Sunflowers

Sunflowers (fourth version), painted in January 1889 and now at the Van Gogh Museum, is one of the series of sunflower paintings Van Gogh produced in two concentrated phases: the first in August 1888 for Gauguin's bedroom in the Yellow House, and this second phase in January 1889 when he made copies of the most successful originals. The sunflower series is among the most iconic works in Western art — Van Gogh himself considered sunflowers as his personal emblem, writing that they expressed 'gratitude.' This Amsterdam version reproduces one of the original 1888 compositions, displaying fifteen sunflowers at various stages of bloom in a simple earthenware vase against a yellow-ochre background.

The composition deploys a stratified yellow palette — the vivid yellows of the sunflower heads, the pale yellow of the background, the ochre of the vase — that creates a nearly monochromatic field of exceptional tonal complexity within a restricted color range. Van Gogh renders each flower individually, distinguishing between fully open blooms, overblown heads, and the compact spheres of seed-bearing discs. His impasto handling gives the flower heads physical relief — the paint standing proud of the canvas surface in places. The visible brushstrokes reinforce the vitality of the subject.