Van Gogh's most famous paintings: history and where to see them

Van Gogh's most famous paintings are The Starry Night, the Sunflowers, Café Terrace at Night, The Bedroom, The Potato Eaters, The Night Café, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, Irises, Almond Blossom, the Portrait of Dr Gachet and Wheatfield with Crows. Almost all of them were painted in the last five years of his life, between 1885 and 1890. Today they are divided between Amsterdam, New York, London, Paris and Otterlo.

On this page you will find them all, in chronological order, with their story and the museum where you can see them. We begin with the one we have printed on Amalfi paper: the most luminous of his night scenes.

Vincent van Gogh in ten years of painting

Vincent van Gogh was born in the Netherlands in 1853 and began painting late, at twenty-seven, after working as an art dealer's assistant, a teacher and a preacher. In just ten years he painted about 860 paintings and more than a thousand drawings, and sold very few of them. Throughout his life he was supported by his brother Theo, an art dealer in Paris, to whom he wrote hundreds of letters that still tell us about his paintings in his own words.

His painting moves from the dark tones of Holland to the bright colours of the south of France: Paris, then Arles in Provence, the asylum at Saint-Rémy and finally Auvers-sur-Oise, where he died in July 1890, at the age of thirty-seven.

Café Terrace at Night: the night full of colour

Vincent van Gogh, Café Terrace at Night (Place du Forum, Arles), September 1888, oil on canvas. Otterlo, Kröller-Müller Museum

We are in Arles, in the Place du Forum, in September 1888. Under a large yellow awning lit by a lamp, the café tables are full of people; on the right the street disappears into the darkness between the houses, and above is a deep blue sky full of stars. It is the first painting in which Van Gogh painted a starry sky, nine months before The Starry Night.

Van Gogh painted it at night, on the spot, and was proud of it. He wrote to his sister Wil that he had painted "a night painting without black", made only of blue, violet and green, with the square lit up in yellow. That is the very secret of the painting: the darkness is not black, it is colour. The café still exists, and for years it has been called the "Café Van Gogh".

Café Terrace at Night on Amalfi paper, to hang at home

Of all Van Gogh's paintings, the Café Terrace is the most cheerful: a summer evening, the yellow lights, people sitting at the tables and the stars above. Hanging at home, it brings a piece of Provence and the warmth of an evening outdoors.

We have printed it on a sheet of handmade Amalfi paper, the oldest paper in Italy: the yellow of the awning and the blue of the sky stay full and warm, and around the image remains the margin with the deckled edges of the handmade process. The sheet measures 29 x 42 cm (11.4 x 16.5 in) and is mounted in a handmade beech frame: 31 x 44 cm (12.2 x 17.3 in) in all. Each print comes with a certificate of authenticity, also on Amalfi paper, signed by the craftsman who printed it.

Why it is not a poster

Van Gogh laid on his paint in thick, vibrant brushstrokes: on glossy paper they go flat. We chose the oldest paper in Italy.

Van Gogh's other most famous paintings

Here are the other masterpieces, in chronological order, with the museum where they are today.

The Potato Eaters (1885)

The Potato Eaters, 1885. Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum

His first true masterpiece, painted in Nuenen, in the Netherlands: a peasant family eating potatoes by the light of an oil lamp. The colours are dark, "the colour of a really dusty potato", as he wrote himself. Van Gogh wanted to show that those hands had dug the earth in which the potatoes had grown.

Sunflowers (1888)

Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers, 1888. London, National Gallery

Painted in Arles to decorate the room of his friend Paul Gauguin, they have become the very symbol of Van Gogh. There are seven versions, divided between London, Amsterdam, Munich, Philadelphia and Tokyo. We have told their full story in Van Gogh's Sunflowers.

The Night Café (1888)

The Night Café, 1888. New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery

The other side of the Terrace: the interior of an all-night café in Arles, with the billiard table, the yellow lamps and the red walls. Van Gogh wrote that with the red and the green he had tried to express "the terrible human passions": a place where you can ruin yourself, go mad, commit a crime.

The Bedroom (1888)

The Bedroom, 1888. Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum

His room in the Yellow House: the wooden bed, two chairs, the washbasin, the pictures on the walls. He wanted it to convey "utter repose". He painted three versions: the first is in Amsterdam, the others at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889)

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889. London, The Courtauld

Painted a few weeks after the night of 23 December 1888, when, after a quarrel with Gauguin, Van Gogh cut off his left ear. In the mirror he appears with the right one bandaged. Behind him, a Japanese print: the sign that, in spite of everything, he wanted to get back to work.

The Starry Night (1889)

The Starry Night, 1889. New York, Museum of Modern Art

Van Gogh's most famous painting: the sky curling into swirls above a village, a great cypress like a flame, the moon and the stars that seem to explode. He painted it from the window of the asylum at Saint-Rémy, partly from memory. We discuss it in Van Gogh's The Starry Night.

Irises (1889)

Irises, 1889. Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum

One of the first paintings made in the garden of the asylum at Saint-Rémy: a bed of blue irises, with a single white flower. In 1987 it sold at auction for almost $54 million, at the time the highest price ever paid for a painting.

Almond Blossom (1890)

Almond Blossom, 1890. Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum

White almond branches against a blue sky, as in a Japanese print. Van Gogh painted it for the birth of his nephew, Theo's son, who bore his own name: Vincent. It is the painting of hope: Theo and his wife Johanna hung it in their home, above the piano.

Portrait of Dr Gachet (1890)

Portrait of Dr Gachet, 1890. Paris, Musée d'Orsay

The doctor who looked after him in Auvers, with his head resting on his hand and a melancholy expression. There are two versions: this one is at the Musée d'Orsay; the other, privately owned, sold at auction in 1990 for $82.5 million, a world record for many years.

Wheatfield with Crows (1890)

Wheatfield with Crows, 1890. Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum

A yellow field under a stormy sky, three paths that lead nowhere and a flock of black crows. Painted in Auvers a few weeks before his death, it is often described as his last painting, but it is not: it is, however, the one that more than any other feels like a farewell.

On our blog you will also find The Poet's Garden, another Arles painting made for Gauguin's room.

Where to see Van Gogh's paintings

The first museum to see is the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the largest collection in the world, with The Potato Eaters, The Bedroom, Almond Blossom, a version of the Sunflowers and Wheatfield with Crows. The second is the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, in the Netherlands, with Café Terrace at Night. Then there are MoMA in New York (The Starry Night), the National Gallery and The Courtauld in London, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Getty in Los Angeles (Irises) and the Yale University Art Gallery (The Night Café). And in Italy? Two of his paintings are in Rome, at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna: The Gardener (1889) and L'Arlésienne (1890). In Milan, at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in the Villa Reale, there is a watercolour of Breton women, a copy of a work by his friend Émile Bernard.

If you want his brightest night always before your eyes, there is our print of Café Terrace at Night on Amalfi paper.

Where to hang it, and who to give it to

In the dining room or kitchen, next to the table, because it is the painting of a dinner outdoors among friends. In a hallway or corridor, where the yellow of the awning lights up the wall as soon as you walk in. In the study, to always have a summer evening in Provence before you. And as a gift for anyone who loves Van Gogh, travelling in France or evenings with friends, or for someone who has just opened a bar, a restaurant or a café.

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