The Sunflowers Are Mine

This beautiful dive into some of Van Gogh's most iconic paintings is a definite must-read for those who love his work. Carefully written, with obvious painstaking research informing it, it is a book full of information about the artist's life and his mental status when he set out to paint his sunflowers.

The book delves into the influences of the time that led Van Gogh to paint these flowers, along with the mental fragility that led him to doubt his own talent. With the added benefit of the images included in the text, this is a complete study of the work and the man behind it.

I was unfortunately not able to access this book because it was not downloadable to Kindle and the other format didn’t work on my device. Please advise if there’s another way to access.

Unfortunately I was unable to access the book even though I downloaded it to my computer several times. The file wouldn't open, which was a shame as it promises to be a great read!

The book relates part of the life of Vincent van Gogh along with the development of one of his most known creations, The Sunflowers. The text is divided into two major parts, the first focuses on the artist’s lifetime highlighting important times of Van Gogh’s life where he seemed to have acquired inspiration or drive to push on his idea of these paintings. These highlights are accompanied by personal anecdotes and paintings which make the telling interesting and full of enjoyment. The second part of the text describes how Van Gogh’s sunflowers paintings have been passed on through history and how they have arrived at their current place. This is a very beautiful book not just because of the many illustrations, which are vivid and colorful, but also because of its rich detail. It is only 240 pages, but they are well employed. At the end of the book there is a short chronology of each of the seven sunflower paintings and a picture of each of them. Readers will also find a chronology of Van Gogh’s life but in relation to the sunflower paintings; there is an endnotes section, a bibliography, and an index. This is a great book for an art major, a Van Gogh’s fan, and a great addition to a college’s library. I received a free copy via NetGalley.

Can you believe possible such luck? The author of The Sunflowers

are Mine, Martin Bailey tells this wonderful anecdot: he was in Paris, spending the last of the year with a couple of Parisian friends and sharing with them his interest for Van Gogh. The couple, so, encouraged, told him a singular, absolutely stunning adventure.
What a stroke of luck!
As many people do, they bought a second-hand book in a bouquiniste stall located close to the Seine.
As it happens often, people bring home used book and they end in the pile of the "I want to read" books. A pile never-ending, let me add.
One day, after a lot of time from that distant moment in which the couple bought the book, the two noticed that inside there was a letter, from Vincent Van Gogh, to Paul Gaugin!
The letter later was recognized as original and it is now part of the Musee Reattu of Arles enriching a world, the epistolary one of Van Gogh, that it is simply immense; after his death people discovered, being a voracious letter-writer something like 820 letters.
This one follows the traumatic decision of Van Gogh of cutting his own ear, a self-injury punishment he inflicted to himself for who knows which reason and the quick departure from Arles of the same Gaugin after the terrible fact.

Van Gogh started to feel interest for sunflowers starting in 1888, when he left Provence for Arles; he is the artist more associated at this friendly, warm summer-flowers.

He was quick when he painted. He completed a painting of Sunflowers in just a week. He fell fascinated by sunflowers once in Paris in 1886.
That years were the most illuminating, most precious, more perfect ones for this artist.

Van Gogh didn't choose of portraying a sophisticated life; he went in particular for common people, countrysides, the work of peasants; he was interested to capture the colors of life seen and read examining the daily life.

Van Gogh composed various sunflowers paintings and in this book the author will drive us, thanks to a historical and artistic meticulous reconstruction, into the same history of these paintings and their destiny once bought.


Beautiful. If you love art, this book is for you!

Highly recommended.

Anna Maria Polidori

This meticulously researched and beautifully illustrated book is the story of Van Gogh’s iconic sunflower paintings, a fascinating account of the different versions and their adventures in time and place. All the paintings are collected at the end, making comparisons easy and rewarding, with their provenance and list of owners. A timeline and full bibliography are included, making this an accessible volume for the general reader as well as a useful one for the scholar and art historian. A great read.

The Sunflowers are Mine by Martin Bailey takes Vincent van Gogh’s iconic flower and examines, the hows, whos, and wheres of those famous paintings. The book is comprised of essentially two halves. The first examines how Van Gogh came to choose the sunflower, his influences, Van Gogh’s situation when he painted each of the seven canvases. The second half follows the story of each painting once they left the easel, both their own adventures through galleries and wars, and as a wider look at their influence on modern art.

As I would expect from someone who has written several books on Van Gogh, Bailey’s investigation of the Sunflower still-lifes is thorough, enlightening, and clearly painstakingly researched. I did find the tail-end of the second half a little dry, the story behind a painting petered out to a perfunctory description but I can’t hold that against the author; only so much can be written about a painting that has sat peacefully in a gallery or on someone’s wall for years. Otherwise the text is very readable, whether you have a casual interest in Van Gogh or are an art history student. I have read quite a bit about Van Gogh already and even I found myself learning something new. For example, I was not aware of the painting Five Sunflowers existed, let alone had been destroyed in Japan in 1945 during an air raid. Fortunately it was photographed in colour in 1921, and is featured in this book, in all the jewel-like intensity emblematic of Van Gogh, making it the first time it has been reproduced outside of Japan.

The reproduced pictures are almost worth buying the book alone. Vincent’s paintings are printed in marvellous, glossy and vivid detail. Even though they are digital reproductions you really get to share the sense of all those 1880s gallery goers shocked out of a pastel stupor. With pictures to reference to a reader can clearly see where Van Gogh influenced others, or where he found inspiration, as well as a visual context to contemporary art movement. There are also brilliant, fascinating photographs where possible. There was one in particular that stood out; a photograph of the artist’s nephew, Vincent Willem ‘the Engineer’ van Gogh, from 1973 at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. An elderly man in a black and white photograph but it immediately reminded me Toulouse-Lautrec’s 1887 Portrait of Vincent van Gogh. It completely struck me, seeing an actual person - not a painting - that was only one generational step away from such a key figure in modern art.

