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Downloaded from
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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

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"My dear Bernard...

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The beautiful sun down here
in high summer,

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it beats down on your head

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and I have no doubt at all
that it drives you crazy.

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Now, being that way already,
all I do is enjoy it.

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I'm thinking of
decorating my studio

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with half a dozen paintings
of sunflowers.

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A decoration in which
harsh or broken yellows

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will burst against
various blue backgrounds,

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from the palest Veronese
to royal blue,

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framed with thin wooden laths

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and painted in orange lead.

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Sorts of effects of
stained glass windows
of a Gothic church.

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Ah, my dear pals,

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we crazy ones,

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let's enjoy with our eyes,
shall we?

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Alas, nature gets paid in kind

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and our bodies are despicable
and sometimes a heavy burden.

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Oh, how I'd like to
spend these present days
in Pont-Aven...

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But anyway,

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I console myself
by reconsidering the sunflowers.

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Ever yours, Vincent."

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Every artist is known by one picture
that says it all,

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it encapsulates
their artistic qualities.

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I mean, we know that Rembrandt
is The Night Watch

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and the Mona Lisa, OK,
that's Leonardo da Vinci.

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In the case of van Gogh,
it's the sunflower.

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It says really something
about his artistic qualities,

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because he managed to do something
which was difficult to do.

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It was something that,
by experimenting,

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it became better.

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It also says something
about his biography at the time,

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somebody who
was really hoping for love,

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gaiety, musicality in life,

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something he didn't have at the time.

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And we all know
what kind of tragedy
became part of his life,

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but that's all included,
I tend to think.

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People really love the sunflowers.

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And they recognise
a human longing for happiness,

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and all people have that.

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It says it all...

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That's why it is a masterpiece,
an iconic picture.

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People love van Gogh
for two reasons.

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The images are often fairly simple
when you first look at them,

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but they have real depth to them.

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And it's got a vibrant quality
and it's got marvellous colours.

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But the other reason why van Gogh
is so popular

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and why the public
is obsessed with him
is the story is his life,

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which was absolutely extraordinary.

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The way he began as an art dealer...
Tried various careers.

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He went to Belgium,
to a coal mining area,

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as a missionary,

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and he failed at that.

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He then decided to become an artist.

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He mutilated his ear.

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He ended up in an asylum
and he committed suicide.

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It's an extraordinary story.

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The exhibition is called
van Gogh and the Sunflowers,

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here at the van Gogh Museum,

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and it's focusing on the Sunflowers
in the collection of this museum.

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There has been extensive research
into this masterpiece,

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technical research,

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and we want to share that
with the public,

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the results of this technical study.

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van Gogh painted in total
11 pictures of sunflowers...

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..four of them
when he was living in Paris.

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And these are still lifes
of sunflowers lying on a table.

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And then the next year in Arles,
in Provence,

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he paints
seven pictures of sunflowers.

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One of them is lost, unfortunately,

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and these are the famous pictures
of the large bunch of sunflowers
in a vase.

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These paintings are now
all across the world,

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in museums
and in private collections.

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But each of them
has its own fascinating story.

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He had been working
for five years as an artist,

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and we have to remember
that he only worked as an artist
for ten years.

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And when he painted,

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he painted mainly in dark colours

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and he was very much influenced
by the Barbizon school,

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the French
realistic landscape painters,

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peasant painters,
such as Jean-Francois Millet.

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van Gogh had to make a decision
whether he would always
be painting peasants,

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who wouldn't sell,

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or think about
the near future, maybe,

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and that's why
he decided to pick portraits
and flower still lifes,

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who were the best subjects
if you wanted to make some money.

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So, what you see
when he moves to Paris in 1886,

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in the summer he really starts to
make at least roughly
40 flower still lifes.

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Initially he did them, really,
as colour exercises.

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You know,
he loved the different colours
of the flowers,

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and he was getting interested
in how colours worked in paintings.

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He met the Impressionists,

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and that really made him
exuberant in his use of colours.

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Settling in Montmartre,
as van Gogh did,

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he would have been
in quite a traditional,

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old-fashioned,
rural environment
on the doorstep of Paris, really,

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and people were growing sunflowers
just for the sheer delight
in their colour

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and their shape and so on.

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But he would also have known
the kind of formal
flower painting tradition

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that Manet
and that Jeannin and Quost

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and others
of his contemporary generation
were producing.

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And we find all sorts of
Language of Flowers allusions
in Fantin-Latour,

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who's a sort of academic painter
of flowers,

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contemporary with the Impressionists,

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friendly with many of them,

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just as Quost is on that borderline
between the academic, the symbolic,

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the formal and the informal
Impressionist vision of nature.

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He would also have heard about them,
I'm sure,

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from his brother Theo,

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who was buying pictures by Monet,
for example.

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Monet was painting the sunflowers
that he grew at Vetheuil
in 1881 already,

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Vetheuil being his own garden,
not far from the River Seine.

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And the inspiration of the sunflower
is being taken up, then,

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by the Impressionists, via Monet.

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van Gogh's
hearing about Monet's pictures.

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Monet's going to be doing
a number of further
sunflower pictures,

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but at this point
we have the Vetheuil ones

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that could have
come into his awareness.

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The sunflowers belong to one genus

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within, if you like,
the sunflower family.

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And that genus
is called helianthus,

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literally 'sun-flower'.

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Helios, sun.

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Anthus, flower.

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There were no sunflowers in Europe
before 1492

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and the discovery of the Americas.

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Native Americans were using them
as a source of food,

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essentially storing energy over the winter.

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They were also using them
as dye plants.

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They were being used medicinally,

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but none of that
was transferred into Europe,

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so the uses of the plant
were not transferred.

