Article: Vincent van Gogh Prints: Beyond Starry Night — The Ones That Work on a Real Wall
Vincent van Gogh Prints: Beyond Starry Night — The Ones That Work on a Real Wall
This article is part of our Ultimate Fine Art Print Buyer's Guide.
Almost everyone who loves Van Gogh starts with The Starry Night. It is a wonderful picture, but it is also one of the most reproduced images in the world, and on a real wall it can look more like a poster than a choice. The good news is that Van Gogh painted around 850 pictures in barely ten years, and many of them are easier to live with: blossoming trees, golden wheat fields, olive groves, a calm blue bedroom. This guide helps you find the Van Gogh that suits your room, not just the one you already know.
In brief: For a bedroom or a calm room, choose Almond Blossoms. For night and drama without the cliché, choose Starry Night over the Rhône. For warmth and big colour, choose Wheat Field with Cypresses or Olive Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun. For a Japanese touch, choose Flowering Plum Orchard. And if Starry Night is the one you love, buy it — then frame it well.
Who Van Gogh was, in one paragraph
Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) was a Dutch painter who came to art late, in his late twenties, and painted almost all his best-known work in the last few years of his life: in Paris, then in Arles in the south of France, in the asylum at Saint-Rémy, and finally in the village of Auvers near Paris. He sold almost nothing while he lived. His thick, directional brushstrokes and strong colour are what make his pictures recognisable from across a room — and why a good print on textured paper looks so much better than a cheap poster.
The blossom paintings: the best Van Gogh for most homes
Almond Blossoms, at the top of this page, is the Van Gogh we recommend most often. Branches of white blossom spread across a clear turquoise sky — no horizon, no figures, just the tree and the light. Van Gogh painted it in 1890 to celebrate the birth of his nephew, and it still feels like a picture about new beginnings, which makes it a lovely choice for a bedroom, a nursery or a new home.
In the spring of 1888 in Arles, Van Gogh painted a whole series of orchards in flower. The Pink Peach Tree is a single tree frothing with pale pink blossom beside a reed fence. The White Orchard is a row of fruit trees in white flower over fresh green grass, and Almond Tree in Blossom is a slender young tree with pink flowers against a band of green and gold. They are light, hopeful and easy to place.
Room: bedroom, nursery, kitchen, a bright living room. Frame: white or natural oak.
Van Gogh and Japan
Van Gogh collected hundreds of Japanese woodblock prints, and they changed the way he used colour and outline. In Paris in 1887 he painted his own versions of some of them. Flowering Plum Orchard (after Hiroshige) takes a print by Utagawa Hiroshige — a dark, twisting plum trunk in white flower — and turns it into blazing red, yellow and green, with Japanese characters copied down the orange borders. It is the perfect bridge if you love both Van Gogh and Japanese art; for the original tradition, see Best Japanese Woodblock Prints for Modern Homes.
Room: living room, study, a hallway that needs colour. Frame: black or brown walnut.
Night: the Starry Nights
If you want a Van Gogh night sky, look first at Starry Night over the Rhône. Painted in Arles in 1888, a year before the famous one, it shows the river at night: a deep blue sky scattered with stars, the yellow gaslights of the town on the far bank, their reflections streaking across the water, and a couple strolling at the water's edge. It is calmer and more romantic than The Starry Night, and far less familiar.
And if The Starry Night itself is the one — the swirling sky, the crescent moon, the dark flame of the cypress over the sleeping village — then buy it. It is one of the ten pictures in The Big 10: The World's Most Iconic Art Prints for good reason. Choose a generous size and a proper frame, and it stops looking like a dorm-room poster.
Room: living room, bedroom, a dark-painted study. Frame: black or brown walnut.
Wheat fields and olive groves: big colour for big walls
At Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh painted the countryside outside the asylum again and again. Wheat Field with Cypresses is the classic: a field of ripe gold wheat, a tall dark cypress like a green flame, blue hills and great swirling clouds above. Olive Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun is warmer still — twisted olive trunks casting blue shadows on orange earth, under a lemon-yellow sky with a pale sun. For a softer green, Field with Poppies looks across a patchwork of green fields dotted with red poppies towards a farmhouse and dark cypresses.
These are the Van Goghs to buy large. Their energy needs space, and they look best above a sofa, a dining table or a bed. For sizing, see What Art Print Size Should I Buy for My Sofa, Bed, or Dining Room Wall?
Room: living room, dining room. Frame: natural oak or brown walnut to warm the golds.
Inside: the bedroom and the flowers
The Bedroom is Van Gogh's own room in the Yellow House in Arles: blue walls, a wooden bed with a red cover, two rush-seated yellow chairs, a small washstand table, and his own pictures hanging above the bed. He painted it to express rest, and it is a natural choice for — of course — a bedroom. For flowers, our Sunflowers is not the famous vase but the earlier Paris study of cut sunflower heads lying on a blue cloth, all spiky petals and seeds — earthier and more modern-looking than the vase.
Room: bedroom, kitchen, a reading corner. Frame: natural oak or white.
The exhibition-poster versions
If you prefer something more graphic, our exhibition-poster designs set Van Gogh's paintings in torn strips of colour on a cream poster, above the lettering of a 1960 Aix-en-Provence exhibition. Café Terrace at Night and Irises both come in this style, and the Van Gogh Colour Series Statement Trio hangs three of these posters — cream, mint green and pink — side by side. They suit a kitchen, a modern apartment or a home office. For hanging two or three prints together, see How Do I Pair Two or Three Art Prints Together?
Why a Van Gogh print is worth doing properly
With Van Gogh, the brushstrokes are the picture. A cheap poster flattens them into blurred colour; a good giclée print keeps every ridge and direction of the paint. Every print we make is on Hahnemühle fine art paper with archival pigment inks, so the blues stay deep and the yellows stay bright for decades. If you are wondering what that means in practice, read What Does "Museum-Quality" Actually Mean for Art Prints? and When Are Expensive Art Prints Worth It — and When Are They Not? Framed prints come in black, white, natural oak and brown walnut.
Summary: Almond Blossoms for calm, Starry Night over the Rhône for night without the cliché, the wheat fields and olive groves for big colour, Flowering Plum Orchard for a Japanese accent, The Bedroom for the bedroom. And The Starry Night, if you love it — framed well.
Keep exploring the Impressionism & Fauvism and Famous Artists collections.
