Leo Martínez
Vincent van Gogh is one of the most famous painters in history, known for his bold colours, thick brushstrokes, and emotional depth. Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings, with his original artworks selling for millions. While he sold very few paintings during his lifetime, his work gained recognition posthumously. Some of Van Gogh's most famous paintings include The Starry Night, The Potato Eaters, and Sunflowers.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Most Famous Paintings | Starry Night, Sunflowers, Irises, The Bedroom in Arles, Café Terrace at Night, The Potato Eaters, Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear |
| Year of Creation | 1888-1889, 1886-1888, 1889, 1888, 1888, 1885, 1889 |
| Current Location | MoMA, The Met, J. Paul Getty Museum, Van Gogh Museum, Kröller-Müller Museum, Musée d'Orsay, Kröller-Müller Museum |
| Selling Price | N/A, N/A, $53.9 million, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A |
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What You'll Learn
Starry Night (1889)
The Starry Night, crafted by the Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh in 1889, is among his most celebrated and widely recognized works. This iconic painting depicts a night sky brimming with swirling clouds and bright stars over a sleepy village, illuminated by the soft glow of moonlight. Created with oil paints on a canvas measuring approximately 29 by 36 inches, it is currently housed at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.
The painting is characterized by Van Gogh's distinctive style, featuring bold, expressive brushstrokes and an intense use of color. The night sky takes center stage, with swirling clouds forming a vortex that draws the viewer's eye towards the shining star at the heart of the composition. The village lies quiet beneath this celestial display, with the gentle curves of the hills and rooftops providing a contrast to the dynamic movement above.
What makes Starry Night particularly fascinating is the way Van Gogh interpreted the night sky. Rather than simply painting what he observed, he allowed his imagination and emotions to guide his brush, resulting in a sky that appears alive with energy and movement. The vibrant hues of yellow, blue, and green add to the sense of drama and mystery, enhancing the overall romantic and ethereal atmosphere of the scene.
The painting is also notable for its use of impasto technique, where paint is applied thickly to create a textured surface. This adds a sense of depth and dimension to the work, especially in the clouds and stars, giving them a three-dimensional quality that further enhances the sense of movement and dynamism.
Starry Night is not just aesthetically captivating but also holds a significant place in art history. It is a testament to Van Gogh's unique style and his ability to convey emotion and expressiveness through his brushwork. The painting has influenced generations of artists and continues to inspire and captivate audiences today, solidifying its status as one of Van Gogh's most beloved and iconic masterpieces.
As one of Van Gogh's most recognizable works, Starry Night has become an enduring symbol of the artist's talent and a testament to his enduring legacy in the world of art. Its captivating beauty and emotional depth have ensured its place as one of the most beloved and well-known paintings in the history of art, offering viewers a glimpse into the brilliant and tumultuous mind of Vincent van Gogh.
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Sunflowers (1887-1889)
Sunflowers is one of Van Gogh's most celebrated series of still-life paintings. The series includes two sets of paintings: the first, executed in Paris in 1887, depicts sunflowers lying on the ground, while the second, made a year later in Arles, shows a bouquet of sunflowers in a vase. The Arles sunflowers are the paintings that are most commonly associated with the name "Sunflowers". The Paris Sunflowers, which are lesser known, can be found at museums including The Met in New York, the Kröller-Müller Museum, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
The Sunflowers series is perhaps Van Gogh's best-known and most widely reproduced work. The artist created the paintings using only shades of yellow and a touch of green, with thick, textured brushstrokes that radiate warmth and energy. Van Gogh saw the sunflower as a symbol of gratitude, and this series has become synonymous with his artistic legacy.
In 1987, Japanese insurance magnate Yasuo Goto paid the equivalent of US$39,921,750 for Van Gogh's Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers at auction at Christie's London, a record-setting amount for a work of art at the time. However, there has been some controversy over the authenticity of some of the paintings in the Sunflowers series, with some experts suggesting that they may be forgeries by Émile Schuffenecker or Paul Gauguin. Most experts, however, conclude that the work is genuine.
In January 1889, Van Gogh finished the first repetitions of the Sunflowers pendants, and wrote to his brother Theo: "I picture to myself these same canvases between those of the sunflowers, which would give a series of twelve or fourteen studies of sunflowers".
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The Potato Eaters (1885)
While Van Gogh's most famous paintings include "Starry Night" and "Sunflowers", "The Potato Eaters" is also considered one of his most famous and ambitious works. Painted in 1885, it is regarded as Van Gogh's first masterpiece and a crucial point in the development of his style and technique.
The painting depicts a family sharing a simple meal of potatoes, with Van Gogh seeking to establish himself as a painter of peasant life. In a letter to his brother, Van Gogh explained his intention to convey the idea that the peasants "have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish". He wanted to portray a different way of life and the beauty he saw in it, capturing the atmosphere and primitive nature of arduous peasant life.
To prepare for the painting, Van Gogh created over a hundred portrait studies of farmworkers, various drawings, and two painted studies. He also made lithographs of the image, which are held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The painting itself is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, with the original oil sketch at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo.
Despite initially receiving criticism from his friend Anthon van Rappard, Van Gogh considered "The Potato Eaters" to be his most successful painting, as expressed in a letter to his sister two years later: "the painting of the peasants eating potatoes that I did in Nuenen is after all the best thing I did".
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Self-portraits
Vincent van Gogh painted self-portraits because he wanted to practice painting people. Over his career, he painted no fewer than 35 self-portraits, with some sources placing this number at about 32. The majority of these—over 25—were done while he was in Paris from 1886 to 1888. During this period, he was short of money and struggled to find models, so he painted himself. To save money, he sometimes painted self-portraits on the back of other paintings, thereby avoiding the cost of models and expensive canvases.
Van Gogh's self-portraits tell us that he had red hair, green eyes, and an angular face. Each self-portrait is different, and Van Gogh himself wrote:
> "People say – and I’m quite willing to believe it – that it’s difficult to know oneself – but it’s not easy to paint oneself either."
In his self-portraits, Van Gogh often presented himself as restrained and serious, with a look of concentration on his face. However, something of Van Gogh's personality can be found in each self-portrait. He described the last self-portrait he did in Paris as "quite unkempt and sad... something like, say, the face of death." This reflected how he felt at the time: mentally and physically exhausted.
Van Gogh's self-portraits continued after he left Paris. In January 1889, he painted two self-portraits with a bandaged ear, following an episode in December 1888 in which he cut off his left ear. In September 1889, he painted what is believed to be his final self-portrait, which is housed at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. This self-portrait was painted shortly before he left Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in southern France, and he showed it to Dr. Paul Gachet, who thought it was "absolutely fanatical."
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Irises (1889)
Vincent van Gogh is one of the most well-known figures in art history. His expressive use of colour, dramatic brushstrokes, and emotional intensity have made him a household name, celebrated as a master of Post-Impressionism. Van Gogh created "Irises" in 1889, within a month of his one-year stay at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. The painting is a landscape with a cropped composition and is one of several hundred paintings from a series of paintings that Van Gogh made during his stay at the asylum.
The subject of "Irises" is the flowers that were growing in the hospital garden, which Van Gogh could see from the window of the spare room allocated as his studio. The painting depicts vibrantly blooming irises with dynamic brushstrokes. The flowers are a mix of deep blues and violets, contrasting with lush green leaves, red-orange earth, and yellow flowers in the background. Van Gogh's characteristic impasto technique adds texture and movement within the painting, creating an energetic and expressive feeling. The overall cropped composition of "Irises" includes broad areas of vivid colour and monumental rippled irises overflowing the borders of the canvas, helping to move the viewer's eye throughout the canvas.
Van Gogh was a dedicated collector of Japanese prints, and his work was influenced by the large areas of colour and sharp diagonals used by Japanese artists. He associated irises with Japan, where the native species were highly prized and had a prominent place in art. In a letter to his brother Theo, Van Gogh mentioned that he had begun a painting of ""violet irises", and he regarded "Irises" as a study. The painting was first exhibited at the Société des Artistes Indépendants in September 1889, along with Starry Night Over the Rhone.
"Irises" is often seen as a testament to Van Gogh's ability to find beauty in nature, even during times of personal turmoil. The painting held the record for the most expensive artwork in 1987 when it sold for $53.9 million USD, which would be around $100 million in today's economy. "Irises" is currently part of the permanent collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California.
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