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The genus arrived
in the early 16th century,

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and at that period
they were primarily
seen as garden plants.

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So, the fields of sunflowers
that we see today

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would not be
the types of landscape
van Gogh would have encountered.

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That thing that we think of
as a flower,

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as a single flower,

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in fact is not.

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It is in fact
a collection of lots and lots...

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Thousands of tiny little flowers.

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And in fact, there are
two types of flowers there.

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If you look very carefully,

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you will see
the yellow petal-like structures.

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They are one type of flower.

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And then, if you go inside,

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what you see are lots and lots of
tiny little flowers.

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And they're the second type.

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And it's only the ones in the centre
that produce seed.

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The ones on the outside are sterile.

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Surrounding this entire structure,

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there are these leaf-like structures
which are called bracts.

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And in fact,

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that combination
of lots of small flowers,

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surrounded by those bracts,

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are the characteristic feature
of the whole family of plants

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that the sunflowers belong to.

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So, things like chrysanthemums,
daisies, thistles...

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They're all in this family.

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It's not a subtle plant.

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It's capable of hanging on
in very rough conditions,

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and suddenly it comes into Europe
and people start cossetting it.

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They start looking after it.

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They start putting it into
beautifully nurtured soil,

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and then suddenly it goes mad...

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With that potentially comes
all sorts of ideas of power,

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and that,

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if you think about
that nature is ordered
in the so-called scala naturae,

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then you have
the big, dramatic plants
overlording the smaller plants.

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And of course,

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that's quite an interesting simile
for associating with humans

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and human societies.

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van Dyck's
Self-Portrait with a Sunflower
is really a very stunning sunflower.

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He's looking towards it.

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He's holding out his hand
and touching it with his finger

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and he is also holding a chain,
a gold chain,

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which we know was given to him
by Charles I.

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So,
with the emblematic
use of sunflowers

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as emblems of devotion, adoration...

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And it can be interpreted
various ways.

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You might see it as him alluding to
his own devotion to Charles I,

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doing commissions for Charles I,

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or you might see it as him,
in a slightly broader sense,

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representing his profession,

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that he responds to nature
as a visual artist,

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portrays that.

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Equally,
he turns the sunflower in this image
to signify his dedication to art.

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The 17th century
is a really interesting period,

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because the sunflower, obviously,
has come in the century before
from America

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and has become part of the garden,

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but it's still an exotic, really.

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It's still something
people are fascinated by.

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And we also have
other plants coming along,

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like the chrysanthemum,

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something that the Dutch
brought back through trade
in the late 17th century.

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00:14:56,920 --> 00:15:01,720
And so, painters of flowers
and of still life in Holland,

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00:15:01,760 --> 00:15:04,760
with their fascination
with the contemporary,

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00:15:04,800 --> 00:15:05,960
the here and now,

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all that went with
the Dutch Republic

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and the secularism
that that involved

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were almost inevitably, I think,

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going to turn to flowers
as things that were
new and interesting

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and dynamic, almost.

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You have to realise
that van Gogh in general
was mildly depressive.

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00:15:26,320 --> 00:15:30,120
So, he needed a more colourful,
a more bright,

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a more hopeful kind of surroundings
for his own pictures

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but also for himself,

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simply to keep himself in balance.

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It says something about the fact
that even in the Sunflowers,

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where the wilting part
is so much part of that picture,

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painting them in such a joyful way
really, really helped him

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00:15:48,720 --> 00:15:50,360
to...well, to get hope.

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That's also what he says
about this particular motif,

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that it would give him
hope for the future.

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The first year,

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00:16:25,840 --> 00:16:27,720
he produced a lot of
flower still lifes

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and he really hoped
that they would sell.

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00:16:30,040 --> 00:16:32,520
And we see not
the freshly cut flowers anymore,

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00:16:32,560 --> 00:16:35,360
but we see the ones that are dying,
fading away.

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And he suddenly became interested
in something else.

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We're still in Paris.

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He made four magnificent
still lifes of sunflowers,

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00:16:43,640 --> 00:16:46,360
and you see dying sunflowers
that are after their bloom.

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They're marvellous.

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He loved those kinds of subjects.

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Old, gloomy to a certain extent.

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00:16:53,560 --> 00:16:56,720
And now he'd found something
which is personal.

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So,
he was now inventing a new subject,

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you could say,

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00:17:01,440 --> 00:17:02,440
for the flowers.

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00:17:02,480 --> 00:17:03,880
That's an important moment,

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00:17:03,920 --> 00:17:07,160
because it's really different
from what you would do
for the market.

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It's only later on
that artists became interested in
the picturesque kind of qualities

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00:17:11,320 --> 00:17:12,320
of dying flowers.

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00:17:29,080 --> 00:17:31,480
"I don't want to be
one of the melancholics

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00:17:31,520 --> 00:17:35,760
or those who become sour
and bitter and morbid.

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00:17:35,800 --> 00:17:39,360
To understand all is to forgive all,

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00:17:39,400 --> 00:17:45,400
and I believe
that if we knew everything
we'd arrive at a certain serenity.

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00:17:47,160 --> 00:17:51,120
If I didn't have Theo
it wouldn't be possible for me
to do justice to my work.

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It's my plan to go to the south
for a while,

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00:17:55,480 --> 00:17:56,960
as soon as I can,

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00:17:57,000 --> 00:18:00,800
where there's even more colour
and even more sun."

245
00:18:30,920 --> 00:18:33,640
When van Gogh went to Provence
in the South of France,

246
00:18:33,680 --> 00:18:36,320
he went there
to look for brighter colours,

247
00:18:36,360 --> 00:18:38,520
as he later writes in a letter.

