21 October 2015 – A few years ago my wife and I spent our summer holiday in Provence, part of it including an art course on Van Gogh who executed some of his most famous work in Arles. Paul Gauguin would make a short stay during this time … probably making the house in Arles the most famous house-share in art history.
Van Gogh would paint his famous sunflower pictures to hang on the walls of his dwelling (which became known as “the Yellow House”). He would paint his famous fields of ripe wheat that same summer but the most extraordinary pictures he produced in that summer were the Sunflowers. As our art teacher would note, the sunflower pictures show a startling evolution in forcefulness and daring.
During those art sessions we learned how Van Gogh used so-called chrome yellows, a class of compounds consisting of lead, chromium and oxygen. There are different shades of the pigment, and not all of them are photochemically stable over time.
And so, the color is changing. For an excellent piece on the science behind it all click here.