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

New York’s Metropolitan Museum buys four extremely rare Van Gogh prints

Vincent wanted to sell the set for under a dollar as “art for the people”—the museum will have paid several million

a blog by Martin Bailey

Van Gogh back on the road: major exhibitions coming in 2022

With shows in London, Vienna, four American cities and of course Amsterdam—I choose the highlight of the year

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What a year for Van Gogh: surprise discoveries, record prices and a boom in immersive experiences

From insects trapped in paint and Vincent's support of a brass band to the scene depicted in his final picture—plus it was suicide (not murder)

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Van Gogh gets a facelift: conservation of self-portrait to be revealed in London

The Kröller-Müller Museum painting will be unveiled in the Courtauld Gallery’s exhibition

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The secret behind Van Gogh’s satirical herring still life: they represent policemen

Vincent told his artist friend Paul Signac that the fish stood for the gendarmes who hassled him after he mutilated his ear

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Revealed: Larry Ellison, the world’s seventh richest person, has collected at least four Van Goghs

The Oracle Corporation co-founder owns the painting that hung above J.F. Kennedy’s hotel bed on the morning of his assassination—and the president’s final telephone call was about Van Gogh

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Van Gogh and friends: new show in Ohio puts Vincent alongside masters such as Rembrandt, Hokusai and Monet

But is it one exhibition or two? Surprisingly, Through Vincent’s Eyes: Van Gogh and His Sources will be quite different when it travels next year to California

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Four Van Goghs go for $161m in one evening in New York—double their Christie’s estimates

For the artist who failed to sell during his lifetime, there is now a surge in the market for Vincent’s late paintings

The astonishing survival of the farmhouse depicted in Van Gogh’s newly unveiled watercolour

Vincent’s picture of wheatstacks is coming up at Christie’s on 11 November—yours for around $25m

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Van Gogh’s favourite artists: how did they influence his own work?

Steven Naifeh, co-author of the best-selling biography, writes about the painters Vincent admired—and collects their pictures

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Another insect discovered in a Van Gogh painting—and this time it has left behind a trail

Show opening in Dallas and travelling to Amsterdam reveals findings from three-year international research project into Vincent's olive grove pictures

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Stunning $30m Van Gogh watercolour resurfaces at Christie’s New York following complex behind-the-scenes deal

The auction house—which estimates the painting at $30m—helped broker a deal between the seller and the descendants of two Jewish families who had it in the Nazi era

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Van Gogh’s Potato Eaters: Mistake or Masterpiece?

Amsterdam museum opens exhibition on Vincent’s early painting of a peasant family gathered for a meal

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70 paintings in 70 days: Van Gogh’s astonishing achievement at the end of his life

A dramatic sunset over a château was one of Vincent's last landscapes—and one of his largest

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Where was Van Gogh originally buried? We still don’t know

In an extraordinary scene, reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Vincent’s skull was held aloft and moved in 1905

Van Gogh’s mysterious Wheatfield with Crows—what does it really mean?

Long assumed to be Vincent’s final painting, this foreboding scene is also full of life

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Caught: the drug baron who claims to have bought €20m stolen Van Gogh paintings for 'their artistic value'

Arrested in Dubai, the story of Mafia suspect Raffaele Imperiale confirms long-suspected links between the drugs trade and art theft

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Secrets of the two unknown Van Gogh Sunflowers

One has been always been hidden away in private collections and will fetch a fortune when it emerges; the other was destroyed by an American bomb

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Ten surprising facts about Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, his greatest masterpiece

From a brothel garden to Nazi leader Hermann Göring’s fake—all part of the sunflower story

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Exuberant Van Gogh landscape—featuring his beloved olive and cypress trees—could well make $40m at Christie's New York

Always hidden away in private collections, the painting will probably sell to a someone in the Far East

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Discovered: a very early photograph of the trees in Van Gogh’s final picture, painted just hours before he fired the fatal shot

On the anniversary of Vincent’s death, his picture can be seen as “a suicide note in colour”

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The Harvest: painted in a single summer's day, here's why this is Van Gogh’s finest landscape

Vincent needed to recover from his intensive work with a stiff drink and his beloved pipe

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Exclusive: Rescued from an attic, lost Van Gogh landscape surfaces in Japan—here it is in colour

Vincent's watercolour of a Dutch meadow with cows was exhibited once, in 1903, and is known only from a small black-and-white photograph

a blog by Martin Bailey

Van Gogh’s self-portraits: what do they really reveal?

An exhibition at London’s Courtauld Gallery will be the most comprehensive ever held of Vincent's paintings of himself

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How Van Gogh helped set up a brass band in his village

Dutch trombonist discovers documentary evidence revealing that Vincent supported a musical group which still plays today

A new Van Gogh work discovered hidden in a book

Reproduced here for the first time: a trio of sketches from Vincent’s village—designed as a bookmark

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Discovered: American couple buys a picture by Van Gogh’s friend Edmund Brooke for $45 in antiques shop

Vincent was fascinated by his Australian colleague’s links with Japan—and together they painted landscapes in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise

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A Degas bought by the Van Gogh Museum sparks off an ethical debate: are female nudes OK?

The controversial pastel stars in a show of new acquisitions in Amsterdam

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