Vincent van Gogh | Paris | Amsterdam | Van Gogh Museum

Vincent van Gogh's dramatic and daring paintings deserve - no, demand - to be seen up close and in person. Here is one man's quest to visit the world's three major collections of van Gogh's work. In three days.
When I do it all over again, I will start in London.

I will spend the night at the Connaught, then rise early and walk down Piccadilly to the National Gallery. Maybe I will detour through Green Park and past Buckingham Palace and perhaps stop for a coffee on the fringes of Trafalgar Square before marching up the museum steps to seek out, on that wing off the second floor reserved for artists living between 1700 and 1900, the works of Vincent van Gogh.

Van Gogh's soulful use of color and his three-dimensional strokes of brush and palette knife speak to me. A mere print is, literally, a pale imitation. Van Gogh's brilliance must be seen in person to be believed.

And so, in the dead of winter, I flew to Europe with the goal of seeing the world's three premier van Gogh collections in three days: Paris's Musée d'Orsay, Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, and London's National Gallery. My aim was a museum and a city per day. No more, no less. Twining the slightest touch of adventure to the artistic, I made no advance reservations for museum tickets, hotel rooms, or transportation.

So it was that on the third day of my journey, in the predawn blackness of a bitter February morning, I was the last passenger on a short yellow train approaching the Hook of Holland, the port from which I would catch the channel ferry to Britain. I had been told that the ship left a little past seven. Upon the train's arrival, I would have 15 minutes to run from the train to the ferry station, purchase a ticket, and then climb aboard. I hoped to find a quiet corner belowdecks where I could read up on van Gogh or perhaps just sip coffee and stare out the window at the heaving seas.

The train stopped. The doors slid open. An arctic gust almost knocked me flat as I stepped onto the empty platform. A freezing rain drenched me. The ferry terminal, thankfully, was just 200 yards away. I walked briskly, trying to convince myself that I was tougher than the cold and rain. When I finally arrived at the terminal, I was shivering uncontrollably. The glass doors were locked. A sign informed prospective travelers that the morning ferry had been discontinued.

As my train disappeared into the distance, taking with it all hopes of immediate warmth and transportation, I began repeating the mantra that would see me through the day: When I do it all over again, I will start in London.

Paris: Musée d'Orsay

My journey, however, had begun in Paris. From a transportation point of view, it made no sense: London is the ideal starting place to seek out the great van Gogh collections. From Waterloo Station, it's simply a matter of taking the Eurostar through the Chunnel to Paris, then catching a train from Gare du Nord to Amsterdam. A truly ambitious traveler could do the whole thing in a day.

Yet from an artistic viewpoint, there can be no other launching point than Paris. Vincent van Gogh lived in the hilly Montmartre section from 1886 to 1888, a time that marked a crucial turning point in his career. He was 33 at the time, an evangelical preacher turned artist just a few years earlier. His work until then was filled with dark shades, earth tones, and drab scenes of peasant life. But in Paris, van Gogh became fascinated by the Impressionist school of painting, with its emphasis on natural light and color. He befriended famous artists such as Paul Gauguin and Camille Pissarro. Van Gogh was an obsessive and prolific man, constantly pushing himself toward creative excellence. Paris was where he ceased to be just a painter and began filling his canvases with the uniquely applied dabs and swirls that would become his trademark style. "I am using another language, that of colors, to translate the impressions of light and dark into black and white," he explained to his brother Theo, an art dealer.

How do I know this? I'm not an art historian. What I know of van Gogh's life I read in books. But a few years back, my wife and I hung a rather nice framed van Gogh print in a hallway at home. The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise was meant to be a decoration, nothing more. It was a rather somber image of a lone woman walking past a church that looked, frankly, haunted.­ I didn't give it much thought.

But while in Paris on business soon after, I stopped off at the Musée d'Orsay to view the Impressionist paintings. There, among the walls lined with Monets and Manets, was a room dedicated to van Gogh. Room 35, on the fifth level, to be precise. And there hung The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise. Only the real thing wasn't some drab portrait, but a dramatic rendering of a misshapen Gothic cathedral ringed by bubbling moats of lava and wildflowers. The sky wasn't black at all, but an unholy shade of blue that I had only seen in nature. And the paint was applied so thickly­ that it seemed as if the whole complex image was going to leap off the canvas.

