Van Gogh’s sweeping depictions of nature, like a detailed study of a moth or a flower, the rain-soaked French countryside or sun-scorched wheat fields, preoccupied his work and his thinking throughout his career.

“I’ve been a van Gogh nut ever since I was a teenager,” said Richard Kendall, a curator at large at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., who organized “Van Gogh’s Van Goghs: Masterpieces From the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam” at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1998.