item details
NameSunflowers and portrait
ProductionNatalia Goncharova; artist; circa 1908-1909
Classificationoil paintings, portraits
Materialsoil paint, canvas
Materials Summaryoil on canvas
DimensionsImage: 1072mm (width), 1155mm (height)
Registration Number1973-0003-3
Credit lineGift of Mme Larionov, Paris, 1973
Overview
A vase of sunflowers shedding petals, a portrait of Tsar Alexander III, and a glimpse of a yellow landscape. Natalia Goncharova’s stylised plants, brilliant colours, and upset perspective show the influence of the French expressionist Henri Matisse.
In this work, she seems to have drawn on childhood memories of sunflower fields: ‘not when the young plants were a tender green … nor when the flowers were the colour of the sun, turning their heads towards it, but ... during the harvest or even after.’