Visit the Van Gogh Museum in The Netherlands
Walk into the Van Gogh Museum and meet the artist through the work itself: self-portraits, landscapes, drawings, letters and the paintings that chart how quickly his style changed over a relatively short career. The collection is arranged so you can follow his development rather than simply move between famous canvases, from the darker Dutch works through Paris, Arles, Saint-Rémy and Auvers-sur-Oise. The museum holds the largest collection of Van Gogh's work anywhere, including more than 200 paintings, hundreds of drawings and around 700 letters. That makes this more than a stop for people who already know Sunflowers . The letters and supporting material give context to the paintings, revealing his experiments with colour, technique and subject as well as his relationships with other artists and with his brother Theo. It is also a good introduction to the wider story of late nineteenth-century European art, because Van Gogh's work sits alongside that of contemporaries who influenced him or worked in the same artistic world. The museum sits on Museumplein in Amsterdam, so it is easy to combine with the Rijksmuseum or Stedelijk during a wider visit to the Netherlands. Timed tickets are sold through the museum's official booking system, so this is one attraction worth reserving before you travel rather than leaving entirely to chance. Give yourself a couple of hours rather than racing from masterpiece to masterpiece, then use the rest of the trip to see something of Amsterdam beyond the museum district. Add this to your list and see Van Gogh's work as a body of work, not just a handful of reproductions you've known for years.