Sunflowers by Van Gogh: Yellow on Yellow for Gauguin’s Room

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Flowers to decorate a friend’s bedroom

In August 1888, Van Gogh was waiting in Arles for Paul Gauguin to join him at the Yellow House. He wanted the guest room to be full of colour, and he began a series of large paintings of sunflowers to hang on its walls.

He painted four sunflower canvases that month. This one, with fifteen flowers in an earthenware vase against a yellow wall, is the version in the National Gallery in London, which acquired it in 1924. Van Gogh himself considered it one of the best of the group.

Yellow on yellow on yellow

Large sunflower seed head painted in thick brown and orange dabs — Yellows and browns separated only by tone.

Almost everything is yellow: the wall, the table, the vase and the flowers. Van Gogh wanted to see how far he could push a single colour, separating forms only by small shifts of tone, a darker ochre, a greener yellow, a line of blue.

Much of the yellow is chrome yellow, a new and cheap pigment at the time. Research has shown that some of it has darkened with light, so the flowers were originally brighter than they look now.

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Every stage of a flower’s life

Open sunflower with yellow petals and a dark seed centre — A flower in full bloom.

The sunflowers are not all at their best. Some are in full bloom with bright petals; others have lost their petals and show only a heavy seed head, painted in thick, raised dabs of brown and orange.

Drooping sunflower with curling green petals — A wilting flower at the lower left.

At the lower left, a few flowers droop and wither, their green petals curling. Fresh, ripe and dying flowers share the same vase. Many viewers read this as a picture of the cycle of life, though Van Gogh himself spoke mostly of colour.

Signed on the vase

Signature Vincent painted in blue on the vase — Signed simply Vincent, on the vase.

Van Gogh signed the picture in blue on the vase itself: simply “Vincent.” He usually signed with his first name, which he felt was easier for French speakers to say.

The blue line on the vase and the thin blue line where the table meets the wall are almost the only cool colours in the picture. They make the yellows feel even warmer.

He painted it again

In January 1889, after his breakdown and Gauguin’s departure, Van Gogh made repetitions of the London composition. Versions are now in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and another is in Tokyo. The sunflowers became so closely tied to him that Gauguin later painted him at work on one.

Questions about Sunflowers

Why did Van Gogh paint sunflowers?

To decorate the room in the Yellow House where Paul Gauguin would stay in Arles.

Where is this version?

The National Gallery, London.

How many sunflower paintings are there?

Four were painted in Arles in August 1888, and he later made repetitions in January 1889.

How large is it?

92.1 × 73 centimetres, oil on canvas.

Sources and image credit

Faithful public-domain reproduction of Sunflowers (1888), via Wikimedia Commons. Detail images are crops of the same historical painting; no reconstruction or upscaling.