Vincent van Gogh

The more than 700 letters that van Gogh wrote to his brother Théo (published 1911, translated 1958) constitute a remarkably illuminating record of the life of an artist and a thorough documentation of his unusually fertile output—about 750 paintings and 1,600 drawings. The French painter Chaïm Soutine, and the German painters Oskar Kokoschka, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Emil Nolde, owe more to van Gogh than to any other single source. Many of van Gogh’s paintings remained in his family after his death, passing from Théo to his widow and then to their son, and are now on view at the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh in Amsterdam. The museum opened in 1973 and contains some 200 paintings, 500 drawings, and 700 letters, along with the artist’s collection of Japanese prints.

Although Van Gogh’s works failed to find an appreciative audience during his lifetime, their popularity rose steadily during the 20th century. His paintings brought record prices at auctions: His Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1890), for example, sold at Christie's in 1990 for $82.5 million. Exhibitions of van Gogh’s works have proved to be enormous crowd-pleasers, including Van Gogh’s Van Goghs: Masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum (1998-1999), Van Gogh: Face to Face (an exhibition of portraits, 2000-2001), and Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South (2001-2002).

See also Postimpressionism.