☙ Sunflower

🜱 On sentiments: The sentiment of knight-errantry likely requires some explanation for contemporary readers - it means to wander around in search for a quest, living the mercenary life of a knight of olden times, and from this arises the sentiment of chivalry, which is implied by knight-errantry.

Knight-errantry, too, implies a sort of foolhardiness; a kind of wild idleness that seeks adventure, seeing the quixotic as romantic, the danger as valour, and overlooking the potential pointlessness of a quest for the perceived valour, or that this is one's calling, and indeed purpose, regardless of its folly.

The first entry I have assigning knight-errantry is Henry Phillips' Floral Emblems. Phillips' entry quotes poet ◼︎ Charles-Louis Mollevaut, and paraphrases his passage (q.v. 'Cited Verse' above):

Horrible, sur sa tête altière,
L'Aconit, au suc malfaisant,
Comme s'il s'armait pour la guerre,
Élève un casque menaçant;

Horrifying, on its haughty head,
The aconite, with its poison,
As if arming itself for war,
Raises a menacing helmet.

The monkshood, says Phillips, 'rears its threatening helmet as if to protect the gayer favourites of Flora', and thus is the emblem of a knight.

As mentioned in 'Cited Verse', the sentiment of deceit seems to be drawn from the quote attributed to 'Wiffen' by Dix, but I have been unable to locate the original source.

🜱 The sunflower (со́няшник m, 'sónjašnyk', or со́нях m, 'sónjax') is traditionally associated with independent Ukraine. Following its importation to Europe by Spanish explorers in 1510, the sunflower appears to have been introduced to Eastern European agriculture in the 17th century, becoming important as a plant-based oil source allowed during Eastern Orthodox Lent.

Its prominence as a Ukrainian symbol was reinforced during the Russian Civil War (1917-1922) by the use of sunflower oil in lamps as a substitute for kerosene, and in 2020, Ukraine matched Russia's production of sunflower seeds - over 13 million tonnes each, a combined 53% of total world production. The association became strengthened by the use of sunflowers as a symbol of nuclear disarmament (q.v.) and planting in post-conflict zones in the 1990s, and further still by their adoption as a symbol of resistance by Ukraine in Russia's 2022 invasion.

I have found precise declarations hard to place, but note it being called 'traditional' by at least 1978 in Іван Драч and Stanley Kunitz's Orchard Lamps.

🜱 The 'wild native sunflower' (specified as Helianthus) was signed into legislation as Kansas' state flower by Governor Willis Bailey on 12 March 1903, from a bill submitted by state senator from Council Grove George P. Morehouse. Morehouse had been moved by seeing Kansans wearing sunflowers as badges at rodeos in Colorado Springs.

Although other Kansans have been opponents of the sunflower (an 1895 state law designated it a 'noxious weed' that should be destroyed), it has long had its admirers in the state, with Noble Prentis, editor of the Atchison Champion, first nominating it as state emblem in 1880. It had been associated with the state from long before, however, with women's suffrage campaigners in Kansas adopting it for their cause as early as 1867 (q.v.).

In 1887, it was worn by Kansas delegates to the Grand Army of the Republic convention, and since the adoption in 1903 it has appeared on the collar device of the Kansas National Guard (from later that year), the Kansas quarter, and the state flag, designed by Topeka artist Albert T. Reid in 1919 and approved in modified form in 1925.KHS

From the legislation, Kan. Stat. § 73-1801:

This flower has to all Kansans a historic symbolism which speaks of frontier days, winding trails, pathless prairies, and is full of the life and glory of the past, the pride of the present, and richly emblematic of the majesty of a golden future, and is a flower which has given Kansas the world-wide name, "the sunflower state".

🜱 The sunflower (向日葵, 'himawari') is the flower emblem of the Fukuoka city of Kitakyūshū (北九州市), which became a city in 1963.

I cannot find official records of its adoption in English, but hypothesise that this choice, too, may be related to the sunflower as a symbol for nuclear disarmament (q.v.) - the castle town at the centre of modern Kitakyūshū, 'Lucky' Kokura, was the original target for the American 'Fat Man' atomic bomb, dropped on their second option, Nagasaki, after Kokura was obscured by fog on the morning of 9 August 1945.

