Rare early photographs reveal lost sites featured in Van Gogh’s paintings

Two rare photographic albums taken by art critic Gustave Coquiot in 1922 have been acquired by the newly established Van Gogh Academy in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, and are now on display. The images capture many of the sites in Arles that Vincent van Gogh painted in the late 1880s, including the Yellow House, the Langlois Bridge, and the Rhône riverbank. Several of these locations were later destroyed during World War II or by modernization, making Coquiot's photographs valuable historical records of Van Gogh's original subjects.

East Africa meets Western Europe as Michael Armitage takes on Venice's Palazzo Grassi

The artist Michael Armitage opens a monographic exhibition titled 'The Promise of Change' at Venice's Palazzo Grassi, featuring 46 large paintings and nearly 100 sketches that survey his past decade of work. At 42, Armitage is the youngest artist to receive a solo show at the palazzo, which is owned by François Pinault and has previously hosted Albert Oehlen, Luc Tuymans, and Marlene Dumas. The exhibition highlights Armitage's fusion of East African and Western European artistic influences, drawing on his upbringing in Kenya and his training at London's Byam Shaw School of Art, the Slade, and the Royal Academy.

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The Wildenstein Plattner Institute (WPI) and the Romare Bearden Foundation have launched the first installment of a digital catalogue raisonné for the artist Romare Bearden, covering his work from 1964 to 1969. The project, which began in earnest in 2017, has so far documented 3,000 artworks, including 210 in this initial chapter, and has uncovered previously unknown works such as a portrait of artist Edmonia Lewis. The research builds on three decades of archival work by the foundation, which digitized Bearden's ephemera to aid in tracking down works he often gave away informally.

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The Van Gogh Museum has acquired Henri Matisse's 1905 painting *Olive Grove in Collioure* to illustrate Vincent van Gogh's influence on modern art. The work, painted 15 years after Van Gogh's death, shows Matisse's adoption of van Gogh's expressive, anti-naturalistic color and brushwork. The museum pairs it with van Gogh's *Trees in the Garden of the Asylum* (1889) to highlight how Matisse transformed van Gogh's reed-pen drawing techniques into his own Fauvist style. Matisse first encountered van Gogh's work in 1897 through Australian painter John Russell, who gave him a van Gogh drawing that Matisse hung in his Paris apartment alongside works by Cézanne and Gauguin.

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The Museum of Fine Arts Boston has opened "Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits," the first exhibition dedicated to Vincent van Gogh's portraits of the Roulin family—the local postman Joseph Roulin, his wife Augustine, and their children. The show brings together 14 of Van Gogh's 26 depictions of the family, including loans from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The exhibition was inspired by a 2018 conversation between curators Nienke Bakker and Katie Hanson, who realized no show had ever focused on this working-class family that was so central to Van Gogh's portraiture.

Must-see Van Gogh exhibitions in 2026

Several major Van Gogh exhibitions are scheduled for 2026 across Japan and the Netherlands. In Nagoya, the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art hosts "Van Gogh's Home: The Van Gogh Museum" (January–March), featuring 24 paintings and five drawings from the Amsterdam museum. Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum presents "Yellow: More than Van Gogh's Favourite Colour" (February–May), exploring the color yellow through Van Gogh's Sunflowers and works by other artists. A touring exhibition from the Kröller-Müller Museum, "The Grand Van Gogh Exhibition," travels from Kobe to Fukushima and Tokyo with 37 paintings and 20 drawings. The Kröller-Müller Museum itself plans "All Van Goghs" (September 2026–January 2027), reuniting its entire collection for the first time since 1984. Den Bosch's Noordbrabants Museum examines Van Gogh's influence on Jan Sluijters in "Jan and Vincent: About Light" (October 2026–February 2027). Several ongoing exhibitions continue into early 2026, including "Van Gogh and the Roulins" and "Captivated by Vincent" at the Van Gogh Museum, and "Van Gogh and the Potato" in Den Bosch.

10 Must-See Shows during Art Basel Paris 2025

Art Basel Paris 2025 returns to the Grand Palais, with off-site events across the city. For those without fair tickets, galleries throughout Paris are hosting notable shows alongside the fair, including Gerhard Richter at David Zwirner, Robert Rauschenberg's 'Gluts' series at Thaddaeus Ropac, Hans Op de Beeck at Templon, and Heinz Mack at Almine Rech. The article highlights ten must-see gallery exhibitions running concurrently with the fair.

