All language subtitles for EOS_SUNFLOWERS_SCR

My dear Bernard, the beautiful sun down
here in high summer,

it beats down on your head, and I have
no doubt at all that it drives you

Now, being that way already, all I do is
enjoy it.

I'm thinking of decorating my studio
with half a dozen paintings of

A decoration in which harsh or broken
yellows will burst against various blue

backgrounds, from the palest veronese to
royal blue, framed with thin wooden

laths and painted in orange lead.

Sorts of effects of stained -glass
windows of a Gothic church.

Ah, my dear pals, we crazy ones, let's
enjoy with our eyes,

shall we?

Alas, nature gets paid in kind, and our
bodies are despicable, and sometimes a

heavy burden.

Oh, how I'd like to spend these present
days in Pont -au -Vert.

But anyway, I console myself by
reconsidering the sunflowers.

Ever yours, Vincent

Every artist is known by one picture
that says it all. It encapsulates their

artistic qualities.

I mean, we know that Rembrandt is the
Night Watch and the Mona Lisa, okay,

that's Leonardo da Vinci. In the case of
Van Gogh, it's the Sunflower.

It says really something about his
artistic qualities because he managed to

something which was difficult to do.

It was something that, by experimenting,
it became better.

It also says something about his
biography at the time, somebody who was

hoping for love, gaiety, musicality in
life, something he didn't have at the

time.

And we all know what kind of tragedy
became part of his life.

But that's all included, I tend to
think.

People really love...

the sunflowers, and they recognize our
human longing for happiness, and all

people have that.

It says it all.

That's why it is a masterpiece, an
iconic picture.

People love Van Gogh for two reasons.
The images are often fairly simple when

you first look at them, but they have
real depth to them. And it's got a

quality, and it's got marvelous colors.

But the other reason why Van Gogh is so
popular and why the public is obsessed

with him is the story of his life, which
was absolutely extraordinary.

The way he began as an art dealer, tried
various careers. He went to Belgium to

a coal mining area as a missionary, and
he failed at that.

He then decided to become an artist.

He mutilated his ear.

He ended up in an asylum.

and he committed suicide. It's an
extraordinary story.

The exhibition is called Van Gogh and
the Sunflowers, here at the Van Gogh

Museum, and it's focusing on the
sunflowers in the collection of this

There's been extensive research into
this masterpiece, technical research,

we want to share that with the public,
the results of this technical study.

Van Gogh painted in total 11 pictures of
sunflowers.

Four of them when he was living in
Paris, and these are still lives of

sunflowers lying on a table.

And then the next year in Arles, in
Provence, he paints seven pictures of

sunflowers.

One of them is lost, unfortunately.

And these are the famous pictures of the
large bunch of sunflowers in a vase.

These paintings are now all across the
world in museums and in private

collections, but each of them has its
own fascinating story.

He had been working for five years as an
artist, and we have to remember that he

only worked as an artist for ten years.

And when he painted, he painted mainly
in dark colors, and he was very much

influenced by the Barbizon school, the
French realistic landscape painters,

peasant painters such as Jean -François
Millet.

Verhoog had to make a decision whether
he would always be painting peasants who

wouldn't sell or think about the near
future maybe, and that's why he decided

pick portraits and flower still lifes,
who were the best subject if you wanted

to make some money.

So what you see when he moves to Paris
in 1886, in the summer he really starts

to make at least roughly 40 flower still
lifes.

Initially he did them...

really as colour exercises.

You know, he loved the different colours
of the flowers and he was getting

interested in how colours worked in
paintings. He met the Impressionists and

that really made him exuberant in his
use of colour.

In Paris, he would have used a variety
of flowers and some of his friends would

bring him flowers, a wide variety,
depending on the seasons.

Van Gogh loved sort of basic nature, and
I think that's one of the reasons why

these flowers appeal to him so much.

In Antwerp, I did not even know what the
Impressionists were.

Now I've seen them, and though not being
one of the club, yet, I have much

admired certain Impressionist pictures.

Degas, nude figure.

Claude Monet, landscape.

And now for what regards what I myself
have been doing.

I have lacked money for paying models,
else I would have entirely given myself

to figure painting.

But I have made a series of color
studies in painting simply flowers, red

poppies, blue cornflowers and meosotis,
white and rose roses,

yellow chrysanthemums, seeking
oppositions of blue with orange,

red and green.

yellow and violet, seeking the broken
and neutral tones to harmonize brutal

extremes.

And so I'm struggling for life and
progress in art.

Settling in Montmartre, as Van Gogh did,
he would have been in quite a

traditional, old -fashioned rural
environment on the doorstep of Paris,

and people were growing sunflowers just
for the sheer delight in their colour

and their shape and so on.

But he would also have known the kind of
formal flower -painting tradition that

Manet and that Jeannin and Couste and
others of his contemporary generation

producing.

We know he admired Coast's work, well,
Coast chose hollyhocks in his own

garden, and those could have been read
symbolically as emblems of fecundity,

that was the meaning given to them at
that point, or they could have been read

as an exercise in colour, and the market
would have consisted of people who

wanted something decorative for their
apartment, but equally people who were,

it were, looking to painting for an
insight into an idea.

And we find all sorts of language of
flowers, allusions in Fontaine Latour,

who's a sort of academic painter of
flowers, contemporary with the

Impressionists, friendly with many of
them, just as Coast is on that

between the academic, the symbolic, the
formal and the informal Impressionist

vision of nature.

He would also have heard about them, I'm
sure, from his brother Tzio, who was

buying pictures by Monet, for example.
Monet was painting the sunflowers that

grew at Vétheuil in 1881 already,
Vétheuil being his own.

not far from the River Seine. And the
inspiration of the sunflower

is being taken up then by the
Impressionists via Monet.

Van Gogh's hearing about Monet's
pictures.

Monet's going to be doing a number of
further sunflower pictures, but at this

point we have the Vétheuil ones that
could have come into his awareness.