The emblem is wildly popular in the city, appearing on everything from ferries to schools to restaurants to streets. The city's mascot, Yuru-chan, is a white bear holding a flag and a sunflower, with another sunflower appearing on a kerchief around Yuru-chan's neck. The city's Japanese football team, Giravantsu Kitakyūshū (ギラヴァンツ北九州), is named after the Italian words girasole, 'sunflower', and avanzare, 'moving forward', and their logo combines a sunflower with the city's seal into a 'jirasol crystal'.Newwave-K

Sunflowers are a popular seasonal flower in Fukuoka with garden viewings in summer, and Kitakyūshū has its own sunflower garden in the agricultural learning centre Hananooka Park, with optimal viewing in late July to mid-August.

🜱 The sunflower and its colours, particularly golden yellow, became associated with women's suffrage with Elizabeth Cody Stanton and Susan B. Anthony's suffrage state referendum in Kansas in 1867 (a referendum for suffrage for non-white people was held at the same time, and also failed). With Kansas being 'the sunflower state' (q.v.), the women adopted its symbol and the colours black and yellow for their cause - although the referendum failed, the symbol stuck. In his article on Spiritualism (q.v.), Paul J. Gaunt noted that by 1887 at the 37th annual convention of the Indiana American Woman Suffrage Society:

[...] the ladies and gentlemen present all donned the 'sunflower' [gold] ribbon of the suffrage cause.

It is seen in badges and pins of the women's suffrage movement, and though I've seen repeated references to the National American Woman Suffrage Association adopting it formally, I have not yet found a source for this, and various dates are given for it. ▲︎ Mary Cassatt's painting Woman with a Sunflower (c.1905) is read to be using this symbolism, and mentions of its association with suffrage exist in her letters.NGA

While colours varied from state to state and nation to nation, the sunflower yellow ruffles, belt and underskirt of Mary Poppins' sister suffragette Winifred Banks (Glynis Johns) may hint at this symbolism.

Stephanie Hall's article on the Library of Congress' Folklife Today blog notes that elsewhere, in Maine, it was instead the Jonquil that became the yellow flower of women's suffrage, while the Red rose became a symbol of anti-suffragists.

🜱 The sunflower as a symbol of nuclear disarmament has a simple conceptual origin: sunflowers, as they grow, can extract industrial, and even nuclear, byproducts from the soil, making them a beautiful crop with a wonderful benefit to the environment (although of course products of sunflowers grown for this purpose should never be consumed).

They are best known as a symbol of the anti-nuclear and nuclear disarmament movement from their ceremonial planting at Pervomaisk Missile Base in the Ukraine on 5 June 1996, commemorating the atomic disarmament of Ukraine completed on 1 June with the removal of RT-23 atomic missiles from the base to Russia for disembling. The defence ministers of the USA, Russia and Ukraine travelled to the base where they planted sunflowers and scattered sunflower seeds in the ceremony. The area was repurposed for wheat and sunflower fields.New York Times (1996)

Their use by the movement goes back further, however, to 15 August 1988, when a group of peace activists, the Missouri Peace Planters, entered nuclear silos in Missouri for a 'sit in' in protest of the silos, planting sunflowers while there. The members were arrested, with some sentenced to two years or more of jail time and, in one case, $2,500 in fines. But their activism eventually paid off: the last of the silos was removed in 1998. Protester Gail Beyer, who was involved in the sit in at Silo K-6, has an extensive write-up with documentation at No-Nukes.org.

🜱 The sunflower was incorporated into the Vegan Society's trademark in 1990, with a statement from the society on 27 February 1990 noting that the flower was 'internationally recognised as being associated with "green" and vegan movements'.VS (PDF) Although some sources from the society seem to indicate that the sunflower was drawn from the charity's original logo, I cannot find any evidence of this fact. I believe this has just become rhetorically confused with the swept V with leaf that now forms part of the trademark, which was drawn from the society's magazine masthead, first appearing in The Vegan Winter 1985, 1 December 1985, New Series Vol.1 No.3. Their entire archive can be read online on Issuu.com.

