Coquelicots et fleurs blanches
This conversation is connected to Coquelicots et fleurs blanches.
The entire surface is filled with flowers seen from above with large white blooms (probably peonies or hydrangeas) and bright orange-red poppies against a warm golden-ochre ground. Green stems and leaves are visible between the blooms but the composition is essentially flat, decorative, and almost entirely abstract in its patterning. The paint is thick and applied with visible brushstrokes, the whites built up in heavy impasto. This is Valtat at his most purely coloristic, the subject is almost irrelevant, and the painting is really about the relationship between the orange-red, the white, and the gold. Ambroise Vollard, the legendary dealer who represented Cézanne, Picasso, and Renoir, had an agreement with Valtat to buy nearly his entire output for a decade.