View our wide collection of beautiful museum shop products with a reproduction of The Sunflowers is a series of still lifes (oil on canvas) made by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.
From the series of sunflowers there are three paintings with fifteen sunflowers in a vase and two paintings with twelve sunflowers in a vase.
Vincent Van Gogh started painting the works in the late summer of 1888 and continued one year later. The paintings went to his friend Paul Gauguin as decoration for his bedroom. The paintings show The Sunflowers are among the most famous paintings by Van Gogh. He made them in Arles, in the South of France, in 1888 and 1889. In total he painted five large canvases of sunflowers in a vase, with three shades of yellow "and nothing else". For example, he showed that it was possible to create a performance with many variants of one color without sacrificing expressiveness.
New was the use of the many yellow colors. Vincent wrote in a letter to his brother Theo van Gogh: Somehow the sunflower is mine.
His paintings of sunflowers had special significance for Van Gogh. They expressed "gratitude," he wrote. The first two he hung in the room of his friend Paul Gauguin, the painter who came to live with him in the Yellow House for a while. Gauguin was impressed by the sunflowers, which he said were "completely Vincent". During his friend's stay, Van Gogh had already painted a new version and later Gauguin asked for a gift. Van Gogh was not very keen on that. He did, however, make two free repetitions, one of which hangs in the Van Gogh Museum.
Painter Isaac Israëls also had a painting of Van Gogh's sunflowers in his studio for some time. He had received this on loan from the heirs of Theo van Gogh. Israëls often used the brightly colored paintings as a background for model paintings. The best known example of this is Woman, and a profile for the sunflowers of Van Gogh (1917), currently in the collection of Museum De Fundatie in Zwolle. See different periods of flowering of the sunflowers, from full bloom to naturalization.
New was the use of the many yellow colors. Vincent wrote in a letter to his brother Theo van Gogh: Somehow the sunflower is mine.
Painter Isaac Israëls also had a painting of Van Gogh's sunflowers in his studio for some time. He had received this on loan from the heirs of Theo van Gogh. Israëls often used the brightly colored paintings as a background for model paintings. The best-known example of this is Woman, and a profile for the sunflowers by Van Gogh (1917), currently in the collection of Museum De Fundatie in Zwolle. Flowers by Vincent van Gogh. now online!
