Portrait of the Artist's Mother
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena
Portrait of the Artist's Mother is a painting Vincent van Gogh made in Arles in October 1888, held at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. It shows Anna Cornelia van Gogh, his mother, by then a woman in her sixties whom Vincent had known chiefly through a difficult, distant family relationship rather than daily closeness in the years before this picture was made[1]. Anna valued the social standing and respectability of a parson's household, and much of Vincent's behaviour as a young man, his rejection of convention, his quarrels, the company he kept, ran directly against what she wanted for her family[1]. Yet the relationship was not without tenderness on his side. Four years earlier, in January 1884, Vincent had been present when his mother's thighbone was set after she fell getting off a train at Helmond, and he wrote to his brother Theo and to a fellow painter describing the accident and the long recovery she faced, staying close to nurse her through it[2][3]. The portrait made in Arles, painted at a physical distance from her, stands at some remove from that household, part of a body of work in which Van Gogh returned again and again to the people who had shaped him.
Where it is held
Held at Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, United States.
The painting is held at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, part of the collection of nineteenth and twentieth century European art assembled by the American industrialist and collector Norton Simon (1907 to 1993) over the course of the twentieth century[4].
A household set against him
Vincent's relationship with his father, a Dutch Reformed pastor, was openly hostile by the time the family lived in Nuenen: he advertised his own atheism to visitors and seemed, in his mother's eyes, to be waging a campaign against everything the parsonage stood for. Anna van Gogh had always treasured the social distinctions of a parson's life, and watched with dismay as her eldest son's strange dress, unconventional models and public rebellion against his father put that status under strain[1]. Vincent himself described family as, in his words, a combination of people with contrary interests, each opposed to the rest, a judgment shaped by years of feeling thwarted and rejected within his own household[1].
Nursing his mother through a fracture
In January 1884, while the family was living in Nuenen, Anna van Gogh broke her thighbone getting off a train at Helmond. Vincent was painting at a nearby farm when he was sent for, and he was present for the setting of the fracture, which he described to Theo as having gone comparatively well, though the doctor warned it would take a long time to heal given her age[2]. Writing to the painter Anthon van Rappard a few days later, Vincent set out the full seriousness of the injury, a broken right thighbone that would leave one leg shorter than the other and require at least six months before she could walk again, and explained that he was glad to be there to help, since his sisters were physically weaker and less able to manage the nursing[3]. He kept working through the crisis where he could, cutting back to watercolour studies he could make without leaving the house for long.
A collector's later acquisition
Portrait of the Artist's Mother now hangs at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, built around the collection of Norton Simon, an American industrialist active as a collector through the twentieth century. He is described by one historian of collecting as an irrepressible buyer, willing to pursue major works through complicated auction arrangements and competing dealers, and his collection ranged from Italian Baroque paintings to Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works of the kind this portrait represents[4].
Common questions
When and where did Van Gogh paint Portrait of the Artist's Mother?
In Arles, in October 1888.
Who is shown in the painting?
Anna Cornelia van Gogh, the artist's mother.
Sources
Editorial draws on the following references, verified against the museum and public-domain image record for this work.
- [1] book Steven Naifeh, Van Gogh Used for: this artwork.
- [2] book Vincent van Gogh, Delphi Complete Works of Vincent Van Gogh (Illustrated) Used for: this artwork.
- [3] book Charles, Victoria; Gogh, Theo van; Gogh, Vincent van; Harrison, Robert, Vincent van Gogh by Vincent van Gogh Used for: this artwork.
- [4] book Edgar Peters Bowron (editor), Buying Baroque_ Italian Seventeenth-Century Paintings Come to America (The Frick Collection Studies in the History of Art Collecting in America) Used for: this artwork.
Editorial overseen by Solis Prints. Sources verified 2026-09-03. Click a source for details, or hover over [N] in the page above to preview.
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