Van Gogh painted his Sunflowers in Arles, in the south of France, in August 1888, for the guest room of his house there. The guest he was waiting for was the French painter Paul Gauguin, and Van Gogh hoped the two of them would share a studio.
He knew Gauguin liked his sunflower pictures, so he painted four large ones to hang on the walls before his friend arrived. He had planned a dozen.
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The flowers did not stay a simple gift. A few months later, Gauguin asked to keep one, and Van Gogh said no. The way he refused explains what these pictures meant to him.
By then the two painters had parted. Their weeks together ended badly: on December 23, 1888, after a violent crisis, Van Gogh mutilated his own ear, and Gauguin went back to Paris.
From Paris, in January 1889, Gauguin let Van Gogh know he would like to have the Sunflowers with the yellow background. It was the only one of the four painted on a yellow ground, the picture now in London.
Van Gogh answered that he contested “categorically” his friend’s right to the canvas in question. Gauguin already owned two sunflower pictures from Van Gogh’s Paris years, and the painter saw this flower as his own subject. He had taken the sunflower, he said, before anyone else.
Four paintings in one week
The four pictures Gauguin found on his walls had taken about a week…
What You'll Discover
What became of the dozen panels.
What was already dying in the vase.
Why one painting became several.
What the yellow is doing now.
What Gauguin later asked a friend to send.