248
00:18:38,560 --> 00:18:41,800
He also
wanted to live in a warmer climate,

249
00:18:41,840 --> 00:18:44,480
because the cold in Paris
was not good for him.

250
00:18:44,520 --> 00:18:46,080
And he really felt, also,

251
00:18:46,120 --> 00:18:48,920
that he needed to
go live in the countryside

252
00:18:48,960 --> 00:18:50,360
and get away from the big city.

253
00:18:50,400 --> 00:18:54,280
So, those were
a number of reasons for him
to leave Paris

254
00:18:54,320 --> 00:18:59,400
and to move to more quiet,
more natural surroundings.

255
00:19:13,640 --> 00:19:18,120
"I live in a little yellow house
with green door and shutters,

256
00:19:18,160 --> 00:19:19,560
whitewashed inside.

257
00:19:19,600 --> 00:19:24,000
On the white walls,
very brightly coloured
Japanese drawings.

258
00:19:25,480 --> 00:19:27,720
Red tiles on the floor.

259
00:19:28,440 --> 00:19:33,000
The house in the full sun
and a bright blue sky above it.

260
00:19:34,040 --> 00:19:38,040
And the shadow
in the middle of the day
much shorter than at home."

261
00:19:48,040 --> 00:19:49,280
"My dear Theo,

262
00:19:49,320 --> 00:19:51,720
I'm writing to you in great haste,

263
00:19:51,760 --> 00:19:55,160
to tell you that I've just received
a line from Gauguin,

264
00:19:55,200 --> 00:19:59,440
who says that he hasn't written
because he was doing
a great deal of work,

265
00:19:59,480 --> 00:20:04,720
but says he's still ready
to come to the south
as soon as chance permits.

266
00:20:08,440 --> 00:20:11,080
I'm painting with the gusto
of a Marseillais,

267
00:20:11,120 --> 00:20:12,920
eating bouillabaisse,

268
00:20:12,960 --> 00:20:17,360
which won't surprise you
when it's a question of
painting large sunflowers.

269
00:20:20,360 --> 00:20:22,520
I have three canvases on the go.

270
00:20:23,800 --> 00:20:25,440
I'll probably not stop there.

271
00:20:26,600 --> 00:20:31,240
In the hope of living
in a studio of our own with Gauguin,

272
00:20:31,280 --> 00:20:34,440
I'd like to do a decoration
for the studio.

273
00:20:34,480 --> 00:20:36,880
Nothing but large sunflowers."

274
00:20:59,680 --> 00:21:01,760
The Yellow House
is where it all takes place,

275
00:21:01,800 --> 00:21:03,360
where he paints his sunflowers

276
00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:07,720
and where he puts his sunflowers
on the walls of Gauguin's bedroom.

277
00:21:09,200 --> 00:21:13,680
It's the place
where he wants to create
his artists' colony,

278
00:21:13,720 --> 00:21:17,200
with Gauguin as the first artist
who will join him there,

279
00:21:17,240 --> 00:21:20,880
and where they will collaborate
and create a new art.

280
00:21:21,880 --> 00:21:25,200
So, van Gogh has very high hopes
and ambitions in this period.

281
00:21:25,240 --> 00:21:28,560
He's really looking forward
to Gauguin coming.

282
00:21:28,600 --> 00:21:31,760
He is working all the time

283
00:21:31,800 --> 00:21:34,800
to paint a lot of pictures
for his house.

284
00:21:34,840 --> 00:21:38,080
And the first ones that he does
are the sunflowers.

285
00:21:39,600 --> 00:21:43,080
We sort of think of the sunflowers
as a single painting sometimes,

286
00:21:43,120 --> 00:21:45,200
but actually they were a series.

287
00:21:45,240 --> 00:21:48,800
He did, actually,
four paintings in one week.

288
00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:54,960
The first of the series
was three flowers
against a turquoise background.

289
00:21:55,000 --> 00:21:58,320
And this painting was sold
soon after van Gogh's death,

290
00:21:58,360 --> 00:22:01,600
and it's been owned
by a series of private collectors

291
00:22:01,640 --> 00:22:03,880
who've kept it
very much to themselves.

292
00:22:03,920 --> 00:22:07,400
In fact,
it was last exhibited back in 1948,

293
00:22:07,440 --> 00:22:09,760
so it's never been seen
in public since.

294
00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:13,120
And in 1996 it changed hands.

295
00:22:13,160 --> 00:22:15,640
We don't know who the owner is,

296
00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:19,320
so it's the great mystery
of the Sunflowers Series.

297
00:22:20,560 --> 00:22:24,120
So, it's the only one
which is really likely
to come on the market.

298
00:22:24,160 --> 00:22:26,480
And when it does
come back on the market,

299
00:22:26,520 --> 00:22:28,520
it will fetch an enormous sum.

300
00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:33,800
The second painting of the series
is of six flowers

301
00:22:33,840 --> 00:22:36,480
against a rich
royal blue background,

302
00:22:36,520 --> 00:22:39,160
and that's got
a particularly interesting story.

303
00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:43,360
It was sold to a Japanese collector
in the early 1920s.

304
00:22:43,400 --> 00:22:47,800
And in fact,
it was the first van Gogh painting
to go to Japan.

305
00:22:47,840 --> 00:22:51,480
And it was owned by a collector
in the city of Ashiya.

306
00:22:51,520 --> 00:22:53,680
Then, during the Second World War,

307
00:22:53,720 --> 00:22:57,280
at the end of the war,
the Americans bombed Ashiya.

