Van Gogh's Sunflowers
Vincent van Gogh painted sunflowers in two series: cut flowers lying on a table in Paris, and the famous vases painted in Arles.
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About the series
Van Gogh's Sunflowers fall into two series. In Paris in 1887 he painted four canvases of cut sunflower heads lying on a surface, seen close up. In Arles in August 1888 he began a series of sunflowers in a vase, painted to decorate the room of his friend Paul Gauguin in the Yellow House.
He painted four vase paintings that August and made three repetitions in January 1889, seven in all. The paintings are built almost entirely from shades of yellow, a colour he linked with light and friendship. One was destroyed in Japan during the Second World War and one is in a private collection. The other five hang in the National Gallery in London, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Sompo Museum of Art in Tokyo.
The vase paintings are upright and suit a kitchen, dining room or hallway. The Paris canvases are wide and hang well above a sideboard.
