Van Gogh Trivia
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49 free Van Gogh trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
50 free van Gogh trivia questions with answers. Vincent van Gogh sold one painting in his lifetime and now sells out museum shows on three continents, and that gap between the failure and the legend is what makes him such good trivia. This quiz covers the whole story: the preacher's son from Zundert who was sacked as a missionary in the Belgian coalfields, the ten frantic years in which he produced about 2,100 works, the Yellow House in Arles, the nine weeks with Gauguin, the ear, the asylum at Saint-Rémy and the wheatfields of Auvers. The paintings get their own questions: which planet blazes in The Starry Night, why the bandage is on the wrong ear in the self-portrait, how many Bedrooms there are, which Sunflowers burned in 1945, and what Ryoei Saito threatened to do with Dr Gachet. There are also rounds on the museums, the thefts, the record auction prices, and Van Gogh on screen, from Kirk Douglas to Loving Vincent. About a third of the questions are easy enough for anyone who has seen a poster of his work; the rest climb to details only art historians and museum guides usually know. Every answer has been checked against a reference source, and each question shows its citation and a short explanation once you have answered.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Vincent van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in which village in the Dutch province of North Brabant?
Zundert
Van Gogh was born in Zundert, in the largely Catholic province of North Brabant, where his father was a Protestant minister; Ossip Zadkine's sculpture of Vincent and Theo now marks the spot.
Q 02Roughly how many artworks did Van Gogh produce in just over a decade as an artist?
About 2,100
Van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks, around 860 of them oil paintings, most in the last two years of his life; he took up art seriously at 27 and died at 37.
Q 03How long after shooting himself on 27 July 1890 did Van Gogh die?
Two days later
He died two days later, on 29 July 1890, in his rented room at Auvers; he had walked back with the bullet inside him, smoked his pipe, and talked with Theo, who arrived the next day.
Q 04Van Gogh's younger brother Theo bankrolled him for most of his career. What was Theo's profession?
Art dealer
Theo worked in Paris for the same firm that had employed Vincent as a young man, and it was Theo who introduced him to the Impressionists and their dealers.
Q 05Which ear did Van Gogh partly sever with a razor in December 1888?
His left ear
It was his left ear; on the night of 23 December 1888 he wrapped the severed piece in paper and delivered it to a woman at a brothel in Arles, then was found unconscious at home.
Q 06In May 1889 Van Gogh committed himself to an asylum just outside which Provençal town?
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
The asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole lies just outside Saint-Rémy-de-Provence; he had two cells, one to sleep in and one as a studio, and painted around 150 canvases there, including The Starry Night.
Q 07What kind of medicine did Dr Paul Gachet, who cared for Van Gogh at Auvers, practise?
Homoeopathy
Gachet practised homoeopathy and was also an amateur painter and etcher who befriended Cézanne and Pissarro; Vincent wrote to Theo that the doctor seemed 'sicker than I am'.
Q 08In 1869, aged 16, Van Gogh got his first job through his uncle Cent. What was the firm?
The picture dealers Goupil & Cie
He did well and was sent to the London branch, where he was happy until an unrequited infatuation with his landlady's daughter set off the first of his crises.
Q 09In 1879 Van Gogh worked as a lay missionary in which Belgian coal-mining region?
The Borinage
The Borinage, a coal-mining district near Mons, is where Van Gogh preached in 1879; he gave away his possessions and slept on straw, and church authorities dismissed him for excessive zeal.
Q 10In which Dutch village, where his father was pastor, did Van Gogh paint The Potato Eaters in 1885?
Nuenen
The Potato Eaters was painted in Nuenen in April 1885; Van Gogh wanted the peasants' faces to look as if painted with earth and was furious when Anthon van Rappard criticised the figures' anatomy.
Q 11Van Gogh moved to Paris in March 1886 and shared Theo's apartment in which district?
Montmartre
Theo's flat was in Montmartre, from June 1886 at 54 rue Lepic; Vincent studied at Fernand Cormon's studio, met Toulouse-Lautrec and Émile Bernard, and his palette shifted from Dutch browns to bright Impressionist colour.
Q 12Which artist took Van Gogh on as a student in The Hague and introduced him to watercolour?
Anton Mauve
Their friendship broke down within months, partly over Vincent's decision to live with a pregnant prostitute, Sien Hoornik. He later dedicated a pink orchard painting to Mauve's memory.
Q 13Roughly how many letters from Vincent to Theo survive?
More than 600
Q 21How many authentic versions of Bedroom in Arles did Van Gogh paint?
