The Starry Night is generally considered Vincent van Gogh's most famous painting. Sunflowers, Cafe Terrace at Night, The Bedroom, Almond Blossom and Irises are also among the works most often associated with him. Below, we look at 20 well-known paintings, when Van Gogh created them, where they are held today and what makes each work important.
Van Gogh's paintings are spread across museums in Europe and the United States, but their color and recognizable shapes also make them popular subjects for Van Gogh paint by numbers kits. A numbered version is an adaptation rather than a substitute for the original. The best designs simplify small marks while keeping the structure that makes the painting instantly recognizable.
A Short Context: How Van Gogh's Style Changed
Vincent van Gogh was born in the Netherlands in 1853 and began pursuing art seriously around 1880. His Dutch work used dark earth colors and focused on workers, cottages and rural life. After moving to Paris in 1886, he encountered Impressionism, Japanese prints and newer ideas about color. Arles, Saint-Remy and Auvers-sur-Oise then produced most of the paintings for which he is known today.
Van Gogh is usually described as a Post-Impressionist rather than an Impressionist. He learned from the movement but used stronger outlines, more deliberate color contrasts and repeated directional marks. Our guide to Impressionist paint by numbers explains the difference in a practical painting context. More than 850 of Van Gogh's paintings and almost 1,300 works on paper survive, despite a working career of only about a decade.
20 Most Famous Van Gogh Paintings
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The Starry Night (1889)
Painted: June 1889. Place: Saint-Remy-de-Provence. Current collection: Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Van Gogh painted The Starry Night while staying at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole hospital. The view began with the landscape outside his window before sunrise, but the finished village and sweeping sky are not a literal record of one scene. The tall cypress links the land to a sky built from concentric bands of blue, white and yellow. That mix of observation and invention is a major reason the painting has become his best-known work. In a paint by numbers version of The Starry Night, the hardest part is usually separating the many neighboring blues without losing the direction of the sky.
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Sunflowers (1888)
Painted: August 1888. Place: Arles. Current collection: National Gallery, London.
Sunflowers refers to a group of still lifes rather than one canvas. The London version shows fifteen flowers in different stages, from full yellow heads to dry seed centers, arranged in a simple earthenware vase. Van Gogh planned the Arles series as decoration for the Yellow House while preparing for Paul Gauguin's visit. The limited yellow palette looks simple from a distance, yet the petals, centers and background depend on close shifts in tone. That makes a Sunflowers paint by numbers kit more detailed than its broad color scheme first suggests.
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Cafe Terrace at Night (1888)
Painted: September 1888. Place: Arles. Current collection: Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo.
Van Gogh set up his easel near the Place du Forum to paint a cafe terrace under gaslight. He avoided a flat black night, using deep blue around the yellow facade and orange lamps instead. The strong contrast leads the eye from the foreground tables into the narrow street and then up to the stars. It is one of his first major painted night scenes and should not be confused with The Night Cafe, which shows a different establishment from the inside. The architecture and pools of light make Cafe Terrace at Night especially recognizable as a numbered canvas.
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The Bedroom (1888)
Painted: October 1888. Place: Arles. Current collection: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
The Bedroom shows Van Gogh's room in the Yellow House. The bed, chairs, washstand and pictures are ordinary objects, but the tilted floor and angled furniture make the space feel slightly unstable. Van Gogh simplified the forms and wanted color to carry the sense of rest. He later produced two more painted versions after water damage affected the first canvas. The Amsterdam version from 1888 is the earliest and the one listed here.
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Irises (1889)
Painted: May 1889. Place: Saint-Remy-de-Provence. Current collection: J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Irises was among the first paintings Van Gogh made after arriving at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole. He worked from the hospital garden, placing the flowers close to the picture plane and letting leaves and stems continue beyond the edges. One pale iris interrupts the field of blue-purple blooms, giving the composition a clear point of contrast. The painting works as a careful garden study rather than a coded account of his mental state. It also belongs within the broader group of Van Gogh flower paintings that includes sunflowers, roses and blossoming orchards.
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The Night Cafe (1888)
Painted: September 1888. Place: Arles. Current collection: Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.
The Night Cafe shows the interior of the Cafe de la Gare, with a billiard table in the center and a few figures sitting along the walls. Red and green areas press against each other while the floorboards pull the viewer toward the rear doorway. Van Gogh used the room to test how color and perspective could create discomfort rather than describe a pleasant evening. The result is the opposite of the welcoming outdoor light in Cafe Terrace at Night.
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Almond Blossom (1890)
Painted: February 1890. Place: Saint-Remy-de-Provence. Current collection: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Van Gogh made Almond Blossom to celebrate the birth of his nephew, Vincent Willem. Flowering branches spread across a turquoise-blue field with no conventional horizon, an arrangement linked to the Japanese prints he collected. The cropped branches and clean background separate it from his denser landscapes. It is one of his most familiar late works and one of the few on this list tied to a clearly documented family occasion.
