Sunflowers
From Darin's Collection
Puzzle enthusiast and collector
1000 Ravensburger (50 x 70)
Sunflowers
Vincent van Gogh
Production Date 2008
This is a lovely puzzle of the Munich version of Sunflowers. I framed it and gave it as a housewarming gift to my daughter after she got married.
Van Gogh’s Munich Sunflowers was painted in Arles in August 1888, during one of the most important and productive periods of his career. It is an oil painting on canvas measuring 92 × 73 cm and is now part of the Bavarian State Painting Collections at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, inventory no. 8672.
The composition depicts twelve sunflowers arranged in a simple earthenware vase. The flowers are shown at different stages—from fresh, open blooms to drooping and heavily seeded flowers—creating a striking sense of the natural life cycle. Van Gogh deliberately reduced the setting to broad areas of colour: the yellow vase and tabletop contrast dramatically with the cool turquoise background, while the oranges, ochres and deep browns of the flowers provide additional tonal variation.
The painting was intended to decorate Van Gogh's Yellow House studio in Arles, where he hoped to work with Paul Gauguin. Van Gogh conceived his sunflower paintings as a decorative series, experimenting with combinations of yellows against different blues. He was particularly interested in achieving intense colour effects reminiscent of stained-glass windows, while his simplified forms also reflect the influence of Japanese prints and the decorative ideas circulating around Gauguin.
The Munich painting is particularly significant because Van Gogh considered it, together with the National Gallery's Sunflowers in London, to be one of the principal versions of the series. Both were signed “Vincent.” He even contemplated using the two sunflower paintings as part of a larger decorative arrangement around La Berceuse, effectively creating a triptych.
Sunflowers
Vincent van Gogh
Production Date 2008
This is a lovely puzzle of the Munich version of Sunflowers. I framed it and gave it as a housewarming gift to my daughter after she got married.
Van Gogh’s Munich Sunflowers was painted in Arles in August 1888, during one of the most important and productive periods of his career. It is an oil painting on canvas measuring 92 × 73 cm and is now part of the Bavarian State Painting Collections at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, inventory no. 8672.
The composition depicts twelve sunflowers arranged in a simple earthenware vase. The flowers are shown at different stages—from fresh, open blooms to drooping and heavily seeded flowers—creating a striking sense of the natural life cycle. Van Gogh deliberately reduced the setting to broad areas of colour: the yellow vase and tabletop contrast dramatically with the cool turquoise background, while the oranges, ochres and deep browns of the flowers provide additional tonal variation.
The painting was intended to decorate Van Gogh's Yellow House studio in Arles, where he hoped to work with Paul Gauguin. Van Gogh conceived his sunflower paintings as a decorative series, experimenting with combinations of yellows against different blues. He was particularly interested in achieving intense colour effects reminiscent of stained-glass windows, while his simplified forms also reflect the influence of Japanese prints and the decorative ideas circulating around Gauguin.
The Munich painting is particularly significant because Van Gogh considered it, together with the National Gallery's Sunflowers in London, to be one of the principal versions of the series. Both were signed “Vincent.” He even contemplated using the two sunflower paintings as part of a larger decorative arrangement around La Berceuse, effectively creating a triptych.
