The artist painted the incident reported in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus asks a Samaritan woman for water, on two occasions. This later version was probably painted in the late 1890s, in the second phase of Redon’s career, in which he focused on colour. In an unreal, swirling play of colours, the silhouettes of the two figures merge with the reddish-brown background. The white bouquet (which is also the painting’s subtitle) shines with a glittering, mystical light in front of Jesus’ breast. Although Redon was a contemporary of the Impressionists, his work is entirely independent. In form and content, his paintings anticipate Symbolism and Surrealism.