There's a sort of turning point going on
in Paris where those two traditions of

Impressionism and Realism are beginning
to meet each other in Van Gogh's

thinking.

with the number of false teeth, etc.

But why does that matter?

I have a dirty and difficult occupation.

Painting. And if I weren't as I am, I
wouldn't paint.

But being as I am, I often work with
pleasure.

And I see the possibility, glimmering
through, of making paintings in which

there's some youth and freshness.

Although my own youth is one of those
things I've lost.

Last year, I painted almost nothing but
flowers to accustom myself to a color

other than gray.

That's to say, pink.

Soft or bright green.

Light blue.

Violet. Yellow.

Orange. Fine red.

And when I painted landscape in Ancière
this summer, I saw more color in it than

before.

One of the things that was driving lots
of things from this period was this idea

of competitive gardening and the great
and the good wanting to make sure that

they had something that they can outdo
their friends with.

The sunflowers belong to one genus
within, if you like, the sunflower

and that genus is called Helianthus,
literally sunflower, Helios sun,

Anthus flower.

There were no sunflowers in Europe
before 1492.

and the discovery of the Americas.

Native Americans were using them as a
source of food, essentially storing

over the winter.

They were also using them as dye plants.
They were being used medicinally.

But none of that was transferred into
Europe. So the uses of the plant were

transferred.

The genus arrived in the early 16th
century.

And at that period, they were primarily
seen as garden plants.

So the fields of sunflowers that we see
today would not be the types of

landscape that Van Gogh would have
encountered.

They were these fantastically unusual
plants. There's nothing like it in

Huge flower head, long stalk.

They also have a range of different
colours associated with them. So we

sunflowers as primarily as being yellow.

But, of course, they do show a range.
You go from very pale colours all the

through to colours that are getting into
the red spectrum, dark orange.

That thing that we think of as a flower,
as a single flower, in fact is not.

It is, in fact, a collection of lots and
lots, thousands of tiny little flowers.

And, in fact, there are two types of
flowers there.

If you look very carefully, you will see
the yellow petalite structures.

They are one type of flower. And then if
you go inside, what you see are lots

and lots of tiny little flowers. And
they're the second type. And it's only

ones in the centre that produce seed.
The ones on the outside are sterile.

Surrounding this entire structure, there
are these leaf -like structures which

are called bracts, and in fact, that
combination of lots of small flowers

surrounded by those bracts are the
characteristic feature of the whole

family of plants that the sunflowers
belong to. So things like

daisies, thistles, they're all in this
family.

Over time, it was discovered that, in
fact, the seeds were a good source of

and were potentially a good food
material. They were not toxic. They

lot of high -quality oil. But it took a
long time for people to actually

discover those culinary values of
sunflowers itself.

And, of course, the other thing that we
find about sunflowers is this idea that

they track...

the sun that that flower head actually
follows the sun on its daily arc that's

myth it doesn't do that at all when
they're very young what you find is that

sunflowers will as in fact all seedlings
they move and that they move during the

day and this is a process called
circumnutation but it's not associated

movement of the sun it's actually
associated with gravity it's not a

plant it's capable of hanging on in very
rough conditions

And suddenly it comes into Europe and
people start costing it. They start

looking after it. They start putting it
into beautifully nurtured soil. And then

suddenly it goes mad.

With that potentially comes all sorts of
ideas of power, and that if you think

about that nature is ordered in the so
-called scala natura, then you have the

big, dramatic plants overloading the
smaller plants. And, of course, that's

quite an interesting simile for
associating with humans and human

Van Dyck's self -portrait with the
sunflower is really a very stunning

sunflower. He's looking towards it. He's
holding out his hand and touching it

with his finger.

And he is also holding a chain, a gold
chain, which we know was given to him by

Charles I.

So with the emblematic use of sunflowers
as emblems of...

devotion, adoration, and it can be
interpreted various ways. You might see

him alluding to his own devotion to
Charles I, doing commissions for Charles

or you might see it as him, in a
slightly broader sense, representing his

profession, that he responds to nature
as a visual artist, portrays that

equally, he turns the sunflower in this
image to signify his dedication to art.

The 17th century is a really interesting
period because the sunflower obviously

has come in the century before from
America and has become part of the

but it's still an exotic really. It's
still something people are fascinated

And we also have other plants coming
along like chrysanthemum, something that

the Dutch brought back through trade in
the late 17th century.

Painters of flowers and of still life in
Holland, with their fascination with

the contemporary, the here and now, all
that went with the Dutch Republic and

the secularism that that involved, were
almost inevitably, I think, going to

turn to flowers as things that were new
and interesting and dynamic almost.

There will be always that symbolism
underpinning the depiction of the

such,

at their prime for a short time only,
they're cut, the petals will fall off,

they won't be there anymore, they
encapsulate that moment, that specific

-ness and now -ness, as it were.

There is a really interesting example of
this in the hands of Maria van

Oosterwijk, who was a Dutch artist, a
very interesting individual.

deeply religious so she probably looked
at the sunflower through the eyes of

contemporary religious symbolism as the
flower that turned to the sun therefore

was an emblem of the soul turning to god
but what she does in her still life of

a sunflower and various other flowers is
is really subtle and intriguing.

She includes the sunflower at the apex
of the composition, wonderful yellow

petals crowning it, as it were, looking
over the whole scene. And then she edges

up to it a little chrysanthemum.

Actually, not a very little one, a
reasonable size chrysanthemum.

And this flower must have been
absolutely new.

It was only published in 1689.

This painting's 1675 at the latest.

It must have been growing as a new
thing, just brought through to Holland

traders who'd been over to China or
possibly Japan, and therefore it's

rival, it's a challenge to the
sunflower.

The sunflower's maybe going to be
dethroned by this flower that Maria van

Oosterwijk then just puts in
juxtaposition with it. And then at the

the composition, in the little motif of
the lid from the pot, it's a kind of

ceramic that's been sculpted to make a
little finial. and that finial is the

statuette of Venus.

