Researchers examine ’Sunflowers’ by Van Gogh

Introduction: Vincent Van Gogh used only two yellows to paint Sunflowers: a light-fast and a light-sensitive type. Researchers from the Universities of Antwerp, Perugia and Delft together with museum staff have painstakingly examined Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). He painted this iconic work, a composition dominated by yellow tints with some orange and blue accents, in 1889 in Arles, France. F. Vanmeert (researcher at the University of Antwerp and main author of the study): "We developed a new, non-destructive method of chemical imaging based on X-ray diffraction that permits to identify all crystalline pigments with a high degree of certainty. We call it Macroscopic Scanning X-ray powder diffraction ." In Sunflowers , almost throughout the entire painting the pigment Chrome Yellow is used. The researchers observed that in the warm-yellow areas, a chemically very stable form of this pigment was used. Here, it is expected that in the coming decades, the paint will keep its original color without any problem.