The enigmatic symbolism of Van Gogh's sunflowers - and what they really mean

When we think of Vincent van Gogh, most people immediately think of his iconic, boldly executed sunflowers. This was entirely intentional brand recognition on the artist's part.

"The sunflower is mine," he once wrote, revealing his desire to be publicly associated with this audacious plant, which can grow to the size of a man, and its crown of flaming petals.

Sunflowers clearly had a deep meaning for him. But what did Vincent intend his beloved Helianthus annuus to symbolize?

Along with "The Starry Night ," the painting "Sunflowers" at the National Gallery in London is perhaps his best-known work. However, the artist also painted 10 other paintings focusing on these flowers.

They emerged in three brief bursts of inspiration. The first was a series of four paintings conceived in Paris in 1887. The second batch of four canvases was created in less than a week after his move to the southern French city of Arles in 1888. The third phase, in early 1889, involved copying three of the previous year's compositions.

The most famous versions of 1888 were painted during a flash of confidence and sensual enthusiasm, "with the taste of a Marseilles resident eating bouillabaisse ," as he put it.

Yet when he wrote about sunflowers in his letters, Van Gogh never made clear statements about what they really meant to him.

On the one hand, they seem to be a vehicle for experimenting with color combinations—especially different shades of yellow.

But they were also intended to decorate a house where a fellow artist, Paul Gauguin, would live. Gauguin admired Van Gogh's earlier sunflower paintings, so perhaps they embodied the artist's irrepressible search for solidarity and friendship—desires that would ultimately be frustrated, along with Vincent's yearning for artistic recognition in his lifetime.

Gauguin abandoned Van Gogh after only two months of living together, and Vincent would die at the age of 37 without having managed to sell many of his works of art.

But Van Gogh's sunflower paintings quickly gained cult status in the early 20th century.

This first happened among the avant-garde movement in Europe. In 1920, writer Katherine Mansfield noted that "yellow flowers, full of sunshine, in a vase" had inspired her creative awakening.

In 1923, critic Roger Fry described Van Gogh's Sunflowers as "one of the triumphant successes of this year", which displayed the artist's "supreme exuberance, vitality and vehemence".

They subsequently achieved widespread public recognition, helping to place Van Gogh among the most famous and influential painters in the history of art.

Van Gogh's influence on the 21st century is the subject of the Royal Academy's latest exhibition in London, titled Kiefer/Van Gogh , which explores his impact on one of the greatest contemporary artists, Anselm Kiefer. Sunflowers play a key role in this.

At the center of the exhibition is Danaë , a new sculpture by Kiefer depicting a sunflower emerging from a stack of books. Elsewhere, there is a woodcut showing a Helianthus annuus sprouting from the body of a recumbent man.

They highlight Kiefer's enduring interest in the subject, and give us the opportunity to unravel the mysterious symbolism of the plant in both his and Van Gogh's art.

"For Van Gogh, the sunflower embodied his idea of the South," the exhibition's curator, Julien Domercq, told the BBC, referring to his move from Paris to Provence.

But Van Gogh had worked as an art dealer in his youth and was well-read in art history. His cultural knowledge shines through in the way he depicted flowers.

"He depicts them in a great Dutch tradition: these flowers withering and dying... the flowers that are still looking up at the sky, and the ones that are slowly fading, becoming browner, so it's really a meditation on the passage of time."

"I think with Kiefer, it follows a similar line," adds Domercq.

"This idea of the cycle of life, of this incredibly vital flower, a flower of the south, the flower that looks to the sky."

The symbolism of sunflowers throughout history

All artistic symbolism can be explained by the evolution of ideas and associations. The meaning of sunflowers has its roots in the past and has generated extensive discussion in various fields.

Van Gogh was neither the first nor the only creative mind in history to be obsessed with them. They have filled the imagination of countless artists and writers in the past, including, among others, Anthony van Dyck, Maria van Oosterwyck, William Blake, Oscar Wilde, Dorothea Tanning, Paul Nash, and Allen Ginsberg.

Unlike many other symbols in art history, the sunflower is relatively new. It is native to the Americas and was only introduced to the "Old World" after Columbus's explorations and European colonization in the 16th century.

When they were successfully cultivated and propagated in Europe, the fact that young sunflowers move their faces to follow the sun (a phenomenon known as heliotropism) became the plant's most attractive feature, which fundamentally shaped its symbolic meanings.

