For Van Gogh, oleanders were joyous, life-affirming flowers that bloomed inexhaustibly and were always putting out strong new shoots. In this painting of August 1888 the flowers fill a majolica jug that the artist used for other still lifes made in Arles. They are symbolically juxtaposed with Emile Zola's La joie de vivre, a novel that Van Gogh had placed in contrast to an open Bible in a Nuenen still life of 1885.