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 range from newsy items about this most intriguing artist to scholarly pieces based on his own meticulous investigations and discoveries. © Martin Bailey
The Van Gogh painting that was stolen—and recovered in an Ikea bag—goes on show
Research reveals that the artist began the work as a winter scene and transformed it into a spring landscape
One of Van Gogh’s finest early watercolours is coming up for sale, estimated at up to £3m
Woman Sewing was inspired by a soulful English poem, “The Song of the Shirt”
A Dutch museum wants to buy a Van Gogh painting from an English collector
The portrait of Gordina, whom Vincent was accused of getting pregnant, is worth around £5m
Van Gogh and Gauguin’s little cat
The playful creature—painted while the artists were living in the Yellow House—has crept out of hiding after more than 100 years
Van Gogh 2024 highlights: London’s National Gallery takes the lead
There will be other exhibitions in Italy, France, the Netherlands and Taiwan—plus a topical book and a plethora of immersive experiences
Van Gogh in 2023: the best-ever series of exhibitions
Other highlights include the dramatic recovery of a stolen painting and an astonishing donation
When Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ was bought by the National Gallery it was snubbed as one of its top 100 acquisitions of the decade
Omitted from the 1920s book, next September the masterpiece will star in a London blockbuster on Vincent’s art of Provence
Van Gogh’s 'Starry Night over the Rhône' will return for the first time to the city where it was painted
But did Vincent really wear a hat fringed with candles when he was working?
Gauguin’s shocking claim: Van Gogh painted the Sunflowers 'following my advice'
The French artist tried to rewrite history, just months before his death
A stolen Van Gogh drawing recovered outside a public lavatory 20 years ago goes on show
The Whitworth's watercolour will be a highlight at the Royal Academy’s exhibition
Van Gogh’s 'Night Café': a haunt of prowlers, not a brothel
Vincent felt that the café he painted was where you could “ruin yourself, go mad, commit crimes”
How a fake Van Gogh encouraged Barbra Streisand to buy the real thing
The star's autobiography reveals her admiration for a “self-portrait” owned by a Hollywood producer
Van Gogh exhibitions coming up in 2024, a blockbuster and a surprise
London’s National Gallery will top the bill, with a spectacular display of paintings from Provence
Van Gogh’s sunflowers blossom in Japan
The masterpiece is celebrated in a show at Tokyo’s Sompo Museum
Where did Van Gogh shoot himself?
It may have been near the inn where he stayed—not in a more distant wheatfield
Van Gogh paints by the River Seine, a stepping stone to Provence
A revelatory exhibition in Amsterdam on Vincent’s landscapes from the outskirts of Paris—along with those of his avant-garde colleagues
Experience Van Gogh’s final weeks—through a blockbuster exhibition in Paris
After seeing the Musée d’Orsay show, continue on to Auvers, to enter the room where Vincent lived and died
Van Gogh would have loved to see the National Gallery’s exhibition on Hals
We spotlight eight paintings in the London show that Vincent singled out for special praise
Revealed: Van Gogh’s unknown period, exploring the landscape of the remote north
The first exhibition on Vincent’s visit to Drenthe, where art consoled him after a failed love affair
Recovering the stolen Van Gogh: the museum director recalls the emotional moment
Seized in a violent raid in 2020, returned in a blue Ikea bag—now being bought back from the insurer
Brighter than a thousand suns: atomic scientist Robert Oppenheimer and his three Van Goghs
The awesome nuclear test explosion at the heart of the new film seems prefigured by Vincent’s sunrise
Step inside Van Gogh’s London bedroom
It's 150 years since Vincent moved to Brixton, where he fell in love
In the spotlight: the only collector who bought a Van Gogh during Vincent’s lifetime
Anna Boch is celebrated with an ambitious exhibition, opening in Ostend
What paintings did Van Gogh hang above his bed?
“Pictures within pictures” reveal more about life in the Yellow House
How Van Gogh inspired his artist friends to exchange self-portraits
But Vincent was then shocked when Paul Gauguin’s painting arrived at the Yellow House
Ten surprises about Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’
Vincent and his brother Theo once considered the painting a failure—and it only got its name in the 1920s
Van Gogh’s astonishingly bold painting of the church at Auvers, now on show in Amsterdam
The picture exudes spirituality, but after the artist shot himself, its priest refused to help bury him
Why is Van Gogh so popular?
An in-depth interview with the director of the Van Gogh Museum, Emilie Gordenker, on its 50th anniversary
Van Gogh’s cypresses are the focus of an exhibition opening at the Met in New York
How the flamelike trees came to rival the sunflowers as a signature motif
Inspired by the Seine: an ambitious exhibition with Van Gogh’s Parisian landscapes opens in Chicago
Only one photograph of Vincent as an adult survives, drinking at a riverside café—but he turns his back on the camera