Still life: Vase with 15 Sunflowers (1888)
At the art auction at Christie's in London in 1987 the still life of Vincent van Gogh was up for bids: when closing the biding possibility the piece was sold to Japanese insurance company for almost forty million dollars. The sold still life painting was given the title 'Vase with fifteen Sunflowers'. This amount of money is a shrill contrast to the poverty that van Gogh was forced to live with.
Although he had only sold 2 paintings during his life, his colleagues complimented his work very often. Especially the series of sunflower paintings was very succesfull. For example Paul Gauguin painted a potrait of Van Gogh while he was painting this sunflower piece. The Vase with fifteen Sunflowers was the first work out of serie of 3 pieces. Van Gogh painted the still life pieces as a gift for Gaugain. He must have been very content with the series as he sent two of the five still life pieces to a exposition in Brussels where he received many positive reactions.
Van Gogh himself wrote; 'I started painting with the same enthousiasm as a French man eating bouillabaise, which isn't very suprising as I am referring to the painting as large sunflowers.' When looking at this painting it is obvious why Van Gogh wasn't the only one to enjoy the sunflowers.
Still life: Vase with 15 Sunflowers is available in original and large size: . | | 
reproduction Vase with fifteen Sunflowers |
 Detail Vase with fifteen Sunflowers |
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