Where Is Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' Displayed?

'Sunflowers' refers to a series of Van Gogh's works, rather than a single painting. The series was painted in the French town of Arles, but has since been split up. The series includes three paintings of fifteen flowers in a vase and two paintings of twelve flowers in a similar vase. The first painting to be completed of fifteen flowers now resides in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, with the first of the paintings of twelve owned by London's National Gallery.

Van Gogh began painting the series in the summer of 1888, and one of the paintings later went on to decorate the house of his friend Paul Gaugin. It is doubtful, however, that anyone could have predicted the price Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers fetched at auction in March 1987, when Yasuo Goto, a Japanese businessman, paid a record $40m dollors for the painting. The sale, at Christie's in London, was clouded in controversy later when it became unclear whether the painting was an original Van Gogh, or was in fact from the hand of Emile Shuffenecker, a renowned Van Gogh forger.