structural:summarization
Reputation and legacy

After van Gogh's first exhibitions in the late 1880s, his reputation grew steadily among artists, art critics, dealers and collectors. In 1887, André Antoine hung van Gogh's alongside works of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, at the Théâtre Libre in Paris; some were acquired by Julien Tanguy. In 1889, his work was described in the journal Le Moderniste Illustré by Albert Aurier as characterised by "fire, intensity, sunshine". Ten paintings were shown at the Société des Artistes Indépendants, in Brussels in January 1890. French president Marie François Sadi Carnot was said to have been impressed by van Gogh's work.

After van Gogh's death, memorial exhibitions were held in Brussels, Paris, The Hague and Antwerp. His work was shown in several high-profile exhibitions, including six works at Les XX; in 1891 there was a retrospective exhibition in Brussels. In 1892, Octave Mirbeau wrote that van Gogh's suicide was an "infinitely sadder loss for art... even though the populace has not crowded to a magnificent funeral, and poor Vincent van Gogh, whose demise means the extinction of a beautiful flame of genius, has gone to his death as obscure and neglected as he lived."

Theo died in January 1891, removing Vincent's most vocal and well-connected champion. Theo's widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger was a Dutchwoman in her twenties who had not known either her husband or her brother-in-law very long and who suddenly had to take care of several hundreds of paintings, letters and drawings, as well as her infant son, Vincent Willem van Gogh. Gauguin was not inclined to offer assistance in promoting van Gogh's reputation, and Johanna's brother Andries Bonger also seemed lukewarm about his work. Aurier, one of van Gogh's earliest supporters among the critics, died of typhoid fever in 1892 at the age of 27.

In 1892, Émile Bernard organised a small solo show of van Gogh's paintings in Paris, and Julien Tanguy exhibited his van Gogh paintings with several consigned from Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. In April 1894, the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris agreed to take 10 paintings on consignment from van Gogh's estate. In 1896, the Fauvist painter Henri Matisse, then an unknown art student, visited John Russell on Belle Île off Brittany. Russell had been a close friend of van Gogh; he introduced Matisse to the Dutchman's work, and gave him a van Gogh drawing. Influenced by van Gogh, Matisse abandoned his earth-coloured palette for bright colours.

In Paris in 1901, a large van Gogh retrospective was held at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, which excited André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, and contributed to the emergence of Fauvism. Important group exhibitions took place with the Sonderbund artists in Cologne in 1912, the Armory Show, New York in 1913, and Berlin in 1914. Henk Bremmer was instrumental in teaching and talking about van Gogh, and introduced Helene Kröller-Müller to van Gogh's art; she became an avid collector of his work. The early figures in German Expressionism such as Emil Nolde acknowledged a debt to van Gogh's work. Bremmer assisted Jacob Baart de la Faille, whose catalogue raisonné L'Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh appeared in 1928. Van Gogh's fame reached its first peak in Austria and Germany before World War I, helped by the publication of his letters in three volumes in 1914. His letters are expressive and literate, and have been described as among the foremost 19th-century writings of their kind. These began a compelling mythology of van Gogh as an intense and dedicated painter who suffered for his art and died young. In 1934, the novelist Irving Stone wrote a biographical novel of van Gogh's life titled Lust for Life, based on van Gogh's letters to Theo. This novel and the 1956 film further enhanced his fame, especially in the United States where Stone surmised only a few hundred people had heard of van Gogh prior to his surprise best-selling book.

In 1957, Francis Bacon based a series of paintings on reproductions of van Gogh's The Painter on the Road to Tarascon, the original of which was destroyed during the Second World War. Bacon was inspired by an image he described as "haunting", and regarded van Gogh as an alienated outsider, a position which resonated with him. Bacon identified with van Gogh's theories of art and quoted lines written to Theo: "eal painters do not paint things as they are... hey paint them as they themselves feel them to be."

Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings. Those sold for over US$100 million (today's equivalent) include Portrait of Dr Gachet, Portrait of Joseph Roulin and Irises. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired a copy of Wheat Field with Cypresses in 1993 for US$57 million by using funds donated by publisher, diplomat and philanthropist Walter Annenberg. In 2015, L'Allée des Alyscamps sold for US$66.3 million at Sotheby's, New York, exceeding its reserve of US$40 million.

Minor planet 4457 van Gogh is named in his honour.

In October 2022, two activists protesting the effects of the fossil fuel industry on climate change threw a can of tomato soup on van Gogh's Sunflowers in the National Gallery, London, and then glued their hands to the gallery wall. As the painting was covered by glass it was not damaged.