So we have Venus herself dethroned, not
just by the sunflower, but also by the

chrysanthemum. And then we have a
butterfly just at the very far left,

the soul, emblem of transience, but also
of spirituality, and in a sense, the

emblem of Christ it sometimes is. So
it's almost as though there's a dialogue

going on between the real material world
and that spiritual world that Maria was

so much involved in as a deeply
religious individual.

Equally Van Gogh would have been very
familiar with those colour combinations

from his knowledge of Vermeer for
example in Dutch 17th century art where

already get explorations of juxtaposed
and different contrasts of colour.

And it's almost as though he sees the
flowers as an opportunity in still life

painting to explore what he can do with
colour.

So I think the sunflowers would have
been those notes of yellow.

It's rather interesting that when he
gets to do his full.

Sunflower series, as he later calls
them, a symphony in blue and yellow,

thinking of harmony and contrast.

Then we have this yellow still life from
the Paris period in the exhibition.

It's quite an interesting still life.
And so it's a still life of fruit.

quinces and lemons and pears. And it is
very interesting in this context because

it's a painting of yellow on yellow.

completely yellow painting or nearly
only yellow painting for the very first

time. And he's experimenting with how to
achieve a very strong color effect with

only gradations of yellow. And that's
something that he will take a step

with the sunflowers.

You have to realize that Van Gogh in
general was mightily depressive.

So he needed a more colourful, a more
bright, a more hopeful kind of

surroundings for his own pictures, but
also for himself, simply to keep himself

in balance.

It says something about the fact that
even the sunflowers, where the wilting

part is so much part of that picture,
painting them in such a joyful way

really helped him to, well, to get hope.

That's also what he says about this
particular motif, that it would give

well, hope for the future.

My dear little sister, you see for
yourself in nature that many a flower is

trampled, freezes, or is parched.

Further, that not every grain of wheat,
once it has ripened, ends up in the

earth again to germinate there and
become a stalk.

But far and away the most grains do not
develop, but go to the mill, don't they?

Now. Comparing people with grains of
wheat, and every person who's healthy

natural, there's the power to germinate
as in a grain of wheat.

And so, natural life is germinating.

What the power to germinate is in wheat,
so love is in us.

I do think that the very idea of the
human being as an extension of a plant

-ordered universe was really fundamental
in the 19th century.

We have the advent of plate glass. We
have the opportunity to cultivate exotic

flowers at home in greenhouses that are
built with glass and iron construction

from the mid -19th century.

And equally, there's the development of
hybridisation that gradually gathers

momentum through the 19th century,
creation of all sorts of new species.

So painters begin to respond to the
flower as something that offers

opportunities for analysis of form,
study of colour.

a sense of design, of pattern.

And we have Renoir, for example, saying
that he likes painting flowers because

he doesn't have to worry about getting
the likeness of a sitter. He can instead

concentrate on that play of colour and
form.

The first year he produced a lot of
flower still lifes and he really hoped

they would sell and we see not the
freshly cut flowers anymore, but we see

ones that are dying, fading away. And he
suddenly became interested in something

else. We're still in Paris.

He made four magnificent still lifes of
sunflowers and you see dying sunflowers

there after they bloom.

They're marvellous.

He loved those kind of subjects, alts.

gloomy to a certain extent, and now he's
found something which is personal.

So he was now inventing a new subject,
you could say, for the flowers.

That's an important moment because it's
really different from what you would do

for the market.

It's only later on that artists became
interested in the pittoresque kind of

qualities of dying flowers.

He was clearly fascinated by these high
plants. He depicted them on several

occasions in drawings, in paintings too,
where he is highlighting

the length or the height of these
flowers by putting little figures in the

picture with them.

These are views of Montmartre. On the
hill you had this beautiful view of the

city, so you see the city in the
background, but it's a very rural area.

There's an interesting painting in the
exhibition which we don't often show.

It's actually a double -sided painting.

So on the other side we have a portrait
of a woman from Nuenen in Brabant.

And he paints this landscape scene with
a larger -than -life sunflower in a

garden in Montmartre. And in the
background he puts a little figure of a

looking at the view above the houses. So
he's contrasting this very large...

sunflowers with the little figure and
it's interesting because it's almost

a human figure, this sunflower.

My dear little sister, I don't want to
be one of the melancholics or those who

become sour and bitter and morbid.

To understand all, is to forgive all.

And I believe that if we knew
everything, we'd arrive at a certain

If I didn't have Theo, it wouldn't be
possible for me to do justice to my

It's my plan to go to the South for a
while, as soon as I can, where there's

even more color and even more sun.

When Van Gogh went to Provence in the
south of France, he went there to look

brighter colors, as he later writes in a
letter. He also wanted to live in a

warmer climate because the cold in Paris
was not good for him, and he really

felt also that he needed to go live in
the countryside and get away from the

city. So those were a number of reasons
for him to leave Paris and to move to a

more quiet, more natural surroundings.

My dear sister, the color here is
actually very fine.

When the vegetation is fresh, it's a
rich green, the like of which we seldom

in the north.

Calm.

When it gets scorched and dusty, it
doesn't become ugly.

But then a landscape takes on tones of
gold of every shade.

Green gold, yellow gold, red gold, ditto
bronze, copper.

In short, from lemon yellow to the dull
yellow color of, say, a pile of fresh

grain, that with the blue.

From the deepest royal blue in the water
to that of, forget -me -nots, cobalt

above all, bright clear blue, green blue
and violet blue.

I live in a little yellow house, with
green door and shutters, whitewashed

inside, on the white walls, very
brightly colored Japanese drawings.

Red tiles on the floor, the house in the
full sun, and a bright blue sky

above it.

The shadow in the middle of the day,
much shorter than at home.

At the time, there were no fields of
sunflowers. There were gardens with

sunflowers, amongst a lot of other
flowers. And we have this very beautiful

drawing in the collection, a large
drawing in pen and ink, which shows

that type of garden. So we know from his
letters that this is the garden of a

bathhouse, a public bathhouse.

It's lovely how he's drawn all the
different flowers. And the sunflowers,

can recognize them immediately. They're
very distinctive, how he's drawn them.