308
00:22:57,320 --> 00:23:00,040
It was actually
on the day of the Hiroshima bomb,

309
00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:02,640
although it was
a conventional bomb
that was dropped,

310
00:23:02,680 --> 00:23:04,640
and there was a fire in the house.

311
00:23:04,680 --> 00:23:06,920
The painting
was in a very heavy frame,

312
00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:09,120
and it was burnt and destroyed.

313
00:23:13,920 --> 00:23:17,320
Fortunately,
we have colour reproductions
of the painting

314
00:23:17,360 --> 00:23:19,160
taken before the Second World War,

315
00:23:19,200 --> 00:23:20,600
which is slightly unusual,

316
00:23:20,640 --> 00:23:22,440
so we know what it looked like.

317
00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:25,040
And one of
the interesting discoveries

318
00:23:25,080 --> 00:23:30,480
was that the painting was originally
in a simple orange frame

319
00:23:30,520 --> 00:23:32,080
which van Gogh had made.

320
00:23:32,120 --> 00:23:34,760
He mentions this in passing
in his letters,

321
00:23:34,800 --> 00:23:37,880
but it had not been appreciated
that this colour photograph

322
00:23:37,920 --> 00:23:41,640
actually shows the frame
that van Gogh painted it in.

323
00:23:41,680 --> 00:23:45,920
And it therefore shows the way
van Gogh wished it to be displayed.

324
00:26:15,600 --> 00:26:19,400
The fourth of the series
that he did in Arles
and the yellow house

325
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:22,080
was sunflowers
against a yellow background.

326
00:26:24,640 --> 00:26:27,520
And this painting
stayed with the van Gogh family,

327
00:26:27,560 --> 00:26:30,720
with Jo Bonger,
who was Vincent's sister-in-law.

328
00:26:30,760 --> 00:26:34,480
And she'd had the picture
in her room for her entire life,

329
00:26:34,520 --> 00:26:36,680
and she said
she didn't want to sell it

330
00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:39,680
when the National Gallery
wanted to buy it in the 1920s.

331
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:43,560
In 1923,

332
00:26:43,600 --> 00:26:49,160
Samuel Courtauld,
the great fabric merchant
here in Britain,

333
00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:53,840
decided to give a good deal of money
to the National Gallery

334
00:26:53,880 --> 00:26:56,120
to buy modern pictures.

335
00:26:56,680 --> 00:27:00,560
He also retained control
of what the modern pictures were

336
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:02,320
that the National Gallery bought.

337
00:27:02,360 --> 00:27:05,520
They first went to Jo Bonger

338
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:09,880
and bought a
Portrait of the Postmaster Roulin,

339
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:14,320
a painting now in
the Museum of Modern Art
in New York.

340
00:27:14,360 --> 00:27:18,680
After a few months of having it here
at the National Gallery,

341
00:27:18,720 --> 00:27:22,680
Courtauld and his advisors
decided that,

342
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:26,360
already such was the fame
of the Sunflowers,

343
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:29,120
they returned the Postmaster Roulin

344
00:27:29,160 --> 00:27:32,120
and replaced it
with the Sunflowers

345
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:37,640
that Jo Bonger had said
was the one that she wanted to keep
for the family.

346
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:41,560
And we said, rather arrogantly,
"But we're the National Gallery."

347
00:27:41,600 --> 00:27:43,680
And, uh, she agreed.

348
00:27:43,720 --> 00:27:47,800
And that's when, in '24,
this picture comes to us.

349
00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:57,080
When van Gogh
was taken with an idea,

350
00:27:57,120 --> 00:27:59,920
when he was taken with a motif

351
00:27:59,960 --> 00:28:02,520
and he knew
where he wanted to go with it,

352
00:28:02,560 --> 00:28:05,800
he tended to work
very, very quickly.

353
00:28:07,640 --> 00:28:13,120
Having decided that sunflowers
would be what welcomed Gauguin
to Arles,

354
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:16,240
he painted four in rapid succession

355
00:28:16,280 --> 00:28:22,280
and then chose two of them
to actually hang in the bedroom
that Gauguin would inhabit.

356
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:30,000
The London picture
is certainly one of those
that was there when Gauguin arrived.

357
00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:32,920
The other one
is the picture now in Munich.

358
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:40,800
I think we've come now
to understand more fully

359
00:28:40,840 --> 00:28:44,000
the relationship
between Gauguin and van Gogh

360
00:28:44,040 --> 00:28:47,120
during these
two critical months in Arles,

361
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:50,960
and to realise the nature
of the aesthetic differences

362
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:53,000
that very quickly came to the fore.

363
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:57,160
van Gogh was committed to the motif.

364
00:28:57,200 --> 00:29:02,680
That is, he was committed to
REALLY looking at somebody
or something when he painted.

365
00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:08,160
Gauguin had moved on from that

366
00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:11,760
to wanting to make
what he called 'abstractions'.

367
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:15,600
By abstractions,
we don't mean nonrepresentational,

368
00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:19,600
but what he meant was something
where he had looked at the motif,

369
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:21,120
registered it

370
00:29:21,160 --> 00:29:23,480
and then, as he actually painted it,

371
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:28,760
no longer had to look at the person,
at the object, himself.

372
00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:33,120
And that allowed him to get closer
to what he called abstraction.

373
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:43,760
After two months,

374
00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:47,120
I think that
the tensions between them...

375
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:50,400
And the tensions, really,
on an aesthetic level,

376
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:54,240
though we don't know
about the tensions
in the day-to-day living

377
00:29:54,280 --> 00:29:55,760
in the yellow house...

378
00:29:55,800 --> 00:30:00,040
The tensions on an aesthetic level
had reached such a point

379
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:04,040
that almost at Christmas
they had a huge fight,

380
00:30:04,080 --> 00:30:06,640
a huge falling out.