🜱 In 2014 and coming to a head 18 March to 10 April, students in Taiwan protested the passage of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement by the then-ruling Kuomintang at the legislature level without a clause-by-clause review by entering the Legislative Yuan and later the Executive Yuan, the first time the former had been occupied by citizens. The protestors were concerned that the trade pact would leave Taiwan vulnerable to political pressure from the People's Republic of China.BBC

After 29-year-old florist Lin Zhewei (林哲瑋) contributed 1,300 sunflowers to the students outside the Legislative Yuan building as a message of hope and solidarity,Sina (in Chinese) the flower became associated with the movement and was adopted into its name (太陽花 in Chinese, 'taì yáng hua', a calque of the English 'sunflower' rather than the native 向日葵, 'xiàng rì kuí'), echoing the Wild Lily Movement of 1990, a milestone in the democratisation of Taiwan, in its floral name. It is perhaps notable that Lin Zhewei is also mentioned in the Sino article as having previously been involved in anti-nuclear social movements (q.v.).

🜱 Launched in May 2016 at Gatwick Airport, England, the Sunflower Lanyard Scheme® and Hidden Disabilities Sunflower was developed to help people with hidden disabilities, such as neurological differences, allergies, and many others, signal discreetly to staff that they may require additional assistance while travelling. Since its development, the symbol has been adopted widely across the Commonwealth and beyond. The Hidden Disabilities Sunflower site indicates that the sunflower was chosen because it 'suggests happiness, positivity, strength as well as growth and confidence and is universally known', as well as being a discreet sign visible from a distance, distinctive, joyful and dynamic.HDS

🜱 The A:shiwi people of present-day New Mexico valued powdered sunflower as a medicine. Published in 1904, Matilda Coxe Stevenson recorded in her article 'The Zuñi Indians: their mythology, esoteric fraternities, and ceremonies', in the Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Vol.23 (1901-1902), powder made from sunflower being used in the 'Ceremonial of initiation into O'naya'nakĭa', the 'Mystery medicine' order of the Ma'^tke ^tSan'nakwe ('Little Fire fraternity'). The ceremonial was one of the most elaborate of the fraternity, stretching over four days, with medicines being ground over the second and third day for use in the climactic ceremony of the fourth night (although sunflower is not recorded specifically among them). On the fourth night, after the powder has been distributed, writes Stevenson:

The sunflower powder, which is now distributed by the elder brother Bow priest to male members only, is used for a number of purposes. It is sprinkled upon personators of the gods, that they may aid the one using the medicine to have a brave heart; and when a man has a distance to go he takes a bit of the flower medicine in his mouth and spits it out, that he may follow the right road, meet no enemies, be well received by all peoples whom he may visit, and be preserved from all accident and ill health during his journey. (560-561)

Apart from the reference to 'flower medicine', which is unspecific, it is not clear from Stevenson's writing which part of the sunflower this powder is made from.

It is also briefly mentioned by Stevenson, again in the context of medicine, at page 45 of the same in the A:shiwi story, 'A'shiwi find the Middle place':

Leaving ^tKĭap'kewna, the A'shiwi migrated to He'shota'yälla, a small village, to find all the inhabitants but four either fled or dead from the effluvium of the A'shiwi. The houses here were built of reeds and earth, and the A'shiwi declared, "Our people built this village."
 On entering one of the houses an aged man and woman, with two grandchildren, boy and girl, were discovered sitting by a meal symbol of clouds upon the floor. Their ears and nostrils were closed with raw cotton, and they were bending over a he'pikĭa tehl'i (urinal) in which the old man had deposited sunflower and other medicine, the fumes of which they were inhaling to save them from the killing odors of the A'shiwi.
 Some of the A'shiwi exclaimed: "These people are dead." The old man replied: "We are not dead; we were the Yellow Corn people; you have destroyed or driven off all but ourselves; we are saved by inhaling my medicine, but it has made our corn, which we hold in our belts, black, and we are now the Black Corn people." Since that time they and their decendants have been called the Black Corn people. (44-45, paragraphing added.)