And they're also, they're very high,
just like the sunflowers that he painted

Paris and drawn in Paris. You see the
sunflowers again in Arles.

This is where he found them, and there's
this beautiful little sketch that he

does in the letter to Theo of a painting
that he's just done in a...

a farmhouse, garden, again, many, many
different kinds of flowers, but also

sunflowers, and he indicates that near
the sketch he says that there are

sunflowers too.

My dear Theo, I'm writing to you in
great hate to tell you that I've just

received a line from Gauguin, who says
that he hasn't written because he was

doing a great deal at work.

but says he's still ready to come to the
south as soon as chance permits.

I'm painting with the gusto of a
Marseillaise eating bouillabaisse, which

surprise you when it's a question of
painting large sunflowers.

I have three canvases on the go.

I'll probably not stop there.

In the hope of living in a studio of her
own, with Gauguin, I'd like to do a

decoration for the studio.

Nothing but large sunflowers.

The yellow house is where it all takes
place, where he paints his sunflowers

where he puts his sunflowers on the
walls of Gauguin's bedroom.

It's the place where he wants to create
his artist colony with Gauguin as the

first artist who will join him there and
where they will collaborate and create

a new art.

So Van Gogh has very high hopes and
ambitions in this period. He's really

looking forward to Gauguin coming. He is
working all the time to paint a lot

of pictures for his house, and the first
ones that he does are the sunflowers.

It's interesting how he actually started
painting them. Originally, he didn't

have this idea.

Originally, he was going to paint a
landscape painting in Arles, which is

wonderful on the outskirts, the farming
areas.

But then there was a very strong mistral
storm and wind, which made it very

difficult to paint.

So he decided to paint a portrait. But
then he arranged, or tried to arrange,

for someone to come to sit for the
portrait, and they didn't show up.

So he couldn't do a portrait.

So he was left with doing a still life,
which didn't depend on the weather or

people. And because sunflowers were at
their best, he then decided to paint

sunflowers. And he got a large bunch of
sunflowers, and he got a pot, and he

started painting them.

We sort of think of the sunflowers as a
single painting sometimes, but actually

they were a series.

He did actually four paintings in one
week.

The first of the series was Three
Flowers Against the Turquoise

this painting was sold... soon after Van
Gogh's death, and it's been owned by a

series of private collectors who've kept
it very much to themselves.

In fact, it was last exhibited back in
1948, so it's never been seen in public

since. And in 1996, it changed hands.

We don't know who the owner is, so it's
the great mystery of the Sunflower

series.

So it's the only one which is very
likely to come on the market, and when

does come back on the market, it will
fetch an enormous sum.

The second painting of the series is of
six flowers against a rich royal blue

background, and that's got a
particularly interesting story.

It was sold to a Japanese collector in
the early 1920s, and in fact it was the

first Van Gogh painting to go to Japan.

and it was owned by a collector in the
city of Ashiya.

And then during the Second World War, at
the end of the war, the Americans

bombed Ashiya.

It was actually on the day of the
Hiroshima bomb, although it was a

bomb that was dropped.

And there was a fire in the house. The
painting was in a very heavy frame, and

it was burnt and destroyed.

Fortunately we have colour reproductions
of the painting taken before the Second

World War, which is slightly unusual, so
we know what it looked like.

And one of the interesting discoveries
was that the painting was originally in

simple orange frame which Van Gogh had
made.

He mentions this in passing in his
letters, but it has not been appreciated

this colour photograph actually shows
the frame that Van Gogh painted it in,

it therefore shows the way that Van Gogh
wished it to be displayed.

My dear sister, at the moment I'm
working on a bouquet of twelve

yellow earthenware pot, and have a plan
to decorate the whole studio with

nothing but sunflowers.

You'll certainly notice that in the
summer in Paris the sun shines much more

strongly than at home.

There's a similar difference again
between Paris and here.

I wouldn't mind going a bit further,
though, where the land isn't as flat as

I've actually never seen a mountain in
my life.

I will do that sometime when Gauguin's
here.

But I'll stay here in Arles until then.
And, as soon as he comes, we'll like to

go on a walking tour together all over
Provence.

I'm busy with my sunflowers, and in
fact...

can think of nothing to say.

So I'll just end, wishing Theo and you
really good days and fine weather.

The Münchner painting was created in
August 1888.

He painted in this time frame within a
few days, I think it's only six days, he

painted four different versions.

These are the first elaborate attempts
with which he also deals with the color

yellow,

with which he deals with color
contrasts, how they affect each other.

When you look at the composition, you
notice that the painting does not rely

three -dimensionality.

It is not an illusionary painting space,
but Van Gogh really reduces the

painting to the flatness of the canvas,
an idea that he certainly won through

the study of Japanese art.

This is certainly a very special quality
that allows, on the one hand, to

concentrate on the composition, but on
the other hand also on the painter's

expression, on the artist's style.

Because he really applies the color in
coarse brushstrokes, very passively on

the canvas.

The picture not only appears, it becomes
an object itself.

The sunflower is the flower of light. It
is yellow, it is friendly, and in this

sense it is of course appreciated by
many people as the symbol of the sun.

It is also a symbol of friendship, of
affection, and in this sense Frank

certainly also painted.

The special features of this painting
are of course the color contrast.

It is this blue -green background that,
in its own way, connects itself to a

very peculiar composition with the
yellow floor, with the yellowed vase,

but above all with the sunflower itself.
It is a bit unusual.

It is not a complementary contrast as
one would expect.

but it is the complementary color, the
mixture of yellow and blue.

And with that, of course, he moves in a
very small, very small spectrum of

color. But the more exciting, the more
attractive the contrast is, of course.

And I think that's what this painting is
about.

Painting, as it is, now promises to
become more subtle, more music and less

sculpture. In fact, it promises color,
as long as it keeps this promise.

The sunflowers are progressing.

