The original work is dated 1887 and was made by Vincent Van Gogh in Paris. It is currently exhibited at the Museum of Art and History of Genève, Switzerland. The only subject represented is a vase of lilac flowers, daisies and anemones. Van Gogh's pictorial style, made up of thick and full-bodied brushstrokes, is based on a 'revolutionary' use of colour: he tends to free it from the shape, to make it expressive for itself, to use it as a space constructor, to give it a symbolic function. Van Gogh is the first artist to understand art as pain and not as pleasure. Through his works he expresses all his suffering, his anxieties. He himself declared in 1888 that he had tried to express the terrible passions of men with red and green. For him colour was already a way to express emotions rather than a way to represent reality. Van Gogh used flowers, in various shapes and colours, as inspiration for many of his works. "Still Life, vase with daisies and poppies", was the star of one of Sotheby's awaited evening auctions of impressionist and modern art in New York. The painting, realized in the last years of Vincent's life, has been sold for a record amount of money.