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

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

a blog by Martin Bailey

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”

a blog by Martin Bailey

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

a blog by Martin Bailey

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

a blog by Martin Bailey

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

a blog by Martin Bailey

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

a blog by Martin Bailey

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

a blog by Martin Bailey

Van Gogh 'immersive experiences': a guide to the global battle now reaching London

Presenting a vivid insight into Vincent’s art, Van Gogh Alive opens today in Kensington Gardens

a blog by Martin Bailey

India’s 'vaccine prince' has a Van Gogh landscape in his living room

Adar Poonawalla, who runs the world’s largest Covid-19 vaccine producer, claims to have the finest collection of European art in the sub-continent

a blog by Martin Bailey

How a Van Gogh painting was stolen from a Cairo museum—not once, but twice

The Khalil Museum, with its fabled Impressionists in a mansion by the Nile, has reopened after an 11-year renovation—without Vincent’s flower still-life

a blog by Martin Bailey

Irises: anniversary of Van Gogh’s finest garden picture, painted on his first morning in the asylum

Monet asked how the artist who made this exuberant masterpiece could possibly be unhappy—and a century later it became the most expensive work at auction

New discoveries about Van Gogh’s olive grove paintings revealed in upcoming Dallas and Amsterdam exhibitions

In Provence, Vincent loved the gnarled trees with a passion that rivalled his beloved sunflowers

Van Gogh's $30m riverscape with an absinthe-coloured sky comes up for sale at Christie’s

The story of Le Pont de Trinquetaille—with the young female mudlark and the ruffians from the red-light district

a blog by Martin Bailey

Van Gogh’s unknown period: his life in a remote Dutch heathland region

A new study and a 2023 exhibition will reveal how Vincent’s art developed in Drenthe—an escape from city life and his lover Sien

a blog by Martin Bailey

David Hockney follows in Van Gogh’s footsteps, painting fleeting spring blossom

Martin Gayford’s book pays tribute to Britain’s greatest living artist before an exhibition at London’s Royal Academy

a blog by Martin Bailey

Dutch police arrest over Van Gogh smash-and-grab raid: how long until the landscape is recovered?

The suspect is linked to a Frans Hals theft, which should help track down paintings from two museums

a blog by Martin Bailey

Who bought the €13m Van Gogh? Britain’s second richest family

Montmartre painting was auctioned twice by Sotheby’s, after a bidder failed to have the necessary cash

a blog by Martin Bailey

The astonishing tale of how a US vice president’s Van Gogh work ended up in Iran

Vincent’s print—inscribed “At Eternity’s Gate” by the artist—went from Nelson Rockefeller to Tehran’s Museum of Contemporary Art

a blog by Martin Bailey

Boris Johnson says Van Gogh’s Sunflowers 'lifts the soul'—as the London masterpiece is unveiled in Australia

Britons will have to wait a bit longer to enjoy the painting as Covid-19 delays the National Gallery’s international tour, now on its final stop in Canberra

a blog by Martin Bailey

Bought for around $1,000, now worth $10m: where was the newly unveiled Van Gogh landscape hidden away?

Montmartre windmill painting is on view with Sotheby’s for the first time since it left the easel

a blog by Martin Bailey

Pissarro predicted that Van Gogh 'would either go mad or leave the Impressionists far behind'

Fresh evidence of Camille’s admiration for Vincent: an unpublished document reveals he owned the Dutch artist’s portrait of their paintseller friend Père Tanguy

a blog by Martin Bailey

Hockney and Van Gogh paintings meet in Houston for exhibition on the joys of nature

Despite Covid-19, the show will open with works now safely flown across the Atlantic

a blog by Martin Bailey

Seller of $92m Botticelli also collected Van Gogh

Sheldon Solow’s Rhône riverscape is worth $40m—but what will happen to it now that the billionaire New York collector has died?

a blog by Martin Bailey

Van Gogh’s Japanese girl could fetch record $10m at auction

A Provençal drawing coming up at Christie’s New York is based on a painting in Washington, DC

a blog by Martin Bailey

Is Van Gogh hiding at the back of this Toulouse-Lautrec drawing?

In this rare depiction of Vincent, now in a Hiroshima museum, he is observing a raucous cabaret in Paris

a blog by Martin Bailey

A lost Van Gogh self-portrait had the most extraordinary frame that included his much-loved sunflowers—here it is reconstructed

The painting—which went missing in a German salt mine during the war—was given a gilded frame with swirling lines

a blog by Martin Bailey