Vase with Twelve Sunflowers Bookmark

Van Gogh painted his sunflowers in Arles in August 1888, in a burst of work — several canvases in a single week — to decorate the guest room of the Yellow House before Paul Gauguin arrived. He wanted his friend to walk into a room full of yellow. "I have the sunflower, in a way," he wrote to his brother Theo, and he was right: no other painter has ever owned a flower quite so completely.

This bookmark takes a detail from Vase with Twelve Sunflowers, all thick golden petals and rust-brown seed heads against a pale turquoise ground. The original hangs in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, with Van Gogh's own later repetition of it in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Seeing it cropped close like this is a good reminder of just how loaded his brush was — you can practically feel the paint.

At 48 × 162mm with a turquoise ribbon marker that picks up the background, it lies flat in any book. A small, genuinely lovely gift for an art lover, a gallery-goer, or anyone whose reading pile deserves better than a folded corner.

Come and see the full Museums & Galleries range in the shop — there's always more on the shelves than we can fit online.

Key features

• Detail from Vase with Twelve Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
• Golden sunflowers against a pale turquoise ground
• Turquoise ribbon marker
• 48mm × 162mm
• Museums & Galleries, the British art-stationery publisher behind the V&A, Tate, Natural History Museum and British Museum ranges
• Flat enough to post inside a greetings card
• Perfect for art lovers, gallery-goers, book club gifts and stocking fillers

FAQ

• Does the design show the whole painting? No — it's a close-up detail of the sunflowers themselves, which suits the long, narrow shape of a bookmark.
• Which painting is it? Vase with Twelve Sunflowers, painted by Van Gogh in Arles in 1888 as part of the decoration for the Yellow House.
• Where is the original? The 1888 canvas is in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich; Van Gogh's own later version of it is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
• What colour is the ribbon? Turquoise.
• What size is the bookmark? 48mm wide by 162mm tall.