Adventures with Van Gogh is a weekly blog by Martin Bailey, The Art Newspaper's long-standing correspondent and expert on the Dutch painter. Published on Fridays, stories range from newsy items about this most intriguing artist, to scholarly pieces based on meticulous investigations and discoveries.
Explore all of Martin’s adventures with Van Gogh here.
© Martin Bailey
Now owned by New York’s MoMA, the painting of Joseph Roulin is the star loan for a major exhibition opening in Boston
Years later, inspired by Vincent’s paintings, the French artist became a “wild beast”
His ‘Sunflowers’ painting does not make the list—and there are other surprises too
While painting Joseph Roulin and his wife and children, Vincent wrote in great excitement: “I’ve done the portraits of an entire family”
At the last minute hundreds of Kiefer’s home-grown sunflower seeds stuck on a huge painting needed to be replaced after they had attracted insects
The sketch reproduces a long-lost painting of the public garden outside the Yellow House
As Birmingham’s peasant woman painting goes on loan to Charleston, we explore the question of its provenance
The picture shows the ward where the artist slept after mutilating his ear—I witnessed the room’s tragic demolition
The New York-based LMI Group claims the $50 portrait is a previously unknown work by the Dutch master, perhaps now worth $15m, but the Van Gogh Museum rejects it
A new Dutch book provides the first comprehensive account of how the artist’s work has been targeted by thieves
Both pictures were acquired by the same private collector, they have not left Switzerland for a century
The National Gallery’s blockbuster exhibition, ‘Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers’, provides an unusual opportunity to see how the artist’s works have been framed by their owners
This year also marks the 150th anniversary of Vincent’s time as a young art dealer in England
Our review of 2024: record sales, exhibitions, fakes—and tracking down Dr Gachet
This unlikely grouping is part of an astonishing story involving New York’s Guggenheim Museum
Their astonishing 1896 exhibition is now being celebrated by the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands
The painting, which has just gone on display at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, was previously hidden away in a private collection for over a century
A pair of pictures with this bizarre geological feature have been brought together at London’s National Gallery, on loan from New York
Bought by a British collector, the Dutch landscape was donated to an institution dedicated to Pope John Paul II
The sketch of Austin Friars Church throws fresh light on Vincent’s draftsmanship, suggesting he was even more of a late developer as an artist
Ambitious shows to open in Boston, Amsterdam, Tokyo...
Gauguin then went on to make a ceramic self-portrait with bleeding ears
We name the London collector who parted with the painting
Vincent described his friend as having “a big, bearded face, very Socratic”
A vase of summer sunflowers in a late autumn scene proved a giveaway
Seized by Hitler's deputy, Hermann Göring, the picture disappeared in mysterious circumstances during the Second World War—but could it survive?
Visitors will be ‘blown away’ by the masterpieces—but there are intriguing and little-known stories behind many of the loans
Acquired by the arms dealer Emil Bührle, both have been on loan to a Zurich museum
“Moored Boats”, the “gem in the crown of the Bourbon collection”, will be auctioned in Hong Kong
As Vincent wrote to his brother, “life happens … in the garden, it isn’t so sad”
