Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh

Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh

Yellow on yellow

Fifteen sunflowers stand in an earthenware vase against a yellow background, with a single line to show where the table meets the wall. Some are in full flower, some are going over, their petals curling, and some have lost them altogether and are down to their seed heads. Van Gogh builds the whole picture from yellows and ochres, with a little green in the stems, and signs his name, “Vincent”, in blue on the vase itself. The paint is thick, and the seed heads are built up in raised dabs of paint.

For Gauguin’s arrival

He painted it in Arles in August 1888, as one of a group of sunflower pictures meant to decorate the Yellow House, and in particular the room where Paul Gauguin would stay when he came to join him. Much of the yellow is chrome yellow, then a relatively modern pigment. He thought well enough of this composition to paint repetitions of it in January 1889, after Gauguin had left.

Where it hangs

It has been in the National Gallery, London, since 1924, and measures 92.1 by 73 centimetres.

About this print

Made from a 6,000-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 40 inches on its longest side.

Sources: National Gallery, London · Wikidata Q21948567 · Wikimedia Commons