This is one of five versions of Sunflowers on display in museums and galleries across the world. Van Gogh made the paintings to decorate his house in Arles in readiness for a visit from his friend and fellow artist, Paul Gauguin.
‘The sunflower is mine’, Van Gogh once declared, and it is clear that the flower had various meanings for him. The different stages in the sunflower’s life cycle shown here, from young bud through to maturity and eventual decay, follow in the vanitas tradition of Dutch seventeenth-century flower paintings, which emphasise the transient nature of human actions. The sunflowers were perhaps also intended to be a symbol of friendship and a celebration of the beauty and vitality of nature.
The sunflower pictures were among the first paintings Van Gogh produced in Arles that show his signature expressive style. No other artist has been so closely associated with a specific flower, and these pictures are among Van Gogh’s most iconic and best-loved works.
This is a description of 'The Sunflowers', by the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh, painted in 1888. Oil on canvas, the picture is 92cm high by 73cm wide, in a plain wooden frame.
One of the most recognisable paintings in the history of art, it depicts a slightly larger than life vase of 15 sunflowers, in front of a pale-yellow background. The flowers are carefully observed - each at a different stage in their life-cycle. But this is not a photographic-like depiction. Van Gogh presents us with a unique, powerfully expressive approach to this timeless theme.
A vibrant energy radiates from the jagged spiky flowerheads, in a bold ‘yellow on yellow’ colour combination. The paint is thickly applied in most places - a style of painting termed ‘impasto’ (from the Italian word for dough). We can imagine Van Gogh in the act of painting, the traces of his brush visible in the textured surfaces.
Most of the background is painted in a luminous pale wheat-yellow, applied with criss-crossed hatched brushstrokes. The mustard-coloured surface the vase stands on is painted as a horizontal strip across the bottom 5th of the painting. Applied with smoother brushstrokes, it has a flatter appearance. Where these two yellows meet, Van Gogh has used a thin contrasting line of bright blue to separate them.
The vase is a bulbous oval shape with the appearance of simple country-cottage stoneware. It is painted in two bands of yellow, darker at the top, to stand out against the background colours. The two yellows are separated by a thin blue line, above which he has signed his name ‘Vincent’ in the same blue, on the left of the vase. A few thick daubs of white paint in the centre suggest light reflecting off its surface.
The arrangement of flowers at first appears haphazard, but the flowerheads fall into rough groupings. On either side of the vase, newly developing sunflowers, with curved stems, droop over. The yellow petals of the smaller bud on the left are curled up, having just emerged from their encasement of thin green leaf-like structures, known as ‘bracts’, which frill out around them.
Above these new buds on each side, is a cluster of 3 flowers, the lowest proudly in full bloom while those above are starting to shed their petals. One, furthest to the
right, clings on to a solitary tear-shaped petal. The centre of these flowers are dotted with dark brown to indicate developing sunflower seeds.
A central flower is at the halfway stage, its top half crowned with an arch of spiky petals, while underneath is bare save for some green bracts. Its orange centre is beginning to develop a brown ring of seeds.
The display is finished by two clusters of 3 larger, heavier seed heads, one at the pinnacle of the arrangement, another at its lowest point, overlapping the front of the vase. Here the paint is thickest, applied in ochre-coloured, lively repetitive dabs, with short olive-green flicks at their centres.
While some painters thought sunflowers too coarse a subject to spend their time on, Van Gogh enthusiastically painted them many times. His first four versions were done in just one week of August 1888, while at the ‘yellow house’, his rented home in Arles. They were painted in optimistic anticipation of a visit from fellow artist Paul Gauguin. But Van Gogh and Gauguin’s time together in Arles ended in a disastrous and violent falling out.
In painting his sunflowers Van Gogh achieved a kind of immortality and the magnetic energy of this painting continues to inspire all who encounter 'The Sunflowers' to this day.
Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Martin Davies, with additions and some revisions by Cecil Gould, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: French School: Early 19th Century, Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, etc.’, London 1970; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
If you know more about this work or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.
