Sunflowers — Van Gogh

Van Gogh's Sunflowers series ranks among art's most emotionally charged still lifes, selling in 1987 for $39.9 million—over three times the then-record for a painting. The seven canvases, painted in Arles in 1888, capture friendship's warmth through thick, radiant layers of yellow ochre and chrome. They outperform #6 The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp in public recognition and appear in over 50 million digital reproductions yearly. Each sunflower's 14 petals were rendered with Van Gogh's signature impasto, a technique using 2mm-thick paint strokes that created a sculptural, luminous surface unknown to his contemporaries.