Sunflowers

Paul Gauguin painted Sunflowers in 1901 in Tahiti, during his final years in the South Pacific. The sunflower — a subject eternally associated with Van Gogh following his famous series — takes on different resonance in Gauguin's hands, rendered in an Oceanian environment far from the Provençal fields of Van Gogh's paintings. Gauguin had left France permanently in 1895 and was in declining health by 1901, yet he continued painting with remarkable intensity. This sunflower still life, held in the Hermitage, shows him bringing his saturated palette and bold formal simplification to a subject that invited comparison with his great friend and rival.

Gauguin renders the sunflowers with the bold, flat color areas and strong outlines characteristic of his mature Tahitian style. His palette is more saturated than Van Gogh's — the yellows more vivid, the shadows more deeply colored. The brushwork is confident and direct, building the flower heads as strong, simplified forms rather than the swirling, dynamic surfaces of Van Gogh's treatment.