Sunflowers
Van Gogh painted sunflowers to decorate Gauguin’s room in the Yellow House in Arles. He made several versions, almost entirely in different shades of yellow.
Thick paint (impasto) turns the flowers into something almost sculptural.
Vincent van Gogh moved to Arles in the south of France in February 1888. He dreamed of an artists’ colony in the yellow house he rented, and invited Paul Gauguin. In August 1888 he painted four pictures of sunflowers in a vase to decorate Gauguin’s room. Gauguin arrived in Arles in October that year and stayed until December. During just over a year in Arles Van Gogh was extremely productive, painting some two hundred works.
The version in the National Gallery in London is one of the four from August 1888. It shows fifteen sunflowers in a yellow earthenware pot against a pale yellow background. The table is also yellow. The flowers are at different stages: some are in full bloom, others have shed their petals and show their seeds. Van Gogh signed the vase with his first name, Vincent.
The picture is a study in yellow. Van Gogh used several shades of yellow pigment and set them against one another with a few accents of green, blue and orange. The paint is applied thickly, and the brushstrokes follow the shapes of the flowers, so that petals and seeds become almost sculptural. The background is painted with short, crisscrossing strokes that give the surface a lively texture.
For Van Gogh the sunflowers stood for gratitude and for the light and warmth of the Provençal sun. He was influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, with their strong areas of colour and clear outlines. He was proud of the pictures and considered them among his best works. He wrote to his brother Theo about his plans to fill the house with pictures of the flowers.
In January 1889, after the crisis in December when he had cut off part of his ear and Gauguin had left Arles, Van Gogh made several repetitions of the sunflower pictures. One is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, one in Philadelphia and one in Tokyo. The Tokyo version was bought in 1987 by a Japanese insurance company for a record price. Another version was destroyed in Japan during the Second World War.
Investigations have shown that some of the yellow pigments have darkened slightly over time, particularly chrome yellow, which is sensitive to light. The pictures therefore look somewhat different today from when they were painted, and the museums protect them carefully. The National Gallery bought the painting in 1924.
Sunflowers has become one of the best-known pictures in the world and a symbol of Van Gogh himself. In 2022 climate activists threw tomato soup at the painting in London. It was protected by glass and escaped serious damage. The incident showed how strong the picture’s symbolic status is. It is also one of the most reproduced images in the world, on everything from posters to coffee mugs.