Adventures with Van Gogh

Adventures with Van Gogh is a weekly blog by Martin Bailey, our long-standing correspondent and expert on the artist. Published every Friday, his stories will range from newsy items about this most intriguing artist to scholarly pieces based on his own meticulous investigations and discoveries. © Martin Bailey

Did Vincent van Gogh get Gordina pregnant? Christie’s is selling her portrait

Coming up for auction on 28 February for £1m-£2m, the painting has been hidden in a private collection for 120 years

Hidden in a London attic, I discovered a Bible inscribed by Van Gogh

Vincent and his young English friend Harry Gladwell read the book cover-to-cover in their Paris lodgings—possibly praying to avoid the temptations of Montmartre

Was Van Gogh's olive grove landscape another Nazi-era 'forced sale'?

We uncover the tangled tale of the painting controversially sold off by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1972 and now in an Athens museum

I met the oldest woman in the world—who shared her memories of Van Gogh in Arles

Madame Jeanne Calment, who lived to be 122, recalled meeting the artist as a child

Van Gogh's Tokyo Sunflowers: Was it a Nazi forced sale? And is the painting now worth $250m?

Bought for a Japanese museum in 1987, the masterpiece has just been claimed by the heirs of a Jewish Berlin banker

Van Gogh in 2022: record prices, top shows and exciting discoveries

Plus, the best books on Vincent and the artist's booming immersive experiences

Why is Van Gogh under attack?

Vincent’s best-loved paintings are singled out by climate protestors

a blog by Martin Bailey

Van Gogh’s cypresses, a sequel to the sunflowers

New York’s Met plans a major show opening next May, with some of his greatest landscapes of Provence

A surprise: a UK medical museum owns a Van Gogh

The etched portrait of Dr Gachet, who treated Vincent after he shot himself, is in the Wellcome Collection

Life in Van Gogh’s Yellow House: the mysterious objects on his kitchen table

A still life, painted just after Vincent mutilated his ear, holds intriguing clues

A crate of 40 Van Gogh paintings was once sold for less than $1

A seascape that fetched nearly $3m at Sotheby’s this week was one of the works abandoned in an attic

a blog by Martin Bailey

Van Gogh goes to Hollywood: the celebrities who have owned Vincent's work

Californian collectors had the taste and cash to buy some of his finest paintings, with stars including Elizabeth Taylor, Edward Robinson and Barbra Streisand

a blog by Martin Bailey

Revealed: When lightning struck, rescuers of Van Gogh's works were rewarded with a drawing

Coming up at Christie’s and estimated at around $4m, the sketch given to neighbours who doused the fire and saved the Van Gogh family home and collection in 1941

a blog by Martin Bailey

Jo Bonger: the woman who made Van Gogh famous as one of the greatest artists of all time

The definitive biography is now published in English—with a fresh explanation as to why the Sunflowers came to London

a blog by Martin Bailey

Van Gogh landscape coming up for auction should fetch a record price of over $100m

The orchard blossom scene, from the collection of Microsoft founder Paul Allen, is being sold by Christie’s

a blog by Martin Bailey

Amsterdam exhibition shines light on Klimt's artistic debt to Van Gogh and contemporaries

Klimt discovered Van Gogh in 1903—and took inspiration from the Dutch painter for his early landscapes

Van Gogh in America: Detroit’s exhibition set to be a revelation

US collectors and museums came late to Vincent’s paintings, yet eventually amassed the finest works outside the Netherlands—plus a few embarrassing fakes

a blog by Martin Bailey

What were the first 12 Van Gogh paintings ever sold?

And who were the brave collectors, way ahead of their time?

a blog by Martin Bailey

Radical outsiders: how Cézanne and Van Gogh drove art to new heights

Ahead of Tate Modern’s Cézanne blockbuster exhibition, we investigate the two artists' links

a blog by Martin Bailey

Van Gogh exhibitions in 2023: we reveal the hot tickets coming up worldwide

Highlight shows in Chicago, Paris and Amsterdam—plus a 50th birthday celebration for the Van Gogh Museum

'My companions in misfortune': discovery reveals who Van Gogh lived with in the asylum

The story of an unknown register of patients is in my “Starry Night” book, out in paperback this month

a blog by Martin Bailey

London's 'spectacular' 2024 Van Gogh show will focus on the artist’s greatest period—we delve into the details

“Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers” at the National Gallery will be presented in themes, tracing the story of his stay in Provence

A blog by Martin Bailey

'Closer to Vincent': the secrets of everyday objects in Van Gogh’s paintings

A book and exhibition will reveal surprising facts about some of the artist’s best-loved motifs

a blog by Martin Bailey

New research sheds light on Van Gogh’s problems with Gauguin, as revealed by the paintings of their favourite chairs

And why was “Vincent’s Chair” sold to London’s National Gallery in the 1920s, while “Gauguin’s Chair” was hidden away?

a blog by Martin Bailey

Why did Van Gogh fail to sell his work?

Although his paintings now fetch millions, during his lifetime he perhaps ended up pricing them too high

The Marcos art mystery: with a new Philippines president, we ask what happened to the family's Van Gogh?

Ferdinand Marcos, the former president, and his wife Imelda owned one of Vincent’s peasant scenes. Did it end up in Japan?

a blog by Martin Bailey