A later article by Camazine & Bye, 'A study of the medical ethnobotany of the Zuni Indians of New Mexico', Journal of Ethnopharmacology 2:365-388 (1980), reinforces this medicinal reputation. Camazine & Bye record of Helianthus annuus, called 'omatts'aba' by the A:shiwi, being used to treat scorpion stings:

Fresh or dried root is chewed by the medicine man before sucking upon the wound; chewed root is applied to the bite. (375)

🜱 Like the Tawantinsuyu further south, antiquated authors sometimes refer to sunflowers being used for worship in ancient Mexico - a great many diverse civilisations over several millenia sometimes referred to colloquially in English as 'the Aztecs'. Although ancient Mexican peoples had more direct contact with northern people who may have cultivated Helianthus annuus, there is little evidence that they did, in fact, cultivate domesticated sunflowers before the arrival of European colonisers.

The topic has been hotly debated in the past, particularly after the discovery of sunflower achenes in the Mexican sites of Cueva del Gallo in Morelos, Templo Mayor at Tenochtitlan, and San Andrés, with these specimens and their analysis dating them to pre-Columbian eras gathered together by Lentz et al in their 2008 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), 'Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) as a Pre-Columbian Domesticate in Mexico'. Combining these finds with a linguistic survey of local Mexican Indigenous groups, comparing their names for H. annuus with the Spanish names, and older anthropological reports, Lentz et al claimed that there was significant evidence to establish the cultivation and use of H. annuus in ceremonial contexts by peoples indigenous to Mexico.

This paper was quickly attacked. Cecil H. Brown (2008) refuted the comparative historical linguistics, noting that Brown had performed similar comparative analysises on a set of '41 such plants', including H. annuus, and not found adequate evidence of a word for sunflower 'in any ancestral language spoken after 2000 B.P.' Bruce D. Smith (2008) also rebuked the comparitive quantity of evidence, noting that:

Pre-Columbian contexts in [Eastern North America] have yielded >3,000 domesticated sunflower achenes, seeds, stalks, and discs. In contrast, Lentz et al. list 17 potential sunflower specimens from Mesoamerica. Based on their small size, 11 of these are designated as wild.

Charles Heiser (2008), whose work is referred to elsewhere in this article, also wrote back to dispute Lentz et al's interpretation of the historical documentation. Lentz et al responded to all three in a letter. I include all these here for your own perusal and analysis.

Subsequent DNA analysis presented by a team from Indiana University, lead by Benjamin K. Blackman, in 2011 affirms a single geographic domestication site in eastern North America for their sample of modern sunflowers. While Blackman's team note 'a few qualifications remain', such as that there is a small chance they missed finding a modern Mexican domesticated version descended from an independent Mexican lineage, or an ancient Mexican lineage that has since become extinct, they affirm finding no DNA evidence that a second, independent domestication event occurred in Mexico.

I conclude that, at present, there is limited to no evidence of domesticated H. annuus being used in pre-Columbian populations in Mexico or further south. It is possible that other, similar flowers were used in ceremonial contexts, but that is a separate topic needing separate evidence. Subsequent usage of sunflowers in ceremonial contexts by peoples indigenous to Mexico and the Central and South Americas will be handled separately on this page. Assertions that 'the Aztecs' used 'sunflowers' in worship are unsubstantiated by the current evidence. I am open to opposing research should it become available.

As I find no inherent problems with the actual linguistic study itself that Lentz et al conducted, merely their conclusions, I have incorporated this work into Appendix A.

🜱 Ceremonial use of sunflowers by the Hopisinom is well recorded, with mentions of the heads being used as hair ornaments in ceremonial dances (Heiser 1976) and a highly valued purple dye being extracted from sunflowers specially cultivated by the Hopisinom. In Sapir's works on the languages of the Southern Paiute and Kaibab Paiute, cultivated H. annuus sunflowers are called 'Hopi sunflower' - mo'q·wi-àq·ï (the seeds) and mǫ̀q̅wi⁺aq̅'^α respectively - illustrating this association between the Hopisinom and sunflower cultivation.

