Looking at Van Gogh’s Irises With AI: What Time Changed in the Colors
Drafted and reviewed using AI assistance.
On this page
Conceptual colors: a fading red component can make a violet mixture look bluer.
A museum's online collection can be a pleasant place to spend a little time after work. If you bring AI along as a reading companion, a question about color can lead somewhere unexpected.
Take Vincent van Gogh's Irises, the 1889 painting in the Getty Museum. Getty's research says the flowers, which appear blue today, were originally painted violet. Asking about the painting's present colors and asking about its original palette are therefore two different conversations.
The explanation comes from research by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Conservation Institute. Van Gogh mixed blue and red paints to make violet. Using techniques including X-ray fluorescence analysis, Getty researchers found markers for a highly light-sensitive red pigment called geranium lake. Light exposure early in the painting's history caused that red pigment to fade dramatically.
Think about what happens to the mixture: as its red component fades, the remaining color looks bluer. A change in one ingredient changes the appearance of the whole mixture. Today's blue cannot, on its own, tell us exactly which violet Van Gogh put on the canvas.
That gives color a material history to read alongside the image. Getty used its findings to approximate the original colors in a reconstruction. Such a reconstruction offers a way to consider an earlier appearance; it isn't an exact original color code or a repainting of the canvas.
This is a good point to invite AI into the reading. Give it the relevant Getty passages and ask it to explain the fading red in ordinary language, using this painting. Then you could discuss how that knowledge changes a reading of the palette: what are you responding to in the colors visible today, and what might you reconsider when thinking about the earlier violet?
The discovery belongs to Getty's researchers. You could use AI to linger over their explanation, then return to the painting with the question of the faded red in mind.