What struck me first, after all the postcards, fridge magnets, coffee mugs and art textbooks one sees of van Gogh`s work in a lifetime, was the cartoonish quality of his portraits. It had never jumped out at me from the reproductions but standing before The Potato Eaters (1885) I saw distorted, buggedy-eyed characters that in their unauthenticity, seemed to make them even grimier and veritably human.

Though it was always there, benignly waiting to be noted as I scribbled notes in art class, it was only when I stood before his Bedroom in Arles (1888) at the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam that the warp and wave of the lines and the improbable colours occur to me. Finally, then, when his Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette (1885) appears, it‘s clear. Vincent was having a laugh. Read all about Vincent van Gogh →