381
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:11,160
Later, Gauguin would claim
that van Gogh struck him,

382
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,160
but there was a break
right before Christmas.

383
00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:17,000
And it's at that moment,

384
00:30:17,040 --> 00:30:20,040
as Gauguin leaves
to go back to Paris,

385
00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:24,640
that van Gogh
has a mental breakdown of some kind,

386
00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:26,400
cuts off his ear...

387
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:29,760
And really, after that,
has to be committed to an asylum.

388
00:30:35,640 --> 00:30:36,640
"My dear Theo...

389
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:39,920
Physically, I'm well.

390
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:43,320
The wound is closing very well,

391
00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:46,760
and the great loss of blood
is balancing out,

392
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:49,800
since I'm eating and digesting well.

393
00:30:50,880 --> 00:30:54,120
The most fearsome thing
is the insomnia,

394
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:56,480
and the doctor
didn't talk to me about it,

395
00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:58,920
nor have I spoken to him
about it yet.

396
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:01,040
But I'm fighting it myself.

397
00:31:01,080 --> 00:31:03,960
Now, if I recover,

398
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:06,080
I must start again,

399
00:31:06,120 --> 00:31:09,000
and I can't again
attain those peaks

400
00:31:09,040 --> 00:31:11,840
to which sickness
imperfectly led me."

401
00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:24,680
Our museum is associated with
the insurance company.

402
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:27,800
The insurance company
was named Yasuda,

403
00:32:27,840 --> 00:32:31,560
and the Yasuda
was established in 1888.

404
00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:33,760
This is a very significant year,

405
00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:38,120
because Vincent painted
the Sunflower Series in 1888.

406
00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:43,160
So, Yasuda bought this painting
in the auction of Christie's.

407
00:32:44,160 --> 00:32:47,320
I think he tried something to study

408
00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:51,520
and for developing his technique
or theory of colour.

409
00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:53,520
Simple compositions, also.

410
00:32:56,800 --> 00:33:01,200
Our Sunflowers
was painted at the end of November

411
00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:04,320
to the beginning of December,

412
00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:08,240
just before Paul Gauguin
and van Gogh struggled,

413
00:33:08,280 --> 00:33:11,160
as in the famous accident
when he cut the ear.

414
00:33:14,600 --> 00:33:17,240
Just after Paul Gauguin
arrived in Arles

415
00:33:17,280 --> 00:33:19,440
he bought 20-metre jute,

416
00:33:19,480 --> 00:33:21,040
very rough canvas,

417
00:33:21,080 --> 00:33:24,040
and they separate
ten metre, ten metre...

418
00:33:24,080 --> 00:33:26,800
And they shared this jute,

419
00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:30,160
and our Sunflowers
is painted on this jute.

420
00:33:32,320 --> 00:33:34,640
It was not the season
for sunflowers.

421
00:33:35,800 --> 00:33:38,520
He needed something in front of him,

422
00:33:38,560 --> 00:33:40,960
so he copied his own painting.

423
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:45,200
In his letter,

424
00:33:45,240 --> 00:33:50,880
he said he wanted to paint
a very big decoration
for a small room,

425
00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:52,000
like Japanese.

426
00:33:55,800 --> 00:33:59,280
Our Sunflowers
is showing 15 sunflowers,

427
00:33:59,320 --> 00:34:03,120
but Vincent, in a letter,
he said 14 sunflowers.

428
00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:06,640
Well, it's a kind of mystery.

429
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:10,320
Someone said he painted 14

430
00:34:10,360 --> 00:34:14,520
and after that
he painted one more flower.

431
00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:16,800
We don't have an answer yet...

432
00:34:19,560 --> 00:34:23,720
I think we have to understand
that the pictures are a construct.

433
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:29,760
We don't know how many flowers
were in any vase at any given time.

434
00:34:29,800 --> 00:34:32,200
He may have added them,
taken them away,

435
00:34:32,240 --> 00:34:35,480
ensured balance as he painted.

436
00:34:35,520 --> 00:34:41,520
But they are a construct
that leads to
a very convincing image.

437
00:34:42,240 --> 00:34:44,240
This is not unknown to artists.

438
00:34:45,800 --> 00:34:49,200
The Tokyo painting,
it was sold in 1987,

439
00:34:49,240 --> 00:34:52,560
when it fetched a record price
of £25 million,

440
00:34:52,600 --> 00:34:55,240
which was absolutely enormous
at that time.

441
00:34:55,280 --> 00:34:57,440
Of course, prices have risen since.

442
00:34:57,480 --> 00:34:59,040
And when it was sold,

443
00:34:59,080 --> 00:35:00,720
the fact that it wasn't signed

444
00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:04,080
led to some questions
about whether it was
authentic or not.

445
00:35:07,720 --> 00:35:10,680
It were thoroughly studied
by the van Gogh Museum,

446
00:35:10,720 --> 00:35:15,120
and they proved that it is indeed
a copy made by van Gogh.

447
00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:18,760
There were no flowers blooming
when he did the copies,

448
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:22,360
so he was essentially
making his versions,

449
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:26,360
painting other versions
from his original paintings.

450
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:31,040
Two with a yellow background,
one with a turquoise background.

451
00:35:31,080 --> 00:35:33,400
They're very similar
to the originals

452
00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:37,240
that he did in August
with the fresh flowers,

453
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:39,840
but there are
some minor differences

454
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:41,600
and differences in colour...

455
00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:43,440
Very minor differences.

456
00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:47,960
So, he was making what were
loosely described as copies,

457
00:35:48,000 --> 00:35:50,480
but they're quite legitimate
works of art.