Zurich’s controversial Bührle Collection is rehung, including five paintings by Van Gogh—plus one forgery

The Kunsthaus Zurich has unveiled a comprehensive new display of the Emil Bührle Collection, featuring 205 works including five significant paintings by Vincent van Gogh and one acknowledged forgery. This reinstallation marks a shift from previous thematic displays focused on provenance research to a denser presentation of the collection's breadth. Notable works on view include a 1887 self-portrait and the masterpiece 'The Sower at Sunset,' though one Van Gogh remains in conservation and another has been withdrawn due to Nazi-era ownership complications.

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The Brooklyn Museum is preparing to investigate the restoration of Paul Gauguin’s relief panel, *Te Fare Amu*, which was recently gifted to the institution by the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation. The artwork features a crouching nude figure whose genitals were painted over with green pigment by the collector Henry Pearlman in 1954 to bypass U.S. Customs indecency laws. While a 2017 conservation assessment at the Art Institute of Chicago deemed the overpainting too risky to remove, Brooklyn Museum conservators plan to re-evaluate the piece when it arrives for exhibition this fall.

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A wave of paintings by women depicting women dominated New York galleries this fall, sparking a critical examination of contemporary feminist figuration. Artists like Emily Coan and Anna Weyant create images of idealized, often sexualized femininity, framing their work as a reclamation of beauty and personal expression.

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The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has opened an exhibition titled "Van Gogh and the Roulins. Together Again at Last," which reunites 14 of Vincent van Gogh's 23 portraits of the Roulin family, painted during his 15-month stay in the Yellow House in Arles (1888–89). The show features a full-scale recreation of the Yellow House façade, the original chair used by postman Joseph Roulin during sittings, and costumed actors portraying family members. It traveled from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where it drew 280,000 visitors, and includes four additional paintings not shown in Boston, on loan from institutions such as the Stedelijk Museum, Kröller-Müller Museum, Kunst Museum Winterthur, and Museum Folkwang.

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A painting by Swiss-French artist Félix Vallotton, *Femme couchée dormant (Le Sommeil)* (1899), sold for $2.8 million at Sotheby’s New York on Thursday night, exceeding its high estimate of $2.5 million. The work was part of the Pritzker Collection sale, which also featured masterpieces by Van Gogh, Matisse, and Gauguin. Vallotton’s auction record remains at nearly $4.5 million, set by *Cinq heures* (1898) at Christie’s London in late 2023.

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The Kunstmuseum Basel has confirmed that a Paul Gauguin self-portrait, titled *Portrait de l’artiste par lui-même* (1903), is an authentic work by the French painter, despite decades of scrutiny. The painting, held by the museum since 1945, was subjected to scientific analysis—including pigment testing, radiography, and infrared reflectography—at the Bern Academy of the Arts after amateur art sleuth Fabrice Fourmanoir claimed it was actually painted by Gauguin’s friend Ky-Dong Nguyen Van Cam. The tests showed the pigments date to Gauguin’s era, but also revealed overpainting on the face, possibly done between 1918 and 1926, though the museum found no evidence of intentional forgery.

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Kelly Reichardt's new film *The Mastermind*, starring Josh O'Connor, depicts a low-stakes art heist at the fictional Framingham Museum of Art, inspired by a real 1972 theft at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. In the actual heist, two robbers stole four paintings by Rembrandt, Picasso, and Gauguin, worth about $7.72 million today, and shot an unarmed guard. The film, set in the early '70s, draws on details like two schoolgirls who witnessed the crime, but Reichardt deliberately makes the cinematic version less thrilling than the real event.

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Abu Dhabi will host the most expensive art exhibition ever staged by Sotheby's in the Middle East on October 1 and 2, valued at approximately $150 million. The exhibition features six masterpieces by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Frida Kahlo, René Magritte, Camille Pissarro, and Edvard Munch, sourced from major private collections including those of Leonard A. Lauder, Cindy and Jay Pritzker, and Matthew and Kay Bucksbaum. It takes place at the Bassam Freiha Art Foundation on Saadiyat Island Cultural District and marks Sotheby's first public fine art show in the UAE, ahead of its Abu Dhabi Collectors' Week in November.

