Irises

Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh painted this Irises in May 1889, within a week of checking himself into the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He'd suffered a breakdown, cut off part of his ear, and decided he needed supervised care. The hospital gardens became his first subject.

The painting shows purple irises crowding the canvas, their sword-like leaves thrusting in all directions. One white iris stands apart from the mass. Van Gogh described the work as "a study" meant to calm his mind before tackling more ambitious compositions. He'd go on to paint The Starry Night that June.

Irises measures 74.3 by 94.3 centimeters. In 1987, Australian businessman Alan Bond bought it at Sotheby's for 53.9 million dollars, setting an auction record. The sale proved controversial when news broke that Sotheby's had loaned Bond half the purchase price. Bond later defaulted, and the painting was sold privately to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, where it's been since 1990.