Sometimes a work of art is so dazzlingly famous that it can blind people to its original context and meaning. That surely is the case with Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers.Take the version in London’s that the Dutch artist painted in Arles in the South of France in August 1888. Fifteen sunflowers erupt out of a simple earthenware pot against a blazing yellow background. Some of the flowers are fresh and perky, ringed with halos of flickering, flame-like petals. Others are going to seed and have begun to droop.In part a meditation on the vagaries of time, the picture gives a dynamic, ferociously colourful twist to the long tradition of Dutch flower painting stretching back to the 17th Century. Since it entered the National Gallery’s collection in 1924, it has also proved phenomenally popular.

Last year, more postcards of this painting were sold in the gallery’s shop – the exact figure was 26,110 – than of any other picture in the entire collection. But many of the more than 5m people who visit the National Gallery every year will be unaware that the painting belongs to a series of four extraordinary sunflower still lifes that Van Gogh created in less than a week during the summer of 1888, when a cold northerly wind prevented him from working outdoors.The first of these, now in a private collection and sometimes described as Van Gogh’s ‘unknown’ Sunflowers, shows three yellow-orange blooms in a green glazed pot against a turquoise background. It has not been exhibited since 1948, when it was lent to the Cleveland Museum of Art for a month.A second picture, again with three flowers in a pot as well as three more on the table in the foreground, in front of a a rich royal blue wall, was destroyed during the American bombardment of the Japanese town of Ashiya in 1945. Rather, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers thrived during the 20th Century, when reproductions of them were spread around the world, thanks to their immediacy, clarity, and force. “Instead of trying to render exactly what I have before my eyes,” Van Gogh told his brother shortly before beginning the series, “I use colour more arbitrarily in order to express myself forcefully.” This emotional, subjective use of colour would prove enormously influential on modern art, and continues to speak directly to people today. “I’d like to paint in such a way thateveryone who has eyes could understand it,” Van Gogh once said.For Jansen, this, coupled with the compelling story of the artist’s life, as well as the value of the pictures (in 1987, Van Gogh’s unsigned Sunflowers copy became the most expensive painting ever sold at auction), proved irresistible: “The popularity of the Sunflowers is a combination of, on the one hand, their beauty, emotional impact and a touch of the human condition, and on the other hand the public’s fascination with fame, money and myth.

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Sunflowers (Van Gogh series) Sunflowers (original title, in French: Tournesols) is the name of two series of still life paintings by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. The first series, executed in Paris in 1887, depicts the flowers lying on the ground, while the second set, executed a year later in Arles, shows a bouquet of sunflowers in a vase.

New: A brand-new, unused, unopened, undamaged item in its original packaging (where packaging isapplicable). Packaging should be the same as what is found in a retail store, unless the item is handmade or was packaged by the manufacturer in non-retail packaging, such as an unprinted box or plastic bag. See the seller's listing for full details.Size:Small (up to 12in.)Type:Giclee & Iris PrintArtist:Vincent Van GoghSubject:Famous Paintings/PaintersStyle:ExpressionismBrand:UnbrandedMaterial:Canvas.