Artist | Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Year | August-October 1887

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

59,5 × 99,5 cm

Location

Kröller-Müller Museum → Now on display

Four Sunflowers Gone to Seed

In Paris, Vincent van Gogh frequently painted flower still lifes to practice his use of colour. In 1886, he described making a series of colour studies by simply painting flowers, seeking oppositions of blue with orange, red and green, yellow and violet, while looking for broken and neutral tones to harmonise brutal extremes and trying to render intense colour rather than a grey harmony. This artwork is an unusual flower still life that features no fresh flowers in a vase or pot, no arranged bouquet of different flowers, no entourage, and no background; it depicts just a few cut sunflowers gone to seed. Painted life-sized, the flowers completely fill the entire canvas. In this painting, he found what he sought by combining warm and cold colours in contrasting tones. The integration of these elements with swirling brushstrokes in all directions, along with the strange, undefinable space where the sunflowers are placed, makes this piece one of the highpoints of his Parisian period.