Poppies

Clusters of red and orange poppies rise among green stems and leaves, rendered with loose, impressionistic brushwork that lets the blooms seem to flicker against their foliage. The painting, titled Poppies, was made in 1888 using oil on canvas and is held today at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, where it entered the collection through the James E. Roberts Fund. The artist, Robert William Vonnoh, lived from 1858 to 1933, was an American painter known also for the work In Flanders Field - Where Soldiers Sleep and Poppies Grow. Looking closely, the way the warm red and orange petals seem to vibrate against the cooler green stems gives the whole composition a sense of light and movement, as though a breeze were passing through the flowers and stirring their color across the canvas surface.