Vincent van Gogh text message story: Vincent's art dealer texts
A short, funny LINE-style chat starring Vincent van Gogh (1853 to 1890), Dutch painter, with his brother Theo. A dealer asking an artist for something that sells is the oldest conversation in the art world, here with a stubborn answer about sunflowers.
Read the chat
- Theo: Vincent, can you paint something people will actually buy
- Vincent: what do people buy
- Theo: flowers. a nice bowl of fruit
- Vincent: I have thirty sunflowers
- Theo: that is a lot of sunflowers
- Vincent: they are all very yellow
- Theo: can one of them be blue
- Vincent: no
- Theo: then send the sunflowers, I will find a buyer
Free to try, no account needed until you export.
Who was Vincent van Gogh?
- He painted several versions of his Sunflowers in 1888 and 1889.
- His brother Theo van Gogh, an art dealer, supported him with money and letters for most of his career.
- He sold very few paintings while he was alive; their fame came after his death.
The chat is invented. Vincent van Gogh never sent these messages, and the story is labelled as fiction wherever it appears.
How this chat is built
It runs 9 messages between Theo and Vincent. Theo writes 5 of them. The longest line is “Vincent, can you paint something people will actually buy” (Theo) and the shortest is “no” (Vincent). The word “sunflowers” comes back 3 times, which is where the rhythm of the joke comes from. It closes on “then send the sunflowers, I will find a buyer” from Theo.
It is shown in the LINE look , one of the LINE-style chat tools. In the editor you can switch it to any other look and the whole conversation follows.