Vincent van Gogh (Russell painting) Vincent van Gogh" (1887) and Paul Gauguin's "The Painter of Sunflowers" (1888). Van Gogh seems to have been particularly attached to Russell's portrait, which the Australian gifted to him as a mark of their friendship. The painting passed from Van Gogh to his brother Theo, then to their family, and is now in the permanent collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Russell was born into a wealthy engineering family in 1858 in Sydney, New South Wales. The family business, P.N. Russell & Co, was responsible for much of the city's 19th-century ironwork. Although Russell had a strong interest
Van Gogh Museum was transferred to the state-initiated Vincent van Gogh Foundation in 1962. Design for a Van Gogh Museum was commissioned by the Dutch government in 1963 to Dutch architect and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld. Rietveld died a year later, and the building was not completed until 1973, when the museum opened its doors. In 1998 and 1999, the building was renovated by the Dutch architect Martien van Goor and an exhibition wing by the Japanese modernist architect Kisho Kurokawa was added. Starting in late 2012, the museum was closed for renovations for six months. During this period, 75 works from the