Welcome from Amsterdam and welcome from the Van Gogh Museum.
Now you have travelled on...
those of you who have already listened to the Facebook livestream...
from the National Gallery in London, where we are travelling around the world today.
And we're travelling around the world with a remarkable work of art.
I should say, with five remarkable works of art...
by one of the most famous painters on the planet, Vincent van Gogh...
as we say here in the Netherlands.
And the most famous picture, probably one of the most famous paintings in the world...
is of course his 'Sunflowers', which you see here behind me.
But there's not just one version of it. There's five versions of this picture.
And those of you who have joined in earlier...
you have already listened to my colleague, Chris Riopelle...
at the National Gallery in London, talking about their version of the picture.
And now it's our turn, here at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam...
to talk about ours.
For those of you who have not followed...
we are going on a journey around the world with this Facebook LIVE event.
That is to say, we are talking about...
all five versions of Van Gogh's famous Sunflowers...
which can be found in five museums, on three continents around the world.
So, after this, if you move on then to our colleagues...
you can virtually travel around the world with this picture under your arm.
Now, the Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh... Why are there even five versions?
Why do artists do that?
Isn't it all about authenticity and the one great work of art?
Well, you often find copies, you often find versions...
because artists either want to improve on what they have done...
they want to experiment further...
or sometimes they also want to give a version to another person.
In Vincent van Gogh's case, all these things are true.
He wanted to improve on earlier compositions...
he wanted to keep a copy sometimes for his brother Theo...
and he sometimes also wanted to give a version away.
The National Gallery picture that some of you will just have seen...
is one of the first versions that Van Gogh made of the Sunflowers...
whereas ours is one of the last ones.
However, they're very similar. We'll be talking about that in a minute.
But first of all, what is so special about these...
apart from that they're great works of art?
They're also a true symbol of friendship...
because these pictures, the versions of the Sunflowers...
do tell the story of friendship, a friendship between two great artists.
Vincent van Gogh had met Paul Gauguin, the other great French painter of his day...
in Paris. And they had exchanged ideas about art. They had become sort of friends.
But eventually, Vincent van Gogh, in 1888, moved to the south of France...
to splendid isolation in Arles in Provence, where he worked all by himself.
But it was really his dream...
and my colleague from the National Gallery has already talked about this...
it was really his dream to set up an artistic community.
To invite artists from Paris, from other places...
to come to join him in Arles, to work side by side...
to inspire each other, to exchange ideas.
And the first artist, of course, he had set his sight on...
whom he greatly admired, was Paul Gauguin.
And Paul Gauguin had sort of accepted the invitation...
but it required some gentle persuasion by Vincent's brother Theo...
who was an art dealer in Paris...
for Paul Gauguin actually to go to the south of France.
And before Gauguin got there...
Vincent thought that he wanted to decorate the house...
where he wanted to establish the Studio of the South, as he called it...
in the yellow house.
One of his other great, famous works which happens to be in our collection...
as there are so many of course...
The Yellow House in Arles...
where he wanted to receive Paul Gauguin as the first of his guests.
And Van Gogh had, of course, also painted the interior of the house...
the famous The Bedroom, which is also here in Amsterdam.
So the whole setting was there.
And so he bought furniture. He bought a chair, for example, for Gauguin.
And then he wanted to decorate the house. And it was rather ambitious...
because he thought about making not just one or two versions...
but in fact, initially, twelve copies... Twelve versions really, of paintings of sunflowers.
Quite quickly he realised that that was rather ambitious.
He reduced his ambition to six.
But upon the arrival of Gauguin, actually he had finished two paintings.
One, which is a version that you will be hearing about a little later...
because it is the painting in Munich.
And that is the version that has a sort of bluish, turquoise background.
The first one. And then after that the National Gallery picture...
that some of you, most of you, will have just looked at...
which is completely in yellow.
Now, why is this so special?
I'll sometimes say, jokingly of course, it is not fifty shades of grey...
but it's almost fifty shades of yellow.
In fact, you can count about 38 tones of yellow in this...
what you could also refer to as a symphony in yellow.
It is rather challenging for an artist to come up with a convincing composition...
that makes you actually want to look at the details of a picture...
that draw you to it, all painting in almost one single colour.
Of course there are colour accents in the picture.
You can see, of course, the green stems of the flowers.
You see other colour accents here, in the flowers...
and of course also here along the table and around the vase.
Vincent proudly signed the painting, as he did most of the other versions as well.
But those of you who just looked at the London version...
may have noticed rather subtle differences.
There is a big reflection of light in the London picture that is missing from ours.
The line here in the background is blue rather than red...
in the London version.
So Vincent van Gogh also plays very subtly with differences between the pictures.
Just adjusting the composition slightly...
because he felt it was better and more appropriate.
When Gauguin got there this version didn't exist yet.
He saw the Munich version, he saw the London picture...
what became the London picture, in the house...
and he was deeply impressed by them.
And so then, while Gauguin was there, Vincent embarked on another version...
which you will hearing about later: The one in Tokyo. What is so special about that...
is that we have in our collection a painting by Paul Gauguin...
who portrays Vincent van Gogh as he paints that third version of The Sunflowers.
When you look at those paintings, you realise...
that they are painted on a very rough canvas. It is jute...
a type of sackcloth that requires you to paint in a very different way.
So those two pictures are painted much more thickly.
It was the aesthetic that Gauguin preferred, and of course van Gogh...
wanted to take up the inspiration and the artistic exchange...
and of course wanted to experiment with that as well.
That discussion, that artistic dialogue between these artists, continued...
but it also became rather fiery. They fought with each other...
and had very serious discussions.
Van Gogh writes about these that they're so energetic that by the end of them...
it feels like the batteries ran out, that they have drained all energy out of them.
Of course the subsequent story is famous.
The two artists get into a heated discussion. Van Gogh...
Van Gogh has a mental attack, if you like...
and that is the moment when the famous incident with the ear happens.
When he cuts off his ear.
In panic Gauguin leaves right away and goes back to Paris.
The amazing thing... This is, as I said in the beginning...
a true story of friendship. Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh stay in touch.
And Gauguin asks him...
whether he could get one of the two early versions of The Sunflowers...
namely the yellow on yellow with yellow version...
that he knew from the yellow house. But Vincent van Gogh...
embarked on a new set because he felt he wanted to improve on them.
And so this is when our picture was created.
So it was created in response to the request of Paul Gauguin.
He then painted this beautiful version.
And that is the picture that then of course remained in the family...
and that ultimately ended up in the museum.
Because at the Van Gogh Museum...
the collection that after Vincent's death was left to his brother Theo...
What was left after works were sold from the collection...
form the core of the collection here at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
That is why one of the great works, one of the great versions of The Sunflowers...
is here in Amsterdam.
Of course the picture has become world famous.
That of course also makes...
that we felt, on the initiative of the National Gallery in London...
that we should embark on this unique Facebook LIVE event...
and take you on this journey around the world to look at all the versions...
because physically we will never be able to bring them together again.
So this is your unique opportunity...
and I would like to invite you to continue with the subsequent Facebook LIVE's.
The next one will be from Munich.
Our colleague from the Neue Pinakothek in Munich will tell you about their version.
She will tell you how dangerous it can be...
to acquire a version of The Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh.
I hope you will enjoy that.
For now I thank you very much for your attention from Amsterdam.
Thank you from the Van Gogh Museum.
If you are in Amsterdam, do come visit. Thank you very much.