Van Gogh: 500 Masterpieces in Color (Illustrated) (Affordable Portable Art)

- Digitally restored illustrations
- Translated captions
- Annotated

Though the years of the early 1880s showed great promise and increasing technical mastery paired with a sharpening creative eye for Vincent Van Gogh's art career, the five-year span from 1886-1890 marked the high point (and end point), providing unparalleled paintings from a troubled genius. It was to be an age of post-Impressionistic color, form and wonderment that the art world discovered only after the master's death. Bouts of anxiety, mental illness and epilepsy may have tormented him and brought about his suicide at the age of 37. But they may also have been catalysts for emotionality and vibrance in his art that reveal a turbulent search for grace.

The compilation of Vincent Van Gogh's 500 finest color paintings in this online volume comes to you in a digitally restored state: the eye-popping brilliance and vitality are just as on the day Van Gogh finished them. Unless noted otherwise, all of them were originally oil paintings on canvas or wood (the few exceptions are watercolors).

The arrangement is by genre (see the list below) and is chronological within each genre section. There are a few duplicates, that is, some paintings from one genre are also shown within the scope of another genre in order to emphasize their "dual nature." This is especially true for the images in "Skyscapes," many of which are reprised from "Landscapes" or other relevant genres to afford you, the viewer, with a fresh perspective on a different aspect of the composition.

Technical Note: All 500 images are in color -- they render beautifully in optimized gray-scale tones for black-and-white e-book readers, but exhibit even more stunningly in full color with color readers and inside Kindle apps for color-enabled computers and portable or hand-held devices.

The masterpieces are organized into the following genres (with the tally of images in each):

PORTRAITS (24)
SELF-PORTRAITS (18)
CHARACTER AND ACTION STUDIES (31)
LABORERS (37)
TOWNSCAPES: FROM A DISTANCE (17)
TOWNSCAPES: FROM INSIDE THE TOWN (30)
BUILDINGS: FROM AN EXTERIOR PERSPECTIVE (35)
BUILDINGS: INTERIOR DESIGN (17)
BIRDS (2)
ANIMALS (7)
FLOWERS AND GARDENS: LIVING AND GROWING (20)
FLOWERS: FLORAL ARRANGEMENTS (29)
STILL LIFE (45)
TREES (50)
LANDSCAPES (50)
WATERSCAPES: THE SEA (6)
WATERSCAPES: RIVERS, CANALS AND BRIDGES (23)
SKYSCAPES (38)
NIGHTSCAPES: AT SUNSET (14)
NIGHTSCAPES: BY MOONLIGHT (3)
NIGHTSCAPES: STARRY NIGHTS (5)
NIGHTSCAPES: AT SUNRISE (1)