Sunflowers
1887 · National Gallery, London
Some blooms burst with petals and others have gone to seed, all yellow on yellow, painted to decorate the house where Gauguin was to come.
★ 8.2
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Irises
1889 · Getty Museum, Los Angeles
One white iris stands alone among a whole bed of blue-violet ones, the blades twisting and crowding right up to the edge of the canvas.
★ 7.4
Almond Blossoms
1890 · Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
He painted it for his brother's newborn son, named Vincent after him, and cropped the boughs against the sky like a Japanese print.
★ 7.2
Bullfinch on Weeping Cherry
1834 · Location unknown
One plump bullfinch on a cherry sprig, a poem written beside it. The other Hokusai, quiet and exact, nothing like the wave.
★ 6.5
Flowers (Warhol)
1964 · Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
Four flat hibiscus blossoms on green, silkscreened from an ordinary photograph and reproduced in any color, over and over, on demand.
★ 6.1
Bouquet
1603 · Alte Pinakothek, Munich
None of these flowers bloom in the same season. Bruegel assembled the bouquet from studies made across the whole year, and let petals droop.
★ 6.1
Red Hills with Flowers
1937 · Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Red New Mexico hills roll across the canvas with a few flowers brought right up close, the vast and the fragile in one frame.
★ 5.2