Van Gogh’s Signature Was a Choice — and a Rare One
A new study is reshaping a familiar detail of Vincent van Gogh’s work: the way he signed it, and how often he chose not to. Amsterdam-based art historian Julia Engelmayer’s online essay for the Van Gogh Museum, “Simply ‘Vincent’: An Overview of Van Gogh’s Signed Paintings,” counts 133 signed works among roughly 840 surviving paintings. That means only 15 percent of his surviving canvases bear a signature or, in two cases, an inscribed title.
The numbers alone make Van Gogh unusual. He created around 1,000 paintings in total, and his signature rate was far lower than that of many 19th-century peers. Paul Gauguin, by comparison, signed far more of his work. Engelmayer’s study suggests that Van Gogh’s restraint was not accidental. He began signing in 1884, then added 17 signed works in Nuenen, 57 in Paris, 50 in Arles, seven in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, and one in Auvers-sur-Oise.
The decision to use only “Vincent” also appears to have been both personal and practical. Van Gogh’s relationship with much of his family, especially his father, was strained, though he remained close to Theo. In a December 1883 letter, he wrote that he was not really a “Van Gogh.” He later explained that his surname was difficult for non-Dutch speakers to pronounce, and in March 1888 he told Theo that he wanted only his Christian name in a Belgian exhibition catalogue.
Engelmayer also shows that the signature itself was part of the painting’s visual language. Red is the most common color, appearing on 75 of the 133 signed works. More than half of the signatures are angled, often at about 45 degrees, and 31 paintings from the Arles period include a horseshoe-shaped “V.” In works such as “Seascape near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer,” Van Gogh explicitly linked the red signature to color contrast, writing that he wanted “a red note in the green.”
Placement mattered as well. Most signatures sit in the corners, but Van Gogh occasionally inserted his name into the composition itself. On the sunflower paintings, he placed it on the pot, asserting the motif as his own. In “Van Gogh’s Chair,” the signature appears on a box at the back of the image, adding another layer of ambiguity to a work already charged with absence and self-definition.
One of the study’s most striking omissions is “The Red Vineyard,” the only identified painting Van Gogh sold during his lifetime. It remained unsigned. That detail, like the rest of his signature practice, suggests an artist who treated authorship not as a fixed stamp, but as something contingent, expressive, and deeply tied to how he wanted to be seen.