Martin Bailey has written a wonderful exploration of Vincent van Gogh and some of the most famous sunflowers in history. An informative read and utterly beautiful, I think it would be suitable either as an introduction to Vincent’s life or as part of a deeper study, and highly recommend it.

A lifelong lover of Vincent's paintings, this journey of his life, seen through the Sunflower painting series, is enjoyable and accurate. Gorgeous reproductions, and drawings too. Lovely book.

“I’m painting with the gusto of a Marseilles eating bouillabaisse, which won’t surprise you when it’s a question of painting large Sunflowers.” - Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo

The Sunflowers Are Mine is a heavy-researched non-fiction book about one of art history’s most iconic paintings, Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. It is also a very informative biography of the artist around that time. I did not know that much about Vincent Van Gogh before reading this book. I’ve always been curious about what motivated Van Gogh to cut off his ear. This author says that it was partially motivated by Van Gogh’s fear that he would lose his bother Theo’s emotional and financial support (he had recently received a letter from Theo announcing his engagement) and that combined with mental illness caused him to act out in that self-destructive way.

“Nineteenth-century artists tended to choose elegant vases for floral still lives, but it is typical of Van Gogh that he opted for a more humble vessel.”

The title of this book comes from a letter that Van Gogh wrote in which he said that other artist’s had made various flowers their signature (Jeannin painted peonies and Quost painted hollyhocks), but that Van Gogh was going to make sunflowers his signature flower. Though most people are familiar with his painting depicting fifteen sunflowers in a simple pot, Van Gogh painted many lesser-known pictures of sunflowers.

“A botanist might feel that Van Gogh has not depicted the sunflowers accurately enough, but that was hardly his intention. He robustly set out to capture the essence of the flower, with a degree of exaggeration and stylization.”

The level of detail in this book is extraordinary. Every aspect of the paintings is described to a T. I wish I had gone into this book with a better understanding of art technique. There were a few words I had to look up, such as impasto.

“Always continue walking a lot and loving nature, for that’s the real way to learn to understand art better and better. Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see.” - Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo

I learned a lot from this book. For example, it was Theo Van Gogh who encouraged Vincent to paint flowers because he thought they might be marketable. They weren’t as highly regarded as landscapes or portraits, but people would often buy paintings of flowers to display in their homes.

I would recommend this book if you are interested in Vincent Van Gogh enough to wade through a very detailed account of one aspect of his painting (specifically his work that involved sunflowers). If you are looking for a more general biography of Vincent Van Gogh, there are better books to chose from. I have heard good things about Julius Meier-Graefe’s Vincent Van Gogh: A Biography and Victoria Charles’ Vincent Van Gogh. Still, I found this a very interesting read. I intend to pick up one of the two biographies I just mentioned to gain a better understanding of his life overall.

Thank you to Net Galley and White Lion Publishing for the digital copy of this book.

Grade: B

Even non-art lovers are aware of Van Gogh's Sunflower paintings. This tells you the inspiration for them. Beautiful, lovely book. Quite a treasure!

I received an e-copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for review purposes. Thank you!

An in-depth look at the history of one of world’s most famous sets of paintings: Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Bailey writes about the very origins of the paintings, about Van Gogh’s life around the time of the creation of Sunflowers, about the critical reaction to the pieces and of their fate before and after Van Gogh’s death, as well as about their eventual “places of residence”. The book is full of beautifully reproduced pictures and of interesting facts. The most important of the latter, perhaps, is that there were <i>seven</i> paintings in the series, with six surviving (one was destroyed in Japan during WWII); but then there is also the fact that the Sunflowers were once considered controversial and just plain weird.

Overall, while this might not necessarily be required reading for everyone, it is nonetheless a fascinating book.

I absolutely adored this book and I will soon get a physical copy! I love art and Van Gogh is one of my favourite artists - this is one of the best books I read on him. The author is passionate about Van Gogh but also observational and presents the facts without altering or romanticizing them. He is a great art historian writer and the way he talks about Van Gogh and his sunflowers made this book such a quick read!

I really enjoyed reading and looking at this book. The author takes an in depth look at Van Gogh's Sunflower Paintings. There is also some biographical information. The text is accompanied with wonderful illustrations. Enjoy this beautiful and informative art book

The attraction of this wonderful book is not only due to the sumptuous photographs of Van Gogh's mesmerising iconic works but also the informative and lucid prose provided by Martin Bailey who is a leading Van Gogh specialist and has curated several Van Gogh exhibitions. In addition he has authored a number of bestselling books on the artist. In The Sunflowers Are Mine, Martin narrates the story of the series of sunflower still lifes that he painted while staying in Paris and Provence. He painted a total of twelve of these canvases, although the most commonly referred to are the seven he painted while in Arles in 1888 - 1889. The other five he had painted previously while in Paris in 1887. The book not only tells the story surrounding their painting but also looks at their subsequent history which is fascinating in itself and includes many discoveries.

This is not only a book for the art connoisseur but also for the general reader like myself and Martin expertly narrates the story of Van Gogh's troubled life and places him against the perspective of the development of art at that time setting Van Gogh at the forefront of POST-Impressionism. Also the personal and artistic relationship between Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin is examined and analysed. I must admit that I spent several hours spellbound by his art and its meaning and would recommend this book to those who have a love of beauty and imagination.