There's a new bouquet of 14 flowers on a
green -yellow background, so it's

exactly the same effect, but in larger
format, a number 30 canvas, as the still

life of quinces and lemons.

that you already have but in the
sunflowers the painting is much simpler

ever yours vincent

The fourth of the series that he did in
Arles and the Yellow House was

Sunflowers Against the Yellow
Background.

And this painting stayed with the Van
Gogh family, with Jo Bonger, who was

Vincent's sister -in -law. And she'd had
the picture in her room for her entire

life, and she said she didn't want to
sell it when the National Gallery wanted

to buy it in the 1920s.

In 1923, Samuel Courtauld, the great
fabric merchant here in

Britain, decided to give a good deal of
money to the National Gallery to buy

modern pictures.

He also retained control of what the
modern pictures were the National

bought. They first went to Joe Banger
and bought a portrait of the postmaster

Roulin, a painting now in the Museum of
Modern Art in New York.

After a few months of having it here at
the National Gallery, Kurthold and his

advisors decided that already such was
the fame of the sunflowers, they

returned the Postmaster Roulin and
replaced it with the sunflowers that Joe

Bonger had said was the one.

that she wanted to keep for the family,
and we said rather arrogantly, but we're

the National Gallery, and she agreed,
and that's where in 24 this picture

to us.

When Van Gogh was taken with an idea,
when he was taken with a motif,

and he knew where he wanted to go with
it, he tended to work very, very

Having decided that sunflowers would be
what welcomed Gauguin to Arles, he

painted four in rapid succession and
then chose two of them to actually hang

the bedroom that Gauguin would inhabit.

The London picture is certainly one of
those that was there when Gauguin

arrived. The other one is the picture
now in Munich.

I think we've come now to understand
more fully the relationship between

and Van Gogh during these two critical
months in Arles and to realize the

of the aesthetic differences that very
quickly came to the fore.

Van Gogh was committed to the motif.

That is, he was committed to really
looking at somebody or something when he

painted.

Gauguin had moved on from that to
wanting to make what he called

By abstractions, we don't mean non
-representational, but what he meant was

something where he had looked at the
motif, registered it, and then, as he

actually painted it, no longer had to
look at the person, at the object

And that allowed him to get closer to
what he called abstraction.

My dear old Bernard, Gauguin interests
me greatly as a man.

Greatly.

For a long time it has seemed to me that
in our filthy job as painters we have

the greatest need of people with the
hands and stomach of a labourer.

More natural tastes, more amorous and
benevolent temperaments than the

and exhausted Parisian men about town.
Now here!

Without a slight doubt, we're in the
presence of an unspoiled creature with

instincts of a wild beast.

With Gauguin, blood and sex have the
edge over ambition.

But enough of that.

You've seen him close at hand longer
than I have.

Just wanted to tell you first
impressions in a few words.

In this relationship, one of the most
interesting examples of the distance

between these two artists involved the
paintings of Madame Ginoux, the woman

ran the famous night café.

As they sat together, side by side,
painting Madame Ginoux, Van Gogh

dashed off a portrait in an hour.

Gauguin made a very careful drawing.

of madame she knew very carefully shaded
big simple forms to get her basic shape

and then he went away and painted the
actual painting of madame she knew

entirely in her absence only using the
drawing and that i think

suggests the distance in approach that
had crept in between them

My dear Theo, Gauguin, in spite of
himself and in spite of me,

has proved to me a little that it was
time for me to vary things a bit.

I'm beginning to compose from memory,
and all my studies will still be useful

me for that work, as they remind me of
former things I've seen.

In the meantime, I can tell you anyway
that the last two studies are...

Rather funny.

A wooden and straw chair, all yellow on
red tiles against a wall.

Daytime. Then Gauguin's armchair, red
and green, night effect.

On the seat, two novels and a candle.

On sailcloth, in a thick impasto.

After two months, I think that the
tensions between them, and the tensions

really on an aesthetic level, though we
don't know about the tensions in the day

-to -day living in the yellow house, the
tensions on an aesthetic level had

reached such a point that almost at
Christmas, they had a huge fight, a huge

falling out.

Later, Gauguin would claim that Van Gogh
struck him, but there was a break right

before Christmas, and it's at that
moment, as Gauguin leaves to go back to

Paris, that Van Gogh has a mental
breakdown of some kind, cuts off his

and really after that has to be
committed to an asylum.

My dear Theo, physically, I'm well.

The wound is closing very well, and the
great loss of blood is balancing out,

since I'm eating and digesting well.

The most fearsome thing is the insomnia,
and the doctor didn't talk to me about

it, nor have I spoken to him about it
yet, but I'm fighting it myself.

Now, if I recover...

I must start again.

I can't again attain those peaks to
which sickness imperfectly led me.

After he painted the sunflowers, Van
Gogh had an interesting idea how they

be displayed.

He'd painted a portrait of one of his
friends, a woman who'd just given birth,

and he painted her singing a lullaby to
the little infant.

And Van Gogh's idea was that this
portrait should be the centre of a

and on either side there would be two
sunflower paintings, one on a yellow

background and one on a blue background.

And Van Gogh felt that the sunflower
paintings on either side would somehow

illuminate the portrait.

And it also has resonances with
religious triptychs, where you might

picture of Christ in the middle with two
other scenes on the side.

Every time I go to the National Gallery,
I go and look at the sunflowers, and I

go quite often.

It was the painting which Van Gogh was
most pleased with. It was the last of

series that he did with the sunflowers
in front of him in the Yellow House.

One of the things that really makes the
sunflower paintings is the way that the

flowers are at different stages of their
life.

There's one that's got a bud that's just
going to come into life.

Half of the sunflowers are out at full
bloom, looking like sunflowers that we

would buy in the shops at their best.
And then the other half of the

are turning to seed, which is what
sunflowers do.

And I think for Van Gogh there was a
symbolism.

in this it was the cycle of life if you
like and the painting in a way is almost

like a family different generations at
different stages so that adds an

interesting layer to the pictures and
they're not just pretty flowers

We talked about the flowers all the
time, but we forget to say something

the jar, what it is. And it's, of
course, the kind of thing that they use

over in the South. It's a simple jar for
olives or things like that.

