Van Gogh masterpiece set for floral welcome at NGA exhibition

A stunning display will greet visitors to the National Gallery of Australia as one of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings goes on show.

For the great Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, sunflowers were the blooming symbol of warmth, welcome and friendship.

So it’s fitting that 6000 real sunflowers will greet visitors to the National Gallery of Australia when the most famous of all Van Gogh’s paintings, Sunflowers, goes on view from Friday until June 14.

Van Gogh painted Sunflowers in August 1888 to welcome artist Paul Gauguin to his home/studio in the French town of Arles. The most popular picture at the National Gallery in London’s Trafalgar Square, it has left there only a handful of times since the gallery acquired it in 1924.

It’s one of the most famous paintings in the world and has never before been to Australia.

Bonnie Jackson with Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers at the National Gallery of Australia. Picture: Rohan Thomson

It is joined by 60 other extraordinary pictures in the exhibition Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London.

The works include paintings from across 500 years of art, by artists such as

Botticelli, Titian, Rembrandt, Vermeer, El Greco, Velazquez, Goya, Turner, Constable, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Renoir, Cezanne, Monet, Gauguin and Van Gogh.

The National Gallery of Australia commissioned Saskia Havekes of Sydney’s Grandiflora florists to create a spectacular arrangement to celebrate the first blockbuster show since the pandemic.

Model Bonnie Jackson among an installation of sunflowers at the National Gallery of Australia. Picture: Rohan Thomson

Havekes used 6000 cut sunflowers, 4000 of which came from Jilliby farmer Kevin Miller after he saw the famed florist in The Daily Telegraph when her involvement in the exhibition was announced. Kevin simply marched into Grandiflora and said he wanted to help.

“Kevin wanted to grow two hectares of sunflowers to support us,” Havekes said.

Miller will leave home at 5am tomorrow (Wednesday) to get the last truckload of sunflowers to the gallery.

“We have to be at the gallery at 9am,” he said.

When the exhibition opens its doors to the public on Friday, the sunflowers so beloved of Van Gogh will be sure to make everyone feel very at home.