Van Gogh's Sunflowers: Real-Life Fakes

Van Gogh's Sunflowers: Real-life Fakes

In Paul Gauguin’s Portrait of Vincent Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers, Arles 1888, Vincent van Gogh is caught in the midst of painting sunflowers that appear to come to life at the tip of his paintbrush. This imagery of his supernatural ability to infuse life into his works, even into subjects as seemingly inanimate as still flowers, resonates with his unparalleled artistic proficiency. As Gauguin illustrates, the power of van Gogh’s artistry is so great, yet to him so simple to evoke, that painting almost seems as a casual gesture. At the time, van Gogh was producing his famous series of sunflower paintings while in Arles, and Gauguin’s work actually serves as homage to this latest series of paintings. Ironically, too, the sunflowers in this work painted by van Gogh have, since the artist’s death, inspired forgeries that have afflicted the realm of art until recently, particularly his masterpiece, Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers (1888), or Sunflowers, as we will refer to it here. This leaves us with the question: Did van Gogh actually paint all existing versions of Sunflowers? And does the answer to that question truly matter? Actually, forgeries of his celebrated Sunflowers have benefited the reputation of van Gogh, since it has made the value of and demand for proven, authentic van Gogh work to increase dramatically, thus leading to a greater cultural appreciation for van Gogh.

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| Definition of a Forgery | Stylistic Inconsistencies | Validity of the Yasuda Painting |