Van Gogh Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
47 free Van Gogh trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free van Gogh trivia questions with answers. Vincent van Gogh sold one painting in his lifetime and now sells out museum shows on three continents, and that gap between the failure and the legend is what makes him such good trivia. This quiz covers the whole story: the preacher's son from Zundert who was sacked as a missionary in the Belgian coalfields, the ten frantic years in which he produced about 2,100 works, the Yellow House in Arles, the nine weeks with Gauguin, the ear, the asylum at Saint-Rémy and the wheatfields of Auvers. The paintings get their own questions: which planet blazes in The Starry Night, why the bandage is on the wrong ear in the self-portrait, how many Bedrooms there are, which Sunflowers burned in 1945, and what Ryoei Saito threatened to do with Dr Gachet. There are also rounds on the museums, the thefts, the record auction prices, and Van Gogh on screen, from Kirk Douglas to Loving Vincent. About a third of the questions are easy enough for anyone who has seen a poster of his work; the rest climb to details only art historians and museum guides usually know. Every answer has been checked against a reference source, and each question shows its citation and a short explanation once you have answered.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Vincent van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in which village in the Dutch province of North Brabant?
Zundert
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.
Q 02Roughly how many artworks did Van Gogh produce in just over a decade as an artist?
About 2,100
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.
Q 03How long after he was shot on 27 July 1890 did Van Gogh die?
Two days later
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.
Q 04What was the profession of Theo van Gogh, the younger brother who bankrolled Vincent for most of his career?
Art dealer
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.
Q 05Which ear did Van Gogh cut with a razor in December 1888?
His left ear
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.
Q 06In May 1889 Van Gogh committed himself to an asylum just outside which Provençal town?
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
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.
Q 07What kind of medicine did Dr Paul Gachet, who cared for Van Gogh at Auvers, practise?
Homoeopathy
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'.
Q 08Which firm gave the 16-year-old Van Gogh his first job in 1869, through his uncle Cent?
The picture dealers Goupil & Cie
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.
Q 09In 1879 Van Gogh worked as a lay missionary in which Belgian coal-mining region?
The Borinage
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'.
Q 10In which Dutch village, where his father was pastor, did Van Gogh paint The Potato Eaters in 1885?
Nuenen
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.
Q 11Van Gogh moved to Paris in March 1886 and shared Theo's apartment in which district?
Montmartre
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.
Q 12Which Hague School painter, his cousin by marriage, took Van Gogh on as a student and introduced him to watercolour?
Anton Mauve
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.
Q 13In which language did Van Gogh write almost all his letters after he moved to Paris in 1886?
French
Q 21Which Van Gogh painting exists in three versions?
Bedroom in Arles
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.
Q 22Where in the Netherlands is Van Gogh's Café Terrace at Night (1888) held?
The Kröller-Müller in Otterlo
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.
Q 23Which work did 2020 research point to as Van Gogh's final painting, rather than Wheatfield with Crows?
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.
Q 14Van Gogh collected cheap woodblock prints from which country and copied their style?
Japan
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.
Q 15Apart from Theo, which sibling did Van Gogh write to about his art in his last years?
His sister Wil
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.
Q 16Which planet is the brightest 'star' in The Starry Night (June 1889)?
Venus
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.
Q 17Since 1941 The Starry Night has hung where?
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
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'.
Q 18Van Gogh hung two of his Arles Sunflowers in which room of the Yellow House in 1888?
The bedroom meant for Gauguin
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.
Q 19Who bought a Sunflowers canvas for a record price at Christie's London in March 1987?
Japanese insurer Yasuo Goto
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.
Q 20What became of Vase with Five Sunflowers on 6 August 1945?
It was destroyed in a US air raid
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.
Tree Roots
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.
Q 24Which plant lies on the table in Portrait of Dr Gachet, a nod to the doctor's trade?
Foxglove
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.
Q 25Why does Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear show the bandage on the uninjured side?
He painted his reflection in a mirror
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.
Q 26Van Gogh's Irises, painted in an asylum garden, has hung where since 1990?
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
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.
Q 27Van Gogh's The Night Café (1888) belongs to which Ivy League university?
Yale
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.
Q 28Which two colours did Van Gogh say expressed 'the terrible passions of humanity' in The Night Café?
Red and green
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.
Q 29Almond Blossom (1890) was painted to celebrate what?
The birth of Theo's baby son
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.
Q 30Which relative of Van Gogh went on to found the Van Gogh Museum?
His nephew
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.