Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. His suicide at 37 followed years of mental illness and poverty.
Paintings by Vincent van Gogh
Sunflowers (Van Gogh series) (1888)
Sunflowers (original title, in French: Tournesols) is the title of two series of still life paintings by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. The first series, executed in Paris in 1887, depicts the flowers lying on the ground, while the second set, made a year later in Arles, shows a bouquet of sunflowers in a vase. In the artist's mind, both sets were linked by the name of his friend Paul Gauguin, who acquired two of the Paris versions. About eight months later, van Gogh hoped to welcome and impress Gauguin again with Sunflowers, now part of the painted Décoration for the Yellow House that he prepared for the guestroom of his home in Arles, where Gauguin was supposed to stay.
Little is known of van Gogh's activities during the two years he lived with his brother Theo in Paris, from 1886 to 1888. The fact that he had painted Sunflowers already is only revealed in the spring of 1889, when Gauguin claimed one of the Arles versions in exchange for studies he had left behind after leaving Arles for Paris. Van Gogh was upset and replied that Gauguin had absolutely no right to make this request:
The Potato Eaters (1885)
The Potato Eaters (Dutch: De Aardappeleters) is an oil painting by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh painted in April to May of 1885 in Nuenen, Netherlands.
It is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The original oil sketch is at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. He also made lithographs of the image, which are held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The painting is considered to be one of Van Gogh's masterpieces.
Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1890)
The Portrait of Doctor Gachet is one of the most revered paintings by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. It depicts Dr. Paul Gachet, a homeopathic doctor and artist with whom van Gogh resided following a spell in an asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Gachet took care of Van Gogh during the final months of his life. There are two authenticated versions of the portrait, both painted in June 1890 at Auvers-sur-Oise. Both show Gachet sitting at a table and leaning his head on his right arm, but they are easily differentiated in color and style. There is also an etching.
The first version was acquired by the Städel in Frankfurt in 1911 and subsequently confiscated and sold by Hermann Göring. In May 1990, under the direction of Christie's auction house Chairman Stephen Lash, it was sold for $82.5 million ($203.3 million today) to Ryoei Saito, making it the world's most expensive painting at that time. It then disappeared from public view and the Städel was unable to locate it in 2019. The second version was owned by Gachet and was bequeathed to France by his heirs. Despite arguments over its authenticity, it now hangs in the Musée d'Orsay, in Paris.
The Starry Night (1889)
The Starry Night is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. Painted in June 1889, it depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise, with the addition of an imaginary village. It has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941, acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. Described as a "touchstone of modern art", The Starry Night has been regarded as one of the most recognizable paintings in the Western canon.
The painting was created in mid-June 1889, inspired by the view from Van Gogh’s bedroom window at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole mental asylum near Arles. The former monastery functioned as a mental asylum, where Van Gogh voluntarily admitted himself on 8 May 1889, following a mental breakdown and his infamous act of self-mutilation that occurred in late December 1888. Catering to wealthy patients, the facility was less than half full at the time of Van Gogh's admission, allowing the artist access to both a second-story bedroom and a ground-floor studio. During his year-long stay, he remained highly productive, creating many paintings including Irises, a self-portrait, and The Starry Night.
Wheatfield with Crows (1890)
Wheatfield with Crows (Dutch: Korenveld met kraaien) is a July 1890 painting by Vincent van Gogh. It has been cited by several critics as one of his greatest works.
It is commonly stated that this was Van Gogh's final painting. This association was popularized by Vincente Minnelli’s 1956 biopic Lust for Life, which depicts Van Gogh painting it immediately before shooting himself. His final painting in actuality was Tree Roots. The evidence of his letters suggests that Wheatfield with Crows was completed around 10 July and predates such paintings as Auvers Town Hall on 14 July 1890 and Daubigny's Garden. Moreover, Jan Hulsker has written that a painting of harvested wheat, Field with Stacks of Wheat (F771), must be a later painting.
Irises (painting) (1889)
Irises is an oil painting by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. Painted in 1889, the work is a landscape with a cropped composition and is one of a series of several hundred paintings that van Gogh made at the Saint Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, in the last year before his death in 1890. It has been in the permanent collection of The Getty in Los Angeles, California since 1990.
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 color and monumental rippled irises overflowing the borders of the canvas which helps moves the viewer's eye throughout the canvas.
Café Terrace at Night (1888)
Café Terrace at Night is an 1888 oil painting by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. It is also known as The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, and, when first exhibited in 1891, was entitled Coffeehouse, in the evening (Café, le soir).
Van Gogh painted Café Terrace at Night in Arles, France, in mid-September 1888. The painting is not signed, but described and mentioned by the artist in three letters.
Bedroom in Arles (1888)
Bedroom in Arles (French: La Chambre à Arles; Dutch: Slaapkamer te Arles) is the title given to three similar paintings by 19th-century Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh.
Van Gogh's own title for this composition was simply The Bedroom (French: La Chambre à coucher). There are three authentic versions described in his letters, easily distinguishable from one another by the pictures on the wall to the right.
The Night Café (1888)
The Night Café (French: Le Café de nuit) is an oil painting created by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh in September 1888 in Arles. Its title is inscribed lower right beneath the signature. The painting is owned by Yale University and is currently held at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut.
The interior depicted is the Café de la Gare, 30 Place Lamartine, run by Joseph-Michel Ginoux and his wife Marie, who in November 1888 posed for Van Gogh's and Gauguin's Arlésienne; a bit later, Joseph Ginoux evidently posed for both artists, too.
The Red Vineyard (1888)
The Red Vineyards near Arles is an oil painting by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, executed on a privately primed Toile de 30 piece of burlap in early November 1888. It depicts workers in a vineyard, and it is the only painting known by name that van Gogh sold in his lifetime.
The Red Vineyard was exhibited for the first time at the annual exhibition of Les XX, 1890, in Brussels, and sold for 400 francs (US$2,100 in 2025) to Belgian painter and collector Anna Boch, a member of Les XX. Anna was the sister of Eugène Boch, another impressionist painter and a friend of Van Gogh, whose portrait van Gogh painted (Le Peintre aux Étoiles) in Arles in autumn 1888. In a later letter to his brother Theo discussing the sale, van Gogh admitted with some embarrassment that the Bochs paid the Les XX 1890 Exhibition sticker price, when in fact they probably should have gotten a "friend's price".
The Church at Auvers (1890)
The Church at Auvers is an oil painting created by Dutch Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh in June 1890 which now hangs in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France.
The painting depicts the Église Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, 27 kilometres (17 mi) north-west of Paris.
Starry Night Over the Rhône (1888)
Starry Night (September 1888, French: La Nuit étoilée), commonly known as Starry Night Over the Rhône, is one of Vincent van Gogh's paintings of Arles at night. It was painted on the bank of the Rhône that was only a one or two-minute walk from the Yellow House on the Place Lamartine, which van Gogh was renting at the time. The night sky and the effects of light at night provided the subject for some of van Gogh's more famous paintings, including Café Terrace at Night (painted earlier the same month) and the June 1889 canvas from Saint-Remy, The Starry Night.
A sketch of the painting is included in a letter van Gogh sent to his friend Eugène Boch on 2 October 1888.