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Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam
125 Questions and Answers

#33/125 Which painting did Van Gogh think was his best work?

Margret van Rooij asks which painting Vincent van Gogh thought was his best work. Read on for the answer.

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Vincent considered The Potato Eaters, Sunflowers and The Bedroom to be his best paintings. We can draw this conclusion because he continued to write about them in his letters long after they were painted.

During his time in Southern France, Vincent also created multiple versions of paintings that he was pleased with. Writing to Gauguin in a letter, Vincent even called sunflowers his personal motif:

‘You talk to me in your letter about a canvas of mine, the sunflowers with a yellow background — to say that it would give you some pleasure to receive it. I don’t think that you’ve made a bad choice – if Jeannin has the peony, Quost the hollyhock, I indeed, before others, have taken the sunflower.’

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Vincent van Gogh, The Bedroom, 1888
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