Max Stafford's Kennel

Vincent van Gogh. Sunflowers. Chairs. Night skies of swirling blue, butter-yellow stars and fat crescent moons. Tortured by mental illness, unable to make a living from his paintings. After his death, so famous that he was the subject of an episode of BBC TV series Doctor Who without anyone having to worry that the audience wouldn’t know who he was. In short, you know Vincent van Gogh. Except that you don’t.

Van Gogh is best known as a Post-Impressionist, his paintings a form of emotional expression rather than a literal representation of the world around him. The Impressionists, in contrast, employed a more naturalistic style, tackling found subjects whether those were countryside scenes or industrial views. We looked at the work of Impressionist Camille Pissarro a few months ago.

Born in 1853 in the Netherlands, where he started his journey in art, van Gogh moved to Paris in 1886, where he…