Van Gogh’s Bastards

During its 14-week run at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the exhibition Van Gogh: Up Close sold an extraordinary number of tickets to visitors from every state in the union and 46 other countries and territories. The only other North American venue for the exhibition is the National Gallery of Canada, where it opened on May 25, the first serious showing of Van Gogh’s work in Canada in a quarter century. It is expected to be the blockbuster art show of the summer, attracting tourists and art obsessives from across the country and around the planet.

The success of this exhibition is no anomaly. Wherever and whenever his paintings are shown, Van Gogh draws the sorts of crowds that are the almost exclusive preserve of geriatric rock and roll superstars like Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones.

For most of his life, Vincent Van Gogh was impoverished, physically unwell and mentally unstable. After two of the most gloriously productive years of any...