When Van Gogh was hospitalized on Christmas Eve, 1888, after trying to cut off his own ear, the official diagnosis furnished by the hospital in Arles was "acute mania with generalised delirium." There is no consensus on a modern diagnosis of van Gogh's illness, though some have suggested bipolar disorder, possibly exacerbated by absinthe drinking and venereal disease.

Writing to his sister Willemina in 1887, Van Gogh said: "What I think about my own work is that the painting of the peasants eating potatoes that I did in Nuenen is after all the best thing I did". However, the painting was criticized by his friend Anthon van Rappard soon after it was painted. This was a blow to Van Gogh's confidence as an emerging artist, and he wrote back to his friend, "You had no right to condemn my work in the way you did," and later, "I am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it."

In January 1879, he took up a post as a missionary at Petit-Wasmes in the coal-mining district of Borinage in Belgium. To show support for his impoverished congregation, he gave up his comfortable lodgings at a bakery to a homeless person and moved to a small hut, where he slept on straw. His squalid living conditions did not endear him to church authorities, who dismissed him for "undermining the dignity of the priesthood."

His suicide at the age of 37 came after years of mental illness, depression and poverty. On July 27, 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a 7mm Lefaucheux à broche revolver. The bullet was deflected by a rib and passed through his chest without doing apparent damage to internal organs. He was able to walk back to the Auberge Ravoux, where he was attended to by two doctors, but without a surgeon present the bullet could not be removed. The doctors tended to him as best they could, then left him alone in his room, smoking his pipe. The following morning, his brother Theo rushed to his side and found him in good spirits. But within hours Vincent began to fail, suffering from an untreated infection resulting from the wound. He died in the early hours of July 29. According to Theo, Vincent's last words were: "The sadness will last forever".

Van Gogh painted some 36 self-portraits in the space of only ten years. Perhaps only Rembrandt produced more, and his career spanned decades.

Although he created more than 900 paintings, Van Gogh sold only one during his lifetime, "Red Vineyard at Arles" which was purchased by the sister of one of his friends. His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century, however, as elements of his painting style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists. He attained widespread critical, commercial and popular success over the ensuing decades, and today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most recognizable and expensive works of art.

Much of Van Gogh's work has been lost because the people who owned it initially thought it to be worthless. His own mother is said to have disposed of full crates of his paintings.

After the death of Vincent and her husband Theo, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger worked assiduously on editing the brothers' correspondence, producing the first volume in Dutch in 1914. She also played a key role in the growth of Vincent's fame and reputation through her donations of his work to various early retrospective exhibitions. She wrote a Van Gogh family history as well.

On December 12, 1988, all three paintings were stolen. In April 1989, the thieves returned Weaver's Interior in an attempt to gain a $2.5 million ransom. The police recovered the other two paintings on July 14, 1989. No ransom was paid.

Portrait of Dr. Gachet became the world's most expensive painting in May 1990. It depicts Dr. Paul Gachet, a homeopathic doctor and artist with whom Van Gogh resided following a spell in an asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Gachet took care of Van Gogh during the final months of his life.