Vincent van Gogh: Irises (Detail), 1889 – Porcelain Art Mug

The white iris stands alone. Van Gogh set it just left of centre, one pale flower in a bed of blue, turned away from the rest. Every account of the painting comes back to it.

He painted Irises in May 1889, in his first week at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole outside Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, working in the walled garden before he was allowed beyond it. There is no drawing underneath: he began straight onto the canvas with the brush, and the leaves were laid in first, cutting across everything that came after.

The colour is argued rather than described. Blue against the orange marigolds behind, and between them a green that belongs to neither — the lesson he had taken from Japanese prints, which he had been collecting and copying for two years. The blue has shifted since 1889: the flowers were painted a warmer violet, and the red lake pigment in them has faded.

This mug carries a detail, not the whole canvas: the white iris, the marigolds above it, and the blue flowers closing in from both sides. The complete painting is shown in the last product image. The printable field on a mug is about nine centimetres high; a canvas almost a metre wide would shrink to a stamp on it, so the honest way to put this picture on a mug is to take a part of it that Van Gogh composed as a whole.

Fine porcelain, 10 oz — 104 mm high, 75 mm across the base. The image runs around the body; handle and rim stay white. Dishwasher and microwave safe.

From the same series: Sunflowers, 1887 · The Bedroom, 1889

Vincent van Gogh, Irises, 1889. Oil on canvas, 74.3 × 94.3 cm. Open-access image released by the museum.

Selected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.