It's not a vase, it's a jar, and there
was something in it. Are they big enough

to keep those sunflowers in it? Probably
not.

Probably it would have fallen over.

What you see in that particular picture
is that he's really experimenting with

impasto versus flatter kind of areas
with solid blocks of color.

And he was a master in that because it's
very difficult to combine that in a way

that's convincing.

And it's on jute because that's the kind
of canvas that they used at the time.

In principle, Gauguin was very much...

an artist who could play with different
tints of one color.

So he probably suggested something to
Van Gogh to improve upon that, and we

that they worked together on Stay Lives
during their stay, and we know that Van

Gogh made another copy of the work,
which is in the National Gallery, and

a picture which is nowadays in Japan.

My dear friend Gauguin, thanks for your
letter.

left behind alone on board my little
yellow house, as it was perhaps my duty

be the last to remain here anyway.

You talked to me in your letter about a
canvas of mine, the sunflowers with a

yellow background, to say that it would
give you some pleasure to receive it.

I don't think you've made a bad choice
if Janine has the peony, Coast the

hollyhock, I, indeed, before others,
have taken the sunflower.

I think that I'll begin by returning
what belongs to you, making it plain

it's my intention, after what has
happened, to contest categorically your

to the canvas in question.

But, as I commend your intelligence in
the choice of that canvas, I'll make an

effort to paint two of them exactly the
same, in which case it might be done

once and for all, and thus settled.

amicably.

Our museum is associated with the
insurance company.

The insurance company was named Yasuda.

And Yasuda was established 1888. This is
a very significant year because

Vincent painted Sanford of Ceres 1888.

So Yasuda bought this painting in the
auction of Christie's.

I think he tried something to study and
developing his technique or...

theory of color, simple compositions
also.

Our sunflower was painted at the end of
November to the beginning

of December, just before Paul Gauguin
and Van Gogh struggled.

As in the famous accident, he cut the
ears.

Just after Paul Gauguin arrived, he
bought 20 meter jute.

very rough canvas and they separate to
meter to meter and they hear this jute

and our sunflower is painting on this
jute it was not the

season of sunflowers he needed something
in front of him so he copied his

own painting in his letter he said he
wanted to

paint very big a decoration for small
room like Japanese.

Our sunflowers showing 15 sunflowers but
Vincent in letter he said 14

sunflowers.

Well, it's a kind of mystery.

Someone says he painted 14 and after
that he painted one more flower.

We don't have an answer yet.

I think we have to understand that the
pictures are a construct.

We don't know how many flowers were in
any vase at any given time.

He may have added them, taken them away,
ensured balance as he painted, but they

are a construct that leads to a very
convincing image.

This is not unknown to artists.

The Tokyo painting, it was sold in 1987
when it fetched a record price of £25

million, which was absolutely enormous
at that time. Of course, prices have

risen since.

When it was sold, the fact that it
wasn't signed led to some questions

whether it was authentic or not.

Nobody raised any questions or issues
about it when it hung side by side

with our picture. People accepted it as
two variations on Vincent's great theme.

It's only when it's been at this great
remove in Tokyo the questions of its

authenticity have arisen.

The lack of signature, there are many
Vincent pictures without signature. We

don't know his thinking of when he
signed, when he didn't sign.

I see his touch in it, but again, like
all the others, like the variants, it

a different quality.

But he wanted his variants to have
different qualities, one from another.

It was thoroughly studied by the Van
Gogh Museum, and they have proved that

is indeed a copy made by Van Gogh.

There were no flowers blooming when he
did the copies, so he was essentially

making his versions, painting other
versions from his original paintings.

Two with a yellow background, one with a
turquoise background.

They're very similar.

to the originals that he did in August
with the fresh flowers. But there are

some minor differences, and differences
in colour, very minor differences.

So he was making what were sort of
loosely described as copies, but they're

quite legitimate works of art.

The research on the painting actually
started in the late 1990s to look at the

relationship between the first version,
which is now in London, and ours, which

is a copy after that painting.

Over the years, we did detailed studies,
technical studies of the paintings to

examine the way that Farrokh worked.

So if you like, to give a sort of like a
picture of looking over his shoulder

while at work.

to look at the different stages of
painting, which materials did he choose,

which did he purchase, why did he
purchase, how did he apply them, which

did he use, how did he mix them, how did
he set the design of his paintings onto

the canvas.

So one of the big questions, actually
one of the main reasons to do this

research was to have an up -to -date
assessment of the condition of the

painting, which is 130 years old.

in order to know how to present it, what
kind of lighting conditions, how to

conserve, what should we be doing with
the painting to make sure that it lasts

for the next generations.

Some of the colours that he used, which
were new tube colours in the late 19th

century, they're sensitive to light.

And so on the one hand you have red lake
colours that have faded, and on the

other hand you have...

a particular type of yellow, a chrome
yellow pigment, that turns darker under

influence of light.

So we knew from examining the painting
which areas had been affected, and we

some tiny microscopic samples. We had
some idea of the pigment mixtures that

been used.

It's very hard to imagine what the
picture could have actually looked like,

we considered making a digital
reconstruction that would approximate

as they could have been originally.

But what we decided to do... was to
actually have a physical reconstruction

of the painting, trying to understand
the original build -up of the painting

Van Gogh and what he was trying to
achieve at the different stages of

In case of the sunflowers, we know that
it's different in how you experience it

nowadays than it was in the 19th
century.

And the museum asked me to paint two
reconstructions.

In one reconstruction, we wanted to show
the impact of varnish on the painting,

because Van Gogh did not varnish his
paintings, but his impact is quite

And in the other reconstruction, we
wanted to go back and find the original

color scheme that Van Gogh used in his
painting. And for that, it was important

that we use the same pigment, so similar
pigment.

The problem is that these paints aren't
sold anymore.

They're toxic or they're unstable, so
you can't buy them.

And they had to be made.

