Sunflowers

The answer

Is this the original?

Yes. The National Gallery says Van Gogh painted seven versions of Sunflowers in two groups: four in August 1888, and three replicas that it dates to January 1889. ^[1] This canvas is one of the four originals. ^[1]

On 28 January 1889 Van Gogh told his brother Theo that he had just finished “the absolutely equivalent and identical repetitions” of the two sunflower canvases in Gauguin’s room. ^[2] The editors of his letters identify those two canvases as F456 and F454, now in Munich and London, and the repetitions as F455 and F458, now in Philadelphia and Amsterdam. ^{[2] [3]}

A third repetition, now in Tokyo, is not mentioned in his letters. ^[3] The Sompo Museum of Art, which owns it, says it was painted in late November or early December 1888, while Gauguin was living with Van Gogh, and that it was based on the London painting. ^[4] In a study of 2001, two Van Gogh Museum researchers also placed it before January 1889. They wrote that when Gauguin asked that January for what was probably the London picture, Van Gogh painted a new version, the one in Amsterdam, with forms “mainly based on the London version”. ^[3]

The Philadelphia canvas repeats the other August original: its museum calls it “a variation on the work now in Munich”. ^[6]

So the London canvas was repeated twice, in the canvases now in Tokyo and Amsterdam.

Things to look for

1. Most of the flowers sit in the same places in both canvases.
2. The lower part of the vase is yellow in London and pink in Amsterdam. ^[3]
3. The Amsterdam canvas outlines the vase and the foreground in red. ^[3]
4. The Amsterdam canvas measures 95 × 73 cm ^[5], the London canvas 92.1 × 73 cm. ^[1]

The series

Seven vases

Five of the seven are in museums, in London, Amsterdam, Munich, Philadelphia and Tokyo, and one, in a private collection, has not been exhibited for generations. ^[1] The seventh, bought by a Japanese collector in 1921, was destroyed during the Second World War. ^[1]

Painted in August 1888

1. Not shown

   Three sunflowers

   Private collection · F453 · 73 × 58 cm

   One of the first two he finished. ^[1] He listed it as “3 large flowers in a green vase”. ^[7]

   No photograph with an open licence was found.

2. Not shown

   Sunflowers on royal blue, destroyed

   Destroyed during the Second World War · F459

   The other of the first two. ^[1] His list counts five flowers “on a royal blue background”, and his editors note a small sixth. ^[7] A Japanese collector bought it in 1921. ^[1]

   The painting no longer exists.

3. 

   Munich

   Neue Pinakothek, Munich · F456 · 92 × 73 cm

   His list calls it “twelve flowers and buds in a yellow vase”. ^[7] The 2001 study counts 14. ^[3] He signed it “Vincent” and hung it in Gauguin’s room with the London canvas. ^[1] It entered the Bavarian State Painting Collections in 1912 as an anonymous gift. ^[8]

   Image: Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Neue Pinakothek, Munich. CC BY-SA 4.0.

4. 

   London, this painting

   National Gallery, London · F454 · 92.1 × 73 cm

   He wrote of “a new bouquet of 14 flowers on a green-yellow background”. ^[9] The Gallery counts 15. ^[1]

His repetitions, late 1888 and January 1889

1. Not shown

   Tokyo

   Sompo Museum of Art, Tokyo · F457

   A repetition of the London canvas, dated by its museum to late November or early December 1888. ^[4]

   No photograph with an open licence was found.

2. 

   Amsterdam

   Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam · F458 · 95 × 73 cm

   A repetition of the London canvas, painted in Arles in January 1889. ^{[5] [3]}

3. 

   Philadelphia

   Philadelphia Museum of Art · F455

   A repetition of the Munich canvas, which its museum says Van Gogh painted “from memory, in the depths of winter in 1889”. ^[6]

Is the Tokyo canvas by Van Gogh?

In 1997 Benoît Landais argued in Le Journal des Arts that it was a later copy. ^[3] In 2001 Louis van Tilborgh and Ella Hendriks of the Van Gogh Museum published a study of it. They found that its history of ownership gives no reason to doubt it. ^[3] They traced its weaker passages to Van Gogh’s own struggle with an extreme light-on-light picture and very thick paint, and wrote that this struggle is what gave “the critics reason to regard the work as a forgery”. ^[3]

In his words

What he wrote

Around 21 August 1888 Van Gogh wrote to the painter Emile Bernard: “I’m thinking of decorating my studio with half a dozen paintings of Sunflowers.” He imagined “harsh or broken yellows” bursting “against various blue backgrounds”, with effects like the “stained-glass windows of a Gothic church”. ^[10]

“I’m painting with the gusto of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won’t surprise you when it’s a question of painting large Sunflowers.” ^[7]

In the same days he told Theo his plan: “In the hope of living in a studio of our own with Gauguin, I’d like to do a decoration for the studio. Nothing but large Sunflowers.” He worked “all these mornings, from sunrise. Because the flowers wilt quickly”. ^[7]

A few days later he reported “a new bouquet of 14 flowers on a green-yellow background”. The editors of his letters identify it as this painting. ^[9]

Gauguin arrived on 23 October, and Van Gogh hung this canvas and the Munich one in the guest room. After a fight on 23 December, Gauguin went back to Paris, and in a letter he asked Van Gogh for a sunflower painting. ^[1] On 22 January 1889 Van Gogh wrote to Theo: “he wants one of those two canvases, well I’ll do one of them over again, the one he wants”. ^[11]

Look closely

Three details

Three details, cut from a large photograph of the painting. The notes say what you can see.