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
Vincent van Gogh not paint things as they are ... [T]hey paint them as "they themselves" feel them to be." Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings. Those sold for over US$100 million (today's equivalent) include "Portrait of Dr Gachet"," " and "Irises". The Metropolitan Museum of Art's version of "Wheat Field with Cypresses" was acquired in 1993 for US$57 million. In 2015 "L'Allée des Alyscamps" sold for US$66.3 million at Sotheby's, New York, exceeding its reserve of US$40 million. Van Gogh's nephew and namesake, Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890–1978), inherited the estate after his mother's death in 1925. During