As one of the 20 most precious paintings in the world, "Sunflowers" is a series of works painted by Van Gogh in the south of France on the same subject. When he painted "Sunflowers", his spirit was extremely excited, the golden petals of the sunflowers gave him a warm feeling, the thick brushstrokes made the picture sculptural, and the dazzling yellow color filled the whole picture, causing people to be greatly invigorated. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

"Sunflowers" is also one of Van Gogh's masterpieces, and it is also the work of the most bright spiritual pursuit that he painted with his heart and soul in the most painful torment. The first work set a world record of tens of millions of dollars at an art auction house in 1990, yet at the time, his life was associated with the misery of poverty.

That oil painting retains Van Gogh's extremely fanatical impulse and fierce spirit when he painted to this day. Later Fauvism in France, Expressionism in Germany, and Abstraction in the early 20th century all began with the emergence of the Vatican Sect. High art draws nourishment. He had a profound and extensive influence on the art of painting in the West in the 20th century

Xu Zhiyuan carefully checked that Van Gogh's lifetime produced more than 800 oil paintings, but there were many similar titles, which puzzled the audience for the first time. For example, there are more than 40 of his self-portraits. There are at least four paintings of "Suspension Bridges" in the Arrow period, not only in different tones and angles, but even one in watercolor.

"The Postman Rulan" and "Doctor Gashe" were also painted twice, and as for the early masterpiece "The Potato Eater", from the sketches of individual figures to the final draft of the formal oil painting, many more were painted over and over again.

He is a painter who seeks change and perfection, and when faced with a subject, he must always review it again and again, and must be comprehensive and make full use of it. His masterpiece "Sunflowers" is no exception.

As early as the Paris period, Van Gogh fell in love with sunflowers, and painted a single branch, bright yellow lined with bright blue, very showy. At the beginning of 1888, he went south to Arrow, and soon after settling down, he invited Gauguin from Brittany in the northwest to live with him in Arrow.

This was Van Gogh's yellow period, and in order to welcome the bright yellow Gauguin to live with him in the "Yellow House", he deliberately painted bright yellow sunflowers on twelve panels as interior decoration.

Van Gogh's two years in Paris, like the French painters, were deeply influenced by Japanese printmaking. It was only 700 kilometers from Paris to Arrow, and he imagined that the beautiful Provence was Japan.

Soon after arriving in Arrow, he told his brother in a letter: "There is a colonnade here called the Portico of Santocien, and I already appreciate it a little. But this place is so unforgiving, so weird, like a Chinese nightmare, that it seems to me that even a beautiful example of such grandeur belongs to another world: I am glad that I have nothing to do with it, just as it has nothing to do with the Roman Emperor Nero's other world, no matter how magnificent it may be. ”

Van Gogh kept mentioning Japan in his letters, and he almost made Japan synonymous with bright colors. He said to his brother: "The fields around the town are covered with yellow and purple flowers, and it is like a Japanese dream. ”

At the end of August 1888, half a year after Van Gogh went to Arrow, he wrote to his brother: "I am working hard to paint, and I am as energetic as the Maasai eat fish soup; It wouldn't be surprising if you knew that I was painting a few large sunflowers. I'm working on three oil paintings...... The third is a painting of twelve flowers with buds in a yellow vase (size 30). So this one is light with light colors lined with light colors, and hopefully it is the best one. Maybe I'm more than that. Since I wanted Gauguin to live in my studio, I wanted to decorate it. Nothing but large sunflowers...... If this plan is realized, there will be twelve woodblock prints. The whole group will be a symphony of blue and yellow. Every morning I start writing at sunrise, because the sunflowers are very fast, so I have to do it in one go. ”

Two months later, Gauguin went to live with Van Gogh in Arrow, and soon the two painters had a dispute because of their different artistic views. Van Gogh was already living an abnormal life, emotionally stressed, and how many setbacks he had accumulated in a year, braving the scorching sun and wind every day to go out to catch paintings, and even capturing the night scene outdoors by candlelight at night.

