Sunflowers - by Vincent van Gogh

Sunflowers
1888
92.1 x 73 cm
oil on canvas

Vincent van Gogh painted these sunflowers after leaving his native Holland for the south of France with the dream of starting an artistic community. He began to paint sunflowers to decorate a bedroom for his friend Paul Gauguin.

The series of paintings was made possible by the innovations in manufactured pigments in the 19th Century. Without the vibrancy of the new colours, such as chrome yellow, Van Gogh may never have achieved the intensity of Sunflowers.

These most famous of all sunflowers in art hold at their heart a simple parable about the brevity of life; they are at varying stages in the life cycle, from withered and wilting to vibrant full bloom.

When sunflowers were introduced from America in the mid 16th Century, news of their vast height and radiant flowers spread rapidly through Europe. The first description, written by the Spanish botanist Monardes, reached England in a book entitled 'Joyful news out of the new found world'.

The name sunflower was already used for related flowers, especially marigolds, and the idea of opening to face the sun and following its course across the sky also applied to daisies - originally 'day's-eyes'.

A flower motif inspired by daisies or marigolds, but exaggerated to look more like the sun and its rays, appeared in Roman mosaics and medieval church carvings long before sunflowers themselves arrived. In this sense the new sunflowers seemed to embody ancient traditions, and this was echoed in the Latin name Helianthus, deriving from the name of the Greek sun god Helios.

Meanwhile, in America, the Incas had made sunflowers the symbol of their god, but in 17th Century Europe sunflowers came to represent kingship at its most vainglorious. For instance, Charles I of England and later Louis XIV of France were referred to as the Sun King.

Like royalty, sunflowers lost favour and 18th Century gardening manuals suggested banning these oversized plants from flowerbeds. Instead they became useful crops, producing oil from the seeds, and also fibres, dyes and medicines.

But sunflowers were to rise again in artistic status. In the 19th Century the aesthetic movement, led by fashionable figures such as Oscar Wilde, popularised the sunflower as a motif in decorative art. Far more enduringly, Van Gogh imparted new heights of meaning and popularity with his series of sunflower paintings. In these he sought to reflect the heat of the sun during the summer at Arles, and its creative energy. (Notes from BBC painting)

Upon looking at the Sunflower painting these came into my mind:
- the colours are vibrant, striking
- the bright yellow gives me the emotions of happiness, brightness
- the full bloom, fullness of life
- the wilted bloom, browns - showed the tiredness, the near to death because the stem still in green, meaning there is still life but near to death.
- the fulfillment of cycle of life
- the community living together, understanding of how all live together, going through the cycle of life.


I still remember the very 1st time I saw this painting of sunflowers, it was in Dr Teng's clinic, I was very down that day, because I have not yet achieved my sales of the month, as I opened the door of the clinic, the painting was hung directly facing the door. As I looked at it, that moment it really gives out a cheerful, bright, vibrant colour. I commented to Dr Teng that it was really a very nice painting, very suitable for his clinic, as there are so many sick people coming in, and when they see the painting for sure it will cheer them up, and he agreed with me. But, he told me that it is a replicated one. I knew that Van Gogh is a famous painter, but do not know his paintings.

After that incident, I went looking for sunflowers poster, but could not find one. But as years go by, the sunflowers still in planted into my mind, until this assignment which gives me the opportunity to research and write about it.