Vincent van Gogh painted Irises in the last year of his life, in the garden of the asylum at Saint-Remy, where he was recuperating from an attack of mental illness. Although he considered the painting more a study than a finished picture, his brother Theo submitted it to the Salon des Independants in September 1889. Its energy and theme--the regenerative powers of the earth--express the artist's deeply held belief in the divinity of art and nature.

This groundbreaking book fills a gap in Van Gogh scholarship with an in-depth study of Irises--among the J. Paul Getty...