Three
There are three versions, told apart by the little pictures on the right-hand wall; they hang in Amsterdam, Chicago and Paris and were reunited for the Art Institute of Chicago's 2016 show.
Q 22Where in the Netherlands is Van Gogh's Café Terrace at Night (1888) held?
The Kröller-Müller in Otterlo
It belongs to the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, home of the second-largest Van Gogh collection; he never signed the canvas but described it in letters, and the café on Arles' Place du Forum was later repainted yellow to match.
Q 23Which work did 2020 research name Van Gogh's final painting, not Wheatfield with Crows?
More than 600 letters from Vincent to Theo survive (about 650), against only about 40 of Theo's replies; Theo's widow Johanna arranged their publication, which did as much as the paintings to build the legend.
Q 14Van Gogh collected cheap woodblock prints from which country and copied their style?
Japan
They were Japanese ukiyo-e prints, bought cheaply in the Antwerp docklands and shown at the Café du Tambourin in Paris in 1887; he made painted copies of Hiroshige's Plum Orchard and Bridge in the Rain.
Q 15Apart from Theo, which sibling was the only one Van Gogh stayed in touch with in later life?
His sister Wil
Willemina outlived him by more than 50 years, most of them in a psychiatric institution. His brother Cor died in the Boer War in South Africa.
Q 16Which planet is the brightest 'star' in The Starry Night (June 1889)?
Venus
Astronomers have confirmed that Venus really was blazing in the eastern pre-dawn sky over Provence that month. The village below, though, was added from imagination.
Q 17Since 1941 The Starry Night has hung where?
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Starry Night entered the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1941 through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest; Van Gogh himself called it a failure, telling Émile Bernard he had reached for stars that were 'too big'.
Q 18Van Gogh painted his Arles Sunflowers in August 1888 to decorate which part of the Yellow House?
The bedroom meant for Gauguin
He worked at speed because the flowers wilted fast, and hoped a wall of them would make Gauguin feel welcome. Gauguin later asked to be given one and Vincent refused.
Q 19Who bought a Sunflowers canvas for a record price at Christie's London in March 1987?
Japanese insurer Yasuo Goto
Yasuo Goto, chairman of Japanese insurer Yasuda Fire & Marine, paid £24.75 million (about $39.9 million), more than triple the previous auction record for any painting; the canvas went to Tokyo's Sompo Museum of Art.
Q 20What happened to the Sunflowers version known as Vase with Five Sunflowers on 6 August 1945?
It was destroyed in a US air raid
It belonged to a private collector in Ashiya, and burned the same day the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, though in a separate conventional raid. Only photographs of it survive.
Tree Roots
Tree Roots: in 2020 Wouter van der Veen matched its tangle of roots to a roadside bank in Auvers shown on a 1905 postcard and concluded Van Gogh was painting it on the day he was shot.
Q 24Roughly what did Ryoei Saito pay for Portrait of Dr Gachet at auction in 1990?
$82.5m
Saito caused an outcry by saying he would have the picture cremated with him. He didn't; it was quietly sold after his death and its current whereabouts are unknown.
Q 25Which plant lies on the table in Portrait of Dr Gachet, a nod to the doctor's trade?
Foxglove
Digitalis, extracted from the plant, was a heart medicine. Some have argued Van Gogh took it and that it explains the yellow tint of his late work, though there is no record he was ever prescribed it.
Q 26Why does the 1889 Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear show the bandage on the uninjured side?
He painted his reflection in a mirror
He painted his reflection in a mirror, so the bandaged left ear appears on the right; behind him hangs the Japanese print Geishas in a Landscape, and the painting belongs to the Courtauld Gallery in London.
Q 27Van Gogh's Irises, painted in the asylum garden in 1889, has hung where since 1990?
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
It briefly held the auction record in 1987 at $53.9 million, but the buyer, Alan Bond, could not pay in full, and Sotheby's had to take it back before the Getty stepped in.
Q 28Van Gogh's The Night Café (1888) belongs to which Ivy League university?
Yale
Yale University Art Gallery received it in Stephen Clark's 1961 bequest; it came from Ivan Morozov's Moscow collection, nationalised by the Soviets and sold in 1933, and a Morozov descendant's claim to it was finally rejected in 2016.
Q 29Which two colours did Van Gogh say expressed 'the terrible passions of humanity' in The Night Café?
Red and green
Red and green: he told Theo he had tried to express 'the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green', in a café where one could ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime.
Q 30Almond Blossom (1890), the branches against a blue sky, was painted to celebrate what?
The birth of Theo's baby son
The baby was named Vincent Willem after him. Theo's widow kept the painting over the child's cot, and it later became one of the founding works of the Van Gogh Museum.