In 1568, botanist Giacomo Antonio Cortuso associated the flower with an ancient mythological character called Clície.

Clycee was said to have fallen in love with Apollo, a god associated with the sun, and watched his movement across the sky until her feet became rooted to the ground, and she was transformed into a heliotrope flower.

The sunflower was soon directly associated with Clicie in art, transforming it into an icon of devoted love.

This can be seen in paintings such as Maria van Oosterwyck's Flowers in an Ornamental Vase (1670–1675), in which a carnation and a sunflower gaze adoringly at each other above a sculpture that looks like a bathing Venus but is very reminiscent of the motionless Clécière.

In Bartholomeus Van der Helst's Young Woman Holding a Sunflower (1670), the flower almost certainly symbolizes her marriage, showing how the sunflower evolved into a symbol of romantic love and attachment.

But the theme of devotion was also linked to religion in works of art. In Anthony van Dyck's Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1632), the Virgin Mary has a sunflower above her to symbolize her role as mediator between the earthly and heavenly worlds. The flower now also had connotations of religious fidelity.

In 1654, Dutch poet and playwright Joost van den Vondel suggested that the sunflower could be a symbol of art itself. Just as a young sunflower follows the direction of the sun, he wrote, "the art of painting, by innate inclination and awakened by a sacred fire, follows the beauty of nature."

This may be the key to another painting by Anthony van Dyck, Self-Portrait with a Sunflower (1633), in which the artist points meaningfully to himself and a sunflower, as if to compare himself to this naturally attentive heliotropic plant.

However, art historians argue that the work actually alludes to the artist's fidelity to his patron, King Charles I of England, for whom Van Dyck was commissioned as "principal painter".

This political symbolism of sunflowers reverberates even in contemporary works of art.

In Ai Weiwei's 2010 work Sunflower Seeds , for example, the 100 million hand-painted porcelain seeds were inspired by the poster artist's memory of Chairman Mao Zedong.

These posters depicted him as a sun over fields of devout sunflowers, to represent his omnipotent power over the Chinese people.

The consistent meaning behind the diverse symbolism of sunflowers is fidelity. It's possible that Van Gogh was aware of some of these concepts.

When he wrote to his sister that his paintings were "almost a cry of anguish, while symbolizing gratitude in the rustic sunflower," he may have been thinking of his own simple, sunflower-like appreciation for fellow artists such as Gauguin.

But he may also have been thinking about his previously devout religious beliefs, romantic love, or even his obligation to the art of painting.

Another fascinating question is how Van Gogh influenced Anselm Kiefer, and the possible convergence of their ideas on sunflowers.

Kiefer has stated that "the sunflower is connected to the stars, because it moves its head towards the sun. And at night, it closes. The moment they explode, they are yellow and fantastic: that is already the point of decline. Therefore, sunflowers are the symbol of our condition d'être [of being]."

In his woodcut Hortus Conclusus (2007–2014), Kiefer's sunflowers evoke decay more emphatically than Van Gogh, but also the possibility of regeneration. They are darkened and withered. But they also often show their seeds cascading to the ground, thus conveying the promise of new life to come.

Kiefer cited another 17th-century figure as his inspiration—the physician, occult philosopher, and cosmologist Robert Fludd.

One of Fludd's beliefs was the correspondence between Earth's living plants and the stars, and a mystical relationship between the lowest forms of life and a singular celestial truth.

In his images of sunflowers, Kiefer often frames them with the sky to remind us of their heliotropic relationship with the sun.

When they appear growing from human bodies, it is as if they symbolize Fludd's belief in the connection of our souls to heaven.

This reinforces the idea that sunflower symbolism still owes much to late Renaissance beliefs. Van Gogh's sunflowers also reflect aspects of these historical associations and allude to his yearning for a deeper love—whether for nature, art, religion, or his desire for creative fraternity with Gauguin.

But in his and Kiefer's hands, Helianthus annuus also conveys universal concerns—our desire to reflect on the transience of life, and to seek higher, more eternal principles.

Sunflowers symbolize loyalty to concepts that exist beyond our comprehension, leading us to think beyond our everyday reality and seek the warmth, light, and love of the heavens. It's something to ponder when summer arrives, and real sunflowers shine again, albeit briefly, in the ecstasy of life.

* The exhibition "Kiefer/ Van Gogh" will be on display at the Royal Academy, in London, from June 28 to October 26.

Read the full report (in English) on the BBC Culture website .