Sunflowers, Friendship and Gratitude
Van Gogh began painting in late summer 1888 and continued into the following year. One went to decorate his friend Paul Gauguin's bedroom. The paintings show sunflowers in all stages of life, from full bloom to withering. The paintings were considered innovative for their use of the yellow spectrum, partly because newly invented pigments made new colours possible.
In a letter to his brother Theo, Van Gogh wrote:
"It is a kind of painting that rather changes in character, and takes on a richness the longer you look at it. Besides, you know, Gauguin likes them extraordinarily. He said to me among other things - 'That...it's...the flower.' You know that the peony is Jeannin's, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is somewhat my own."
Read more about this topic: Sunflowers (Van Gogh series)
Famous quotes containing the words friendship and/or gratitude:
“What men call friendship is no more than a partnership, a mutual care of interests, an exchange of favors—in a word, it is a sort of traffic, in which self-love ever proposes to be the gainer.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)