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Wheatfield with Crows (1890)
Painted: July 1890. Place: Auvers-sur-Oise. Current collection: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Three paths push into a wheatfield under a dark blue sky as crows cross the horizon. The abrupt perspective and short, forceful marks give the scene unusual tension. It is often described as Van Gogh's final painting, but that claim is not correct; current research identifies Tree Roots as his last work. Wheatfield with Crows remains one of his most famous Auvers landscapes without needing the false last-painting story.
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Starry Night Over the Rhone (1888)
Painted: September 1888. Place: Arles. Current collection: Musee d'Orsay, Paris.
Painted about a year before The Starry Night, this Arles view shows the Rhone after dark. Gaslights on the far bank form long yellow reflections in the blue water, while a couple stands near the lower edge. The composition is calmer and more firmly tied to an observed location than the later Saint-Remy sky. Seeing the two works together makes it clear that Van Gogh did not have a single formula for painting night.
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Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889)
Painted: January 1889. Place: Arles. Current collection: The Courtauld Gallery, London.
Van Gogh painted this self-portrait soon after leaving hospital following the injury to his left ear. Because he worked from a mirror, the bandage appears on the right side of the image. A Japanese print and a partly started canvas are visible behind him, keeping the focus on his identity as a working artist rather than turning the picture into a medical record. The winter cap, heavy coat and direct gaze make it one of his most immediately recognizable portraits.
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The Potato Eaters (1885)
Painted: April-May 1885. Place: Nuenen. Current collection: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
The Potato Eaters is the central painting of Van Gogh's Dutch period. Five figures sit around a small table under a single lamp, eating the food they grew themselves. Van Gogh deliberately chose a difficult multi-figure composition and saw it as proof that he could handle a serious subject. The dark palette and rough faces differ sharply from his later work in France, which is exactly why the painting is essential to understanding his development.
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Van Gogh's Chair (1888)
Painted: December 1888. Place: Arles. Current collection: National Gallery, London.
A plain wooden chair stands on terracotta tiles with a pipe and tobacco on its woven seat. Van Gogh painted it as a companion to Gauguin's Chair, which uses a darker room, a more elaborate armchair and books. The pair turns furniture into an indirect portrait of the two artists. Van Gogh's simpler daytime scene is now one of the National Gallery's best-known works by him.
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A Wheatfield, with Cypresses (1889)
Painted: September 1889. Place: Saint-Remy-de-Provence. Current collection: National Gallery, London.
Van Gogh painted several versions of this subject during his stay at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole. In the London canvas, dark cypresses rise above a pale field while clouds roll across the Alpilles in long curved bands. The trees, wheat and sky use different kinds of repeated marks, so the landscape feels active without relying on a narrative. In the Wheat Field with Cypresses kit, a larger canvas helps keep the thin field lines and cloud shapes from merging.
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The Yellow House (1888)
Painted: September 1888. Place: Arles. Current collection: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
The Yellow House records the building on Place Lamartine where Van Gogh rented rooms and set up a studio. He hoped it would become a shared base for artists, and Gauguin stayed there for several weeks. The painting places the bright facade against blue shutters, a pale road and a clear sky, with trains visible in the distance. Its fame comes partly from the building's role in Van Gogh's plans for an artists' community.
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The Red Vineyard (1888)
Painted: November 1888. Place: Arles. Current collection: Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
Workers gather grapes across a field that appears red under the low autumn sun. The strong color is organized by a yellow road and a band of water reflecting the sky. The Red Vineyard is often called the only painting Van Gogh sold during his lifetime, but the evidence does not support that claim. It is better described as one of his clearly documented sales: Belgian artist Anna Boch bought it after its exhibition in Brussels in 1890.
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Fishing Boats on the Beach at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer (1888)
Painted: June 1888. Place: Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Current collection: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Van Gogh visited the Mediterranean fishing village of Saintes-Maries and painted boats pulled onto the sand. Their solid hulls and angled masts form a compact foreground against the flatter sea and sky. He studied the subject in drawings as well as paint, reducing each vessel to a distinct silhouette and color pattern. That clear separation is why Fishing Boats on the Beach can work well as a numbered design even at a moderate size.
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The Sower (1888)
Painted: June 1888. Place: Arles. Current collection: Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo.
Van Gogh returned repeatedly to the sower, a subject he knew from Jean-Francois Millet. In this 1888 version, the figure strides across violet ground beneath an oversized yellow sun, while ripe grain remains visible behind him. The combination of sowing and harvest joins two stages of the agricultural cycle in one image. The complementary yellow and purple also show how far Van Gogh's palette had moved from the brown-green world of The Potato Eaters.
