Vase with Fourteen Sunflowers was painted in Arles in the year 1888. It was painted with oil paints. In Vase with Fourteen Sunflowers, Van Gogh exploits the basic yellow color of a sunflower. Vincent could express everything that was dear to him in sunflowers. Van Gogh said he would paint a series of pictures that were nothing but sunflowers. He vowed to begin painting the sunflowers everyday at dawn and achieve one-dozen paintings at the greatest speed. We chose to put the sunflower picture on this website because it represented all of the things he painted that were dear to him.

The picture sunflowers Van Gogh originally painted were just for the decoration of the yellow house he shared with Gauguin. The Vase with Fourteen Sunflowers is one picture in a series of Van Gogh’s most successful paintings. A painting called Four Cut Sunflowers (shown to the left) was one of the most remarkable paintings Van Gogh ever made. The sunflowers’ petals were like flickering flames. Anyone who looked at it could feel pure power.