🜱 In the Onondaga version of the Haudenosaunee creation story, reported by J.N.B. Hewitt in the Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Vol.21 (1899-1900), titled 'The Manner in Which it Established Itself, in Which it Formed Itself, in Which, in Ancient Time, it Came about that the Earth Became Extant', the maiden daughter of the man-being (people before people, more powerful and wise than humans) who is the first to die, hears from her dead father in his burial-case that, having passed through a gauntlet of trials, she will at last meet the man she is to marry, the Chief-who-has-the-standing-tree-called-Tooth, or He-holds-the-earth. As a final trial, the Chief would order two enormous, pure-white dogs he called his slaves to lick her bare body with rough tongues until she bled all over, feeding on her blood, at which point the Chief would annoint her with sunflower oil, and on which condition they would marry. (ibid. 161)

Later, when the Chief is ailing, a huge procession of man-beings come to him seeking to divine his Word, among them the Sunflower, a woman man-being, who is mentioned visiting alongside Corn, Bean, and Squash, the famous 'Three Sisters'. (ibid. 174)

There can be found online a version alleged to be an Haudenosaunee creation story which otherwise includes the sunflower in the creation story of the 'Three Sisters', however, in following this research back, I have come to believe the sunflower's inclusion as a 'fourth sister' is an invention based on the regular, but cursorary, citation of the above source like follows:

The sunflower is mentioned in the creation myth of the Onondago along with corn, beans, and squash (Hewitt, 1903).

Without further confirmation from Haudenosaunee sources, I urge the reader not to repeat the unauthenticated version. The above story is the only one I have confirmed. I further note that the contemporary Haudenosaunee Confederacy indicate on their website that sunflowers were introduced to their peoples via European contact, and Hewitt's version was recorded centuries after this point; there are some records of Haudenosaunee peoples using cultivating them, but again, no pre-European evidence (Hedrick, 1933). Sunflower may need to be considered a late entry as a 'fourth sister'.

🜱 American Spiritualism identifies with the sunflower, and it abounds in their communities - particularly in a stylised form, showing a human face within a sun, the sun itself as the heart of a sunflower. Spiritualists had adopted the sunflower as a symbol to represent themselves as early as 1891. For this date and the information that follows I am indebted to the article 'The Sunflower became the official emblem of Spiritualism originating in the late nineteenth century in America' by Paul J. Gaunt, Psypioneer Journal Vol. 9 No. 11, November 2013, pp.317-326.

In 1891, the spirit guide of C.E. Langdon of Rochester, New York, suggested Spiritualists should wear a badge of 'a sunflower with the sun in the centre' in order to recognise each other. By October of that year, the symbol had been taken up by the editor of the magazine Carrier Dove and a design was manufactured by C.D. Haines, also of Rochester, put up for sale by December. The badges could be worn as a pin, watch charm, brooch 'or otherwise', and were 'about as large as a ten-cent piece', but Spiritualists who could not afford the price ($1) were encouraged to make their own, such as with silk embroidery: 'Wherever you see a Sunflower Badge you see a friend'.

Reported by some to have been adopted by the 'Cassadaga Lake Free Association' as an official emblem as early as 1893, Gaunt's research confirmed the sunflower badge's adoption as the American national Spiritualistic symbol, stated by leading American Spiritualist Mercy E. Cadwallader, at the Spiritualists' National Federation's annual conference of 2-3 July 1898, held at the Heber Street Spiritual Temple, Keighley. A Spiritualist magazine of the Cassadaga Camp Lily Dale was named The Sunflower and first published 20 August 1898, and a pagoda with library, the Sunflower Pagoda, was built in the park at this location the same year by W.H. Bach. It was adopted as the official 'International Spiritualists' Badge' at the International Federation of Spiritualists Congress in 1925, and in 1926 the badges could be purchased at the Two Worlds office for 2/- (the incorrect date of 1928 abounds, but was corrected by Gaunt's article). Gaunt further hypothesises that its adoption may have been influenced by its use in the American women's suffrage movement (q.v.).

The design varies, as does its exact meanings, but the basics remain the same: the Spiritualist sunflower is a full sun with a human face ('the highest type of intelligence') at the centre of a sunflower. The sunflower's relevance to Spiritualism is phrased this way in early writings on the topic, and found paraphrased to now in myriad ways:

As the sunflower turns its face toward the sun, so does the spiritual man or woman turn towards the sun for Truth, seeking spiritual warmth and light.

