Which museum in Los Angeles holds Van Gogh's 'Irises'?

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles holds Van Gogh’s *Irises*.

Van Gogh painted *Irises* in May 1889, soon after entering the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The canvas shows a dense, cropped bed of irises with vigorous brushwork, blue and violet flowers, green leaves, and reddish soil. Rather than presenting a distant landscape, Van Gogh brings the viewer close to the living plants, using the composition and impasto to create movement across the surface.

The painting first belonged to Julien Tanguy, a Paris paint dealer whose portrait Van Gogh painted. In 1892, Tanguy sold it to the critic Octave Mirbeau, one of Van Gogh’s early supporters. *Irises* later became famous at auction: in 1987 it set a record as the most expensive painting ever sold, changing hands for $53.9 million. The buyer, Alan Bond, could not complete payment, and the work was sold again in 1990 to the Getty.

It has been part of the Getty’s permanent collection in Los Angeles since 1990. The museum is distinct from the Huntington Library and Norton Simon Museum, both of which also hold important art collections in Southern California.