Le grand vase de fleurs was painted in 1907, the year that Vlaminck was crowned "the wildest of the fauves" at his first solo exhibition at Vollard's gallery. Until the previous year, Vlaminck had painted only sporadically because of the need to support himself with other endeavors. In 1906, Vollard purchased the entire stock of Vlaminck's studio which allowed the artist to devote himself exclusively to painting and between 1906 and 1907 his output greatly increased.

The canvases of these years fall into two quite distinct groups: the earlier ones involve patches or stabs of color as well as pointillist passages, and the later works which are more solidly constructed and exhibits a greater sense of formal composition. This work is a fine example of the latter progression. The spontaneous energy of Vlaminck's Fauvism is harnessed by a more disciplined approach to structure but without losing any of the rich drama that characterized his first Fauve works. The same fusion of force (expressed mostly with color) and an expanded sense of mass is obvious in works by Matisse at this time, which is not a coincidence. Among the Fauves the influence of Signac and Seurat was being replaced by an appreciation for the visual revolution that Cézanne started. By late 1906 Vlaminck, Matisse and Derain were all integrating into their work Cézanne's creation of space through color applied with parallel or slanting strokes and closely valued hues.

Vlaminck rarely painted still lifes during his Fauve years and this work is unique in scale and impact; Le grand vase de fleurs was certainly executed as an homage to Cézanne. The differences between the two artists however are as important as the similarities. In Vlaminck, as is evident with this work, a sense of personality is paramount, expressed not only with vivid clashes of color but a dramatic contrast between the vertical movement thrusting from bottom to top (particularized with the reds and oranges) and the languid weight of the blue and green leaves opposing this thrust and pointing unequivocally to the bottom of the canvas. Vlaminck achieves a strong sense of harmony and balance underscored with a current of tension as he courts chaos with the dissonance of clashing hues and the audacious reconstruction of space.

An important characteristic of Vlaminck's is the harsh
flatness--taken almost to the point of arbitrariness--of
his large, unmodulated planes...they create the illusion of
the solidity of their objects by a hardening and upbending
towards the edges (of the planes). Cézanne and the
cubists on the other hand created their objects with planes
which became less definite, hard and flat at their edges;
the centre of each plane in a painting by Cézanne is the
part that is most emphatic, and most definite of the form
of the object depicted. Not so Vlaminck's: hardening and
darkening in color at their edges their plastic power
lies less in an interaction between the angles of their
surfaces than in the tensions which gather along their
gesticulating margins. But if Vlaminck's planes lack
plastic density themselves; if their shapes are sometimes
determined more with regard for their function as units
of design than as agents of plastic definition, density is
recaptured by virtue of the quality of his pigment. (P. Heron,
M. de Vlaminck, London, 1947, n.p.)