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
Portrait of the Artist's Mother (Van Gogh) stylized of the three" paintings of women picking olives was made for his sister and mother. Van Gogh set out to complete a series of portraits of his family. This portrait was based upon a black-and-white photograph of his mother. In a letter to his brother Theo, Van Gogh wrote, "I am doing a portrait of Mother for myself. I cannot stand the colorless photograph, and I am trying to do one in a harmony of color, as I see her in my memory." Van Gogh's mother appears to be a respectable middle class woman, attentive and proud, against a