It came as no surprise to find that the first painting displayed in Philadelphia Museum of Art's spring exhibition on Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh is from his iconic series of sunflowers in an earthen vase. It is probably his most famous subject and a fitting opener to any show on the artist —although this is not just any show, but an unusually thought-provoking one.

Don't go expecting a major van Gogh retrospective filled with other familiar works such as his "Bedroom at Arles" and "Postman Roulin." They're not there.

The 50 or so van Goghs gathered from all over the world are, for the most part, among his lesser known. That's because the exhibition focuses on a neglected aspect of van Gogh, which is the attention he paid to painting "close-ups" of elements in his landscapes, still lifes and flowers, often bringing them to the extreme foreground or making them the entire subject of the picture. Hence the title of the show, "Van Gogh Up Close."

We see this right away with the painting next to his vase of sunflowers, which is a close up of two cut sunflower heads lying on their side out of the vase. The subject is the same, yet it's painted from an entirely different perspective and shows the intricate detail van Gogh saw in the flowers. Just as a professional photographer might zoom in from an unusual angle to give us a new way of looking at a subject, so did van Gogh alter his artistic gaze.

Most of the pictures on display are taken from the last four years (1886-1890) of the artist's short and troubled life, starting in Paris and continuing through the time he spent living with fellow artist Paul Gauguin in the village of Arles in southern France and the memorable ear-cutting incident. He then voluntarily entered an asylum at Saint-Rémy and finally moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, where he shot and killed himself in a wheat field at age 37.

Van Gogh found that gazing at an ear of wheat, a pine tree branch or even a moth with its outspread silvery-green wings had a calming effect on his increasingly agitated mind. Many of the paintings are close-ups of just these things. A prime example is "Iris" (1889), a flower he loved that grew in the grounds of the asylum. Van Gogh captures the moment it bursts into bloom, and that vibrant energy fills the picture. A fellow museum visitor commented: "I love how the paint is kind of popping out."

Van Gogh often painted these intimate close-ups in preparation for other works. In an 1890 letter to Gauguin, he wrote: "I'm trying to do studies of wheat … nothing but ears, blue-green stems, long leaves like ribbons … yellowing ears lightly bordered with pale pink due to the dusty flowering. On it, a very alive and yet tranquil background, I would like to paint portraits."

Van Gogh incorporated this approach into his larger paintings, too. Many of the farmscapes of Arles have what is called a high horizon — you can see the farmhouses in the distance with a sliver of blue sky above. But the main focus is the foreground, filled not only with flowers but, as often as not, harvest-gold bushels of wheat, as in "Wheatfield" (1888), that are so action packed they look as though they're dancing.

The exhibition emphasizes the influence contemporary Japanese woodblock prints had on his work and displays a dozen that are similar to the 500 van Gogh and his brother, Theo, avidly collected. The artist took inspiration from the tilted perspective and detail they depict. The Japanese woodcuts are slender and graceful in comparison to van Gogh's blobby paint-filled brushstrokes. But just like van Gogh, they focus on details such as a single flowering plant in the foreground of a landscape, or cast a veil across the picture with a finely detailed slanting shower of rain.

Almost all of the pictures on display are landscapes, still lifes and pastoral subjects. When human figures find their way onto the canvas, they appear relatively indistinct. One of these, "Undergrowth With Two Figures" (1890), shows a couple walking through a forest of symmetrically planted pines. The picture is dominated by close-ups of the trees, which are viewed from such an angle that we don't see limbs, just trunks emerging from a matted undergrowth filled with yellow and white flowers. You can almost feel the couple's feet brushing across the forest floor. It's a curiously disturbing picture. There's a sense of entrapment with the regimented trees, not just for the people in the picture, but for the viewer. It was painted in the last few months of van Gogh's life.

The exhibition is absorbing and well-annotated. The organizers have succeeded in suggesting the methodical approach van Gogh took toward his later work, perfecting the detail in the focal point of his pictures.

A true artist indeed. After seeing the PMA exhibition, I am once again dumbfounded that in spite of producing an abundance of wonderful works, brilliantly painted and appealing, van Gogh could find a buyer for only one of them, and that was his brother. Yet today his works sell for tens of millions of dollars. So do Picasso's, but Picasso made a fortune from his work while he was alive. Such is the fickle financial fate of the artist.

"Van Gogh Up Close" will remain at the Philadelphia Museum of Art — its only U.S. exhibition point — through May 6. For ticket and travel information, call 215-763-8100 or visit philamuseum.org.