The number of petals and leaves may be given numerological symbolic meanings on top of these meanings.

In Spiritualist communities the sunflower is still a common motif - see journalist Jamie Loftus' remarks on her visit to the Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp, Florida, in 2018. I highly recommend her podcast series on Spiritualism and its history, Ghost Church, for those interested in learning more.

🜱 Colloquial - and antiquated - resources may indicate that the 'Inca' worshipped the sunflower as 'a symbol of the sun'. As Helianthus sp. were not known in cultivation further south than contemporary Mexico before European arrival (and even this evidence within contemporary Mexico is tenuous), this must be considered a fallacy (a similar, common fallacy involves the sunflower originating from 'Peru'; this is not the case, as will be expanded below in the sentiment notes). As botanical classification was still in its infancy, the 'la flor que llaman del sol' and 'tornasol' of Spanish colonialists like Acosta (1591) and Cobo (1652) respectively may instead be referencing genus Tithonia (Ximenez, 1615).

🜱 I'll be moving through these subtopics by the period the independent artists were active painting sunflowers, chronologically in time.

🜱 It is hard to fully demonstrate the importance of sunflowers within the Aesthetic Movement, as the topic stretches so broad and my research is, thus far, limited, however I will offer what I have gathered to now and invite submissions for anyone who wishes to add to the topic.

The flower of the Aesthetic Movement may be said to be the White Lily, but the sunflower is a strong contender for the title, particularly where the Aesthetic Movement interacts with the English Arts and Crafts Movement. The Aesthetics' evolution into Art Nouveau, meanwhile, is associated keenly with the 'Cult of the Orchid'.

Some sources, such as the article 'Sunflowers and the Aesthetic Movement' (2021) in the De Morgan's blog, mention that gardening manuals of the 18th century had suggested a ban of sunflowers from garden beds, presumably due to their height but for which I have not yet found the source. There is also the association between the colour yellow and cowardice, which we do see repeated in Glossa Hortensia although largely in reference to other flowers than the sunflower (for example, the Yellow Rose).

Regardless, by the 1860s the sunflower had been re-embraced by the Western European and North American art worlds. There is a quality in the Aesthetic Movement of reclaiming the gaudy and extravagant, and the sunflower is the epitome of this within the ornamental garden. It had already begun appearing in the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the 1850s - an early example noted by Aaron Eames, whose article on ◆︎ (Irish) Oscar Wilde's sunflowers will be explored in further depth below (q.v.), is ◆︎ Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 1858 Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee, which features sunflowers as well as lilies potted on a windowsill.

Eames also draws attention to the work in the 1860s by ◆︎ Edward Burne-Jones, an artist who spanned the three movements, being involved with Rossetti and with Arts and Crafts leader ◆︎ William Morris, and showing sunflowers in his works such as Ladies and Death (1860) and The Wine of Circe (1863-1869).

Also of note is ▲︎ James McNeill Whistler and ◆︎ Thomas Jeckyll's The Peacock Room, a room installation completed in 1877 and featuring sunflowers in the andirons, wrought iron railings, and brass surrounds of the fireplace (as well as abundant use of yellow in general). These andirons, designed by Jeckyll, show attention to how the archenes form spirals in the heart of the flower, evoking the natural shapes with symbols in pursuit of aesthetic beauty and symmetry. The entire room is now installed in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The allied Arts and Crafts Movement adopted the sunflower widely, and examples of sunflowers portrayed for their pure eye-grabbing, interesting aesthetic allure can be found across their oeuvre. Eames draws attention to wallpapers from William Morris and ◆︎ (Scot.) Bruce James Talbert in 1878 and 1879, and to the sunflower ornaments on 4 Cadogan Square, a house designed in 1878 by ◆︎ George Edmund Street, who had formerly satirised the Aesthetic Movement.

