Time is almost up to witness a once-in-a-generation reunion at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers: A Symphony in Blue and Yellow brings together two of Vincent van Gogh’s most beloved Sunflowers paintings, hanging side by side in Colket Gallery 251, and it closes on Sunday, October 11, 2026.
The exhibition pairs the museum’s own Sunflowers (January 1889), with its striking turquoise background, and the original Arles Sunflowers (August 1888) from London’s National Gallery, glowing against its famous yellow background. Since the London painting entered the National Gallery’s collection in 1924, it has traveled abroad only four times, making this Philadelphia appearance an exceptionally rare treat.
The reunion is the happy result of a museum friendship: Philadelphia lent its Sunflowers to London for the blockbuster Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers exhibition, and London returned the favor. Seen together, the two canvases reveal how Van Gogh used color and brushwork as pure emotion, painting the same flowers again and again, yet never painting them quite the same.
If you have been meaning to go, this is the moment: after October 11, the London Sunflowers sails home, and the two masterpieces may not share a wall again for years. Come see them together while Philadelphia has them.
Photo: Philadelphia Museum of Art
