Should you go to Van Gogh? If you’re in Amsterdam, the answer is a resounding yes!
Even if you can’t properly pronounce his name. The Dutch say “Fahn Khokh.”
Just try that, even once, I dare you. It doesn’t slide off the tongue. But if you want to impress the Dutch, aim for this throatier, gutteral version.
The Van Gogh Museum has the world’s largest collection of artworks by the artist. It owns over 200 paintings, 400 drawings, and 700 riveting personal letters.
The museum, however, isn’t just a collection of pretty Post-Impressionism paintings. It’s an intimate look at the mind and life behind the sunflowers, the starry nights, and the swirling self-portraits.
Packed with both iconic masterpieces and lesser known works, this museum lets you follow Van Gogh’s wild, brilliant, heartbreaking journey up close and personal.
You’ll also see works of his contemporaries who influenced his art like Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Camille Pissarro.
In this guide, I’ll give you an overview of the museum, point out the must see masterpieces, and give you tips for visiting.
Museum Overview & Quick Tips
Floor Plan
Here how the museum is laid out:
- Ground Floor: “Face to face” with Van Gogh (self-portraits)
- 1st Floor: Early works and earthy peasant scenes like The Potato Eaters
- 2nd Floor: Paris period, when he discovers Impressionism and his palette brightens dramatically
- 3rd Floor: Showcases Van Gogh’s time in Arles, Saint-Rémy, and Auvers-sur-Oise, his most productive period. Here, you’ll see iconic works like Sunflowers, The Bedroom, and Wheatfield with Crows
- Exhibition Hall: Connected to the glass entrance, this is where you’ll find the temporary exhibitions. It’s accessed by an underground tunnel called “the node.”
In 2014, the museum redesigned the presentation of its permanent collection. It wanted to better emphasize Van Gogh’s tortured life, which so many fans find compelling.
So, you will get the complete story — his personal ambitions, his emotions, the many myths, and his relationship with other artists. You can see how his artistic style rapidly developed over time.
The display is still roughly chronological. But it is arranged according to themes. Curators may move the paintings around to suit that from time to time.
Van Gogh artworks can seem overly familiar, I know. But there will likely be things you haven’t seen before in this museum. You may even wonder if they are really by Van Gogh!
Quick Tips
You have to be organized to go to this museum. The museum receives over 2 million visitors a year.
- Pre-book tickets or guided tours at least a month in advance.
- The busiest visiting times are between 11:00 am and 3:00 pm.
- You’ll have to check your backpacks in automatic lockers where you set the combination. See instructions in the photo below.
- Plan to budget at least 2-3 hours, depending on how well you know Van Gogh.
If you want to learn about Van Gogh’s backstory, you can read my Van Gogh murder mystery or my guide to his paintings at Paris’ Musee d’Orsay that contains a mini biography.
Museum Backstory
When Van Gogh died in 1890, he didn’t leave a will.
The artist’s three sisters decided his artworks should all go to his brother Theo, who loyally supported him throughout his career. This included works by other artists as well.
After Theo’s death, his widow, Johanna Van Gogh-Bonner, inherited the lot. At the time, Vincent was largely unknown outside small artistic circles, and his work hadn’t sold.
She sold a few of his artworks. But the majority remained in her possession and she wouldn’t let Vincent be forgotten.
Johanna edited and published the letters between Vincent and Theo,.
They gave the public insight into Vincent’s mind, struggles, and artistic passion. These letters became essential in humanizing him and transforming him into a romantic, tragic figure.
She arranged important early exhibitions of his work, including a breakthrough show in 1905 at the Stedelijk. Without Johanna, Van Gogh might have been a footnote in art history.
On her death, her son Vincent inherited the collection. It was loaned to the Stedelijk Museum for decades before a new specially-designed museum was built.
In 1962, the collection was put in the care of the Van Gogh Foundation. The Dutch state built the museum and acts as the collection’s administrator.
Legally, the collection is on permanent loan to the Netherlands. In 1973, Queen Juliana officially opened the museum. It’s still housed in the same building that it occupies today.
The building was designed by one of the foremost De Stijl members of the day, Gerrit Rietveld. The annex, which houses the temporary exhibitions, was later added and designed by Kisha Kurosawa in 1999.
Guide To The Van Gogh Museum
Here are the masterpieces you can’t miss:
The Potato Eaters
This is considered Van Gogh’s first masterpiece. It’s also the largest work he ever painted.
Van Gogh was deeply sympathetic to the sufferings of common people. The gray-brown canvas portrays a peasant family at dinner.
They have nothing to eat except a steaming plate of potatoes. The meal is lit by a single light.
To the right, a woman pours chicory. This was a poor man’s substitute for coffee.
Van Gogh wanted you to feel their plight. But also to feel like, through honest labor, they earned their meal with dignity.
The style is rather crude. Van Gogh wasn’t a great technician. The painting is laid on thick. Still, it’s compelling.
Self Portrait as a Painter
Van Gogh painted many self portraits. They’re some of his most iconic works.
It wasn’t out of vanity that he painted them though. It was for lack of money. Instead of paying models, the artist bought a mirror and used his own image as a laboratory.
In this painting, he confidently portrays himself as an artist with his tools. It’s very detailed and you can see his new palette of bright colors.
Van Gogh didn’t have the flair or ease of a born painter. But what he did have was a desire to achieve, which manifested itself in an eruption of forceful brushstrokes.
Self-Portrait With Straw Hat
In Paris, Van Gogh learned the Impressionists’ techniques. You can see it in this painting.
