Vincent van Gogh painted Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers in the summer of 1888. In mid-August of that year, Vincent van Gogh wrote to his friend Emile Bernard that he was painting canvases of sunflowers to brighten the walls of his studio. Van Gogh described the vivid colors he was using in Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers -- chrome yellow and royal blue -- and compared the effect to stained-glass windows. The thickly worked paint, which sculpts the flower petals and creates a basket-weave pattern on the table's surface and the curve of the vase, heightens the color effects.
Next, we'll look at another study of Vincent van Gogh's emblematic flowers.