#0377 "Solitary Sunflower"

This is another sunflower from our Watershed Farm garden in early August 1995 as painted by the Group of One. This variety of sunflower grew at least six feet tall. The birds and the bees loved them.

Van Gogh began painting sunflowers after he left Holland for France in pursuit of creating an artistic community. The first sunflower paintings were created to decorate his friend Paul Gauguin's bedroom. He painted a total of twelve of these sunflower canvases. Seven of these were painted while in Arles in 1888 and 1889. The other five he had painted previously while in Paris in 1887. The Paris series show blossoms are laid casually on a surface in groups of two or four while in the Arles series, they are arranged in a large group in a case.

Vincent in a letter to his sister dated 21 August 1888 describes his friend Gauguin coming to live with him in his yellow house in Arles and that he intended to decorate the whole studio with nothing but sunflowers. Vincent took the sunflower as his own personal artistic signature, telling his brother Theo in a 1889 letter that "the sunflower is mine."

Gauguin's The Painter of Sunflowers'

In November 1888, Paul Gauguin painted Vincent van Gogh in The Painter of Sunflowers'. The two had been living together in a yellow house in the small town of Arles in southern France. When Gauguin did arrive, he did indeed enjoy the paintings. After the two had parted ways, Gauguin wrote to Vincent requesting that he may keep one of the paintings, calling them a "perfect page of an essential 'Vincent' style."

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