It was in this period that the Aesthetics began to be satirised via the symbol of the sunflower, as distinct from the lily. Eames notes the cartoon 'Music and Æsthetics' by ◼︎◆︎ George du Maurier in Punch 16 February 1878, satirising an Aesthete hostess ignoring her party in favour of her own reflection over a piano - decorated with a sunflower motif - on which she plunks out 'one of Schumann’s saddest melodies in her own inimitable manner'. A second cartoon by du Maurier published in Punch on 1 November 1879 mocked the Aesthetics' exclusiveness, portraying the 'Cimabue Brown' children - 'they're aesthetic, you know!' - each carrying a single sunflower.

However, it was only with 1881 that the sunflower became truly, inexorably entwined with the icon of the Aesthete. Eames points the blame at The Colonel, a play satirising the Aesthetic Movement which opened in London on 2 February 1881. While they were not included in the original script, contemporary reviews evidence that the stage was crawling with the yellow bastards by the time the curtains opened: the set was dressed with two vases of sunflowers, a sunflower-decorated fan and a wall of sunflower tiles, and the play's imposter-aesthete 'professed to sup upon a sunflower' - that is, the image of the flower alone, a joke borrowed from another du Maurier Punch cartoon, 'An Æsthetic Midday Meal', of 17 July 1880, where, as in the script, an Aesthete dines simply on the viewing of a freshly-cut lily. This lifting should be of little surprise - the author of The Colonel, ◆︎ Francis Cowley Burnand, was the editor of Punch - but the change to the sunflower thus becomes something of a bellwether.

Within this, too, I note it would be impossible to ignore the sunflower's use by the American women's suffrage movement of the 1860s onwards (q.v.). Of note is ◆︎ William Powell Frith's painting A Private View at the Royal Academy (1881) in which a woman in the leftmost foreground can be seen wearing a sunflower on her breast. While this may be read as a symbol of her adoring eye (as in our emblem), it would be remiss to ignore that context - perhaps she is a suffragist. Oscar Wilde is also seen in this painting, here wearing a lily, but we will come to him shortly.

🜱 I am indebted to the article 'The Herald of the Helianthus: Oscar Wilde and Sunflower Symbolism' by Aaron Eames, published in The Wildean No.57 (July 2020) pp.56-75, for the majority of the detail of this section.

Like the Aesthetics he later came to figurehead, Irish writer Oscar Wilde began his literary career associating himself with the White Lily. At Magdalen College, Oxford, Wilde was recorded as having placed lilies in the blue china of his rooms (and the college's arms also depict three white lilies).

I note The Wildean further recommends 'Helianthus annuus "Oscar Wilde": some notes on Oscar and the cult[ivation] of sunflowers' by E.Charles Nelson (No.43, July 2013, pp.2-25) for those interested in the subject.

🜱 Perhaps the most famous artist to take the sunflower as a personal emblem, Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh is known for three series of sunflower oil paintings (in French, Tournesols) the second being his best known.

The first series, known as the 'Paris Sunflowers' and painted between 1886-1888 when van Gogh resided with his brother, Theo, in Paris, feature two cut sunflowers laid on a flat surface, with the final painting showing four. To my research, these four paintings (one a study) are now displayed in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Bern; and the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. Of remark is the further oil painting, 'Roses and Sunflowers', showing a vase with cut flowers of both, also of 1886, now residing at the Kunsthalle, Mannheim.

The second series, the 'Arles Sunflowers', are the iconic fifteen or so cut sunflowers in a vase, painted in August 1888. There are three surviving of these paintings: the first version, with a turquoise background, resides in a private collection; the third version, with blue-green background, in Neue Pinakothek, Munich; and the fourth version, with yellow background, in the National Gallery, London, England. The second version, with a royal-blue background, was in a private collection in Ashiya, Japan, but was destroyed by a US air raid in World War II on 6 August 1945.

The fourth version of these Sunflowers gained further popular significance on 14 October 2022, when environmentalist protestors of the Just Stop Oil campaign entered the National Gallery in London and threw tomato soup at the painting before gluing their hands to the wall. As the painting was protected by a sheet of plexiglass, there was ultimately no damage to the canvas itself and minimal to the surrounding frame. The protestors were arrested at the time and the painting was removed from display until the next day. The two activists were found guilty of criminal damage in July 2024, and sentenced to 20 and 24 months' prison respectively in September 2024.

