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
Revealed: How Tate briefly considered acquiring a Van Gogh self-portrait—which was later exposed as a fake
The gallery couldn’t afford the price, of just under £20,000
New publication sheds fresh light on brothel scenes by Emile Bernard and Van Gogh
Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum this week publishes a catalogue focused on Bernard‘s rarely seen drawings featuring prostitution and sexual allegories
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 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’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
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
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
Van Gogh’s last paintings go on show in Amsterdam and Paris
The two exhibitions are the first to highlight the artist’s productive final months in Auvers
Van Gogh’s spectacular output: 60 paintings in six weeks, but he could not sell them
Amsterdam exhibition reveals more about Vincent’s final days in Auvers
A Van Gogh Montmartre scene with sunflowers is coming up at Sotheby’s—and could fetch $30m
Looted by the Nazis, after the war it was returned to the Rothschild family
Van Gogh's thwarted dream: a painting by the artist blocked from display in a French café
A plan to show the €75m “Garden at Auvers” in the village inn where the artist died has been halted at the last minute, although hopefully temporarily
How Van Gogh’s drawing skills were once trumped by a 16-year-old girl
Discovered: a sketch by a pastor’s daughter, who sat beside Van Gogh when they both depicted a woman peeling potatoes