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Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1890)
Painted: June 1890. Place: Auvers-sur-Oise. Current collection: Musee d'Orsay, Paris.
Dr. Paul Gachet cared for Van Gogh during his final months in Auvers and was also an amateur artist and collector. In the portrait, he leans on one hand beside books and a foxglove plant, a reference to a source of the medicine digitalis. Van Gogh made two oil versions. The version at the Musee d'Orsay is discussed here; the other became famous for its record auction price in 1990, and its present location has not been publicly confirmed.
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The Church at Auvers (1890)
Painted: June 1890. Place: Auvers-sur-Oise. Current collection: Musee d'Orsay, Paris.
The Church at Auvers shows the apse of the village church from a low viewpoint. Two paths split around the building, and a small figure moves along the left side. Although the scene is set in daylight, the deep blue sky and distorted outlines make the stone walls appear less fixed than the foreground. The painting is a strong example of how Van Gogh changed an observed building through color and line without abandoning its identifiable shape.
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Head of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette (1886)
Painted: Early 1886. Place: Antwerp. Current collection: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Head of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette looks like a solemn symbol at first, but the museum describes it as a youthful joke. Van Gogh painted it while studying at the art academy in Antwerp, where drawing skeletons was part of the training. The cigarette breaks the academic seriousness and gives the small work its lasting appeal. It should not be presented as proof of a fixed obsession with death.
Which Van Gogh Paintings Work Best as Paint by Numbers?
When we review Van Gogh artwork for numbered canvases, the key issue is not simply the number of colors. A good conversion must preserve the cypress outline, the direction of the sky, the shape of a face or the position of a building while merging tiny marks that would be frustrating to paint. Different paintings create different challenges.
More approachable designs
The Yellow House, Van Gogh's Chair and Fishing Boats on the Beach have strong silhouettes and larger areas that are easy to locate. Sunflowers also has a clear central subject, although the petals and seed heads add more small sections than beginners may expect.
Intermediate designs
Cafe Terrace at Night, Almond Blossom and The Church at Auvers combine recognizable shapes with some dense edges. They reward careful work but do not depend on dozens of nearly identical blue zones across the whole canvas.
More detailed designs
The Starry Night, A Wheatfield, with Cypresses and Irises contain many neighboring curves, leaves or color changes. Choose the largest available canvas when you want those transitions to remain readable. Portraits also require patience because a slight shift around the eyes or mouth changes the expression.
A numbered adaptation will never reproduce every raised mark in an oil painting. Its job is to translate the composition into paintable areas without flattening the parts that identify the work. If you want to compare other approachable classics, see our guide to how you can recreate famous paintings at home.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Van Gogh's most famous painting?
The Starry Night is generally considered Van Gogh's most famous painting. It is held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and combines an observed Saint-Remy landscape with an invented village and highly structured sky.
What are Van Gogh's top 10 paintings?
The Starry Night, Sunflowers, Cafe Terrace at Night, The Bedroom, Almond Blossom, Irises, The Potato Eaters, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, Starry Night Over the Rhone and Wheatfield with Crows are among Van Gogh's best-known paintings. Together, they cover his Dutch period and his years in Arles, Saint-Remy and Auvers.
How many paintings did Vincent van Gogh create?
More than 850 paintings and almost 1,300 works on paper survive. The often repeated claim that he created about 2,000 paintings confuses paintings with his total body of surviving artwork.
Was Wheatfield with Crows Van Gogh's last painting?
No. Wheatfield with Crows was painted in July 1890, but it was not his final work. Research by the Van Gogh Museum identifies Tree Roots, painted in Auvers-sur-Oise, as his last painting.
Did Van Gogh sell only one painting during his lifetime?
No. The exact number is unknown, but surviving records show that Van Gogh sold or exchanged more than one work. The Red Vineyard is famous because its 1890 sale to Anna Boch is clearly documented, not because it was necessarily his only sale.
Where can you see Van Gogh's most famous paintings?
The major works are spread across several collections. The Starry Night is at MoMA in New York; Sunflowers is at the National Gallery in London; Cafe Terrace at Night belongs to the Kroller-Muller Museum; Almond Blossom and Wheatfield with Crows are at the Van Gogh Museum; and Starry Night Over the Rhone and The Church at Auvers are at the Musee d'Orsay.
Why These Paintings Still Matter
Van Gogh's reputation does not rest on one repeated visual trick. The dark figures of The Potato Eaters, the clear branches of Almond Blossom and the constructed sky of The Starry Night come from different periods and solve different painting problems. Seen together, the works show how quickly he changed during a career that lasted only about ten years.
Start with the painting you recognize, then compare it with a less familiar work from the same year. Cafe Terrace at Night and The Night Cafe, or The Starry Night and Starry Night Over the Rhone, make especially useful pairs because they show how differently Van Gogh could handle a related subject.
