LONDON — The National Gallery has mounted a supreme exercise in artistic compare-and-contrast. Side by side, in a room of their own, hang two of the seven paintings of “Sunflowers” by Vincent van Gogh: the National Gallery’s own great painting from August, 1888 and a copy of the same composition from some months later on loan from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (through April 27, in Room 46).
How much can you learn from two versions of the same work, even if they are by a great artist? The answer is: a lot, especially from the way that Van Gogh did not (or maybe could not) repeat himself. These “Sunflowers” are surprisingly different.
The earlier of the two was one of four canvases completed in just six days, between August 21 and 26, 1888, which culminated in this picture with its symphonic variations of yellow on yellow. The idea of building a whole painting, like this, in a single color key shocked and startled Van Gogh’s contemporaries.
The replica was painted either a few weeks before or after Van Gogh’s mental crisis and ear-cutting episode on December 23, 1888 (there is some scholarly dispute on the point), probably as a gift for Gauguin. But the crucial point about this picture is not psychological but horticultural. Sunflowers do not bloom in winter. Therefore this painting was done not in front of a real bouquet, but from the other canvas.
When you look from one to the other, you can see that in the Amsterdam picture, Vincent was playing around even more freely with color itself. The wall behind the flowers is a brighter yellow, as are the blooms themselves. Van Gogh has given the flowers botanically-fictional green centers, a contrasting color-chord that pops and fizzles.
In comparison, the earlier picture, audacious though it is, is clearly based on reality. Of course, there’s no need to choose, but for me the National Gallery picture — though more subdued, more ochre and less chrome, with a paler yellow background — is more powerful. Van Gogh was almost always at his greatest when working from life.