458
00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:56,920
The research on the painting
actually started in the late 1990s,

459
00:36:56,960 --> 00:36:59,600
to look at the relationship
between the first version,

460
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:01,360
which is now in London,

461
00:37:01,400 --> 00:37:03,640
and ours,
which is a copy after that painting.

462
00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:09,560
Over the years
we did detailed studies,

463
00:37:09,600 --> 00:37:11,840
technical studies of the paintings,

464
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:14,440
to examine the way
that van Gogh worked.

465
00:37:14,480 --> 00:37:16,120
So, if you like,
to give a sort of...

466
00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:19,560
Like, a picture of looking over
his shoulder while at work.

467
00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:21,920
To look at
the different stages of painting.

468
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:23,600
Which materials did he choose?

469
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:26,520
Which did he purchase?
Why did he purchase?

470
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:28,360
How did he apply them?

471
00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:30,880
Which colours did he use?
How did he mix them?

472
00:37:30,920 --> 00:37:34,720
How did he set the design
of his paintings onto the canvas?

473
00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:38,040
So, one of the big questions,

474
00:37:38,080 --> 00:37:40,640
actually one of the main reasons
to do this research,

475
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:44,840
was to have an up-to-date assessment
of the condition of the painting,

476
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:46,680
which is 130 years old,

477
00:37:46,720 --> 00:37:49,280
in order to know how to present it,

478
00:37:49,320 --> 00:37:52,560
what kind of lighting conditions,
how to conserve...

479
00:37:52,600 --> 00:37:55,240
What should we be doing
with the painting

480
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:58,600
to make sure that it lasts
for the next generations?

481
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:03,040
Some of the colours that he used,

482
00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:06,080
which were new tube colours
in the late 19th century,

483
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:07,840
they were sensitive to light.

484
00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:09,520
So, on the one hand,

485
00:38:09,560 --> 00:38:11,720
you have red lake colours
that have faded,

486
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:13,160
and on the other hand,

487
00:38:13,200 --> 00:38:15,280
you have
a particular type of yellow,

488
00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:18,560
a chrome yellow pigment
that turns darker
under influence of light.

489
00:38:18,600 --> 00:38:21,000
So, we knew
from examining the painting

490
00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:23,120
which areas had been affected.

491
00:38:23,160 --> 00:38:25,880
And we had,
from tiny microscopic samples,

492
00:38:25,920 --> 00:38:29,920
we had some idea
of the pigment mixtures
that had been used.

493
00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:33,520
It's very hard to imagine
what the picture
could have actually looked like.

494
00:38:33,560 --> 00:38:36,520
So, we considered
making a digital reconstruction

495
00:38:36,560 --> 00:38:40,200
that would
approximate the colours
as they could have been originally,

496
00:38:40,240 --> 00:38:44,960
but what we decided to do
was to actually have
a physical reconstruction

497
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:46,720
made of the painting,

498
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:51,400
trying to understand
the original build-up of a painting
by van Gogh

499
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:54,840
and what he was trying to achieve
at the different stages of painting.

500
00:38:58,640 --> 00:38:59,880
In case of the Sunflowers,

501
00:38:59,920 --> 00:39:04,560
we know that it's different
in how you experience it nowadays

502
00:39:04,600 --> 00:39:06,560
than it was in the 19th century.

503
00:39:06,600 --> 00:39:10,760
And the museum asked me
to paint two reconstructions.

504
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:13,120
In one reconstruction,

505
00:39:13,160 --> 00:39:16,880
we wanted to show
the impact of varnish
on a painting,

506
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:19,240
because van Gogh
did not varnish his paintings

507
00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:21,360
because the impact is quite strong.

508
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:24,200
In the other reconstruction,

509
00:39:24,240 --> 00:39:28,640
we wanted to go back
and find the original colour scheme

510
00:39:28,680 --> 00:39:30,560
that van Gogh used in his painting.

511
00:39:30,600 --> 00:39:31,600
And for that,

512
00:39:31,640 --> 00:39:34,280
it was important
that we used the same pigments,

513
00:39:34,320 --> 00:39:36,200
so similar pigments.

514
00:39:36,240 --> 00:39:41,320
Quite a lot of them
were made in a research project
that ended in 2016,

515
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:44,520
a research project in which
the van Gogh Museum participated.

516
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:46,120
And I could use those paints.

517
00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:52,080
But I had not used
these chrome yellows

518
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:53,920
and these geranium lakes before.

519
00:39:53,960 --> 00:39:56,760
Normally,
I do more medieval reconstructions,

520
00:39:56,800 --> 00:40:00,440
so for me it was really exciting
to start painting with these paints.

521
00:40:00,480 --> 00:40:03,040
And they were much brighter
than I expected.

522
00:40:03,080 --> 00:40:06,400
I knew there would be
yellow paint and orange paint,

523
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:08,680
that they would be that bright...

524
00:40:08,720 --> 00:40:10,200
But at the same moment,

525
00:40:10,240 --> 00:40:13,800
well, you can assume
that these pigments don't lie.

526
00:40:13,840 --> 00:40:16,080
Yeah,
it was quite surprising for me,

527
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:17,120
but also hard,

528
00:40:17,160 --> 00:40:20,480
because the original,
it has brown sunflowers in it.

529
00:40:20,520 --> 00:40:25,760
And especially when you reconstruct
or copy a painting,

530
00:40:25,800 --> 00:40:27,600
you want to look at the original.

531
00:40:27,640 --> 00:40:31,520
But it's really hard
when you have something
really bright on your easel,

532
00:40:31,560 --> 00:40:33,520
it's almost giving light...

