Adventures with Van Gogh

Adventures with Van Gogh is a weekly blog by Martin Bailey, The Art Newspaper's long-standing correspondent and expert on the Dutch painter. Published on Fridays, stories range from newsy items about this most intriguing artist, to scholarly pieces based on meticulous investigations and discoveries.  © Martin Bailey

Van Gogh’s hospital painting comes to London, returning for the first time in a hundred years

The picture shows the ward where the artist slept after mutilating his ear—I witnessed the room’s tragic demolition

Was a new Van Gogh really discovered at a garage sale? Here’s why I remain unconvinced

The New York-based LMI Group claims the $50 portrait is a previously unknown work by the Dutch master, perhaps now worth $15m, but the Van Gogh Museum rejects it

How many Van Goghs have been stolen—and where are they now?

A new Dutch book provides the first comprehensive account of how the artist’s work has been targeted by thieves

What links Van Gogh, Trump, a golden toilet and Cattelan's $6.2m banana?

This unlikely grouping is part of an astonishing story involving New York’s Guggenheim Museum

Snug as a bug: conservation work reveals beetle in Gauguin cat painting

The painting, which has just gone on display at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, was previously hidden away in a private collection for over a century

A Van Gogh painting, newly authenticated in an unexpected Polish museum, has gone on display in a church dome

Bought by a British collector, the Dutch landscape was donated to an institution dedicated to Pope John Paul II

Van Gogh’s finest ‘London drawing’ was not done in the UK, but later in Amsterdam

The sketch of Austin Friars Church throws fresh light on Vincent’s draftsmanship, suggesting he was even more of a late developer as an artist

Van Gogh Museum exposes three early fakes

A vase of summer sunflowers in a late autumn scene proved a giveaway

'The Lovers': the key painting that the National Gallery couldn't track down for its Van Gogh exhibition

Seized by Hitler's deputy, Hermann Göring, the picture disappeared in mysterious circumstances during the Second World War—but could it survive?

Nazi-era claims for two Van Goghs in Switzerland?

Acquired by the arms dealer Emil Bührle, both have been on loan to a Zurich museum

Bucolic Van Gogh riverscape with royal connections set to become the artist’s most expensive Paris work

“Moored Boats”, the “gem in the crown of the Bourbon collection”, will be auctioned in Hong Kong

An exclusive visit to Van Gogh’s asylum garden to track down the scenes that he painted

As Vincent wrote to his brother, “life happens … in the garden, it isn’t so sad”

The ‘Mona Lisa of Brabant’: Dutch museum raises €6m towards buying a memorable Van Gogh portrait

At today’s prices, few museums are able to purchase paintings by Vincent—the artist who failed to sell his own work

Kernel of truth: pollen cone stuck in paint reveals where Van Gogh’s Irises grew

His purple flowers have now faded to blue, as revealed during research for a Getty exhibition in October

How drinking too much coffee fuelled Van Gogh’s work

A highly personal still-life painting featuring a pot, milk jug and cups offers an insight into daily life in the Yellow House

How Van Gogh’s ‘Bedroom’ paved the way to Modern art

Tate’s show on Expressionism reminds us that Vincent was “the father of us all”

The Nazi collaborator who sheltered nearly 300 Van Gogh works during the war: Sam van Deventer’s story is now told

A new biography reveals that the director of the Kröller-Müller Museum had earlier acquired eight Van Goghs for his personal collection—and he may have sold the finest one to Hitler’s deputy, Hermann Göring

The fate of a Van Gogh flower painting destined for Japan’s 'Sheer Pleasure' pavilion

Kojiro Matsukata’s still life was destroyed in a London fire and his “Van Gogh’s Bedroom” was seized during the Second World War

The paint was still wet: a closer look at three Van Gogh paintings heading to the Rijksmuseum

They include an Amsterdam townscape painted an hour or so before the artist visited the newly opened museum in 1885

Four fake Van Gogh self-portraits that publishers put on their book covers

These works deceive readers, giving a false impression about the artist