Art history

Did Van Gogh’s brother Theo have syphilis?

It is almost certain, and this could well be a reason behind Vincent’s suicide

Van Gogh’s potatoes: few artists would choose this subject for a still life

Vincent borrowed a casserole from his brother’s kitchen for the painting, which has just been acquired by Rotterdam’s art museum

Dramatic turn: how the theatre was integral to Rembrandt’s art

A new exhibition in Amsterdam explores how the Old Master's paintings and drawings were inspired and informed by the art of acting

Ten reasons why we love Van Gogh

It’s not only the art, but also his extraordinary life story

Booksreview

Cities are the heroes in an 'easy-going and unpreachy' publication that takes us on whirlwind tour of art history

Fifteen art capitals are captured at their brilliant apogee in Caroline Campbell's book

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 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 '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”

Booksreview

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s ‘heretical’ writings on painting are spirited and contrarian

The Italian filmmaker—and occasional painter—was scathing about Picasso but delighted in Caravaggio

Where did Van Gogh shoot himself?

It may have been near the inn where he stayed—not in a more distant wheatfield

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

‘Breakthrough’ attribution for Artemisia Gentileschi painting stored at England's Hampton Court

Royal Collection curators checked provenance records and pigments, tracing the work to Queen Henrietta Maria

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

Step inside Van Gogh’s London bedroom

It's 150 years since Vincent moved to Brixton, where he fell in love

Technologyanalysis

Is AI generating an ‘averaged’, one-sided, view of art history?

Artists are getting creative to counter visual language being skewed by image-generating apps that average out scraped stock photos and social media files into “mean images”

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

Religionanalysis

Breaking a taboo: religion is being invited into three major museums

Working with Visual Commentary on Scripture, London’s National Gallery and Berlin’s Bode Museum and Gemäldegalerie are uniting art and theology

How Lavinia Fontana went from ‘prospect’ to first professional woman artist

An exhibition of the 16th-century Italian painter at the National Gallery of Ireland tells the story of her unique circumstances and reveals the results of a recently restored work

Mysterious Picasso portrait may be the key to Adrienne Fidelin’s place in art history

Fidelin, a Black dancer and model who was Man Ray’s partner and muse for years, is believed to be the subject of a Picasso portrait that has not been shown publicly since 1985

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

How Van Gogh’s 'Terrace of a Café at Night'—with its starry sky—was inspired by a friend’s painting

The work’s dramatic colour contrast echoes a Parisian street scene by Louis Anquetin, now on show at London’s National Gallery