The final series of van Gogh sunflowers are called 'Repetitions', being repetitions of this most famous fourth version, painted in January 1889. These three paintings are held as of this writing by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; and the Sompo Museum of Art, Tokyo.

Of his association with sunflowers, van Gogh himself wrote in a letter to his brother Theo, from Arles, on Tuesday 22 January 1889:

It’s a type of painting that changes its aspect a little, which grows in richness the more you look at it. Besides, you know that Gauguin likes them extraordinarily. He said to me about them, among other things:
 ‘that — ... that’s... the flower’.
 You know that Jeannin has the peony, Quost has the hollyhock, but I have the sunflower, in a way. And all in all it will give me pleasure to continue the exchanges with Gauguin, even if sometimes it costs me dear too.

Later Dutch Impressionist painter Isaac Israëls further painted a series of portraits of women in front of the fourth Sunflowers, 'voor Van Goghs Zonnebloemen', between 1915-1920.

🜱 Austrian Symbolist Gustav Klimt, one of the foremost painters of the Vienna Secession movement, dabbled occasionally in sunflowers with two works of particular note being Bauerngarten mit Sonnenblumen (1907) and Die Sonnenblume (1907-1908), both now housed in the Belvedere, Vienna. Klimt, like the Aesthetics, is notable for the sensuality of his paintings, a boldness reflected in the symbol of the sunflower.

🜱 Klimt's student beginning in 1907, Expressionist Egon Schiele inherited the sunflower from his mentor among many other motifs, taking it as his subject in 1908's Sonnenblume I, 1909's Sonnenblume II, 1911's Sonnenblumen and 1914's Welke Sonnenblumen (Herbstsonne II). While the resemblance is very evident, in contrast to Klimt's bold sensuality, Schiele's works carry a great melancholy, terminating with the wilting ('welke') sunflowers of the last painting listed.

I note also Bildnis einer Frau mit schwarzem Hut (Gertrude Schiele), of 1909, where the woman depicted (Schiele's younger sister, Gertrude, also known as 'Gerti') wears a colourful scarf in a distinctly Klimt-esque style appearing to feature sunflowers in the print. Gertrude was a regular subject of Schiele, often posed nude (from the age thirteen and up - Schiele was four years her senior), although she does not appear so here. There are claims Schiele showed an incestuous sexual interest in Gertrude, and while this platform is not the place to delve into the veracity of these claims - frankly, it is impossible to say one way or the other - it is a fact that the artist's paintings of Gertrude are explicit. This portrait, again, does not have this quality, but the sunflower motif ties it to this frankness and sensuality explored by other artists in this section.

🜱 For Israëls' 'voor Van Goghs Zonnebloemen' paintings, see Van Gogh above.

Cette fleur figure non seulement la finale des mots terminés en el, comme dans ciel, mais encore celle des mots dans lesquels l’usage veut un l suivi de l'e muet, comme fidèle, rebèle, quand ces mots sont au masculin, car au féminin on se sert de l'échelle de Jacob, qui exprime positivement le genre.

De Ἀκόνιτον, nom grec de la plante, ou de ᾰ̓κόνῑτος, sans poussière, à cause de son feuillage luisant, ou de ᾰ̓κόνῑη, pierre, c'est à-dire plante des rochers.

A. NAPELLUS L. — A. NAPEL. — (A. salutiferum sive Anthora Barr. IC.? A. Neubergense DC.) (Antihora?) Capuche, Capuche de moine, Capuchon, Coqueluchon, Casques, Pistolet, Madriette, tue-loup.) Bret. Louzaouen ar flemm. Angl. Aconite, Common Wolfsbane, Monkshood. All. Elsenhutlein, Sturmhut, Monskappen. Ital. Aconito. — Viv. — Juill.-sept. Haies, ombragées, lieux humides, bords des bois. RRR. Martinvast, bords de la Divette; Sottevast, fossé couvert près la Douve, Carneville, route de Saint-Pierre, Villebaudon, bords de la route de Saint-Lo, Saultchevreuil-du-Tronchet, route d'Avranches, Saint-Jean-de-la-Haize, petite douve près le pont Mobec;

Plante très-vénéneuse, très-âcre, qui ne doit être prescrite et maniée qu'avec prudence et par les médecins.