Paintings of sunflowers took pride of place at his 'Yellow House' at 2 Place Lamartine in Arles, that he prepared awaiting the arrival of his friend and fellow artist, Paul Gauguin. He described his 'Yellow House' in a famous letter to his sister Wil, "My house here is painted outside in the yellow of fresh butter, with garish green shutters, and it's in the full sun on the square, where there's a green garden of plane trees, oleanders, acacias. And inside, it's all white-washed, and the floor's of red bricks. And the intense blue sky above. Inside, I can live and breathe, and think and paint."

Encouraged that Gauguin's arrival was imminent, on August 20, 1888, he commenced his series of four large sunflower paintings - each more complex, from three flowers, to six, then 14 and finally 15 - and completed the series within the week.

Van Gogh described the room in a letter to his brother Theo, "[it] will have a decoration of large yellow sunflowers on its white walls. Opening the window in the morning, you see the greenery in the gardens and the rising sun and the entrance of the town. But you'll see these big paintings of bouquets of 12, 14 sunflowers [either the artist added extra flowers to the paintings to bring the numbers to 14 and 15 respectively, or simply miscounted] stuffed into this tiny boudoir with a pretty bed and everything else elegant. It won't be commonplace."

Although Gauguin's stay with Van Gogh was turbulent and ended with the French artist fleeing after Van Gogh mutilated his ear, the sunflower paintings inspired by the visit remain some of the most loved paintings by the Dutch master. Gauguin also painted a moving portrait of his companion simply titled, The painter of sunflowers (1888).

In a move of reconciliation, Gauguin wrote, "your sunflowers on a yellow background which I regard as a perfect page of an essential 'Vincent' style". Van Gogh was to become known as the painter of sunflowers. The 'Yellow House' itself was soon abandoned by the artist and remained intact until it was largely destroyed in an American bombing in 1944 and was subsequently demolished.

Van Gogh adopted the sunflower as his special flower and wrote both to Gauguin, as well as to his brother Theo, that although other artists had adopted the peony or hollyhock, ...j'ai avant d'autres pris le tournesol' - the sunflower is mine.

Martin Bailey is a British journalist and art historian specialising on Van Gogh and has produced a lengthy and well documented account of van Gogh's life and an account of his sunflower paintings. The second part of the book is a discussion of the fate of seven of the most famous sunflower paintings following Van Gogh's suicide on July 29, 1890.

These works travelled to Munich, London, Tokyo, Lausanne, Ashiya (where the painting was destroyed in American bombings in 1945), Philadelphia and Amsterdam. A summary of the travels of these paintings, in art catalogues usually called 'provenance', is presented on pages 202-205. The book was first published in hardback in 2013 and has been reprinted as a paperback in July 2019.

Bailey writes with the flare of a journalist, but based on the careful forensic research methodology of an art historian. He constantly adopts the language and methods of a detective where problems and doubts are carefully spelled out, the evidence is presented before the reader, and the writer draws together his conclusions to arrive at a fresh resolution.

The style is engaging and readable and the material is attractively and comprehensively illustrated. One of the achievements of the book is the first publication in colour, in an accessible English language book, of the now-destroyed Van Gogh sunflower painting from Japan. Generally, throughout the book there are numerous little discoveries, reattributions and the drawing together of a broad dragnet of material frequently personally gathered by the author.

Many years ago, when I was a student in London, I visited a major Van Gogh exhibition in Paris and greeted it with considerable enthusiasm. On returning to London, I remember extolling its virtues to Sir Kenneth Clark (this was before he was made a peer) and was somewhat shocked to learn that he did not share my enthusiasm for Van Gogh as a painter. Clark admired him more as a draughtsman but thought that his real genius was as a writer of 820 letters on art.

Reading Bailey's accessible, yet scholarly account, with its near deification of Van Gogh, I was constantly reminded of Clark's reservations and the extent to which our interpretation of his paintings is so heavily conditioned by the colourful and emotive language that he created through which to convey his enthusiasm for his art.

The sunflower paintings are without doubt some of the most popular paintings of the late 19th century and we do view them through the artist's eyes.

I cannot think of another major 19th century artist who has so forcefully managed to control the discourse surrounding his or her art.