Adolphe Monticelli (1824-1886) is best-known as Van Gogh’s favorite artist. Born in Marseille, Monticelli first came to Paris in 1847 as a student, studying at the École des Beaux-Arts and later with Paul Delaroche. He returned in 1856 for a longer sojourn, painting in Fontainebleau alongside his friend Diaz de la Peña and internalizing the chromatic lessons of his idol, Delacroix. Monticelli found some success during this period, painting decorative panels on commission for Empress Eugénie and supplying American and British collectors with his Watteau-inspired fêtes galantes. When the Franco-Prussian War erupted in 1870, Monticelli returned to Marseille for good, devoting himself to a life of painting and poverty in the provinces. His relative isolation in the south, and his distance from the major artistic developments then underway in Paris, doubtless contributed to his marginalization within later histories of nineteenth-century art.

Vincent’s letters to his brother Theo, who owned one of Monticelli’s still life paintings, are full of reverential comments about the painter, in particular his use of vibrant color and heavily impastoed brushwork. As Vincent wrote from Arles: “Under the blue sky, the orange, yellow, red patches of flowers take on an amazing brilliance, and in the limpid air there’s something happier and more suggestive of love than in the north. It vibrates - like the bouquet by Monticelli that you have.”