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Sotheby's will open its first auction season in the Breuer building this fall with the Pritzker collection, a private cache of paintings never before seen outside a Chicago living room. The collection, built by Cindy and Jay Pritzker, carries an overall estimate north of $120 million, with the lead lot being Vincent van Gogh's 1887 still life *Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes)*, estimated at close to $40 million. Other highlights include works by Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Joan Miró, Camille Pissarro, and a 15th-century sea chart by Petrus Roselli.

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The Wildenstein Plattner Institute (WPI) has released the first online tranche of the Romare Bearden Catalogue Raisonné Project, covering over 200 works from 1964 to 1969—a pivotal period when Bearden honed his signature collage style. The free digital publication fills a long-standing gap for the canonical Black American artist, who died in 1988, and includes works verified by an anonymous committee of experts, with a verified icon for examined pieces.

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Kelly Reichardt's new film *The Mastermind*, starring Josh O'Connor as a carpenter and family man who turns art thief, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and will be released by Mubi. The film follows O'Connor's character, J.B., as he plots a heist inspired by a real 1972 robbery of the Worcester Art Museum, targeting paintings by American modernist Arthur Dove. The movie blends suspense, humor, and meticulous visual storytelling, with Reichardt drawing on the aesthetic of 1970s America and the work of photographers Stephen Shore and William Eggleston.

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The Kunstmuseum Basel has launched a fresh scientific investigation into a painting long believed to be Paul Gauguin's final self-portrait, *Self-Portrait with Glasses* (1903), after amateur art sleuth Fabrice Fourmanoir raised doubts about its authenticity. Fourmanoir claims the work may have been painted not by Gauguin but by a Vietnamese revolutionary named Ky Dong, a close acquaintance of the artist, after Gauguin's death. The museum, which has owned the painting since 1945, confirmed it is re-examining the work using modern techniques like infrared reflectography and radiology, with results expected by June or July.

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Koyo Kouoh, the Cameroonian-born curator appointed to lead the 2026 Venice Biennale, has died unexpectedly at age 57. The Venice Biennale announced her passing on Saturday, describing her as a figure of “passion, intellectual rigor, and vision.” Her husband, Philippe Mall, stated that a recently diagnosed cancer was the cause of death in a hospital in Basel, Switzerland. Kouoh had served as executive director and chief curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town since 2019, and was the second African-born curator to lead the Venice Biennale.

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The Vatican Museums, including the Sistine Chapel, have closed to the public as Vatican City prepares for a conclave to elect a new pope following the death of Pope Francis on April 28. The reopening date is uncertain, as conclaves have historically lasted from days to weeks, though modern elections for Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI closed the city for less than a week. The Museums house a vast collection of Renaissance and Baroque art, as well as modern works by artists like Paul Gauguin, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso, and attracted 6.8 million visitors in 2024.

Printmaking skills of Manet, Van Gogh and more celebrated in Bath show

An exhibition titled *Beyond Impressionism* at the Holburne Museum in Bath showcases over 50 prints by artists such as Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, James McNeill Whistler, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Pablo Picasso. The show, running from 23 May to 13 September, highlights how impressionist, post-impressionist, and cubist painters revived printmaking in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, elevating it from commercial reproduction to a respected artistic medium. Works are drawn from public collections including the Courtauld Gallery and Ashmolean, as well as private collections.

In Giverny, Monet does not benefit everyone

À Giverny, Monet ne profite pas à tout le monde

The article examines the economic paradox of Giverny, the French village where Claude Monet lived and painted. While Monet's gardens attract nearly one million visitors annually—with ticket sales estimated at €9-10 million—the village itself, with a population of just 430 and an annual budget of €600,000, sees almost none of that revenue. Visitors flood in for half-day trips, queue for hours to see the gardens, and leave by evening, spending little in local shops. The gardens, run by the Académie des beaux-arts, are tax-exempt and operate as a closed economic loop, with their boutique and restaurant generating income that stays within the institution.

Did Van Gogh’s Yellow House turn blue after his death?

