Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ Vase Is Actually a Pot for Cooking Fat, Historian Finds

Dutch art historian Alexandra van Dongen spent the pandemic lockdown trying to find every single item painted by Vincent van Gogh, and determined that the vase used for the artist’s iconic Sunflowers painting is actually a Provençal pot generally used for storing cooking fat, the Times reports. Now, a pot similar to the one Van Gogh chose to paint is on display at the GoghHuis museum in the Netherlands. “Van Gogh was not painstakingly copying a pot of sunflowers beside his easel,” van Gogh expert Martin Bailey wrote. “Instead he probably put the two elements together in his mind, possibly aided by having an empty pot and a separate bouquet in a more practical vessel near his easel.”