Van Gogh’s sunflowers, which hang in the National Gallery, were doused in Heinz tomato soup by environmental protesters this afternoon.
Two women from Just Stop Oil, named Anna Holland, 20, and Phoebe Plummer, 21, threw two cans over the iconic £76million painting this morning before taped themselves to a wall at the London gallery.
Art fans will be relieved to hear that the painting was “unharmed” according to the Metropolitan Police – particularly to understand the significance of Van Gogh’s sunflower collection and how it culminated in a breakdown that led to the painter severing his ear.
In all, he painted seven works from the collection, scattered around the world – and one was even destroyed at the end of World War II.
Two Just Stop Oil protesters this morning threw cans of tomato soup over the third iteration of Van Gogh’s Sunflower painting before taping themselves to the wall
The painting in the National Gallery is the third version of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers – which he tried so hard to perfect that he broke down
A self-portrait of the Dutch artist who severed his ear shortly before his death after collapsing
One that has not been shown publicly since 1948 is in the private collection of an unknown millionaire and was only revealed to his closest friends. Five more are in museums – in Philadelphia, Amsterdam, Munich, Tokyo (bought in 1987 for a world record £25m) and in our own National Gallery in London.
But the seventh was destroyed in World War II. Named Six Sunflowers and painted in August 1888, it was in the collection of a wealthy collector, Koyata Yamamoto, who was living on Japan’s coast when his city was hit by an American bomb on August 6, 1945 – coincidentally on the day the Atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima.
The painting that hung above the sofa in Yamamoto’s living room was erased. Yamamoto managed to escape the raging firestorm, but his precious picture—with its heavy frame—was too unwieldy to carry.
But in 2013, almost 70 years later, a British art historian discovered a color photograph showing the work in all its glory.
The print – with its vibrant yellows, bright oranges, citrus greens and royal blue background – gives us a rare glimpse of what the original might have looked like.
Missing link: This photo of the destroyed second version was found in a Japanese museum
Art historian Martin Bailey stumbled across the photo while researching a book about the Sunflower series. Not only does it retain Van Gogh’s bold original colours, but it also showcases the unusual, heavy wooden frame specially chosen by the artist.
While most picture frames at the time were white, Van Gogh chose an orange one to compete with the orange of the sunflowers.
With the rediscovery of the photo in the seventh picture, the whole story of the Sunflowers series came together. Van Gogh painted her at a critical point in his life.
At the age of 35 he was less than two years from death, his career an absolute failure, his enthusiasm for painting mixed with disappointment, sadness and self-destructive delusions.
Before turning to painting he was an art dealer and teacher in England – in Brixton, Ramsgate and Isleworth -, a bookseller in Holland and a missionary in Belgium. Those around him despaired of his prospects almost as much as he despaired of himself.
In a letter he angrily reported that his family wanted him to become a carpenter, accountant or baker. It’s safe to say that the prospects of becoming a world-famous artist seemed far away.
His love life was just as disastrous. When he proposed to his landlady’s daughter from Brixton, she declined because she was already engaged to a former lodger.
A decade later, when she proposed to his widowed Dutch cousin, she replied, “Nooit, neen, niemmer.” (‘No, no, never.’)
When she told him that he could no longer see her, he put his hand in the flame of a candle and said to her father, his uncle: “Let me see her while I can keep my hand in that flame. ‘ The desperate trick didn’t work.
A relationship with an alcoholic prostitute followed – and his romantic prospects were not improved by a bout of gonorrhea in 1883. It is also believed that he was ill with syphilis.
Nor was his violent mood swings helped by a poor diet rich only in absinthe and tobacco. In February 1888 he moved to Arles in Provence, seeking refuge from his misery and hoping that fresh air would relieve his chronic smoker’s cough.
He signed a lease on the so-called Yellow House, which he would immortalize on so many of his canvases, and began to paint obsessively. And what had possessed him most were sunflowers.
A letter written by Van Gogh to his art dealer brother Theo at the time has survived.
“I paint with the enthusiasm of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse [a local fish soup]’ he wrote, ‘which will not surprise you when it comes to painting large sunflowers. I want to make a decoration for the studio. Nothing but big sunflowers.’
And so he began the paintings that would sell millions of copies – but only after his death.
During his lifetime, Van Gogh was painfully aware of how unpopular his work was. In fact, he only sold one painting at a time. Two days after that first letter to Theo, he wrote another, saying, “We live in times where there is no market for what we do… I fear that will change little in our lifetime.”
Van Gogh not only had an extraordinary talent. He was also amazingly quick – the first four sunflower images were ready in a week. But for all her golden, bright colors, no one would buy her.
A repeat of painting #3 (left): exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and (right) a replica of #4, now at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam
Desperate but not yet defeated, Van Gogh continued to work at breakneck speed in the fall of 1888. He painted a self-portrait, a picture of his fellow artist Paul Gauguin, who was visiting him in Arles, and several famous pictures of empty chairs.
Relations with Gauguin were stormy and Van Gogh was afraid his friend would leave him and leave him alone with his demons in Arles. Then came the blow that finally sent him off the tracks.
On December 23, he received a letter from his adoring brother Theo saying he was getting married. That same evening he cut off a piece of his ear in a brothel in Arles, wrapped it in newspaper and gave it to a prostitute with the request “to keep this object carefully”.
It wasn’t that Van Gogh disliked his new sister-in-law, Johanna Bonger, but he feared she would disrupt his close relationship with his brother.
“Vincent was concerned about losing his brother’s emotional and financial support,” writes art historian Martin Bailey in his new book. “And those fears played a key role in provoking his self-mutilation a few hours later.”
By January, Van Gogh had recovered sufficiently to leave the hospital and paint three winter prints of his Summer Sunflowers. But the damage was done and he spiraled into self-destruction.
Between February and May he was hospitalized again, suffering from hallucinations and paranoid fantasies that he was being poisoned. Among the villagers he had earned the nickname “fou roux”, the crazy redhead.
Final painting of version four on display at the Sompo Museum of Art in Tokyo, Japan
In May he was transferred to an asylum in nearby Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He stayed there for a year, sometimes seeming to come to his senses, sometimes having debilitating relapses.
Though his mind was tormented by visions and delusions, he continued to produce bold, ravishing canvases of the neighboring olive groves, vineyards and cornfields.
Then, in July 1890, two months after leaving the asylum, he shot himself in the abdomen in Auvers, northwest of Paris. He chose to do it in the spring wheat fields – the landscape he had just painted so memorably. Two days later he died at the Auberge Ravoux, the inn where he was lodged.
Biographers are still debating the exact causes of Van Gogh’s acute mental state. Some say it was syphilis that can produce symptoms of insanity, others say it was manic depression or schizophrenia. Whatever the cause, Van Gogh’s mental decline was certainly aggravated by absinthe, acute anxiety, poverty and malnutrition.
But through that fog of madness, Van Gogh created some of the most extraordinary paintings the world has ever seen.
What is even more remarkable is that these masterpieces came about rather by accident.
On a hot, breathless August day in Arles, the models Van Gogh had hired to sit for him failed to show up and it was too stuffy to even think of taking his easel outside.
So he let his eyes wander around the Yellow House for inspiration.
He grabbed a handful of sunflowers, already wilting and curling in the heat, and arranged the blossoms at random in several green, cream, and yellow clay pots.