It has a shimmering effect, which comes from daubs of different colors placed side by side on the canvas. At a distance, some of the colors blend in to create an image.
Van Gogh uses blue, yellow, green, and red to create a brown beard. It’s a beard throbbing with excitement.
The more finished and famous of his straw hat self-portraits is housed in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Self-Portrait with Gray Felt Hat
In this painting, Van Gogh consciously leaves behind his Impressionist friends and strikes out on his own in a new style.
He was tiring of Paris (and absinthe) by then. And set out for sunny southern France.
In this self-portrait, his face screams out from a swirling background. Van Gogh wears a neutral expression, stares straight ahead, and dons a soft gray hat. The background is a field of cool tones: blues, greens, and purples.
His brushwork is more directional and sculptural, not dappled like Monet’s. He uses color to express inner life, not just to record optical effects.
The Bedroom
When he lived in Arles, Van Gogh made this iconic painting of The Bedroom in his “Yellow House.”
It may be the most famous painting of a bedroom in Western art history. The bright colors and straight lines were meant to express absolute repose and serenity.
Although the picture symbolized relaxation to the artist, The Bedroom canvas itself is the opposite. It seems to teem with nervous energy, instability, and turmoil. The effect is heightened by the sharply receding perspective.
The rules of perspective are not accurately applied in the painting. This was a deliberate choice.
If you look closely, you can see what may be a self-portrait on the right wall.
Augustine Roulin
The woman portrayed here is the wife of the postman Joseph Roulin, one of van Gogh’s closest friends in Arles. His portrait is in the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia.
The family agreed to pose for Van Gogh, and he produced quite a number of family portraits.
Augustine’s nickname is la berceuse, which means both lullaby and babysitter. The cord in her hand was used to rock the cradle.
For Van Gogh, she was the ultimate symbol of motherhood. He frames her with flowers.
Sunflowers
Sunflower paintings are iconic of Van Gogh’s oeuvre. They might be the most famous of all his artworks, his signature subject.
There are five different versions of this painting. The museum owns the last of the five.
The sunflowers are vigorously energetic. They have fierce yellow hues. The flowers emerge through lumps of paint rather than brushstrokes.
Van Gogh wanted the sunflowers to look like “stained glass in a Gothic cathedral.”
He painted them with thick stabbing brush strokes of ochre and red against a turquoise background. The flowers seem to take on a life of their own.
Almond Blossoms
This famous Van Gogh painting is a tender expression of brotherly love, painted in St. Remy. Van Gogh created it for Theo after the birth of his son, also named Vincent.
There are several versions of it. But this is the most famous one.
Almond blossoms are symbols of new life. Interestingly, the artist’s nephew would later become the founder of the Van Gogh Foundation.
The almond tree is among the first to bloom in late winter, often while snow is still on the ground. For Van Gogh, it symbolized awakening, rebirth, and resilience. It’s an especially poignant choice given his ongoing mental health struggles.
Van Gogh, like everyone else back then, was obsessed with Japanese wood blocks and you can see it here. The branches cut diagonally across the canvas against a flat blue background, with no sense of depth or horizon.
Irises
While holed up at the psychiatric institution in St. Remy in Provence, Van Gogh painted a glorious vase of irises twice. Both works were intended as a study in color.
In one still life, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he created a soft pastel effect in the still life.
But in this museum’s painting, the irises are an intense purple set against an intense yellow background.
The decorative forms stand out vividly. Although they look blue, they were originally purple and have faded over time.
Wheatfield with Crows
After leaving the hospital in St. Remy, Van Gogh went to live in Auvers-sur-Oise. It was a village close to Paris and his brother Theo.
There, he was incredibly prolific. The last few months of his life, he churned out magnificent landscape paintings with restless energy.
This enigmatic painting has long been regarded as Van Gogh’s last work. We know now that it wasn’t; that was Tree Roots.
Still, it’s has some somber symbolism that you can’t miss. The skies are dark, the black crows hover like ghosts, and an ominous path leads nowhere.
The Sower
In this small painting, a dark silhouetted figure sows seeds in a tilled field under the burning sun. Van Gogh himself had worked as a sower during his youth in Belgium.
The Sower is a pivotal work, and a perfect example of him breaking away from Impressionism and forging his own expressive, symbolic style.
He painted multiple versions between 1888 and 1889. The most famous one is in this museum.
It was directly inspired by Jean-François Millet, whose rural scenes Van Gogh revered. But Van Gogh transformed the subject into something far more intense and modern.
The heat from the sun radiates from thick swirls of paint. A tree slashes across the painting. Van Gogh clearly rejects naturalism in favor of emotional truth.
Paintings By Contemporaries & Other Artists
Scattered throughout the museum are works by Van Gogh’s fellow artists, those he influenced and those who influenced him.
You’ll see pieces by Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Benard, and Kees van Dongen. You can see the influences of Impressionism, Fauvism, and Pointillism on Van Gogh.
These were artists Van Gogh who knew personally or corresponded with. Their work is often shown alongside his to highlight shared ideas or contrasting styles.
You’ll also see pieces by artists Van Gogh admired like Millet. And painters who came after him whose bold colors, emotional intensity, or expressive brushwork were inspired by Van Gogh.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my guide to the Van Gogh Museum. You may find these other Netherlands guides useful:
- Tips for visiting the Netherlands
- Guide to the Anne Frank House
- Guide to the Rijksmuseum
- Guide to MOCO Amsterdam
- Guide to the Stedelijk Museum
- Guide to Rembrandt House
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