Sunflowers - Hardcover

Debra N. Mancoff has written monographs on Burne-Jones, Jane Morris, Mary Cassatt, and other artists, and is the author of Van Gogh's Flowers. She is currently a Scholar in Residence at the Newberry Library, Chicago.

Behold the sunflower. Immortalized by van Gogh during a seminal period in his creative development, the bucolic blossom has an artistic eminence that predates Columbus and persists into the twenty-first century. Although the sunflower remains most closely associated with van Gogh in the vernacular mindset, in actuality it has served as a motif for artists, a symbol for royalty, and a religious icon since the sixteenth century. Mancoff's captivating monograph glorifies the lofty heritage of this lowly New World plant as it ignited the artistic, scientific, literary, and religious communities of the Old World through celebrated images, commencing with early botanical texts and climaxing with the British aesthetic movement. As Mancoff thoughtfully examines the sunflower's myriad contributions to profound effect, exquisite reproductions from nearly every artistic movement reveal the depth and breadth of its many incarnations. From German romanticism to contemporary surrealism, from Besler's botanicals to van Gogh's golden affirmations, Mancoff pays fitting tribute to the sunflower's enduring and diverse cultural ancestry through legend and lore, art and artifact. Carol Haggas
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