Sunflowers
Vincent van Gogh (1853 to 1890) · January 1889
Fifteen sunflowers crowd into a plain earthenware pot against a wall that is itself the colour of sunlight. Some of the flowers are fresh and open, some are turning to seed, some are already drooping and dry. Vincent painted the first version of this picture in August 1888 to decorate the room in the Yellow House where his friend Paul Gauguin would sleep, and in January 1889, after Gauguin had gone and Vincent had come out of hospital, he painted this repetition of it. He signed it simply Vincent on the belly of the vase, the way he liked to be known.
The idea that drove the picture was to paint yellow on yellow, with almost no other colour to help. Look at how many yellows there are: pale chrome in the background, deeper chrome and ochre in the petals, a warm cream in the table, and a thin line of blue holding the vase together at the bottom. The paint in the flower heads is laid on thickly, with the seed centres worked in little raised strokes that catch the light like the real thing. Vincent wrote that he was painting these with the enthusiasm of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, that is to say greedily and fast, and you can feel that speed in every stroke.
The canvas stayed with the family and came to the museum with the rest of the collection. It is the picture most visitors come for, and the museum has never lent it since it was found to be too fragile to travel, so this is the only place to see it. One detail to look for: the yellow has changed. The chrome yellow Vincent used darkens over time, so the background was once brighter and the flowers a little more lemon than they are today, and the museum keeps the lighting low to slow the change.
Did You Know? The museum decided in 2019 that this painting will never travel again because the paint layers are too fragile, so it has been in Amsterdam ever since.
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