Sunflowers

A simple earthenware vase holds a crowd of sunflowers, some bursting with golden petals, others gone to seed and drooping, the whole canvas a symphony of yellows against yellow. Van Gogh painted his sunflower series in Arles to decorate the house where he hoped to live and work with Gauguin, and he loaded the blooms with thick, vibrant impasto and his own joy in the southern sun. Now in London's National Gallery, the Sunflowers became his signature image - radiant, generous, and alive, the flower he made forever his own.