Sunflowers

Fifteen sunflowers crowd together in a plain earthenware vase, some fresh and bursting with color, others already curling and fading at the edges. Vincent van Gogh painted this version in 1889, one in a small series he made on the same subject. The original idea was cheerful and practical at once: he wanted to brighten the room he was preparing for his friend and fellow painter Paul Gauguin, who was coming to stay with him in the sunny town of Arles in the south of France. Van Gogh worked fast, racing to capture the blooms before they wilted, and he was honestly proud of the result.

Yellow rules almost everything here, from the shaggy petals to the rounded vase and even the wall behind. Van Gogh adored this color, and he layered his paint so thickly in places that the flowers seem to rise off the surface. For him the sunflower stood for warmth and thankfulness, which may explain why he kept the drooping, tired blooms rather than tidying them away. His signature sits modestly on the vase, just the single word "Vincent," a small personal mark on a picture that has grown into one of the best loved images in the world.