Vincent Van Gogh

Played by Tony Curran

"You know, it seems to me there’s so much more to the world than the average eye’s allowed to see. I believe, if you look hard, there are more wonders in this universe than you could ever have dreamed of"

First Regular Appearance	Last Regular Appearance
Vincent and the Doctor	The Pandorica Opens

The Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond met the painter Vincent Van Gogh in 1890 in Aurvers-sur-Oise, a small village in rural France. Having spotted a strange creature in one of his paintings, the Doctor and Amy travelled to find the great Dutch artist and located him at a bar, trying to settle his tab. Despite initial suspicion on Vincent’s part, the three soon became friends and united in a quest to help the creature – a terrified Krafayis, stranded from the rest of its kind.

Van Gogh struggled with depression and was maligned as a ‘madman’ by those around him. He sadly died by suicide in 1890, at the age of 37 – but his emotional intelligence and beautiful vision of the world around him lives on in his work.

Today, he is revered as a unique artistic genius. In the words of Dr Henry Black of the Musée d’Orsay, Van Gogh remains, ‘the finest painter of them all [...] The most beloved, his command of colour most magnificent. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world – no one had ever done it before. Perhaps no one ever will again.’