For Vincent van Gogh, oleanders embodied joy and renewal, flowers he described as blooming “inexhaustibly” and continually producing vigorous new shoots. In this painting of August 1888, the blossoms overflow a majolica jug that Van Gogh frequently used for his Arles still lifes. The flowers are deliberately set in symbolic dialogue with Émile Zola’s La joie de vivre, a novel that Van Gogh had earlier contrasted with an open Bible in a Nuenen still life of 1885, underscoring his evolving reflections on life, vitality, and belief.