Jerusalem Artichoke Flowers

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Artist: Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)
Medium: oil on canvas
Size: overall: 99.6 x 73 cm (39 3/16 x 28 3/4 in.); framed: 121.9 x 95.2 cm (48 x 37 1/2 in.)
Museum: National Gallery of Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

A cloud of canary-yellow flowers with pumpkin-orange centers on tall stems with emerald and pine-green leaves fills the top half of this vertical still life painting. The flowers, vase, the round tabletop on which they sit, and the background are loosely painted with visible brushstrokes of vibrant color. The flowers have long, pointed petals like daisies. The bouquet is rimmed with a ring of verdant leaves near where the stems gather in the narrow neck of the cylindrical, ivory-white vase.

The vase might sit on a circular cloth edged with alternating sage-green and plum-purple forms like pompoms, but the loose painting style makes these details difficult to make out. The round tabletop is cropped by left and bottom edges of the canvas. The background behind the bouquet and table is painted with long, vertical brushstrokes in salmon pink, pale turquoise, denim blue, and creamy white. The artist signed and dated the painting in red in the lower right corner: “Claude Monet 1880.”