In the Steps of Van Gogh – Important Places in Van Gogh’s Life

Planning your own day trip, Van Gogh walking tour, Van Gogh bike tour, or taking a tour online, these pages will be your tour guide to Van Gogh’s world.

Most people know Van Gogh as an extraordinary artist. He was also quite the writer and storyteller, as his letters to family and friends show. I’ve mentioned these before.

Both from his paintings and his letters, you get a sense that this man was deeply moved by the world around him – whether a little room in the yellow house in Arles, a farming couple resting under a tree in a field, cypress trees in the countryside or the many irises and sunflowers in different settings.

Even though the same places today might be very different from how they looked during his time there, this Van Gogh Footsteps tour has long been on my travel wishlist. Someday……

Consider this description from his time in Isleworth, England, in a letter to his brother, Theo. Vincent was only 23 years old and was teaching the bible at Holme Court House, a private boarding school run by Reverend Slade-Jones, a non-conformist minister. He was so poor that he had to walk to Isleworth from Ramsgate, where the school had been previously, and that took 3 days. This brief time (till about Christmas that year) was the only time Vincent Van Gogh was in England – he never returned.

Last Wednesday afternoon, we took a lovely walk to a village an hour away from here. The road there goes through meadows and fields, along hedgerows of hawthorn full of blackberries and clematis and, here and there, a tall elm tree. It was so beautiful when the sun went down behind the grey clouds and when the shadows were long, and we chanced to meet Mr Stokes’s school, where there are still several boys I know.

The clouds kept their red glow long after the sun had set and the twilight was gathering over the fields, and, in the distance, we saw the street-lamps being lit in the village. This morning, there was also a beautiful sunrise. I see it every morning when I wake the boys up.

And, there are many such descriptions of other places, even more beautifully-written when they are about scenes that moved him enough to eventually capture in paintings. I think that the letters were also a way for him to commit images to memory till he was ready to start painting them.

For being such a troubled soul during his own lifetime, his letters and paintings have always been a source of joy and calm to me for nearly 2 decades now. Take a look at some of these stunning close-ups of his works.