Vincent van Gogh - Still Life Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers 1889
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Still Life Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers 1889
100x76cm oil/canvas
Tokyo, Sompo Japan Museum of Art
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From Sompo Japan Museum of Art, Tokyo:
With fifteen sunflowers arranged luxuriantly in a yellow jar around a single flower with an eye-like red dot, Vincent van Gogh celebrates the vibrancy of life itself, imbuing each individual sunflower with its own expressional impact.
Van Gogh embarked upon his career as an artist relatively late in life, but left a legacy of over 2,000 pieces in a mere ten years of work. And of this rich legacy, his “sunflower” paintings are viewed as symbolizing van Gogh himself, born out of the travails of a short, intense life ended at the age of 37 when despair drove him to choose death.
Van Gogh painted twelve “sunflower” works, seven of which date from his Arles Period, perhaps the painter’s artistic high-water mark. Seeking the bright Japanese quality of light seen in Ukiyoe wodblock prints, the artist settled in Arles in the south of France, where he rented the “yellow house” dreaming of establishing a colony of artists. He had planned to decorate the room he prepared for Gauguin with twelve “Sunflowers.” Unfortunately, the “sunflower,” project ended at seven, and his communal life with Gauguin ended after only two months.
This work is painted on a portion of a 20-meter sheet of canvas purchased by Gauguin when he came to live and work with van Gogh in Arles. Gauguin’s “L’Allee des Alyscamps, Arles” is also painted on canvas from this sheet.