Retrato de Van Gogh pintando girasoles, 1888
Fuente: https://www.meisterdrucke.ie/
On Saturday, I bought two sunflowers at the Chelsea Gardener and planted them in a pot in the front garden. Everyone who passes sees their smiling faces and smiles back. Sunflowers know the secret of life is to follow the sun.
The Sun God Apollo once fell in love with a water nymph named Clytie. When his attentions moved on to a rival nymph, he changed Clytie into a sunflower whose head always turned to the sun. I am not sure how the Greek myth came into being as the sunflower is native to North America, but mythology like religion is only a metaphor.
Flowers turning their heads to the sun is called heliotropism. They all do it, people too, but sunflowers with their emoji faces and corona of bright yellow petals create a fireworks display of colour and light. Keep a sunflower on your windowsill and you will never be sad.
The sunflower is Ukraine’s national flower. They can be seen in great murmuring fields across the countryside and have always been a symbol of peace. Someone with the ear of Mr Putin should mention it to him.
Vincent van Gogh once wrote to his brother: ‘I am working with the enthusiasm of a man from Marseilles eating bouillabaisse, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to you because I am busy painting huge sunflowers.’
Poor Vincent. The artist’s artist. The artist who cut off his ear after a bad-tempered row with his friend Paul Gauguin. The artist who never sold a painting in his lifetime and watched philosophically from his place in heaven as one of his sunflower paintings sold at auction in London in 1985 for $39.85 million.
If all your dreams have broken and gone, if you feel isolated in your own private world, go out this minute and buy a sunflower. Place it on a sunny shelf, give it a little water every day – not too much – and as its big yellow face turns to the sun you will feel your lips lift in a smile knowing that you have learned the secret life of sunflowers.
He met actress Carol White in Hollywood and wrote her memoirs, Carol Comes Home. It was the first of a dozen books as a ghostwriter, including the Sunday Times bestseller Today I’m Alice – the story of multiple personality disorder survivor Alice Jamieson. His latest book, “How to Rob the Bank of England”, was published in September 2024.
www.cliffordthurlow.com