The short answer
Yes, for a little over a year. Vincent van Gogh lived in Amsterdam from May 1877 to July 1878, preparing for an exam in theology that he never sat. He was not yet a painter. His paintings came to the city long after his death: the Van Gogh Museum opened in 1973.
A student of 24, lodging at the navy yard
Vincent van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853, the son of a minister. In May 1877, at 24, he moved to Amsterdam. He had been working in a bookshop in Dordrecht, and now he wanted to be a minister himself. To study theology he first had to pass a state exam.
He lodged with his uncle Jan van Gogh, the director of the naval dockyard, at Grote Kattenburgerstraat 3.
It did not work. He had little interest in Latin and Greek, and in 1878 he gave up without taking the exam. By July he had left the city.
What he went to look at
When he was not at his books, he went to look at pictures. The national collection of paintings then hung in the Trippenhuis, a merchants’ mansion on the Kloveniersburgwal.
In September 1877 he was there on three days in a fortnight: twice on the 7th, again on the 18th to see Rembrandt’s etchings, and once more on the 20th, when he signed the visitors’ book.
Three days at the Rijksmuseum
He came back once as a painter. By 1885 he was living with his parents in Nuenen, in the south of the country, and that April he finished The Potato Eaters.
From 6 to 8 October 1885 he went to Amsterdam for three days with Anton Kerssemakers, a man he had been teaching to paint. They visited the Rijksmuseum, which had only just opened. In November he moved to Antwerp.
How his paintings came to Amsterdam
Van Gogh died in 1890. The paintings he left were kept by Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, the widow of his brother Theo, and in 1925 they passed to her son, Vincent Willem van Gogh. For many years he lent them to the Stedelijk Museum. In 1962 the collection was transferred to the Vincent van Gogh Foundation.
The Van Gogh Museum opened on 2 June 1973, in a building designed by Gerrit Rietveld. It holds the largest collection of Van Gogh’s paintings and drawings in the world.
Where to stand
Stand on the Museumplein in front of the Van Gogh Museum. The plain block is Rietveld’s, and the exhibition wing beside it, by Kisho Kurokawa, was added in 1999.
Then turn round. At the far end of the lawn is the Rijksmuseum, the building he spent three days in. The Trippenhuis, where he looked at Rembrandt as a student, still stands on the Kloveniersburgwal in the old centre.
Where to see it
0 of 3 heard
Walking through Amsterdam? Point your phone at whatever you’re standing in front of, and I’ll tell you its story.
Open LookstorySee how it works