Two Cut Sunflowers

Van Gogh's Two Cut Sunflowers from 1887, now at the Kunstmuseum Bern, belongs to the series of sunflower studies he made before the great Arles sunflower paintings. These Paris-period sunflowers show the flowers cut and placed flat or held upright, their stems severed — a compositional approach that gives the flower heads full prominence without the vertical vase format. The Kunstmuseum Bern's holding connects this work to Switzerland's distinguished collection of Post-Impressionist painting, particularly the strong Bern holdings of Expressionism and its antecedents.

The two cut sunflowers — lying or held with their faces toward the viewer — are rendered with Van Gogh's characteristic intense attention to the flower's specific structure. His Paris palette brings warm yellows and ochres to the subject with more chromatic variety than his Nuenen period. The cut stems and dying elements of the flowers are observed alongside the bloom's peak beauty.