Vase of Flowers before 1910

Maurice de Vlaminck made this Vase of Flowers with oil on canvas. It’s hard to pin down when exactly, but the way he's layering the colors tells a story about his process. Vlaminck uses these thick, juicy strokes of blue, cream, and coral; it's like he's wrestling with the paint, not just applying it. Look at the blues in the background, how they swirl and pull, almost like fabric, and then your eye is pulled forward to the bright, stubby strokes that make up the flowers themselves. There’s this one coral dab, right on the edge of a petal, it's like a tiny explosion of color that holds the whole bouquet together. You know, there's something about this that reminds me of Van Gogh, that same kind of raw, emotional energy. But Vlaminck takes it somewhere else, somewhere a little wilder, a little less… polite. It’s like he's saying, yeah, it's just a vase of flowers, but it's also everything else, all at once.