Sunflowers

Van Gogh painted his first Sunflowers series in Paris in 1887, when he was fascinated by Japanese prints and their use of flat colour. He moved to Arles in February 1888 and began a new, more ambitious series in the summer, intending to decorate the 'Yellow House' (his rented home in Arles) before the arrival of his friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin. He wrote to Theo about 'a symphony in blue and yellow' that would fill the walls.

Gauguin arrived in October 1888 and the two artists lived together for nine weeks before their increasingly volatile relationship culminated in the incident of 23 December 1888, in which Van Gogh severed part of his own ear after a violent argument. Van Gogh's Sunflowers had by then become associated with this period of creative intensity and subsequent crisis. In 1987, one version sold at Christie's London for £22.5 million — a world record at the time.