Loving Vincent (still)

This striking portrait of Vincent van Gogh comes from "Loving Vincent," a 2017 film that made history as the first feature ever created entirely from oil paintings. More than 100 artists worked together to produce over 65,000 individual paintings, each one a frame in a movie about the artist's final days. Painting a film about Van Gogh in Van Gogh's own style feels like exactly the right way to honor him.

The background pulls straight from his most beloved habits, all those curling, restless strokes that call to mind "The Starry Night." Cool blues and soft greens ripple across the canvas, swirling around the bearded figure and making the air itself seem alive. His steady gaze and weathered face sit in quiet contrast to the churning motion behind him.

The devotion in this project runs deep. The filmmakers built many of their scenes and characters directly from Van Gogh's real paintings, folding his own work into the story of his life. There is something bittersweet about it too, since a man who sold almost nothing while he lived would go on to inspire a small army of painters to bring his vision back to life, one careful brushstroke at a time.