Even though not acknowledge during his life, today, Vincent Van Gogh is considered to be the most famous Post-Impressionist painter. Van Gogh created almost 900 paintings but he didn’t sell any of them. He had a tough life, battling poverty and depression which led him to commit suicide at the age of 37. In the following text, we are going to list some of the well-known paintings he created during the course of 10 years.
His most prominent work is “The Starry Night”. He painted in it June, in 1889, remembering the view from his room at Saint-Remy-de Province sanatorium. He omitted the window bars and painted the village as well as the Moon, Venus, and other stars, showing his interest in astronomy.
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Although this is without a doubt his most famous work, Van Gogh considered it to be just another failure. This painting was in possession of several art collectors, but since 1941 it has been a part of a permanent collection in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
“Irises” is one of the several paintings Van Gogh created while at the asylum. He started working on it during the first week of his stay at the Saint-Remy-de-Province. Since he believed that he will be fine if he had the ability to paint, he called this painting “the lightning conductor of my illness”. In 1990 it was sold to J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles where the visitors can see it today. If you want to have a perfect copy of it in your possession, click here to learn more.
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When it comes to the paintings of still life, Van Gogh is the master. The series called “Sunflowers” consists of 12 canvases. Five of them he created in Paris and seven in Arles. They feature vibrant colors and illustrate the natural beauty of this flower. The painting he created in Arles (four original ones) were a gift to his friend Gauguin, but only two ended up being displayed in his home.
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Vincent described “Café Terrace at Night” as painting without black color, but with blue, green, violet, with yellow illuminating certain aspects of it. He thought that “the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day”. Some consider this to be his first “Starry Night” while others analyze it further stating that 12 figures are a representation of da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”. The café still exists, only now it is called “Café Van Gogh”.
“The Potato Eaters” from 1885 is thought to be Van Gogh’s earliest masterpiece. His goal was to depict the peasants as realistically as possible and he made numerous paintings and sketches of it. The original sketch is at the Kröller-Müller Museum and lithographs of the image are kept at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
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Finally, between 1886 and 1889, Vincent painted over 30 self-portraits and most prominent of all must be “The Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear”. After an argument with Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh’s cut off his ear with a razor and then gave it to a prostitute named Rachel and told her to guard it with her life. Since his left ear was bandaged and the painting shows it was the right one, it is supposed that he used a mirror when working on this masterpiece.
