Sompo Museum of Art
In 1976, Sompo Japan Insurance Inc. established a museum on the 42nd floor of its headquarters in Shinjuku. Seiji Togo,a painter who at the time had connections with the company, offered to donate his collection, and the museum opened as Seiji Togo Art Museum. In 1987, Van Gogh's Sunflowers was added to the collection, and making it the only museum in Asia where this masterpiece could be seen. In July 2020, the museum moved to a newly constructed building in front of the company's headquarters grounds and was reborn as Sompo Museum of Art. It hosts about five exhibitions a year featuring Japanese and international artists.
Main works
This painting is one of the most famous works by Vincent van Gogh. In February 1888, Van Gogh departed from Paris for Arles in southern France, where he planned to live and work together with fellow painters. He also invited painter Paul Gauguin, whom Van Gogh respected greatly, to join him as a leader of this community to be. This Sunflowers was painted while Van Gogh was waiting for Gauguin’s arrival with the purpose of decorating his room. The Sunflowers, which is now in our collection, must have been painted between late November and early December that year, when Van Gogh and Gauguin lived together, and it was based on the first Sunflowers on Yellow Background, painted in August 1888, and now in the collection of the National Gallery in London. Though the basic color and composition of the Tokyo version is the same as that in London, the brush strokes and color tones of these two paintings are slightly different. It suggests that Van Gogh worked on this painting with specific new considerations, rather than intending to create a mere copy.
- Paul Cézanne, Pommes et serviette, 1879-80, oil on canvas
- Paul Gauguin, L'Allée des Alyscamps, Arles, 1888, oil on canvas
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Baigneuse, c.1892-93, oil on canvas
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jeune fille au chapeau, 1910, oil on canvas
- Pablo Picasso, Naked Man with Long Beard, 1895-96, oil on canvas
- Maurice Utrillo, Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre, 1925, oil on canvas
- Georges Rouault, 14 Planches gravées pour les Fleurs du mal, 1926-27, etching on paper
- Grandma Moses, The Old Checkered House, 1944, oil on board
