Conedo's Blog

About an artwork and its creator, part 1 July 1, 2011

Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh

When the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh was buried in 1890, his coffin was covered by yellow flowers, including sunflowers – the subject of two series of still life paintings made by the artist.

Out of all versions he made of these flowers, this; the fourth version, is probably considered as the most famous and has been made as repetitions as well as replicas by the painter himself. The original can be seen at the National Gallery in London, Great Britain.

Sunflowers; original title in French: Tournesols; by Vincent Willem van Gogh. Painted in the year 1888, oil on canvas. Size: 92,1 x 73 cm

The painter

Born March 30^th 1853 in Zundert, the Netherlands died largely unknown at the age of 37 in Auvers-sur-Oise, France July 30^th 1890. Vincent van Gogh was a post-impressionist painter who after his death has had a tremendous impact on art lovers with his use of vivid colors and emotional intensity.

Vincent started out his career working for an art dealing company. His goal was to become a priest and he served a while as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium. He didn’t start to paint until he was in his late twenties, but during that decade, before he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1890, he produced more than 2000 artworks including around 900 paintings. The main part of his works was made in his last two years – between 1888 and 1890. Vincent van Gogh suffered throughout his entire life from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness. If and how his mental illness has affected his artworks has always been a subject of speculation.

Self -Portrait 1889

The painting

In the summer 1888, van Gogh had left the Paris city life and full of inspiration had settled down in Arles in the southern France. He painted a series of sunflowers to decorate the 4 rooms in “the yellow house” he rented. He wished to start a colony for painters there and began by inviting Paul Gauguin, who joined Vincent in October the same year. It started out fine, but in December Paul Gauguin moved out after a dispute and disagreements between the two artists. Vincent now had one of his first and more severe mental breakdowns.

Vincent had painted sunflowers earlier, in Paris, but they were lying on the ground. In the second series painted in Arles, shows bouquets of sunflowers in a vase.

Yellow was Vincent’s favorite color, and now in the late 19^th century, when new pigments for color were made available (such as chrome yellow),  he could elaborate and create more lively, colorful and clear still life paintings.

The first version of this second series of sunflower still life paintings has a turquoise background (now in a private collection), the second had a royal-blue background (that pointing was destroyed by fire in World War II (on August 6^th 1945).

Sunflowers, version 2, destroyed by fire in World War II

The third version has a blue-green background (can be seen in Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany). A repetition of this version can be seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, United States.

Of this, the 4^th version with yellow background, Vincent made a repetition that can be seen at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Holland as well as a replica now on display at the Sompo Japan Museum of Art in Tokyo, Japan.

When Vincent died in 1890, the painting came into ownership of his beloved brother Theo. When he passed away six months later, the painting was inherited by Vincent’s sister-in-law Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, who sold it to Leicester Galleries in London, England in 1923.

One version of van Gogh’s sunflowers was sold on auction at Christie’s in London in 1987 for at the time a record-setting amount of almost US $40 million for a work of art.