Van Gogh's Sunflowers, 1887: Two Cut Heads in Paris, Not the Arles Vase

October 27, 2026

Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1887, The Met 49.41

Short answer (updated 28 Oct 2026): The Sunflowers most people picture, a vase full of blooms on a yellow ground, was painted in Arles in 1888–89. This is a different picture. The Met's Sunflowers, 1887, is a Paris canvas showing two cut sunflower heads lying on a blue ground, with no vase at all. It's oil on canvas, 43.2 × 61 cm, and it's wider than it is tall. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The fact gap: Paris heads, not an Arles vase

	What people assume	What the record says
Which Sunflowers	The famous vase of sunflowers	Two cut flower heads on a blue ground, no vase. The Met, accession 49.41. (The Met)
Where and when	Arles, 1888	Dated 1887, the Paris years. The vase pictures came later: the National Gallery's is dated 1888 and the Van Gogh Museum's is dated January 1889. (The Met; National Gallery; Van Gogh Museum)
Shape and size	A tall canvas, about 92 × 73 cm	Landscape format, 43.2 × 61 cm (17 × 24 in.). The London vase is 92.1 × 73 cm and the Amsterdam one is 95 × 73 cm. (The Met; National Gallery; Van Gogh Museum)
Background	Yellow on yellow	A blue ground against orange-yellow heads. (Our reading of the Met image)
One of a kind?	A single picture	One of four Paris sunflower still lifes from late summer 1887: a small oil sketch on cotton (Van Gogh Museum, Sunflowers Gone to Seed, 21.2 × 27.1 cm, F377, August–September 1887), this canvas, a second two-head canvas (Kunstmuseum Bern, 50 × 60.7 cm) and a larger four-head canvas (Kröller-Müller Museum, Four Sunflowers Gone to Seed, KM 105.570, August–October 1887, 59.5 × 99.5 cm, bought by Helene Kröller-Müller in 1908, one of her first Van Gogh purchases), where the flowers are painted life-sized and fill the whole canvas. (The Met; Van Gogh Museum; Kunstmuseum Bern; Kröller-Müller Museum)
Where to see it	London or Amsterdam	New York. The Met lists it in Gallery 825. (The Met)

Three details worth looking at

One head turned over. One head faces us. The other lies face down and shows its ragged back. (Our reading of the Met image)
Woven seed disk. The center is built from short, packed dabs of paint, and the petals curl around it like small flames. (Our reading)
Complementary blue. The blue isn't filler; it pushes the yellows forward. (Our reading.) That pairing was a deliberate Paris experiment: in 1886 he wrote of "a series of colour studies in painting simply flowers… seeking oppositions of blue with orange, red and green, yellow and violet… Trying to render intense COLOUR and not a grey harmony." (letter 569, to Horace Mann Livens, Sept or Oct 1886; quoted by the Kröller-Müller Museum)

Context

He was painting flower studies in Paris by autumn 1886 (letter 569), and was writing from Arles by January 1889 (letters 736, 741). The Paris heads of 1887 come before the Arles vases of 1888–89. (Van Gogh Letters; museum records cited)
The Kröller-Müller calls its four-head canvas "one of the highpoints of his Parisian period" for its warm and cold colours in contrasting tones, its swirling brushstrokes and the strange, undefinable space the flowers sit in. (Kröller-Müller Museum)
The Arles vase pictures exist in several versions. London (NG3863, 1888) and Amsterdam (January 1889) are two of them. (National Gallery; Van Gogh Museum)
The Met marks 49.41 as public domain under Open Access. It came to the museum through the Rogers Fund in 1949. (The Met)

Side by side: New York and Bern

The two canvases Gauguin owned are close in subject but not in shape: ours is 43.2 × 61 cm, the Bern canvas 50 × 60.7 cm, nearly square by comparison. (The Met; Kunstmuseum Bern)

The Bern companion (F 376 / JH 1331). Public domain; reproduction from an art book via Wikimedia Commons, so its colours may differ from the canvas. Not the painting we print.

Gauguin's two sunflowers

Late in 1887, after a show Van Gogh organised at the Restaurant du Chalet in Paris, he swapped this canvas and its Bern companion for Paul Gauguin's On the Shore of the Lake, Martinique (Van Gogh Museum). The 1999 catalogue of the sunflower paintings dates the hand-over to December 1887 or January 1888. (Van Gogh Letters, letter 576, note 2; Van Gogh Museum Journal 1999)
The Met says Gauguin hung the two small canvases above his bed in his Paris apartment until the mid-1890s, when he sold his most prized possessions to pay for his South Seas voyage. (The Met)
On 17 January 1889, after their falling-out in Arles, Van Gogh told Theo that if Gauguin was unhappy with the exchange he could take back his Martinique canvas, "giving me back for his part both my portrait and my two canvases of sunflowers which he took in Paris." The letter edition's note identifies the two as Sunflowers gone to seed, F 375 (this canvas) and F 376 (Bern). (Van Gogh Letters, letter 736 and note 13)
A few days later, on 22 January 1889, he wrote: "Jeannin has the peony, Quost has the hollyhock, but I have the sunflower, in a way." (Letter 741, Van Gogh Letters)
The paintings split up later. Gauguin sold this one to Ambroise Vollard in 1896, and it reached The Met in 1949. Edgar Degas owned the Bern canvas. (Van Gogh Museum Journal 1999)
The full trail of this canvas, from The Met's provenance record: Gauguin sold it on 10 April 1896 for 225 francs, through Georges Chaudet, to Vollard. Vollard sold it to the Dutch collector Cornelis Hoogendijk of The Hague (1897 or 1899), who lent it to the Rijksmuseum from 1907. At his estate sale in Amsterdam on 21 May 1912 it fetched 4,100 guilders. Alphonse Kann of Paris sold it on 19 December 1917 for 32,000 francs to E. Richard Bühler of Winterthur. The dealer Justin K. Thannhauser bought a half share in 1928, owned it outright from 1947, and sold it to The Met in April 1949. (The Met, object 436524, Provenance)

Which print

Our print reproduces The Met's Sunflowers, 1887 (49.41, Rogers Fund, 1949), from the museum's Open Access image DP-41223-001 (CC0). It isn't an Arles vase or a composite. → Van Gogh, Sunflowers (1887) fine art print

Also from the dossier shelf:

Irises, 1889 vs 1890: another Van Gogh flower picture that often gets mixed up with its twin.
The Great Wave: another famous image that exists in more than one version.

FAQ

Is this the famous vase of sunflowers? No. It's the earlier 1887 Paris canvas of two cut heads on a blue ground.

Where is the original? The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession 49.41.

Is it signed? Yes. The 1999 catalogue records it as signed and dated Vincent 87.

How big is it? 43.2 × 61 cm (17 × 24 in.), wider than it is tall.

Where are the vase versions? They include the National Gallery, London (1888) and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (1889), among others.

Did Gauguin own it? Yes. He got it and the Bern canvas in a swap with Van Gogh in late 1887 and kept both until the mid-1890s.

How many Paris sunflower paintings are there? Four: the Van Gogh Museum sketch, this canvas, the Bern canvas and the Kröller-Müller four-head canvas, all late summer 1887. (The Met; museum records)

Is the image public domain? Yes. The Met releases it under Open Access (CC0). The museum does not endorse this shop.

Sources

Quotations are short and attributed. Everything else is paraphrased.