by From sunflowers to starry nights, Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh is one of the most famous names in Western art history.
He is thought to have painted 2,100 works of art in his lifetime, including around 860 oil paintings – many of which were created in the last two years of his life. With his work hanging in the world’s leading museums and galleries, including the National Gallery, the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay and the Met, his 1888 painting, Verger avec cyprès, fetched $117 million at auction in 2022, there is no denying Van Gogh’s lasting influence on the art world.
With the weather so cold and so dark, there has never been a better time to enjoy his works. Here we have gathered 10 of Van Gogh’s best paintings.
Potato Eaters
Potato Eaters was Van Gogh’s first major work and it seems to have been one of the pieces he was most proud of, due to its authenticity. His aim was to show the harsh reality of rural life: the peasants are painted in clay tones with rough faces and bony hands, to show the hard work they do every day.
Terrace Café at Night
Despite being painted over 130 years ago, this café is still in France and has since been renamed the Café Van Gogh. This artwork is the first time Van Gogh’s famous post-impressionist starry sky appears in one of his pieces, and is believed to have been painted on the ground, in person, rather than from memory. Although the artwork does not bear his signature, he is widely known as Van Gogh, as he mentions Café Terrace at Night in several of his letters.
The bedroom
The Bedroom is a painting of a room in Van Gogh’s Yellow House, in Arles. The artist seems to have arranged the room in his house carefully before starting the work, and he chose his own paintings to hang in the space. The buoyant wall in the background was a deliberate choice by the artist – in a letter to his brother he explains that the painting is in the space without shadows so that the picture would resemble a Japanese print.
Sunflower
You don’t have to be an art lover to recognize Van Gogh’s Sunflower, undoubtedly one of the most famous flowers of all time. Only three colors of yellow were used to make this painting, a color chosen by Van Gogh because it was associated with happiness. Originally, the Dutch painter planned to paint the sunflowers as a series of 12, but in the end he finished five. They are exhibited in galleries around the world, including one painting in the National Gallery, which transfers the largest amount of goods for the gallery of any of his paintings.
Magazines
Van Gogh completed almost 142 pieces during his stay at the Saint Rémy de Provence asylum, where he was a volunteer patient from 1889 to 1890 – and this piece was one of his first. The hospital garden provided the artist with plenty of inspiration during his time there and he believed he could keep himself from becoming distracted by painting. The flowers in this work were originally painted purple but have now turned blue due to a fading red hue over time.
Wheat Field with Cypresses
This piece was also inspired by the view from his sanctuary window. Van Gogh was so pleased with the summer landscape, he made two studio renderings: one of the same size – which hangs in The Met, and another smaller replica which he planned to present to his mother and sister.
Starry night
One of the artist’s most famous works, Starry Night, is another depiction of the view from the east window of his room at the sanctuary of Saint Rémy de Provence. In particular, it is the only painting he has that was created at night from his year-long stay in hospital, despite the fact that he wrote to his brother Theo about his interest in painting after hours. This abstract landscape painting was one of the artist’s later works, as he killed himself the following year. He is thought to have created around 21 variations in total.
Almond blossoms
This iconic painting inspired the birth of Van Gogh’s nephew, who bore the same name as the artist. Part of a group of paintings from 1888 and 1890, it was a gift from his brother Theo. Branches of flowers and bushes against a vivid blue sky are a popular motif in the artist’s work, but in this case the flower buds represent the arrival of Vincent Willem’s child.
Starry Night over the Rhône
Starry Night Over the Rhône (1888) is the sister work to Starry Night (1889). Although Starry Night was painted from Van Gogh’s hospital room, this lesser-known midnight scene was painted on the banks of the Rhône river, which was only a short walk from his home in Arles.
Self Portrait, 1887
Van Gogh painted more than 36 portraits from 1886 to 1890 and in a letter to his brother he said that painting them helped him to improve his creative skills. Completed in Paris in the autumn of 1887, two years before he was admitted to hospital, this painting is one of his most recognizable self-portraits and the image he felt seems to capture his “real character”. It is also worth noting that all his later self-portraits show his head without revealing the ear that he so famously mentioned.
