The Google Art Project is a collaboration with museums large and small, classic and modern, world-renowned and community-based from over 40 countries. Together they have contributed more than 40,000 high-resolution images of works ranging from oil on canvas to sculpture and furniture.
Some paintings (like The Starry Night) are available in ‘gigapixel’ format, allowing you to zoom in at brushstroke level to examine and appreciate the incredible detail of these masterpieces.
In addition to the high-resolution images, each artwork also features expertly-narrated videos, audio guides, viewing notes, detailed information, maps and more. It’s a remarkable online resource and one that’s worth exploring.
Below you will find a small selection of the 150+ featured artworks of Dutch post-Impressionist, Vincent Van Gogh. I selected paintings that were available to view in very high-resolution so I could zoom in extremely close-up and capture the brush stroke details.
You can find the entire list of Van Gogh’s Google Art Project works on Wikimedia Commons.
The Starry Night – 1889
73 × 92 cm (28.7 × 36.2 in). Oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art
Enclosed Wheat Field with Peasant / Landscape at Saint-Rémy – 1889
29 × 36.25 in (73.7 × 92.1 cm). Oil on canvas
Indianapolis Museum of Art
Poppy field – 1890
Height: 827 mm (32.56 in). Width: 1,020 mm (40.16 in). Oil on canvas
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
Starry night over the Rhône – 1888
Height: 720 mm (28.35 in). Width: 920 mm (36.22 in). Oil on canvas
Musée d’Orsay
Olive Orchard / Olive Grove – 1889
73.03 × 92.08 cm (28.8 × 36.3 in). Oil on canvas
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
The Rocks – 1888
Height: 549.402 mm (21.63 in). Width: 657.352 mm (25.88 in). Oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Wheat Field with Cypresses – 1889
Height: 73 cm (28.7 in). Width: 93.4 cm (36.8 in). Oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Self-portrait, 1889
Oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art
Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died aged 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted (although no gun was ever found). His work was then known to only a handful of people and appreciated by fewer still.
He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints.
If you enjoyed this post, the Sifter
highly recommends: