Why Did Van Gogh Paint Sunflowers?
Van Gogh painted his famous Sunflowers in Arles in August 1888 to decorate the Yellow House for the arrival of his friend Paul Gauguin. They were a welcome gift and a statement of what his new southern color could do.
He worked fast, in about a week, racing the flowers before they wilted.
He made several versions, claimed the motif as his own, and one of them no longer exists.
Here is why these flowers mattered so much to him.
A gift for a friend who was coming to stay
In 1888 Van Gogh rented the Yellow House in Arles and dreamed of a studio of the south, a place where artists would live and work together.
His first guest was Gauguin.
The Sunflowers were painted to hang in Gauguin’s bedroom before he arrived. A specific welcome, for a specific man, on whom Vincent had pinned his whole dream.
Painted in a week, against the clock
Cut sunflowers wilt fast. He knew it.
So he painted at speed, every morning while the light and the flowers held, finishing the first canvases in roughly a week. You can feel the hurry in the thick, fast paint.
Why yellow on yellow
This was the part that took nerve.
He set yellow flowers against a yellow background, betting that he could make a single color carry a whole picture. He used the brightest yellows he could buy, without restraint.
For Vincent, yellow meant the sun, the south, gratitude and friendship.
The sunflower is mine
He was proud of the motif, and possessive of it.
“The sunflower is mine,” he wrote. He had painted cut sunflowers already in Paris, and he treated them as his personal signature. Gauguin admired them so much that he painted Vincent in the act of painting them.
That admiration later curdled into a small rivalry over who the flowers really belonged to.
How many Sunflowers are there
There is not one Sunflowers. There is a family.
Van Gogh painted the Arles series in 1888, then made careful repetitions in January 1889. The survivors now hang in London, Amsterdam, Munich, Philadelphia and Tokyo. They differ in the number of flowers and the shade of the background.
The one destroyed by war
One version is gone.
It was held in Japan, and was destroyed in 1945 when an air raid burned the house where it was kept during the war. It survives only in old photographs.
They are slowly fading
Here is the quiet tragedy in the paint.
The bright chrome yellows Van Gogh loved are chemically unstable. Over a century they have been darkening toward brown. Conservators now track the change closely. The Sunflowers you see today are already less brilliant than the ones he painted.
Two halves of one plan
The Sunflowers were only half of his decoration for the Yellow House. The other half was his own bedroom, painted as its calm, restful opposite.
There is a secret hidden in that bedroom, detail by detail: Arles Bedroom, the secret detail by detail.
The myth vs what we actually know
Myth: a simple still life of flowers. Fact: a welcome painting for Gauguin, and a manifesto of color.
Myth: there is one Sunflowers. Fact: several versions, with one destroyed in 1945.
Detail: the thick yellow paint, his signature impasto, is slowly browning with age.
FAQ
Why did Van Gogh paint sunflowers? To decorate the Yellow House in Arles for Gauguin’s arrival, and to show what his new color could do.
How many Sunflowers paintings are there? Several from the Arles series and its repetitions, in museums across the world, with one lost in the Second World War.
What do the sunflowers mean? For Van Gogh, the sun, the south, gratitude and friendship.
Where can I see the Sunflowers? Mainly the National Gallery in London and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
The last twist
In 1987, one of the Sunflowers sold at auction for nearly 40 million dollars, a record at the time and many times higher than anything paid for a painting before.
The flowers he dashed off in a week, to make a friend feel at home, became some of the most valuable objects on earth.
Want the whole life, from the dark years to the auction records? Start here: Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Story.
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Quand les deux sont publiés, dis-le moi: je pose les images et je câble tout le maillage du cluster (hub vers les 3 spokes, et les 3 spokes entre eux).