Sunflowers, the painting, or rather paintings, that may be Van Gogh’s best-known work is getting a new look at an innovative exhibition at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum.
Van Gogh is known to have painted seven versions of the iconic sunflowers in a vase; the first was intended to decorate a room for Paul Gauguin’s stay with Van Gogh in Arles. Six survive, five of them in museums, but all are now too fragile to travel to a joint showing.
So, the exhibit at the museum includes the museum’s own version, and high-tech digital scans of the others in Munich, London, Tokyo and Philadelphia. The scans, placed side-by-side show the different variations in color, background and even assortment. The scans also allow examination of details and analyses of how the colors have changed over time; sadly, some of the newly-available colors Van Gogh used have not proven stable.
The exhibit will run through September 1st.
