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In May 1890, just before his departure from the asylum in Saint-Remy, Van Gogh painted an exceptional group of four still life paintings, the Museum's Irises and Roses (58.187) belong. These bouquets and their counterparts an upright composition of irises (artwork at Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) and a horizontal composition of roses (artwork at National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC) were conceived as a decorative ensemble, like the earlier suite of sunflowers. Traces of pink along the tabletop and rose petals in the present paintings, which colours have faded over time, offering a faint reminder of the formerly vivid "canvas of pink roses against a yellow-green background in a green vase."