New historical evidence suggests that Vincent van Gogh’s iconic 'Yellow House' in Arles underwent a dramatic color change before its destruction. While Van Gogh famously painted and cherished the building for its yellow facade in 1888, two recently highlighted paintings from the late 1930s by artists Willy Guggenheim (Varlin) and George Tomaziu depict the structure with a blue exterior. This discovery, brought to light by Ukrainian artist Yuri Pikul, indicates the building had been repainted while serving as a café-bar called the Civette Arlésienne.

Why yellow was Van Gogh's favourite colour

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has launched a new exhibition titled "Yellow: Beyond Van Gogh’s Colour," running until May 17. The show explores Vincent van Gogh’s profound obsession with the color yellow, featuring eight of his works alongside pieces by contemporaries like Paul Gauguin and Aubrey Beardsley. It highlights Van Gogh's technical use of chrome yellow pigments to capture the "high yellow note" of the Provencal sun and the symbolic association of the color with modernity and life-giving energy.

Van Gogh’s family used an erotic Gauguin ceramic as a flower vase

A researcher at the Van Gogh Museum, Joost van der Hoeven, has revealed that Paul Gauguin's erotic ceramic, the Cleopatra Pot (winter 1887-88), was used as a flower vase by Vincent van Gogh's family. Gauguin brought the pot to Arles when he stayed with Van Gogh in 1888, and after Van Gogh's ear incident, Gauguin gave the pot to Vincent's brother Theo as a gift. The pot later remained with Theo's widow, Jo Bonger, and a photograph from 1925-26 shows it on her piano holding flowers, surrounded by still-life paintings.

Exclusive: Philadelphia Art Museum to host sensational Van Gogh exhibition featuring two ‘Sunflowers’

The Philadelphia Museum of Art will host a major exhibition titled *Van Gogh’s Sunflowers: A Symphony in Blue and Yellow* from June 6 to October 11, 2026, bringing together two iconic Sunflower paintings: the museum’s own turquoise-background version (January 1889) and the original yellow-background version (August 1888) from London’s National Gallery. This marks a rare international loan for the London painting, which has only traveled abroad four times since 1924. The exhibition will explore Van Gogh’s use of color and brushwork, and will reunite the two canvases in a triptych arrangement with *La Berceuse* (January 1889, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), as originally envisioned by the artist in a letter to his brother Theo.

A manure mystery: why did Van Gogh depict heaps of sand in a painting of his beloved Yellow House?

A new study by Van Gogh Museum senior researcher Teio Meedendorp proposes that the mysterious piles of sand in Vincent van Gogh's 1888 painting "The Yellow House" are not, as previously thought, related to gas pipe installation, but rather cleansing sand used to absorb horse manure and urine on the streets of Arles. Meedendorp supports his theory with historical postcards from 1902 showing similar sand piles and street-cleaning practices, as well as municipal records indicating the city had outsourced dung removal in August 1888.

An exhibition on the potato in art? Only Van Gogh could pull it off

The Noordbrabants Museum in 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, opens a focused exhibition titled "Van Gogh and the Potato" on 11 October, running until 1 February 2026. The show features five Van Gogh paintings, two drawings, and a print centered on the potato motif, including "Still life with Potatoes" (autumn 1886), which has been newly identified as depicting "rat's back" potatoes. A key highlight is the study "Head of a Woman (Gordina de Groot)" (March-April 1885), acquired by the museum last year for €8.6 million. The exhibition also includes a lithograph of "The Potato Eaters" and explores Van Gogh's shift from peasant subjects to flower still lifes after moving to Paris.

The story behind the Van Gogh still life that looks destined to become his most expensive Paris painting

Van Gogh's 'Parisian Novels' (November-December 1887) will be the leading lot in the Pritzker sale at Sotheby's, New York on 20 November, with an estimate of $40 million. The still life, depicting 22 books and three pink roses, has been consigned by the estate of Cindy Pritzker, who died in March at age 101. The painting was created during Van Gogh's time living with his brother Theo in Paris and was among the first three works publicly exhibited during his lifetime, at the Société des Artistes Indépendants in March 1888. The Pritzker collection sale also includes 36 other works estimated at $120 million, featuring pieces by Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse.