47 Fun Facts About Van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in which village in the Dutch province of North Brabant?

Van Gogh was born in Zundert, where his father was a Protestant minister in a mostly Catholic province; a brother, also named Vincent, had been stillborn exactly a year earlier.

Roughly how many artworks did Van Gogh produce in just over a decade as an artist?

Van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks, around 860 of them oil paintings, most in the last two years of his life; he took up art seriously at 27 and died at 37.

How long after he was shot on 27 July 1890 did Van Gogh die?

He died two days later, in the early hours of 29 July 1890: he had made his own way back to his room at the inn after dark, and Theo reached his bedside by train the next afternoon.

What was the profession of Theo van Gogh, the younger brother who bankrolled Vincent for most of his career?

Theo was an art dealer in Paris, where he championed the Impressionists; from the winter of 1880 he sent Vincent the money that let him do nothing but paint.

Which ear did Van Gogh cut with a razor in December 1888?

It was his left ear; on the night of 23 December 1888 he wrapped it in paper and delivered it to a woman at a brothel in Arles, then was found unconscious at home the next morning.

In May 1889 Van Gogh committed himself to an asylum just outside which Provençal town?

The asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole lies just outside Saint-Rémy-de-Provence; he had two cells, one to sleep in and one as a studio, and painted around 150 canvases there, including The Starry Night.

What kind of medicine did Dr Paul Gachet, who cared for Van Gogh at Auvers, practise?

Gachet practised homoeopathy and painted in his spare time; Vincent soon wrote to Theo that the doctor seemed 'sicker than I am, I think, or shall we say just as much'.

Which firm gave the 16-year-old Van Gogh his first job in 1869, through his uncle Cent?

The picture dealers Goupil & Cie trained him in The Hague and posted him to London in 1873, but he came to resent how dealers treated art as a commodity and was dismissed in 1876.

In 1879 Van Gogh worked as a lay missionary in which Belgian coal-mining region?

The Borinage, a coal-mining district, is where he preached in 1879; he gave his lodgings to a homeless person and slept on straw in a hut, and the church dismissed him for 'undermining the dignity of the priesthood'.

In which Dutch village, where his father was pastor, did Van Gogh paint The Potato Eaters in 1885?

The Potato Eaters was painted in Nuenen in spring 1885; Van Gogh wanted to show that these people had tilled the earth with the very hands they put in the dish, and bristled when his friend Anthon van Rappard criticised it.

Van Gogh moved to Paris in March 1886 and shared Theo's apartment in which district?

Theo's flat was in Montmartre, from June 1886 at 54 rue Lepic; Vincent studied at Fernand Cormon's studio, met Toulouse-Lautrec and Émile Bernard, and his palette shifted from Dutch browns to bright Impressionist colour.

Which Hague School painter, his cousin by marriage, took Van Gogh on as a student and introduced him to watercolour?

Anton Mauve lent him money for a studio but went cold within months, apparently on learning that Vincent was living with Sien Hoornik; Vincent still dedicated a painting of blossoming peach trees to his memory.

In which language did Van Gogh write almost all his letters after he moved to Paris in 1886?

French took over from Dutch once he lived in France: about two-thirds of his surviving letters are in Dutch, a third in French and just five in English.

Van Gogh collected cheap woodblock prints from which country and copied their style?

Japan's ukiyo-e prints caught his eye in the docklands of Antwerp; in Paris he dealt in them through Siegfried Bing and made oil copies of two Hiroshige prints.

Apart from Theo, which sibling did Van Gogh write to about his art in his last years?

His sister Wil got long letters about his work, the sunflower paintings among them; she outlived him by more than 50 years, most of them spent in a psychiatric institution.

Which planet is the brightest 'star' in The Starry Night (June 1889)?

Astronomers have confirmed that Venus really was blazing in the eastern pre-dawn sky over Provence that month. The village below, though, was added from imagination.

Since 1941 The Starry Night has hung where?

The Starry Night entered the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1941 through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest; Van Gogh himself called it a failure, telling Émile Bernard he had reached for stars that were 'too big'.

Van Gogh hung two of his Arles Sunflowers in which room of the Yellow House in 1888?

The bedroom meant for Gauguin got the first two canvases, though Vincent had planned them as a decoration for the studio; Gauguin admired them and later asked for one, which Vincent was reluctant to give.

Who bought a Sunflowers canvas for a record price at Christie's London in March 1987?

Japanese insurer Yasuo Goto paid about $39.9 million; critics later called the canvas a forgery by the painter Émile Schuffenecker, but in 2002 experts at the Van Gogh Museum declared it genuine.

What became of Vase with Five Sunflowers on 6 August 1945?

It was destroyed in a US air raid on Ashiya, where a private collector kept it, on the very day the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, though in a separate conventional attack; only photographs survive.

Which Van Gogh painting exists in three versions?

Bedroom in Arles was first painted in October 1888; a year later he repeated it at the same size, then made a smaller copy as a gift for his mother and sister.

Where in the Netherlands is Van Gogh's Café Terrace at Night (1888) held?

It belongs to the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, home of the second-largest Van Gogh collection; he never signed the canvas but described it in letters, and the café on Arles' Place du Forum was later repainted yellow to match.

Which work did 2020 research point to as Van Gogh's final painting, rather than Wheatfield with Crows?

Tree Roots: in 2020 Wouter van der Veen matched its tangle of roots to a roadside bank in Auvers shown on an old postcard, supporting the view that Van Gogh worked on it on his last day.

Which plant lies on the table in Portrait of Dr Gachet, a nod to the doctor's trade?

Digitalis, extracted from the plant, was a heart medicine. Some have argued Van Gogh took it and that it explains the yellow tint of his late work, though there is no record he was ever prescribed it.

Why does Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear show the bandage on the uninjured side?

He painted his reflection in a mirror, a week after leaving hospital in January 1889; the fur cap is a reminder of the harsh conditions he was working in that winter.

Van Gogh's Irises, painted in an asylum garden, has hung where since 1990?

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, bought Irises after its record $53.9 million sale in 1987 unravelled: the buyer, Alan Bond, had borrowed about half the price from Sotheby's and could not pay.

Van Gogh's The Night Café (1888) belongs to which Ivy League university?

Yale received it by bequest from Stephen Clark; it had hung in Ivan Morozov's Moscow collection until the Soviets nationalised and sold it, and a Morozov heir's claim was finally turned away by the US Supreme Court in 2016.

Which two colours did Van Gogh say expressed 'the terrible passions of humanity' in The Night Café?

Red and green: he told Theo he had tried to express 'the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green', in a café where one could ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime.

Almond Blossom (1890) was painted to celebrate what?

The birth of Theo's baby son, named Vincent Willem after him, prompted the gift: almond trees flower early in spring, and Vincent chose them as a symbol of new life.

Which relative of Van Gogh went on to found the Van Gogh Museum?

His nephew, Vincent Willem, kept the family's collection together, showed it for years at another Amsterdam museum, and in 1962 transferred it to a state-backed foundation so a dedicated museum could be built.

How soon were twenty paintings stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in 1991 recovered?

They were found about 35 minutes later in an abandoned car, three of them badly damaged; the two works stolen in 2002 took 14 years to resurface in Italy.

Which crime organisation's member owned the villa near Naples where two stolen Van Goghs were recovered in 2016?

The Camorra: Italy's financial police found the two paintings, stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in 2002, in a drug trafficker's villa at Castellammare di Stabia, and both went back on show in Amsterdam in 2017.

Which 2017 film was animated from about 65,000 oil paintings?

Loving Vincent was first shot with live actors; a team of 125 painters then turned every frame into an oil painting in Van Gogh's style.

Who played Van Gogh in the 1956 biopic Lust for Life, based on Irving Stone's novel?

Kirk Douglas wore red whiskers for the part; his wife recalled him coming home from the set still in character, and he said he would not work that way again.

Who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing Paul Gauguin in Lust for Life?

Anthony Quinn took his second supporting Oscar, after Viva Zapata!, while the film's leading man, nominated for Best Actor, lost out to Yul Brynner.

Don McLean's Van Gogh tribute 'Vincent' first appeared on which album?

American Pie (1971) carried it alongside the title track; McLean wrote the words on a paper bag after reading a Van Gogh biography, wanting to argue that the painter was ill, not crazy.

How long did Paul Gauguin live and paint alongside Van Gogh at the Yellow House in Arles?

Gauguin arrived on 23 October 1888 and fled at Christmas, about nine weeks later, after the ear incident; the two kept writing to each other but never met again.

Who had Theo van Gogh reburied beside Vincent at Auvers-sur-Oise in 1914?

His widow, Johanna, moved Theo's remains from Utrecht in 1914, the same year she published the brothers' letters; she spent decades promoting Vincent's work.

Who bought The Red Vineyard, one of the few canvases Van Gogh sold in his lifetime?

The Belgian painter Anna Boch paid 400 francs for it at the 1890 Les XX exhibition in Brussels; her brother Eugène was a friend of Vincent and had sat for one of his portraits.

In which Auvers-sur-Oise inn did Van Gogh die in his rented room?

He died in attic room 5 of the Auberge Ravoux, kept empty ever since because a room where a suicide occurred could not be let again; his reported last words were 'the sadness will last forever'.

Starry Night Over the Rhône, painted in Arles in September 1888, hangs in which Paris museum?

The Musée d'Orsay holds the canvas, which Van Gogh painted outdoors at night under a gas lamp; Theo sent it to the 1889 Salon des Indépendants, a rare public showing in his lifetime.

In October 2022, Just Stop Oil protesters attacked Van Gogh's Sunflowers in London with what?

They threw tins of tomato soup over the glazed painting at the National Gallery; the canvas was unharmed, but the frame was damaged and the two were later jailed, one for two years and one for 20 months.

Which tree, which Van Gogh likened to an Egyptian obelisk, did he paint again and again in Provence in 1889?

Cypress trees preoccupied him that summer: he was astonished that no one had painted them as he saw them, and one towers in the foreground of The Starry Night.

What was the trade of Père Tanguy, who sat for Van Gogh three times?

He ground and sold paints in his Paris shop and often took paintings in exchange for supplies; the sculptor Rodin acquired the 1887 portrait, which now hangs in the Musée Rodin.

In the painting Van Gogh's Chair (1888), what sits on the straw seat?

His pipe and tobacco pouch lie on the straw seat, with a box of sprouting onions behind; he painted it as a pair with Gauguin's grander armchair, shown by night with a lit candle and novels.

Which painter of peasant life did Van Gogh revere and copy repeatedly, including his sower?

Jean-François Millet inspired about 21 painted copies made in the asylum; working from black-and-white prints, Van Gogh improvised the colour himself and called the results translations, not copies.

What did Dr Félix Rey do with Van Gogh's portrait of him?

He got rid of it because he disliked it: his mother is said to have patched the family chicken coop with the canvas, and by 1901 it had passed to a dealer; it now hangs in Moscow's Pushkin Museum.