Sunflowers - Van Gogh

• Key facts

  Artist: Vincent van Gogh

  Date made: 1888

  Medium and support: Oil on canvas
• ‘The sunflower is mine’

  Soon after his death he became known as the painter of sunflowers, an identification that endures to this day. No other artist has been so closely associated with a specific flower, and his sunflower pictures continue to be among Van Gogh’s most iconic – and loved – works.
• In this painting the 15 sunflowers are in different stages of their life cycle, from young bud through to maturity and eventual decay and death.


  The bud in the lower left corner has yet to reach full flower, seven flowers are in full bloom and the other seven have lost their petals and are turning to seed.
• Brush strokes

  • Long strokes follow the direction of the petals, leaves and stems, whose sinuous lines echo those of Art Nouveau; small raised dabs of stippled paint imitate the bristling seed heads.
  • Here, especially, Van Gogh exploited the stiff consistency of the new oil paints introduced in the nineteenth century to create thick impasto effects.
• Sunflower symbolism


  The sunflowers’ life cycle follows the vanitas tradition of seventeenth-century Dutch flower painting.

  • The sunflower had also been associated with love, both sacred and profane, since the sixteenth century. This was because just as the sunflower turns to follow the sun, so the true believer follows Christ and the lover follows the object of their affection.
• • For Van Gogh, the sunflower’s association with art and love may have included the idea of artistic friendship or partnership, which he hoped to forge with Gauguin.
  • The sunflower may also have had even more personal meanings for him. In February 1890 he wrote to the critic Albert Aurier, suggesting that the two sunflower pictures he was exhibiting in Brussels might ‘express the idea symbolising "gratitude".’
• sunflowers were also visually striking examples of the beauty and vitality of nature, with which Van Gogh had always had a strong bond.
• No tonal contrasts or shadows just juxtaposition in colour eg. the warmer tones of ochre against the milky yellow background
• No sense of space, flat plane yet some sunflower heads appear to protrude towards the viewer
• The only light apparent reflects off the yellow vase in the centre of the painting, demonstrated by a pale white dash
• The only defining line against the wall and the surface of which the sunflowers are on is a turquoise blue outline providing a sense of horizontality