533
00:40:33,560 --> 00:40:35,200
Light is coming out,

534
00:40:35,240 --> 00:40:38,720
and it's hard,
since the original
is not that bright.

535
00:40:41,440 --> 00:40:44,840
We managed to get
a much broader understanding

536
00:40:44,880 --> 00:40:47,040
of the whole biography
of the object,

537
00:40:47,080 --> 00:40:52,400
not just how and with what
Vincent created
this particular painting,

538
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:54,080
but what has happened since.

539
00:40:55,360 --> 00:40:57,000
During the painting process,

540
00:40:57,040 --> 00:41:02,600
at some point Vincent
must have realised
that he didn't have enough height

541
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:05,600
to create the composition.

542
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:08,120
This top flower, for example,

543
00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:11,400
got too near
to the edge of the canvas.

544
00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:14,600
The canvas he painted on stops here.

545
00:41:14,640 --> 00:41:16,800
So, in order to give it more air,

546
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:18,240
to give it more room,

547
00:41:18,280 --> 00:41:21,920
he decided to
make a little piece of wood

548
00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:25,120
and attach it
on top of the stretched canvas

549
00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:28,040
and then paint over it.

550
00:41:28,080 --> 00:41:32,400
So, what you see over here
are his brushstrokes.

551
00:41:32,440 --> 00:41:36,400
However,
when the painting was relined
in 1927,

552
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:39,680
the canvas
had to be taken off the stretcher.

553
00:41:39,720 --> 00:41:42,040
And in order to be able to do that,

554
00:41:42,080 --> 00:41:45,320
the conservator
had to take off the wooden strip.

555
00:41:45,360 --> 00:41:49,840
And that caused a big crack
in Vincent van Gogh's brushstrokes.

556
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:52,520
He then
applied the piece of wood again

557
00:41:52,560 --> 00:41:57,960
and filled the crack
that had occurred
because of his intervention.

558
00:41:58,880 --> 00:42:00,280
We have to respect that.

559
00:42:00,320 --> 00:42:03,040
We cannot remove those retouchings.

560
00:42:03,720 --> 00:42:07,880
We may not be very happy
with the way they look,

561
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:13,920
but we've decided to try to make
those retouchings less obvious,

562
00:42:13,960 --> 00:42:18,040
less visible
from a normal viewing distance.

563
00:42:19,680 --> 00:42:23,760
The painting has been subjected
to heat, solvents and so on.

564
00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:25,440
It's not something that we do now.

565
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:30,560
And as a result of the combination
of the original painting materials
used by van Gogh,

566
00:42:30,600 --> 00:42:33,320
and the treatments
that it's had in later years,

567
00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:37,240
this has effectively led to
these little losses of paint,

568
00:42:37,280 --> 00:42:39,760
tiny, microscopic losses,

569
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:41,200
although this is stable.

570
00:42:41,240 --> 00:42:46,400
But to avoid any risk
of possible vibration
that could occur during transport,

571
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:49,320
it was decided
not to have it travel at all.

572
00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:36,760
The Philadelphia Museum of Art
is an encyclopaedic museum.

573
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:39,600
It's one of the largest of its kind
in the United States.

574
00:43:40,680 --> 00:43:44,240
Our Sunflowers painting
joined the collection in 1963.

575
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:46,280
It was the gift of Carroll Tyson,

576
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:48,720
who was a Philadelphian
who was an artist

577
00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:51,320
who actually travelled to Paris
in the 1890s.

578
00:43:51,360 --> 00:43:54,080
But along the way,
he also became a great collector,

579
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:58,080
buying both the van Gogh Sunflowers,
great works by Manet,

580
00:43:58,120 --> 00:44:00,000
by Monet, Renoir and others.

581
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:04,040
van Gogh's Sunflowers
have an extraordinary appeal.

582
00:44:04,080 --> 00:44:05,240
At just one level,

583
00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:07,520
they are a very simple,
very spare painting

584
00:44:07,560 --> 00:44:09,960
of a group of flowers
arranged in a pot,

585
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:12,240
but they continue to enthral.

586
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:16,520
The Philadelphia Sunflowers
is the only version of Sunflowers
in the United States.

587
00:44:16,560 --> 00:44:18,880
So, when visitors
come upon it in the galleries,

588
00:44:18,920 --> 00:44:20,000
they're surprised.

589
00:44:20,040 --> 00:44:21,760
I get asked quite often,
"Is it real?

590
00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:23,200
Is this the real Sunflowers?"

591
00:44:23,240 --> 00:44:25,720
And I say, "Yes, it's one of
a number that he painted."

592
00:44:25,760 --> 00:44:27,560
It's quite striking in Philadelphia

593
00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:30,680
that he's taken these 14 blooms,
14 flower heads,

594
00:44:30,720 --> 00:44:34,600
kept them
in a fairly similar arrangement
that he'd worked out earlier,

595
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:37,880
but he's given each one
a very strong personality.

596
00:44:37,920 --> 00:44:41,800
He's included the flower
with the bent stem on the right.

597
00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:43,320
He has also added elements,

598
00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:46,520
such as the bright-red eye
of one of the flowers.

599
00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:49,520
So, he is making a number of changes
as he goes along

600
00:44:49,560 --> 00:44:51,560
to this composition of the flowers.

601
00:44:52,680 --> 00:44:53,920
It's a simple subject.

602
00:44:53,960 --> 00:44:56,040
It's one that he loved,
a humble subject.

603
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:59,040
Perhaps he liked to think of himself
as a humble individual.

