Before he pursued painting, van Gogh attempted to establish careers as a lay minister, a teacher, and an art dealer. He didn't start painting until 1881, when he moved back home with his parents at the age of 27, but from that point forward he created nearly 900 paintings, an average of 2 per week for the rest of his life.

There are two series of dying sunflowers. The first was painted in Paris in 1887 and shows flowers lying on the ground. The second set was completed a year later in Arles and is of bouquets in a vase positioned in early morning light. Both are built from thickly layered paintwork, which, according to the London National Gallery, evoke the "texture of the seed-heads". Today the major pieces of the series are among his best known, celebrated for the sickly connotations of the color yellow and its tie-in with the yellow house in which he lived.

Vincent van Gogh wasn't the only one with his name in the family. Van Gogh the artist was named after his stillborn older brother, who was in turn named after their grandfather. His younger brother, Theo van Gogh, also named his son (the artist's nephew) Vincent.

In August 1881, his recently widowed cousin, Cornelia "Kee" Vos-Stricker, daughter of his mother's older sister Willemina and Johannes Stricker, arrived for a visit. He was thrilled and took long walks with her. Kee was seven years older than he was and had an eight-year-old son. Van Gogh surprised everyone by declaring his love to her and proposing marriage. She refused with the words "No, nay, never" ("nooit, neen, nimmer").

In January 1882, Van Gogh met a homeless, pregnant prostitute named Clasina Maria "Sien" Hoornik who had been deserted by the father of the child she was carrying. Sien posed for van Gogh throughout the winter. In exchange, Van Gogh provided Sien and her daughter with a place to live and food to eat. He considered marrying her, but his father pressured him to abandon Sien and her two children. Vincent at first defied him, but in late 1883, he left Sien and the children. She later drowned herself in the River Scheldt.

In 1885, one of his young peasant models became pregnant. Van Gogh was accused of forcing himself upon her, and the village priest forbade parishioners to model for him.

For nine turbulent weeks during the fall of 1888, a yellow house at the corner of Place Lamartine in the southern French town of Arles was home to Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, a pair of Post-Impressionist painters on divergent artistic paths. The modest two-story abode, which no longer exists, was immortalized in several paintings by Van Gogh, including The Yellow House (1888) and The Bedroom (1888).

After the altercation with Gauguin, Van Gogh returned to his room, where he was assaulted by voices and severed his left ear with a razor. He bandaged the wound, wrapped the ear in paper, and delivered the package to a woman at a brothel Van Gogh and Gauguin both frequented. Van Gogh was found unconscious the next morning by a policeman and taken to hospital. The ear was also delivered to the hospital but could not be reattached as too much time had passed.

The most comprehensive primary source on Van Gogh is the correspondence between him and his younger brother, Theo. Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Vincent's thoughts and theories of art, are recorded in the hundreds of letters they exchanged from 1872 until 1890.

Van Gogh painted The Starry Night while undergoing treatment at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in the south of France. Forbidden by the hospital staff to paint his bedroom, he painted the view from his bedroom window no fewer than twenty-one times at different times of day and under various weather conditions, including sunrise, moonrise, sunshine-filled days, overcast days, windy days, and one day with rain. "Through the iron-barred window," he wrote to his brother in 1889, "I can see an enclosed square of wheat ... above which, in the morning, I watch the sun rise in all its glory."