Suddenly, and for the first time in my life, I got art. It had nothing to do with pretty paintings. Rather, it was like a punch in the gut, a sensation so palpable and emotionally charged that I could not look away. I stared at The Church for a very long time that day. This led to a deeper appreciation of not just the Monets and Manets, but also of underrated artists like Turner (whose Rain, Steam and Speed is a work of pure brilliance) and Pissarro. And, thanks to the visceral power of that painting, I also learned that art is subjective. I like what I like, even if it doesn't match someone else's taste - and that's okay. It's rather freeing to walk into a museum and stare at a painting that I enjoy, unhindered by concerns over whether or not a more advanced art connoisseur might think me a Philistine.

I returned to the Musée d'Orsay on a gray afternoon. It is a former train station located on the banks of the Seine, just a short walk from the more famous and traditional Louvre. The massive open spaces of the bottom floors are given to statuary and oversize paintings. I took the escalator up to the fifth level, where the Impressionists are displayed. In my hand was a map of the museum, showing the rooms where specific works of art could be seen. But I wanted to be surprised and so I did not consult it. I wanted to see if the van Gogh paintings would exert that same raw emotional tug when I chanced upon them.

Cézanne was the first artist on display. His pale, literal pastels would prove to be a warm-up for the bright blues and vivid yellows favored by van Gogh. I wandered from room to room, not studying every painting in depth (there were just too many), focusing only on those that caught my eye. Soon I was in Room 35, a rectangular space perhaps 30 by 40 feet. The walls were beige and gray, as was the floor. Natural light filtered in from skylights. The van Goghs didn't disappoint. It would have been horrible if they had - traveling all that way to relive a memory, only to find out that it was just an invention created by time.

There were 16 on display, though just two were painted during his years in Paris. The room was jammed with schoolkids and tourists. More than one spectator was holding a camera phone up close to a painting to take a quick photo. I moved slowly from painting to painting. My personal favorite on this trip was The Siesta. It featured a man and wife napping in the shadow of a haystack following the harvest. Maybe it was the colors, maybe it was the way I felt transported to a sunny pasture somewhere in the south of France, but it was mesmerizing.

I lingered for another few hours in the Musée d'Orsay, then wandered over to the Louvre, where I spent the rest of the afternoon.

That night I ate a dinner of omelet and salad in a smoky café in lively Montmartre, then found a room in a small artist's hotel where a fat furry cat slept on the front desk. Symbolically, at least, my journey in search of van Gogh's work was off to a fine start.

Amsterdam: The Van Gogh Museum

The train from Paris to Amsterdam took just four hours. The farmland in between was surprisingly green, and there was no snow. It was late afternoon when I arrived, so I hustled over to the Van Gogh Museum. Van Gogh was born in the Netherlands, but Amsterdam was not a central city in his life. Nevertheless, he is treated with as much reverence in his native land as Rembrandt. The Van Gogh Museum is a case in point. A large, airy space next to the Rijksmuseum (the nation's largest museum, featuring a wide collection of Dutch masters such as Rembrandt and Vermeer, and more than a million objects of painting and sculpture), its gray, geometric shape is somewhat ironic considering van Gogh's penchant for blurring perspective and creating motion through wavy lines. There were no right angles to van Gogh.

The museum was crowded, even on a midweek February afternoon, which tells me that it must be quite the tourist draw in the summer. But there are certain attractions one must visit in the world's major­ ­cities - say, the Empire State Building when traveling to New York. In Amsterdam, the Van Gogh Museum is such a place. (I would suggest that the nearby Heineken Brewery is not far behind.) There are more van Goghs inside that space than anywhere else in the world. Elaborate signs in English and Dutch explain where each work was painted and its significance in van Gogh's life. The works are arranged chronologically, making it possible to see his transition from fledgling artist to creative visionary. The paintings between 1888 and 1890 show a freedom and experimentation but also a sense of melancholy. Van Gogh was slowly slipping into depression, and it seems as if he was in a hurry to paint as many canvases as possible before losing his faculties.

Indeed, during that time he was often painting a new work each day.

What struck me was how van Gogh used other artists as a constant source of inspiration. He often practiced by painting reproductions of famous works by Delacroix and Rembrandt. But to look at those paintings created between 1888 and 1890 made me wonder at the cost of his devotion to the creative process. Those paintings were almost all done when he was confined to an insane asylum (thanks to a misdiagnosed case of epilepsy), and this was when he so famously chopped off part of his ear.