604
00:44:59,080 --> 00:45:01,640
And so, I think it's works
that we can appreciate

605
00:45:01,680 --> 00:45:05,000
without feeling a sense of
that kind of anguish

606
00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:08,840
or some of the anxiety
or some of the mental health issues
that he had as well.

607
00:45:15,640 --> 00:45:19,280
Throughout his career, van Gogh
was very taken with Japanese art.

608
00:45:19,320 --> 00:45:22,400
And I think it's perhaps no accident
that in the Sunflowers

609
00:45:22,440 --> 00:45:24,680
you get such a sense of
the decorative.

610
00:45:24,720 --> 00:45:26,880
They're very flattened
picture planes.

611
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:28,160
There's no shadow.

612
00:45:28,200 --> 00:45:31,080
Nice sense of contour,
very bold colour.

613
00:45:31,120 --> 00:45:34,760
These are all elements
that he would have seen
in Japanese woodblock prints.

614
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:39,040
There's such an exuberance to paint
and to colour in these works.

615
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:40,160
van Gogh once said,

616
00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:44,080
"I'd like to paint in such a way
that anyone who has eyes
could see or to understand."

617
00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:46,360
And I think that comes across
in this work.

618
00:45:46,400 --> 00:45:47,640
It has tremendous appeal,

619
00:45:47,680 --> 00:45:50,680
in the sense that
we can see how he's applied paint

620
00:45:50,720 --> 00:45:53,520
and the delight he's taken
in this sense of colour.

621
00:45:56,840 --> 00:45:59,240
This sense of experimentation,
actually,

622
00:45:59,280 --> 00:46:02,760
was one of the things
that came out of
this Sunflower research, too,

623
00:46:02,800 --> 00:46:07,440
because there you have
a series of what looks like
the same motif.

624
00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:10,120
And you think, "They look
very similar to each other."

625
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:14,560
But having been able to compare
in great detail
these different versions,

626
00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:17,760
in particular
the three yellow-on-yellow versions,

627
00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:20,440
so the yellow bouquet
against the yellow background,

628
00:46:20,480 --> 00:46:23,960
you can really appreciate
that there's a sort of logic

629
00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:26,400
in the subtle differences
between them.

630
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:28,440
There was really
a development between...

631
00:46:28,480 --> 00:46:30,640
They're not exact replicas
of each other.

632
00:46:30,680 --> 00:46:32,160
Uh, each one is different.

633
00:46:34,160 --> 00:46:40,120
We don't really know why the public
tends to prefer
one painting to another

634
00:46:40,160 --> 00:46:43,880
or why particular works
become iconic above other ones,

635
00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:45,720
but it's not just a personal thing,

636
00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:48,920
because it's a very broad thing,
a phenomenon.

637
00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:52,440
These light yellows,
it's a very optimistic painting.

638
00:46:52,480 --> 00:46:54,120
The way it's painted,

639
00:46:54,160 --> 00:46:56,720
with these
very swirling brushstrokes,

640
00:46:56,760 --> 00:46:59,000
sometimes really rapidly
in the background,

641
00:46:59,040 --> 00:47:01,280
it's a very invigorating painting.

642
00:47:01,320 --> 00:47:02,560
Lots of positive energy.

643
00:47:07,360 --> 00:47:12,520
The Sunflowers
is the rock star painting
in our collection,

644
00:47:12,560 --> 00:47:18,120
where merely being in the presence
constitutes some kind of validation.

645
00:47:18,880 --> 00:47:19,880
"I was there!"

646
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:22,800
And for many people,
I think that's very important.

647
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:28,880
All you need to do is to show
a little bit of the sunflower

648
00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:30,800
and you know
who you're talking about.

649
00:47:30,840 --> 00:47:33,720
And you don't often find that
with many artists.

650
00:47:33,760 --> 00:47:37,000
You don't often find that, in fact,
with van Gogh's other work.

651
00:47:37,040 --> 00:47:41,440
That set of material is the thing
that coalesced around our image

652
00:47:41,480 --> 00:47:44,880
and our view of
A, what a sunflower is

653
00:47:44,920 --> 00:47:47,400
and B,
what van Gogh was all about.

654
00:47:51,000 --> 00:47:52,720
People are fascinated by van Gogh.

655
00:47:52,760 --> 00:47:56,400
They're almost
obsessed with the story
of his extraordinary life.

656
00:47:57,200 --> 00:47:59,680
And if you stand in front of
the Sunflowers,

657
00:47:59,720 --> 00:48:02,120
you have a feeling
of the man behind the painting.

658
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:08,600
It really has become the world's
most instantly recognisable
work of art.

659
00:48:26,360 --> 00:48:27,440
"My dear Theo...

660
00:48:30,840 --> 00:48:36,000
Gauguin was telling me the other day
that he'd seen a painting
by Claude Monet

661
00:48:36,040 --> 00:48:39,520
of sunflowers
in a large Japanese vase.

662
00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:41,400
Very fine...

663
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:44,440
But he likes mine better.

664
00:48:46,880 --> 00:48:49,120
I'm not of that opinion,

665
00:48:49,160 --> 00:48:51,320
only don't think I'm weakening.

666
00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:54,360
I regret as always, as you know,

667
00:48:54,400 --> 00:48:56,360
the scarcity of models,

668
00:48:56,400 --> 00:48:59,200
the thousand obstacles
to overcome their difficulty.

669
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:07,880
If I were a completely different man
and if I were wealthier,

670
00:49:07,920 --> 00:49:08,920
I could force it...

671
00:49:10,640 --> 00:49:13,200
But at present, I'm not giving up.

672
00:49:13,240 --> 00:49:16,640
And I am plodding on...quietly."

673
00:50:07,160 --> 00:50:15,080
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