Description
A dense mass of lilac, purple, lavender and white, fills an ornate dark blue vase, green leaves woven through the blossoms. The background is an almost uniform near-black, so dark that the vase itself barely separates from it, leaving the flowers to carry the entire canvas alone.
Painted in 1877 and held by the Norton Simon Museum, the canvas (54 by 65.4 cm) pushes the contrast between pale lilac and dark ground even further than Renoir’s other lilac bouquets from the same years. The print keeps that background truly dark, since the flowers only read as luminous against a shadow this deep.



