New York to exhibit Van Gogh's 'Irises and Roses'

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is for the very first time scheduled to exhibit post-impressionist Dutch painter, Vincent Van Gogh's quartet of flower paintings - two of irises, and two of roses.

The exhibition will start from Tuesday and run till August 16, Xinhua news agency reported.

In contrasting formats and colour schemes, Van Gogh made the portrait on the eve of his departure from the asylum at Saint-Remy in France, where he had taken refuge since one year for a condition diagnosed by his doctors as a form of epilepsy, the museum said in a statement.

Conceived as a series or ensemble on a par with the Sunflower decoration he painted earlier in Arles, the group includes the Metropolitan Museum's Irises and Roses and their counterparts, the upright Irises from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and the horizontal Roses from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

The exhibition is timed to coincide with the blooming of the flowers that had captivated the artist's attention during his stay in the asylum, the statement added.

Van Gogh was one of the most celebrated artists of the post-impressionist era. Majority of his works include portraits, self-portraits, landscapes and still lifes of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.

He died at the age of 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after years of struggling with anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness.