Expert tracks down missing Van Gogh 'Sunflowers' paintings

One day in Arles, southern France, in August 1888, Vincent Van Gogh was planning to paint from life. But the models he had hired failed to show up, and a harsh, hot mistral was blowing, making conditions for painting outdoors unbearable.

So he improvised. He took bunches of Provencal sunflowers, then at their goldenblooming best, and arranged them in locally made, half-glazed earthenware pots. He started work on Monday morning and by Saturday he had made four sunflower pictures.

Two of these are now among the most beloved, celebrated and valuable paintings in the world. They hang in Munich and in the National Gallery, London. Two are lost to public view - one was destroyed in an American bombing raid on Japan during the second world war, the other vanished into private hands after it was exhibited in the US state of Ohio in 1948.

Now fresh details have emerged about the two lost paintings. The Van Gogh expert Martin Bailey has tracked down a previously unknown 1920s print of the work that was destroyed in Japan - known as Six Sunflowers - so that for the first time since the war it can been seen in its original bright vibrant colours, and with a hitherto unseen original frame.

In addition, Bailey has tracked the "missing" painting, charting its progress through private hands after the war to being sold in the 1990s to a "very discreet, private collector" who owns a handful of Van Goghs.

Bailey, who publishes his research this week in a new book, The Sunflowers Are Mine, found the 1920s image of Six Sunflowers in a small museum in Japan, tucked away in a portfolio of Cezanne prints.

One other, much poorer quality reproduction exists, lacking the detail of the frame. It is also in much less vibrant colours than the print unearthed by Bailey, which matches the description that Van Gogh wrote of the work in a letter to his brother, Theo.