VAN GOGH, VINCENT - The Man Who Painted Sunflowers

               Vincent Van Gogh was a poor Dutch artist who seldom sold a picture. But he didn’t care about money – he wanted only to paint life around him as it would look bathed in pure sunlight.


               Finally, he went to the town of Arles, in the south of France. He rented a yellow house that had white walls inside and red-titled floors. He filled the house with sunflowers, and sometimes he painted pictures of the sunflowers and other sunlit things in the rooms.

               But most of the time he stood outside in the sun and painted the fields and trees, and the people doing their work. Gold seemed to rub off the sun onto his brush and flood his pictures with golden light.

               In his paintings, Arles is like no other place in the world. The skies are bluer, and the sun is shinier.

               The orchards in bloom are pinkier and greener.

               The cobblestone roads are more cobbly and stony.

               His yellow house is the yellowest house that ever was, and the wild sunflowers he painted are wilder than any you have seen.

               Color! Van Gogh wanted color in his pictures. Even his paintings of the night are like the Fourth of July with fireworks spinning all over the sky.

               During his life not many people appreciated the paintings of Van Gogh. Now the whole world knows he was a great artist.