Artworks

Sunflowers

Artwork · Vincent van Gogh · August 1888–January 1889 · series

Van Gogh’s still lifes of sunflowers in a vase, painted in Arles: four in August 1888 to decorate the Yellow House for Paul Gauguin’s arrival — two of them hung in Gauguin’s room — and three repetitions in January 1889. He meant them to express “gratitude”, and painted them in three shades of yellow “and nothing else”; Gauguin found them “completely Vincent”. Five are in museums: the National Gallery in London and the Neue Pinakothek in Munich (August 1888), the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Sompo Museum of Art in Tokyo (January 1889). Three Sunflowers in a Vase (August 1888) is in a private collection; Five Sunflowers (August 1888) was destroyed in a US air raid on Japan on 6 August 1945.