Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853- 1890) was a Dutch Post-impressionist painter. Van Gogh is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2.100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self portraits, and are characterized by bold colors and impulsive, expressive brushwork.

He was born in Zundert, in the predominantly Catholic province of North Brabant in the Netherlands. His parents were Theodorus van Gogh (1822-1885), a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and Anna Cornelia Carbentus (1819-1907). Van Gogh’s mother came from a prosperous family in The Hague. Vincent was a serious and thoughtful child. He was taught at home by his mother and a governess. His interest in art began at an early age. He was encouraged to draw as a child by his mother  In 1864 he was placed in a boarding school at Zevenbergen (about 25 kilometers north from Zundert), where he felt abandoned and he repeatedly requested to come home. Instead, in 1866 his parents sent him to the middle school in Tilburg (even further away from home), where he was extremely unhappy. In March 1868, Vincent abruptly returned home.

In 1869 Van Gogh’s uncle Cent obtained a position for him at the art dealers Goupi & Cie in The Hague. After completing his training in 1873, he was transferred to London. This was a happy time for Vincent; he was successful at work and, at 20 he was earning more money than his father. After a short period in Paris (1875-1876), where he was dismissed after some disagreements with his employer, he returned home.

Back in the Netherlands he immersed himself in religion, and became increasingly pious and monastic. To support his religious conviction and his desire to become a pastor, in 1877, the family sent him to live with his uncle Johannes Stricker, a respected theologian, in Amsterdam. Van Gogh prepared for the University of Amsterdam theology entrance examination, but he failed the exam and left his uncle’s house. In January 1879, he took up a post as a missionary at Petit-Wasmes in the coal-mining district of Borinage in Belgium. To show support for his impoverished congregation, he lived in a small hut, where he slept on straw. His  squalid living conditions did not endear him to church authorities, who dismissed him for ‘undermining  the dignity of the post’. In the Borinage he became interested in the people and the local environment, and recorded them in drawings after Theo’s, his younger brother, suggestion that he take up art in earnest. In November 1880 he registered at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he studied anatomy and the standard rules of modelling and perspective. Van Gogh went to The Hague to try to sell paintings and to meet with his second cousin, Anton Mauve. Mauve was the successful artist Van Gogh longed to be. Mauve invited him to return in a few months and suggested he spend the intervening time working in charcoal and pastels. Mauve took Vincent on as a student and introduced him to watercolor and to painting in oil and lent him money to set up a studio. Soon after, he first painted in oils, bought with money from Theo. He liked the medium, and he wrote Mauve that he was surprised how good the results were. By March 1882 Mauve appeared to have gone cold towards Van Gogh, and he stopped replying his letters.

In September 1883 Van Gogh moved to Drenthe in the northern Netherlands. In December, driven by loneliness, he went back to live with his parents in Nuenen, North Brabant. There he focused on painting and drawing. Working en plein air and very quickly he completed sketches and paintings of weavers and their cottages. There was interest from a dealer in Paris early in 1885. Theo asked if he had paintings ready to exhibit. In May, Vincent responded with his first major work The Potato Eaters. In August his work was publicly exhibited for the first time, in the shop windows of the dealer Leurs in The Hague. Van Gogh moved to Paris in March 1886 where he shared Theo’s rue Laval apartment in Montmartre and studied at Fernand Cormon’s studio. In 1885 in Antwerp he had become interested in Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and used them to decorate the walls of his studio; while in Paris he collected hundreds of them. After seeing the self portrait of Adolphe Monticelli at the Galerie Delareybarette, Vincent adopted a brighter palette and a bolder attack, particularly in paintings such as Seascapes at Saintes-Maries (1888). By early 1887, Vincent had moved to Asnières, where he got to know Paul Signac. He adopted elements of Pointillism, a technique in which a multitude of small colored dots are applied to the canvas, that when seen from from a distance create an optical blend of hues. In February 1888 feeling worn out from life in Paris, Van Gogh left, having painted more than 200 paintings during his two years there.

Ill from drink and suffering from smoker’s cough, Van Gogh sought refuge in Arles. The time in Arles became one of Van Gogh’s more prolific periods: he completed 200 paintings and more than 100 drawings and watercolors. He was enchanted by the local countryside and light; his works from this period are rich in yellow, ultramarine and mauve. They include harvests, wheat fields and general rural landmarks from the area. On 7 May Vincent moved to the Café de la Gare, having befriended the owners, Joseph and Marie Ginoux. In 1888 he started and finished a series of paintings that included Van Gogh’s Chair, Starry Night, Starry Night  Over the Rhône, Bedroom in Arles, The Night Café, Café Terrace at Night and Vase with Twelve Sunflowers. When Gauguin agreed to visit Arles in 1888, Van Gogh hoped for friendship. While waiting, in August he painted Sunflowers. After much pleading from Van Gogh, Gauguin arrived in Arles on 23 October and, in November the two painted together. Gauguin depicted Van Gogh in his The Painter of the Sunflowers. The two artists visited Montpellier in December 1888, where they saw works by Courbet and Delacroix in the Musée Fabre. Van Gogh and Gauguin often quarreled; Van Gogh increasingly feared that Gauguin was going to desert him, and the situation rapidly headed towards crisis point. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor, when in rage, he severed part of his own left ear. The exact sequence of events which led to Van Gogh’s selfmutilation of the ear is still unknown.

Van Gogh had no recollection of the event, suggesting that he may have suffered from an acute mental breakdown. The hospital diagnosis was ‘acute mania with generalized delirium’ and within a few days, the local police ordered that he be placed in hospital care. Gauguin fled Arles, never to see Vincent again. Despite a pessimistic diagnosis, Van Gogh recovered and returned on January 1890 to ‘the yellow house’, which he had rented. In March, the police closed his house after a petition by 30 local residents who described him as ‘le fou roux (the redheaded madman). Two months later he left Arles and voluntarily entered an asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence. His depression continued and on 27 July 1890 Vincent shot himself in the chest with a revolver. He died from the injuries two days later. Van Gogh was very unsuccessful during his lifetime, and was often considered a fool and a failure. He became famous after his death, and exists in the public imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius. 

- Jan Pleus