The Van Gogh Museum is inspirational, and there is a calming aesthetic to wandering through the large galleries in an unhurried fashion. But it is also impossible to take in its four floors without feeling slightly unsettled. I found myself wondering about that curious place a man inhabits in the artistic realm - one foot in the world's reality and the other in that place of artistic creation that dares to let the mind run wild.

I walked around Amsterdam for a couple hours after that, over cobbled streets and canal bridges. The city was clean and the mood bohemian. The next stop on my short tour was London and the National Gallery, but after the full immersion of the Van Gogh Museum, it felt like my journey into the life and works of Vincent van Gogh had already come to an end.

London: National Gallery

The wonderful thing about travel is that each day offers a fresh start. I was up at 4:30 a.m., eager to catch the train from Amsterdam's Central Station to the Hook of Holland, there to fulfill a desire to cross the English Channel in the manner used by van Gogh when he traveled to London: by ship.

It was not to be. With the ferry not scheduled to depart until late afternoon, it would have been impossible to make the National Gallery before closing. I would be unable to meet my three-day travel goal. So when the little yellow train finally made its way back to Hook of Holland, I was waiting on the platform in the freezing rain, eager to make all haste for the airport. I was in London before noon, walking up the steps of the massive National Gallery and into that second-floor wing reserved for artists living between 1700 and 1900. Van Gogh's work, particularly one of his four famous ­"Sunflower" paintings, hung in a high-­ceilinged room filled with Impressionists. It was an appropriate spot, with the transitional feel of a cultural crossfade. Van Gogh was not actually an Impressionist but an artist who helped bridge the gap between them and later artists such as Picasso.

With that, my van Gogh grand tour was done. Three days, three cities, three museums - and a resonance that will last a lifetime. Next time, I will start in London. Then again, maybe next time I'll be chasing Turner, or Rembrandt, or some other artist. And, like the path of the creative process, who knows where that journey will take me.
The Way To Van Gogh
The Van Gogh Museum (www.vangoghmuseum.com) is conveniently located on the Museum Quarter, a vast lawn that also fronts the Rijksmuseum and the Stedlijk Museum. For a combination of education and libation, check out the Heineken Brewery (www.heinekenexperience.com). The alleys and narrow streets crisscrossing Amsterdam's canals are a great shopping experience and a popular place to people-watch. Lodging is plentiful in Amsterdam. I stayed at the Amsterdam Marriott Hotel (marriott­.com/property/propertypage/AMSNT), on the Stadhouderskade, which is a main thoroughfare.

If you're feeling ambitious while in Paris to see van Gogh's works at Musée d'Orsay (www.musee-orsay.fr), make a side visit to the nearby Louvre (www.louvre.fr). In Montmartre, I stayed at the Hotel Andre Gill (Angle 76, rue des Martyrs; 011-33-14-26-24-848), an austere but quiet lodging, just a short walk away from the Sacré Coeur Basilica and the nightlife of Montmartre. Other great hotels: Best Western Opéra Richepanse (www.holidaycity.com/bw-opera­-richepanse-paris) is just a few blocks off the Place de la Concorde but feels light years away from the hustle and bustle. My all-time favorite Paris hotel is the Hyatt Regency Paris-Madeleine (paris.madeleine.hyatt.com), which has the small intimate feel of a boutique hotel but all the amenities of five-star service. Finding good food is never a problem in Paris, but one of my favorite bistros is Le Florentin, just a block away from the American Embassy Consulate on Rue de Richepanse.

London's National Gallery (www.nationalgallery.co.uk) is centrally located at Trafalgar Square. For a taste of the local fare, try Albannach (66 Trafalgar Square; 011-44-20-7930-0066) which specializes in British Isles food, particularly that of Scotland. There is no shortage of lodging in London, no matter your budget. But if your wallet allows, there is nothing better than a night at the Connaught
(www.the-connaught.co.uk), which offers unparalleled luxury, comfort, and service.

If your travel plans don't call for a trip to Europe, visit New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (www.metmuseum.org), the Art Institute of Chicago (www.artic.edu), and Los Angeles's J. Paul Getty Museum
(www.getty.edu). Each features important works by van Gogh.

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