You’ve seen the starry swirls. You know the yellow sunflowers. Maybe you even own a pair of socks with a severed ear on them. But honestly, most of what we think we know about Vincent van Gogh is a caricature. We’ve turned a complex, hyper-intellectual man into a "mad artist" trope because it's easier to sell than the reality of a guy who wrote thousands of letters and spoke multiple languages.
He wasn't just some guy who went crazy and happened to paint.
Van Gogh was deliberate. He was obsessive. He was, in many ways, his own worst enemy, but not for the reasons you think. If you really want to understand these 5 facts about Vincent van Gogh, you have to look past the myths. We’re talking about a man who only painted for a decade. Ten years. That’s it. In that time, he produced over 2,100 artworks.
Let's get into the stuff people usually miss.
The Ear Incident Wasn't Just "Craziness"
Everyone mentions the ear. It’s the first thing kids learn about him. But the context is everything. It wasn't just a random act of self-harm in a vacuum. It happened during a breakdown following a massive blowout with Paul Gauguin.
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Van Gogh had this dream. He wanted to start an "Art Colony" in the South of France—the Studio of the South. He begged Gauguin to join him in Arles. But living together was a nightmare. They were both volatile. On the night of December 23, 1888, things hit a breaking point.
Was it the whole ear? No.
Historical records and sketches from Dr. Félix Rey, who treated him, suggest it was mostly the lower lobe. He then took that piece of himself to a woman at a brothel. For a long time, people said she was a prostitute named Rachel, but recent research by Bernadette Murphy suggests she might have been a maid or a cleaner at the establishment. Imagine being her. You're just doing your job, and one of the local painters hands you a bloody part of his head.
He Only Sold One Painting (Maybe)
There is a persistent legend that Vincent died a complete failure who only ever sold "The Red Vineyard."
It’s a great story for the "struggling artist" narrative. It makes his posthumous success feel more poetic. But it’s not strictly true. While "The Red Vineyard" is the only recorded sale of a painting through an official gallery during his lifetime (bought by Anna Boch for 400 francs), he actually sold or bartered other works.
He traded paintings for food. He traded them for supplies.
His brother, Theo, was a major art dealer. Theo was constantly pushing Vincent's work in Paris. Vincent also sold at least one self-portrait to a dealer in London. But here’s the kicker: Vincent didn't care about the "sale" as much as he cared about the worth. He knew he was good. In his letters, he basically told Theo that his paintings would eventually be worth more than the cost of the paint and his "meager" living expenses. He was right. He just wasn't alive to see the billions.
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The "Starry Night" View Was From a Hospital Window
When you look at The Starry Night, you’re looking at a view from the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
He checked himself in. He knew he was falling apart.
The famous swirls? Those weren't necessarily "hallucinations." They were his interpretation of the pre-dawn sky. He painted that view dozens of times, but The Starry Night is the most famous because of that explosive, rhythmic energy.
Interesting detail: he wasn't allowed to paint in his bedroom. He had a separate studio space on the ground floor. So, he would sketch the view from his barred window at night and then paint it from memory during the day. That’s why the composition feels so dreamlike. It wasn't a literal transcript of the sky; it was a synthesis of what he saw and what he felt while sitting in the dark, restricted by the rules of an asylum.
He Was a Language Nerd and a Failed Preacher
Before the paint, there was the pulpit.
Vincent didn't start out wanting to be an artist. He wanted to be a minister like his father. He went to the Borinage, a poor coal-mining district in Belgium, to work as a lay preacher. He gave away all his clothes. He slept on the floor. He was so extreme in his devotion that the church authorities actually fired him for "undermining the dignity of the priesthood."
They thought he looked like a vagabond.
But this period is where he learned to see the beauty in the "common man." It’s why his early work, like The Potato Eaters, is so dark and earthy. He wasn't interested in pretty things. He was interested in the truth of manual labor.
Also, the guy was brilliant. He spoke and wrote fluently in Dutch, French, and English. He read Dickens, Keats, and George Eliot. If you read his letters—of which there are over 800—you realize you aren't dealing with a bumbling madman. You're dealing with a philosopher who happened to use a brush.
The Mystery of His Death Remains Contentious
The official story is that Vincent van Gogh walked into a wheat field in Auvers-sur-Oise, shot himself in the chest with a revolver, and then stumbled back to his room to die two days later.
That's the version we’ve accepted for a century.
But in 2011, biographers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith dropped a bombshell. They argued that Vincent didn't kill himself. They proposed that he was accidentally shot by a local teenager named René Secrétan, who had a history of bullying the artist.
Why would Vincent lie?
The theory is that he claimed it was suicide to protect the boys. He was ready to die anyway. He was a burden on Theo. He was tired. If he died a "martyr" by his own hand, the kids wouldn't go to jail. There's no definitive proof either way—the gun was never found at the time (though a rusted one was discovered decades later)—but it adds a layer of tragic nobility to his final moments. Whether it was a "self-inflicted" wound or a "protective silence," he died in Theo’s arms, saying, "The sadness will last forever."
Understanding these 5 facts about Vincent van Gogh changes how you look at the canvas. He wasn't a fluke. He was a man who decided, late in life, to master a craft through sheer, agonizing repetition.
Next Steps for Art Lovers:
If you want to move beyond the surface-level history, stop looking at the prints on coffee mugs.
- Read the Letters: Go to the Van Gogh Letters Project. It’s free. Reading his own words to Theo is the only way to hear his actual voice.
- Look at the Early Work: Skip Starry Night for a second. Look at his drawings from 1881-1883. You can see the struggle of a man teaching himself how to see.
- Visit virtually: The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has high-resolution scans that let you see the actual height of the paint (impasto). You can see the grit and the sand stuck in the oil.
Vincent didn't paint for us to pity him. He painted because he thought the world was beautiful, even when it was breaking him.