Van Gogh’s Lost Sunflower Painting

In October 1888, Vincent van Gogh was already suffering from mental illness when he invited the Paul Gaugin, his friend and artistic mentor, to move in with him in Arles, France.  The two were to share what van Gogh called the “Yellow House”, which was to be the start of a planned artistic community.

According to the letter van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo, the artist planned to make twelve paintings of sunflowers to decorate the house, particularly Gaugin’s bedroom.

"I would like to make a decoration for the walls. Nothing but large sunflowers . . .  Well, if I carry out that plan, there will be a dozen panels of them.  The whole thing will therefore become a symphony in blue and yellow.  I work at it every morning from sunrise, for the flowers wilt quickly and it is a matter of doing the whole thing in one go."

Unfortunately, van Gogh had finished only four of the paintings before the two artists had a falling out and Gaugin moved out.  Van Gogh went into a deep depression that ended with his self-mutilation of his ear and his hospitalization.

After being released, van Gogh returned briefly to Yellow House and completed Vase with Five Sunflowers (F459).  Just to make sure that the painting would be terribly confusing to future art history students, the painting—done in January 1889—is also known as Six Sunflowers 1888.  You can count the number of flowers in the painting (right) for yourself.  (Ironically, as you will soon see, the Yellow House was destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II.)

Van Gogh typically didn’t frame his own works, preferring to leave that to dealers or buyers, but in 1888, when he was preparing to decorate his Yellow House in Arles for Paul Gauguin’s visit, he put extra care into this sunflower still life.  He crafted (or at least had made to his design) a simple, bold orange wood frame that he painted in a complementary tone that was likely to heighten the impact of the vivid yellows and golds of the flowers.  The intention was to create a unified, almost ceremonial presentation of the piece, turning it from “painting” into “altar” for the artistic friendship he hoped to cement with Gauguin.

Only one of the sunflower paintings sold during the artist’s lifetime: Fifteen Sunflowers, which sold to Anna Boch for 400 francs ($1600 today).  The rest were part of the 800-850 paintings and drawings that van Gogh’s brother inherited after the artist died in 1890.   Six months after the artist’s death, Theo died leaving the paintings to his widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger who carefully exhibited his work, slowly selling off the paintings as the artist became famous posthumously. 

Vase with Five (Six) Sunflowers was exhibited three times in Holland, then Johanna placed the painting for sale by consignment with her uncle, Cornelius M. van Gogh’s art dealership.  Fritz Meyere-Fierz, of Zurich, purchased the painting in 1908 for £250 and held onto the painting until 1820, when he sold it by consignment via the Paul Vallotton gallery, Lausanne) for £3,200 to Koyata Yamamoto.  (Koyata Yamamoto is not related to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.)

Koyato Yamamoto (seated at left in the photo) was a wealthy cotton textile merchant who purchased the painting on the advice of his friend, the writer and artist Saneatsu Mushanokoji (seated at right).  Shipped to Japan aboard the mail steamer Binna, the painting was exhibited in both Tokyo and Osaka.  At the second exhibition, the heavy frame caused the painting to fall from the wall, slightly damaging the artwork.  Angry at the lack of safety for the painting, Yamamoto vowed to never allow it to be exhibited again, taking the Sunflower painting to his home in residence in the Uchide district of Ashiya.

 After the start of World War II and the Allied bombing raids on Japan, Yamamoto became concerned about the painting’s safety.  He tried to convince a bank in Osaka to store the painting in its basement vault for safety, but the bank, fearful that the damp basement would harm the painting, refused.  Unable to find a suitable location at which to store the painting, Yamamoto left the painting in its usual location, hanging on the wall in the drawing room of his home.

Starting on August 1, 1945, the United States Army Air Force began the largest bombing raids of World War II, on the urban areas of Japan.  Thousands of tons of explosives were ripped on Japanese cities by a fleet of 836 B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers.  In several of these missions, M69 and M47 incendiary bombs were dropped in such a manner as to produce firestorms in Japan’s wooden urban structures and industrial facilities. 

Ayisha was not a major industrial city but an airfield that was a vital part of Japan’s air defense system was located there.  The destruction of this field was an integral part of  Operation Olympic, the planned invasion of Japan that was scheduled for November 1945.  Because of Ayisha’s dense population of wooden structures, it was decided that creating a firestorm would be the most effective tactic to use against the city.  The raid dropped a total of a thousand tons of incendiary devices on the city, causing widespread destruction.  In a sad coincidence, the raid occurred on August 6, 1945, the same day as the first use of an atomic weapon, in the bombing of Hiroshima.  The use of atomic weapons forced Japan to surrender, thus eliminating the need for Operation Olympic.

When the air raid sirens alerted the people of Ashiya to go to the air raid shelters, Yamamoto tried to save his beloved Sunflower painting, but the frame was too heavy for him to move, so he was forced to leave the painting behind.   The home, with all of its contents, was one of 2833 homes destroyed that night.

Yamamoto survived the air raid on Ayisha and remained in Ayisha until his death in November 1963.  He never mentioned his Sunflower painting again.

Japan acquired its second Van Gogh Sunflowers painting—Sunflowers (F457)—in 1987, when Yasuo Goto purchased it at a Christie’s London auction for a then-record-breaking £24.75 million (about $39.9 million USD at the time).  Goto intended it as both a prestige acquisition and a cultural gift to the public, eventually displaying it at what is now the Sompo Museum of Art in Tokyo.  We can probably safely assume (this time, anyway) that the van Gogh painting will remain safe, since Goto owns the Yasuda Fire & Marine Insurance Company.