The painting, also known as „Vase with Five Sunflowers“, shows the flowers in a vase against a dark blue background.

It was sold to a Japanese collector and shipped to Japan in 1920. But it was destroyed in a fire after US bombing of Osaka during World War II.

Martin Bailey, a curator and correspondent for The Art Newspaper, discovered the photograph while researching his book The Sunflowers are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh's Masterpiece.

"I went back to Van Gogh's letters and he described when he was painting the sunflowers how he was going to put them in an orange frame. That has never been seen before," he said.

"It was a revolutionary idea at the time, framing a painting in orange. Conventionally, paintings were framed in gilt frames, and modern paintings were sometimes framed in plain white frames.

Reproduction is a high-quality print, on an Italian eco ink canvas. The canvas is folded over the back to the size of 30x40, and above this size is stretched on a subframe. The picture is arranged with a luxury frame.