Banking service for the rich steeped in art and history

Money Week has always wondered exactly which type of wealthy client ABN Amro hopes to target with its van Gogh preferred banking services.

Vincent van Gogh, of course, was an enormously talented artist, the creator of rich, felicitous waves of organic colours and shapes, best viewed in his magnificent Sunflowers series of oil paintings.

Most also realise that van Gogh was stark raving mad, a man who, in an exquisitely idiosyncratic psycho-epileptic fit, sliced off his earlobe, wrapped it in fine muslin, calmly strolled over to a local brothel and presented the grisly package to his favourite working girl.

During his subsequent sojourn in a small French sanatorium, he produced one of his most astounding paintings - Starry Night (below), a brilliant, tumultuous swirl of colour that is, in the words of Money Week's art history professor, a 'beautiful, benign Armageddon in a sky of despair'.

So, is ABN Amro appealing to that rarified group of rich, eccentric clients that actually identify with the defective Dutch genius? Or is it really promising financial advice that is impetuous and avant-garde?

Not exactly, says ABN Amro's Vivian Tan, a marketing manager for the van Gogh service.

'Van Gogh was quintessentially Dutch, as we are. He was innovative and creative, just as we are with our services. And we both have a long history - ABN Amro is 175 years old.'