Quite a lot of them were made in a
research project that ended in 2016, a

research project in which the Van Gogh
Museum participated, and I could use

those paints.

So we had to check whether there was
enough or that enough could be made and

estimate how much, because... You can't
paint lightly when you do a Van Gogh.

There's really a lot of impasto and you
have to feel secure that there is going

to be enough paint.

But I had not used these chrome yellows
and these uranium lakes before. Normally

I do more medieval reconstructions.

So for me it was really exciting to
start painting with these paints. And

were much brighter than I expected. I
knew there would be yellow paint and

orange paint, but that they would be
that bright.

But at the same moment, well... You can
assume that these pigments don't lie.

Yeah, it was quite surprising for me,
but also hard because the original, it

brown sunflowers in it.

And especially when you reconstruct or
copy a painting, you want to look at the

original. But it's really hard when you
have something really bright on your

easel. It's almost giving light, light
coming out. And that's hard since the

original is not that bright.

You also have to spend time with the
painting to have it open up to you, to

up yourself, to develop a sensitivity to
the painting.

So that's the case with these Van Gogh
paintings.

I think I wasn't a big fan just when I
was studying art history, but I really

got to love him, and I see how much
poetry is in his way of applying paint,

his decisions of the colours he uses.
He's painting all the time, so he...

He has not to think about how he applies
a brushstroke. It's just going

automatically and I have to think. So
that's a big difference.

So I don't really reach that emotional
state.

But what always happens is that you, at
a certain moment, start to understand

the painting and that you start feeling,
oh, he's searching for something and

he's combining these things and this is
what's happening. So you feel close to

the artist.

But of course, I'm a different person.
I'm a woman. I'm living 100 years later.

And these sort of things are also the
case.

So that's making it so difficult, but
also so interesting.

So when painting, especially with these
pigments that have all these different

properties, it's also that you're not
completely mastering the paint. The

has its own will, doing things you
sometimes don't want it to do.

So I looked at the cross -sections, and
then I mimicked these mixtures. So

that's lead white, lithopone, some
ultramarine, yellow ochre.

But, I mean, that's like four pigments.
But within these four pigments, you have

an enormous amount of variables in how
much you add in color tones.

For example, with the purples mixed out
of geranium lake, ultramarine, and zinc

white.

The geranium lake in combination with
this white, it fades really quickly.

For example, in the signature, I applied
it and I had this really nice purple.

But then three days later it was gone
and it turned into blue.

Probably was the case in Van Gogh's
painting.

And it's quite strange, alienating to
see your own painting fade in front of

your eyes.

So all these pigments have different
properties, not only in color, but also,

for example, in drying times.

There's a lot of zinc white. That's a
slow dryer.

The top contains a lot of ochre yellow,
a quick dryer.

So these kind of things you feel and see
while painting a reconstruction, you

also have to take into account. So
sometimes I had to wait a little bit. In

other moments, I really had to work
quickly.

Well, the research has given us a lot of
new information about Vincent's

techniques and materials.

For instance, we now know that he used a
charcoal to make an underdrawing on top

of the ground. That's visible in
infrared reflectography.

We managed to get a much broader
understanding of the whole biography of

object,

with what Vincent created this
particular painting, but what has

During the painting process, at some
point, Vincent must have realized that

didn't have enough height to create the
composition.

The top flower, for example, got too
near to the edge of the canvas. The

he painted on stops here.

So in order to give it more air, to give
it more room, he decided to make a

little piece of wood and attach it on
top of the stretched canvas and then

over it. So what you see over here are
his flushed strokes.

However, when the painting was relined
in 1927, the canvas had to be taken off

the stretcher. And in order to...

be able to do that. The conservator had
to take off the wooden strip and that

caused a big crack in Vincent van Gogh's
brush strokes.

He then applied the piece of wood again
and filled the crack that had occurred

because of his intervention.

We have to respect that. We cannot
remove those retouchings.

We may not be very happy with the way
they look, but we've decided to try to

make those retouchings less obvious,
less visible from a normal viewing

distance.

One of the major conclusions of the
research is that we cannot take off the

varnish anymore.

So we have to respect that. And the
reason is because in some areas the

have mixed into the varnish.

So the interface between the paint layer
and the varnish layer on top is not

very clear anymore.

And that would mean that if we would
take off the varnish, we would damage

paint, which is, of course, not an
option.

People may not even be aware of the
effect that this varnish has. This

is tinted, it's also discoloured over
time.

Because Van Gogh...

left his pictures unvarnished in the
French period. They were not intended to

varnished. And Jo van Gogh -Bommer was
adamantly against it. She was really

opposed. She expressed that very
clearly.

But after she died, it became a
universal measure to varnish van Gogh

and other 19th century paintings, even
though that was not intended by the

artist.

The painting has been subjected to heat,
solvents and so on. It's not something

that we do now.

And as a result of the combination of
The original painting materials used by

Van Gogh and the treatments that it had
in later years, this has effectively led

to these little losses of paint, tiny
microscopic losses.

Although this is stable, but to avoid
any risk of possible vibration that

occur during transport, it's decided not
to have it travel at all.

Just a few words to tell you that I'm
getting along so -so as regards my

and work.

When you visited, I think you must have
noticed, in Gauger's room, the two

number thirty canvases of the
sunflowers.

I've just put the finishing touches, the
absolutely equivalent and identical

repetitions.

However, the unbearable hallucinations
have stopped for now.

reducing themselves to a simple
nightmare on account of taking potassium

bromide, I think.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is an
encyclopedic museum, one of the largest

its kind in the United States.

Our Sunflowers painting joined the
collection in 1963.

It was the gift of Carol Tyson, who was
a Philadelphian, who was an artist. She

actually traveled to Paris in the 1890s.
But along the way, he also became a

great collector, buying both Van Gogh's
Sunflowers, great works by Manet, by

Monet, Renoir, and others.

Van Gogh's sunflowers have an
extraordinary appeal.

It's at one level, they are a very
simple, very spare painting of a group

flowers arranged in a pot, but they
continue to enthrall.