Two days before Christmas, his frenzy began. Two days after Christmas, Gauguin hurried back to Paris. Van Gogh was hospitalized for two weeks, then resumed painting until February 4, 1889, when he had another seizure and was bedridden for another two weeks.

On January 23, between seizures, he wrote a long letter to his brother, showing that he valued his sunflowers and still cherished his friendship and opinions. He said: If you are happy, you can exhibit these two sunflowers. Gauguin would have been happy to have one, and I would have liked to make Gauguin happy. So he can take any of these two paintings, and I can paint another one, no matter which one it is. ”

"If you can see it, these paintings should be eye-catching. I'd like to advise you to keep it away by yourself and only enjoy it privately with your brother and daughter-in-law. The style of this kind of painting will change, and the longer you look at it, the richer it will become. What's more, as you know, these paintings Gauguin liked very much. He said to me, "That'...... Precisely...... This flower. ”

It shows that Van Gogh has a strong confidence in his sunflowers, and he is simply the only one. These glorious sunflowers, with so many acquaintances in later generations, can prove that Van Gogh's prediction is true. In the same letter, he went so far as to say: "If our collection of Montigellian flowers is worth five hundred francs from a collector, and if it is worth it really, I swear to you that my sunflowers are worth five hundred francs from the Scots or the Americans." ”

Van Gogh was so modest! Five hundred francs were worth only a hundred dollars at the time, and he said this in 1888. Almost exactly 100 years later, in March 1987, one of the sunflowers sold at auction in London for 398,500 times the artist's estimate that year. How would Van Gogh feel if he found out? What if he knew that "Iris Garden" sold for more than "Sunflowers"?

In February 1890, Brussels hosted an exhibition of the Les Vingt. Through Theo, the organizer invited Van Gogh to participate in the exhibition. Van Gogh sent six paintings, including "Sunflowers", which shows his confidence in the painting. As a result, the one that was sold was not "Sunflowers", but "Red Vineyard".

Not only that, but "Sunflowers" was humiliated in that exhibition, and one of the artists on display, called De Grus, who specialized in religious subjects, was adamant that he would not exhibit his painting with "that pot of unbearable sunflowers".

At the reception to celebrate the opening of the exhibition, de Grus scolded Van Gogh, who was not present, and called him a "fool and a liar". Lautrec was present, angry enough to fight de Grus. The painters managed to persuade them to leave. The next day, de Grus withdrew from the exhibition.

Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" is only four in the general catalogue: two in London, one in Munich, and one in Amsterdam. Van Gogh's earliest idea was that "the whole group of paintings would be a symphony of blue and yellow", but of the four paintings he was accustomed to, only one had bright yellow flower clusters on a light blue background, and the other three were all yellow against yellow, which made people's cheeks burn.

The Netherlands was originally the homeland of tulips, but Van Gogh did not like this flower, but identified with French sunflowers, perhaps because tulips are too delicate and delicate, while sunflowers with thick stems and rough leaves, unrestrained inflorescences, and fillable fodder are rich in earthiness and grassroots, which can best represent the spirit of farmers.

There is also Van Gogh's brown hair with red hair, and he is also known as the "red-headed madman". In his self-portrait, not only his hair, but also his beard and beard are all red and burnt, similar to the color of a sunflower's flower plate.

Now in the British National Gallery, there is a painting, and there are always people who stop to admire it, and they refuse to leave it for a long time. This is Van Gogh's "Sunflowers". Millions of people come to see the painting every year.

As for one of the biggest mysteries circulating in the art world, how many sunflowers did Van Gogh draw in the end? According to the research results of the art world, it is generally believed that Van Gogh created a total of 11 "Sunflowers", which are divided into two parts according to the place and time of creation.

Four of them were created in Paris, and the other seven were created in Arles, an ancient town in France, famous for Van Gogh and Bizet, who lived here for more than a year and where more than 200 of the most splendid works of his life were born. This series of seven works created at Arles is Van Gogh's pinnacle.