Vincent Van Gogh | Still life with flowers

"In Antwerp I did not even know what the Impressionists were, now I have seen them and though not being one of the club, yet I have much admired certain Impressionist pictures - Degas🎨, figure - Claude Monet🎨, landscape.

And now for what regards what I myself have been doing, I have lacked money for paying models, else I had entirely given myself to figure painting but I have made a series of colour studies in painting simply flowers, red poppies, blue corn flowers and myosotys.

White and rose roses, yellow chrysantemums - seeking oppositions of blue with orange, red and green, yellow and violet, seeking The Broken And Neutral Tones to harmonise brutal extremes. Trying to render intense Colour and not a grey harmony" - Quote of Vincent van Gogh🎨 in his letter to Horace Mann Livens, from Paris, September or October 1886.

In an august 1888 letter to Theo, he wrote.

"I am hard at it, painting with the enthusiasm of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won't surprise you when you know that what I'm at is the painting of some sunflowers. If I carry out this idea there will be a dozen panels. So the whole thing will be a symphony in blue and yellow.

I am working at it every morning from sunrise on, for the flowers fade so quickly. I am now on the fourth picture of sunflowers. This fourth one is a bunch of 14 flowers ... it gives a singular effect".