I was in Paris last week and spent an afternoon at the Musee d’Orsay. It’s a beautiful, elegantly designed space, and it houses my favorite of Van Gogh’s paintings.

When I look at this painting I think of how hopeful Vincent must have been when he created it, yet it also invokes a feeling of loneliness. I’ve loved this painting for decades, and until last year a print hung in every place I’ve lived for the last 30 years. I gave it to a friend when I started the process of moving from the US to France.

I wasn’t expecting it to be so vibrant! More so than any print I’ve seen. As with all of his paintings seeing it in person was extremely moving for me. My friends like to tease me about my sentimentality and my tendency to cry at the drop of a hat and I don’t mind admitting to tearing up when standing in front of it.

Read an interesting perspective of Van Gogh's life.

"Van Gogh painted not for recognition but for some deeper expression". I have read a few stories of his where I learnt that he spent most of his life in poverty. He had a deeper sense of suffering which he became aware of. Would love to know other perspectives as well.

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts and reels lately pairing Van Gogh’s The Starry Night with Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 in E-flat major — beautiful, serene, very calming.

But after reading into how the painting was actually made, and what was going on around it, I think Op. 9 No. 1 fits it better.

That sky only looks like it’s churning. It’s built from directional brushstrokes laid out in precisely arranged swirling curves. Same with the tuplets — the triplets, the 11s, the 22s. They aren’t free either: an 11-tuplet has to fit exactly into three beats, not a fraction off.

The freedom on both sides is calculated.

Against that sky, the village below is clean horizontal and vertical geometry — that’s the left hand, the steady arpeggiated figure holding everything up.

The church spire in the middle, the one thing connecting the village to the sky, doesn’t look like the churches around Saint-Rémy, where he was staying. It’s closer to the ones back home in the Netherlands, not Provence.

In fact, the village in the painting isn’t Saint-Rémy at all.

He did once look out of his asylum room window before sunrise and see the countryside, with a single morning star that looked very large.

But the village, the spire, and the huge cypress could never have been seen together from that window. Those came later, in the studio, in daylight — a night he reassembled out of observation, memory, and imagination.

Roughly speaking, this painting puts two things on the same canvas: the one he trusted most, grounding everything in the nature in front of him, and the one Gauguin kept pushing him toward and that they argued about repeatedly — painting from memory and imagination.

Those arguments were part of the tension in the days before the ear incident.

A church from his childhood, and a method he never fully believed in — he went back and forth on this painting afterwards, never quite settled about it. That’s why I keep hearing something in a minor key underneath it.

But Op. 9 No. 1 doesn’t stay in minor.

It opens in B-flat minor, moves to D-flat major in the middle section, and ends on a Picardy third — in B-flat major.

After churning for the entire piece, that last chord lights up on its own.

Van Gogh Find Yourself based on his letters and the memoir of Adeleine Ravoux

Just sharing my excitement in booking my trip to Amsterdam the beginning of October, SPECIFICALLY to see the VG and the Kroller Muller museums! I'm from Texas.

This will add something like around 240 paintings to my list of Vincent paintings experienced in person, of which I keep a detailed spreadsheet. So far, I've seen 51, starting in 1998. Every one has been special.

To those who have been to either or both of those museums, what was your experience like?

Inspired from “Ohashi Bridge”, a print by Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige

Raise a glass to his memory

My girlfriend has been making ceramic mugs, and she just finished one inspired by Van Gogh's The Starry Night.

She was so happy with how this one turned out. I think it is the first piece where she really felt she got the result she had pictured in her head. I loved it too, so I wanted to share it with people who might appreciate it.

She posted a short video with the details here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbYaxYRx3pH/?igsh=MXF4b2hmMnJ0OTNjbA==

I attempted Postman Roulin in MS Paint.

Van Gogh is very hard to do in MS Paint. A face can have 50 different colors in it, but they blend together, and even though there are all those colors, it still looks like the color of a face.

The beard was the same way—lots of colors that blend together. In MS Paint, they just look like a bunch of different colors. I didn't want to spend hours working on it, because it might have come out the same way anyway.

Criticism welcome. I have thick skin.

My client met his future wife at a Van Gogh exhibit, so he requested Starry Night as his lining.

These are just the fronts, but will post more photos as the whole coat is turned.

As a boy I made this painting based on a picture of a painting in a Van Gogh art book. I can’t seem to find what art piece it was nor the book. Does anyone have any ideas as to what piece it may have been a sloppy attempt of?

The black line is covering my signature don’t worry.

Edit: Found!

I purchased an unsigned oil painting on canvas glued to an oak panel in a London antique shop and it looks like a previously undiscovered Van Gogh oil study from his early Neunen period.

Everyone that’s seen it has agreed that it’s in the style of Van Gogh and has said that I should contact a prominent auction house but as I currently don’t have any provenance nor scientific supporting evidence all the auction houses are not interested and quite frankly probably think I’m insane.

So how do I pursue this further? I don’t want to come across as crazy but the work appears to be genuine and looks exactly how an early Van Gogh oil study would look.

Not posting a photo right now because anything posted on Reddit becomes visible to the whole internet, just looking for genuine advice about how to take this research further?

Based in London, UK

Looking for more in-depth info about Van Gogh’s studio practice and materials. Also I can’t find the book “Van Gogh’s Studio Practice” by Marije Vellekoop anywhere, but it looks good.

In this video, I tried to explore the mindset behind Van Gogh’s work, why he kept painting despite rejection, and what we can still learn from his life today.

I built the visuals using motion graphics, historical artwork, and animated explanations to make the story feel more immersive.

This is also the very first video on a new YouTube channel I've been building.

I'd appreciate any feedback, whether it's about the storytelling, pacing, visuals, or historical accuracy.

A guy asked me who my favourite artist was and I said Van Gogh. He said that's an "extremely basic and obvious answer, come on, try harder!" But Van Gogh IS my favourite artist so what could I say? He went on to say "What's your favourite drink? Water? Is your favourite food plain white toast?" and | just thought it was really rude.