A flower named in one period only

The record dates Vase with Zinnias and Other Flowers to 1886. Zinnias are named in five titles in this catalogue, four of them dated 1886 and one dated 1888. Vases and cut flowers cluster in the Paris years with a density they never regain, and the specific flowers named are one of the few ways the record lets that be counted.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 61 by 49.5 centimetres and is held by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, which holds three works here, dated 1886 and 1889. The measured palette reads as green and yellow.

Green in the Paris years

Green dominates twelve of the sixty-one works dated 1886, twenty-five of the ninety-five dated 1887, and then sixty-five of the 135 dated 1888 — the family more or less doubles at each step through the middle of the decade before settling. Read against that curve, an 1886 still life measured as green and yellow is an early instance rather than a typical one. The catalogue can say when the reading becomes common; it cannot say why, and this page does not guess. Who arranged the flowers, and in whose room, the record does not state.