Starry Night
1889 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Van Gogh painted the churning sky and its eleven stars from a window of the asylum at Saint-Rémy, partly from memory.
★ 9.6
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Sunflowers
1887 · National Gallery, London
Some blooms burst with petals and others have gone to seed, all yellow on yellow, painted to decorate the house where Gauguin was to come.
★ 8.2
Self-Portrait (van Gogh)
1889 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
The background ripples around his head like a current in the same blue-green as his suit, and his beard burns red against it.
★ 7.7
Wheatfield with Crows
1890 · Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Three paths run into the wheat and none of them go anywhere. Painted at Auvers in his last weeks, and read too neatly ever since.
★ 7.7
Cafe Terrace at Night
1888 · Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo
Van Gogh set up outside and painted the terrace on the spot after dark, pleased that he had used no black at all.
★ 7.5
The Night Cafe
1888 · Yale Art Gallery, New Haven
Van Gogh wanted a room where a man could ruin himself or go mad, and got it with red walls and a green ceiling.
★ 7.5
Wheat Field with Cypresses
1889 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Van Gogh loved the cypress and compared it to an Egyptian obelisk, then set one flaming up the right side of a Provençal field.
★ 7.5
Portrait of Dr. Gachet
1890 · Private collection
The doctor who was caring for him leans his head on one hand, a sprig of foxglove on the table, the background rippling blue.
★ 7.5
Irises
1889 · Getty Museum, Los Angeles
One white iris stands alone among a whole bed of blue-violet ones, the blades twisting and crowding right up to the edge of the canvas.
★ 7.4
Starry Night Over the Rhone
1888 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Gaslights along the Arles quay drop long quivering reflections into the water, the Great Bear overhead, a couple walking arm in arm below.
★ 7.2
The Potato Eaters
1885 · Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Van Gogh made the faces deliberately coarse and the browns deliberately muddy, wanting it clear that these people had dug the meal themselves.
★ 7.2
Almond Blossoms
1890 · Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
He painted it for his brother's newborn son, named Vincent after him, and cropped the boughs against the sky like a Japanese print.
★ 7.2
Mountains at Saint-Remy
1889 · Guggenheim, New York City
The hills buckle and heave in the same thick strokes he gave his skies, so that the rock ends up moving too.
★ 6.3