The Sunflowers

Lovely display at the National Gallery bringing together their version of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and the Amsterdam version which is a copy by Van Gogh.

It was wonderful to see these works together and compare them. I had done a super workshop at the National Gallery a couple of weeks ago looking at how and why they were painted and I did find that brought much more understand to the show. It is a small show and likely to get busy so the information boards had been kept to a minimum but what there was was good and it was clever to bring you out into the room with the other Van Gogh’s in rather than trying to group them together in one space.

I thought the London version had a more luminous quality with the paler background and the use of the blue paint to edge the table and the vase. It had a feel of work being thought through whereas the Amsterdam version was slightly looser in style.

Don’t be put off by the queuing, I only waited about 20 minutes, but I’m glad I waited until after half term.

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