Rare Photograph of Vincent Van Gogh in Color

Very few photographs of world-famous artist Vincent Van Gogh, are known to exist. In fact, there is only one confirmed photographic portrait of him, and that was taken in 1873 when Vincent was only 19 years old, about 10 years before he began painting. When the image was taken, Vincent was working for the Goupil & Cie art dealership in The Hague, shortly before being relocated to their branch in London, England.

There was another portrait photograph that was identified as Vincent Van Gogh at the age of 13. However, after further research, it was concluded that the photograph was misidentified as Vincent, and was actually his brother, Theo Van Gogh, at the age of 15.

One other photograph that has been confirmed to include Vincent Van Gogh does exist. It was taken in circa 1886 and shows Vincent sitting with fellow artist Émile Bernard by the River Seine at Asnières, near Paris, France. Unfortunately, you can only see Émile Bernard in the image, as he is sitting opposite Vincent so he is facing away from the camera.

The confirmed real photo of Vincent Van Gogh has been manually colorized by the colorizers at HistoryColored and can be seen at the top of this article. We used the self-portraits painted by Van Gogh himself as references for key features such as his green eyes and his ginger mixed with brown hair. You can see a comparison between the original and color photograph below.

If you would like to read more about Van Gogh, be sure to check out our 10 Interesting Facts About Vincent Van Gogh article! You can also see more images of historical figures that have been colorized such as Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Charlie Chaplin on our website!