The Philadelphia Sunflowers is the only
version of the sunflowers in the United

States, and so when visitors come upon
it in the galleries, they're surprised.

And I get asked quite often, is it real?
Is this the real sunflowers? And they

say, yes, it's one of a number that he
painted.

It's striking in Philadelphia that he's
taken these 14 blooms, 14 flower heads,

kept them in a fairly similar
arrangement that he'd worked out

given each one a very strong
personality.

He's included the flower with the bent
stem on the right. He has also added

elements, such as the bright red eye of
one of the flowers. And so he is making

a number of changes as he goes along to
the composition of the flowers.

It's a simple subject. It's one that he
loved, a humble subject. Perhaps he

liked to think of himself as a humble
individual.

And so I think it's works that we can
appreciate without feeling a sense of

kind of anguish or some of the anxiety
or some of the mental health issues that

he had as well.

Throughout his career, Van Gogh was very
taken with Japanese art, and I think

it's... It's perhaps no accident that in
the sunflowers you get such a sense of

the decorative.

They're very flattened, picture -planed.
There's no shadow, a nice sense of

contour, a very bold color. These are
all elements that he would have seen in

Japanese woodblock prints.

There's such an exuberance to paint and
to color in these works.

Van Gogh once said, I'd like to paint in
such a way that anyone who has eyes

could see or to understand.

I think that comes across in this work.
It has tremendous appeal for the sense

that we can see how he's applied paint
and the delight he's taken in this sense

of color.

He talks about doing repetitions of the
works he'd done earlier, and that

doesn't mean that he was necessarily
doing exact copies. He saw repetitions

way of sort of improving on what he'd
done earlier, maybe improvising a little

and taking it one step further.

You know, it's often thought that Van
Gogh really liked to work from nature

directly from life, and so it does raise
an interesting question when we think

that these sunflowers were done in
January and that he didn't have flowers.

in front of him.

It's interesting to consider in light of
his heated debate that he had with

Gauguin when Gauguin stayed with him the
fall of 1888. The two had debated

whether a painter should draw from
nature or from the imagination.

And so I've wondered a bit whether Van
Gogh, in turning back to the sunflower

motif in January, he wasn't trying his
hand at some of Gauguin's argument and

thinking, okay, I won't work directly
from nature, but I'll try to work from

memory or from my imagination. or from
these earlier versions.

And so maybe he was stretching himself a
little bit by trying to free himself

from working always in front of the
motif.

Something that I think we see in the
Philadelphia picture, both in the sense

color, a sense of impasto, the paint
that he's brought to it, quite stylized

work, one that has a great deal of kind
of rhythmic brushstrokes. So you get the

sense that he's not observing
necessarily from life, but that he's

something he'd seen over the summer and
seeking to kind of improve on it, maybe

sort of build some of the intensity of
the color and the effect of these 14

blooms.

The Philadelphia picture is very
different in sensibility from the London

picture. It's more delicate, it's more
refined in certain ways. It doesn't have

that brutal energy of London, but it has
a sense of

contemplation almost in it. And so to be
able to know those two shows me

how various this series of pictures is.

The sunflower paintings are a moment at
which Van Gogh, having worked, having

struggled for so long, having suffered
so much, finally finds the motif

that is central to his imagination, and
he goes to town with it.

The yellows were experimented. It was
very difficult to paint a basically

monochromatic picture.

Keeping forms distinctive when you're
basically using the same color

is far more difficult.

And he can take this motif of the flower
of the South and turn it into something

really monumental.

On top of that, a lot of modernism has
been predicated on this idea of eternal

struggle, and this is the chief story in
that psychodrama.

The actual work of art, the actual
painting, often has a physical dimension

people are surprised to experience,
having seen it a hundred times in

reproduction, to realize that the actual
picture has a three -dimensional

quality, has a kind of sculptural
quality as paint builds up and then

away, and that there is no...

comparison at the end of the day between
the reproduction and the actual

physical object, which is a physical
object.

He received very good feedback on
sunflowers from people like Dugas, from

like Gauguin himself, saying he was on
to something.

This sense of experimentation actually
was one of the things that came out of

this sunflower research too, because
there you have a series of what looks

the same motif, and you think, well,
they look very similar to each other.

But having been able to compare in great
detail these different versions, in

particular the three yellow and yellow
versions, so the yellow bouquet against

the yellow background, you can really
appreciate that there's a sort of logic

in... the subtle differences between
them. There was really a development

between them. They're not exact replicas
of each other.

Each one is different.

We don't really know why the public
tends to refer one painting to another

why particular works become iconic above
the other ones.

But it's not just a personal thing
because it's a very broad thing, a

phenomenon.

This light yellow, it's sort of very
optimistic painting and the way it's

painted, it's with these very swirling
brush strokes, sometimes really rapidly

in the background. It's a very
invigorating painting, lots of positive

The Sunflowers is the rock star painting
in our collection, where merely being

in the present constitutes some kind of
validation.

I was there. And for many people, I
think that's very important.

All you need to do is to show a little
bit of the sunflower, and you know who

you're talking about.

And you don't often find that with many
artists, and you don't often find that,

in fact, with Van Gogh's other work.
That set of material is the thing that

coalesced around our image and our view
of, A, what a sunflower is, and B, what

Van Gogh was all about.

People are fascinated by Van Gogh.
They're almost obsessed with the story

extraordinary life.

And if you stand in front of the
sunflowers, you have a feeling of the

behind the painting.

It really has become the world's most
instantly recognisable work of art.

My dear Theo, Gauguin was telling me the
other day

that he'd seen a painting by Claude
Monet of sunflowers in a large Japanese

bath.

Very fine.

But he likes mine better.

I'm not of that opinion, only don't
think I'm weakening.

I regret, as always, as you know.

The scarcity of models.

The thousand obstacles to overcome their
difficulty.

If I were a completely different man,
and if I were wealthier, I could force

But at present I'm not giving up.

And I am plodding on.

Quietly.