To stay that Vincent van Gogh was one in the class of tortured artists would be an understatement. Everyone know he sliced off his own earlobe in a pique of lunacy — but not everyone knows that he went with his profusely bleeding body part to a nearby bordello, starting one of the workers there so much that she fainted. Or that van Gogh went to sleep, severed ear and all, and nearly bled to death — police found him unconscious and took him to the hospital. That kind of madness did lead to some genius works, however, as a Paris gallery proved.

On this day, March 17, in 1901, 71 paintings by Vincent Van Gogh went up on at Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris. The pathos of his works, drawn in bright colors and strong, expressive brushstrokes, was like nothing else at the time.

Van Gogh, unfortunately, did not live to see the praise for his work. After the earlobe incident he deteriorated further in his mental health and checked himself into a mental hospital (where he created one of his most stirrings paintings, Starry Night.) In the summer of 1890 dementia took its final tool, and Van Gogh shot himself. And Starry Night is on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, valued in the tens of millions.