#23 Sunflowers — Mug

Van Gogh painted sunflowers to decorate the spare room in the yellow house at Arles, because Paul Gauguin was coming to live with him and he wanted the walls to say welcome. He worked at speed, in the few hours the flowers stayed open, and put yellow against yellow — a background colour nobody else would have risked. Gauguin arrived in October 1888 and was gone before Christmas. The flowers were painted in hope, before either man knew how it would end. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.