How Did Van Gogh Become Famous After He Died? The Brother, the Widow and 600 Letters

Vincent van Gogh became famous only after his death, and mostly because of the people who refused to let his work disappear. When he died in 1890 at the age of 37, he was, in the words of one summary of his life, considered "a madman and a failure". His fame was built afterwards: by his sister-in-law Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, who inherited hundreds of his paintings, letters and drawings; by a series of exhibitions in the 1890s and 1900s; and by the publication of his letters to his brother Theo, which turned the painter into one of the most compelling characters in art history.

A late start for a famous painter

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, in the south of the Netherlands, the son of a Protestant minister. He did not begin as an artist. From 1869 he worked for the art dealers Goupil & Cie, including a period in London, then tried teaching and religious work. As a lay missionary among the coal miners of the Borinage in Belgium, he was dismissed in 1879 for "undermining the dignity of the priesthood".

Only around 1881, in his late twenties, did he commit seriously to art, and he first worked in oils in 1882. That means his entire career as a painter lasted roughly a decade. In that time he produced about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life.

Dark beginnings: The Potato Eaters

His first major work, The Potato Eaters, was painted in May 1885 in the Dutch village of Nuenen. It shows a peasant family eating by lamplight, in heavy browns and greens. Theo, who worked as an art dealer in Paris and supported Vincent financially throughout his life, felt the paintings were too dark for the bright Impressionist taste of the time.

Paris and the colour revolution

In March 1886 Vincent moved to Paris to live with Theo. There he met avant-garde painters, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, and collected hundreds of Japanese woodblock prints. His palette changed dramatically. The muddy browns gave way to bright colour and short, energetic brushstrokes, and he experimented with Pointillist techniques. The painter we recognise today was born in these two years.

Arles, sunflowers and the ear

In February 1888 he left for Arles in the south of France, hoping to found an artists' community. On 1 May he leased the famous Yellow House. When Gauguin finally agreed to join him, arriving on 23 October, Vincent prepared by painting sunflowers, writing to Theo that he was painting "nothing but large Sunflowers".

The collaboration ended badly. On 23 December 1888, after an argument with Gauguin, Van Gogh cut off his left ear with a razor, in part or in full, wrapped it in paper and delivered it to a young woman at a nearby brothel. The hospital recorded a diagnosis of "acute mania with generalised delirium". Later, a petition from local residents led the police to close the Yellow House.

The Starry Night, seen through a barred window

On 8 May 1889 Van Gogh entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. From his east-facing bedroom window he watched the sky before sunrise. Around 18 June 1889 he painted The Starry Night: a swirling sky, a flame-like cypress and a quiet village.

Two details surprise many people. The village was not visible from his window; it was based on a sketch made elsewhere. And the brightest "star" next to the cypress is probably Venus, the morning star. Van Gogh himself was not impressed. In a letter to Émile Bernard later that year he called the painting a "failure". Since 1941 it has hung in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, far from the barred window that inspired it.

Seventy days in Auvers

In May 1890 Van Gogh moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris, to be near the doctor Paul Gachet. He worked at an astonishing pace, producing about 70 oil paintings in roughly as many days. On 27 July 1890 he shot himself in the chest with a revolver, and he died two days later, on 29 July. Theo, who was with him at the end, reported that his last words were "The sadness will last forever".

Doctors and historians have proposed many explanations for his illness, including bipolar disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy and acute intermittent porphyria, made worse by poor diet, overwork, insomnia and alcohol. No single diagnosis is accepted by everyone.

Jo van Gogh-Bonger: the woman who made him famous

Theo died just six months later, on 25 January 1891. His widow, Johanna, known as Jo, suddenly found herself responsible for a baby son and "several hundreds of paintings, letters and drawings". Many people around her considered the paintings worthless. She did not.

Memorial exhibitions followed in Brussels, Paris, The Hague and Antwerp. A large retrospective at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris in 1901 had a strong effect on young painters and contributed to the rise of Fauvism. Jo also edited the brothers' correspondence: more than 600 letters from Vincent to Theo, most of them published in 1914. The same year she had Theo's body moved to Auvers, so the brothers could lie side by side.

The letters changed everything. Readers discovered not a "madman" but a thoughtful, well-read and painfully honest writer who explained his ideas about colour, work and life. The story of the misunderstood genius, supported by a loyal brother, became part of how the world sees the paintings.

Did he really sell only one painting?

You will often read that Van Gogh sold just one painting in his lifetime. The real picture is less tidy. The Red Vineyard was bought by the Belgian painter Anna Boch in 1890, and the Paris dealer Julien Tanguy acquired some of the works he showed in 1887. What is true is that his sales were tiny and that he depended on Theo for money. His public career had begun modestly, too: his work was first shown in shop windows in The Hague in 1885.

Learn with Van Gogh: English phrases about success and failure

Phrase	Meaning	Example
ahead of the curve	earlier than other people	His use of colour was ahead of the curve.
to make a name for yourself	to become known	She made a name for herself as a translator.
a late bloomer	someone who succeeds later than usual	He was a late bloomer who began painting at 27.
against all odds	despite great difficulty	Against all odds, his work survived.
to stand the test of time	to stay valuable for a long time	Good stories stand the test of time.

Try this: Van Gogh wrote more than 600 letters to his brother. Write a short letter in English (five sentences) to someone you love, describing one thing you saw today in as much colour as you can.