Van Gogh Museum

The Van Gogh Museum opened in 1973 to house the collection inherited by Vincent van Gogh's nephew and namesake, Vincent Willem van Gogh, from his father Theo — the art dealer brother who supported Vincent financially and emotionally throughout his life and whose extensive correspondence with him survives almost entirely intact. That family collection, later placed in a foundation and loaned permanently to the state, forms the core of what is now the single largest gathering of Van Gogh's work anywhere.

The museum's permanent collection is arranged roughly chronologically, letting visitors watch Van Gogh's style transform in barely a decade of painting: from the murky, potato-eating peasants of his Dutch Nuenen period, through the brightening palette he picked up in Paris, to the blazing yellows and swirling brushwork of his Arles and Saint-Rémy years that produced Sunflowers, The Bedroom and Almond Blossom. Letters displayed alongside the paintings — Van Gogh wrote obsessively to Theo — add a level of biographical detail rare in single-artist museums.