Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Post-Impressionist painter. He was a Dutch artist whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. His output includes portraits, self portraits, landscapes and still lifes of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.

He drew as a child but did not paint until his late twenties; he completed many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, including 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolours, drawings, sketches and prints.

Alex Reid trained with Theo van Gogh and lived with Vincent for a period in 1886. His association with the van Gogh brothers meant that Reid came into contact with several other important young artists at the time, such as Paul Gauguin, Emile Bernard and Toulouse-Lautrec. Vincent painted Reid's portrait on two occasions (one example above, centre).