The Van Gogh Museum: Totally Worth It…

You don’t think of Vincent Van Gogh – well, I don’t, anyway – as the type of chap to make art for a nursery. But he did.

And that pretty, delicate pastel painting of almond blossoms is just one of many reasons the Van Gogh Museum, on its own, is totally worth the ferry or the flight to Amsterdam.

Because the little boy he made the painting for was his nephew, also named Vincent, the only child of his little brother and sole supporter, Theo. Theo died a bare six months after Vincent committed suicide, and his widow, Johanna, continued his life’s mission to bring his brother’s work to the world.

Vincent, famously, sold only one painting during his entire life, although he made more than 900, and they now change hands for tens of millions of dollars. And the museum is a tribute to Johanna’s work in keeping both Vincent’s oeuvre and the paintings the brothers collected alive, and to the baby boy who grew up to entrust his paintings to the state.

The main reason, though? The chance to wander past hundreds of Van Gogh paintings, drawings, lithographs — by far the largest collection in the world. To get up close enough that you can see the indents of the bristles of his brushes.

To watch his evolution from dull, dark Dutch browns and greys to brilliant, saturation colours inspired by colour theory, his sidesteps into Japanese art, and his first attempts at copying.

And to learn that the colours we see today are often not the ones Van Gogh intended. He couldn’t afford the more stable pigments that successful artists used, and his reds have been lost to time: pink backgrounds shading to beige, mauves to dull grey, indigoes to blue, apples and pomegranates eternally dulled.

It’s splendid, interactive and, with works by Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Monet, includes a slice of both Theo and Vincent’s worlds. Go visit.