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Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch pronounciation:(March 30, 1853 in Zundert
� July 29, 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise) was a Dutch draughtsman and painter,
classified as a Post-Impressionist. His paintings and drawings include
some of the world's best known, most popular and most expensive pieces.
He suffered from recurrent bouts of mental illness � about which there
are many competing theories � and during one such episode, famously cut
off a part of his left ear.
Van Gogh spent his early life working for a firm of art dealers, and
after a brief spell as a teacher, became a missionary worker in a very
poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until
1880, at the age of 27. Initially he worked in sombre colours, until an
encounter in Paris with Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism accelerated
his artistic development. He produced all of his more than 2,000 works,
including around 900 paintings and 1100 drawings or sketches, during the
last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced
in the final two years of his life, and in the two months before his death
he painted 90 pictures.
The central figure in Vincent van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, an
art dealer with the firm of Goupil & Cie, who continually and selflessly
provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in
numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards, which were
published in 1914, by Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, Theo's widow, who generously
supported most of the early Van Gogh exhibitions with loans from the
artist's estate.
Van Gogh has been acknowledged as a pioneer of what came to be known as
Expressionism and has had an enormous influence on 20th century art,
especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists, and with a line that
continues through to the Abstract Expressionism of Willem de Kooning and
the British painter Francis Bacon.
Early life (1853 � 1869)
Van Gogh's parents, Theodorus and Anna Cornelia, and their children
Vincent, Anna, Theo, Lies, Wil and Cor (from left to right)Vincent
Willem van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert, a village close to Breda
in the Province of North Brabant in the southern Netherlands. Vincent
was the son of Anna Cornelia Carbentus and Theodorus van Gogh, a minister
of the Dutch Reformed Church. He was given the same name as his
grandfather�and a first brother stillborn exactly one year before. It
has been suggested[1] that being given the same name as his dead elder
brother might have had a deep psychological impact on the young Vincent,
and that elements of his art, such as the portrayal of pairs of male
figures, can be traced back to this. The practice of reusing a name in
this way was not uncommon. The name "Vincent" was often used in the Van
Gogh family: the baby's grandfather was called Vincent van Gogh (1789-1874);
he had received his degree of theology at the University of Leiden in 1811.
Grandfather Vincent had six sons, three of whom became art dealers,
including another Vincent, referred to in Van Gogh's letters as "Uncle
Cent." Grandfather Vincent had perhaps been named after his own father's
uncle, the successful sculptor Vincent van Gogh (1729-1802).[2] Art and
religion were the two occupations to which the Van Gogh family gravitated.
Four years after Van Gogh was born his brother Theodorus (Theo) was born
on May 1, 1857. There was also another brother named Cor and three sisters,
Elisabeth, Anna and Wil. As a child, Vincent was serious, silent and
thoughtful. In 1860 he attended the Zundert village school, where the
only teacher was Catholic and there were around 200 pupils. From 1861
he and his sister Anna were taught at home by a governess, until October
1, 1864, when he went away to the elementary boarding school of Jan Provily
in Zevenbergen, the Netherlands, about 20 miles away. He was distressed
to leave his family home, and recalled this even in adulthood. On September
15, 1866, he went to the new middle school, Willem II College in Tilburg,
the Netherlands. Constantijn C. Huysmans, who had achieved a certain
success himself in Paris, taught Van Gogh to draw at the school and advocated
a systematic approach to the subject. In March 1868 Van Gogh abruptly
left school and returned home. His comment on his early years was: "My
youth was gloomy and cold and barren...."
Art dealer and preacher (1869 � 1878)
In July 1869, at the age of 15, he obtained a position with the art dealer,
Goupil & Cie in The Hague, through his Uncle Vincent ("Cent"), who had built
up a good business which became a branch of the firm. After his training,
Goupil transferred him to London in June 1873, where he lodged in Stockwell.
This was a happy time for Vincent: he was successful at work, and was
already, at the age of 20, earning more than his father.[4] He fell in love
with his landlady's daughter, Eug�nie Loyer,[5] but when he finally
confessed his feeling to her, she rejected him, saying that she was
already secretly engaged to a previous lodger. Vincent became increasingly
isolated and fervent about religion. His father and uncle sent him to Paris,
where he became resentful at how art was treated as a commodity, and he
manifested this to the customers. On April 1, 1876, it was agreed that his
employment should be terminated.
The house where Van Gogh stayed in Cuesmes in 1880; it was while living
here that he decided to become an artist.His religious emotion grew to
the point where he felt he had found his true vocation in life, and he
returned to England to do unpaid work, first as a supply teacher in a small
boarding school overlooking the harbour in Ramsgate; he made some sketches
of the view. The proprietor of the school relocated to Isleworth, Middlesex.
Vincent decided to walk to the new location. This new position did not work
out, and Vincent became a nearby Methodist minister's assistant in wanting
to "preach the gospel everywhere."
At Christmas that year he returned home, and then worked in a bookshop
in Dordrecht for six months, but he was not happy in this new position
and spent most of his time in the back of the shop either doodling, or
translating passages from the Bible into English, French, and German.
His roommate from this time, a young teacher called G�rlitz, later
recalled that Vincent ate frugally, preferring to eat no meat.In an effort
to support his wish to become a pastor, his family sent him to Amsterdam
in May 1877 where he lived with his uncle Jan van Gogh, a rear admiral
in the navy.[9] Vincent prepared for university, studying for the theology
entrance exam with his uncle Johannes Stricker, a respected theologian who
published the first "Life of Jesus" available in the Netherlands. Vincent
failed at his studies and had to abandon them. He left uncle Jan's house
in July 1878. He then studied, but failed, a three-month course at the
Protestant missionary school (Vlaamsche Opleidingsschool) in Laeken, near
Brussels.
Van Gogh cut off the ear lobe on one of his ears during some sort of seizure
on December 23, 1888. Mental problems afflicted him, particularly in the
last few years of his life. During some of these periods he did not paint,
or was not allowed to. There has been much debate over the years as to the
source of Van Gogh's mental illness and its effect on his work. Over 150
psychiatrists have attempted to label his illness, and some 30 different
diagnoses have been suggested.
Still Life with Absinthe (1887)Diagnoses which have been put forward
include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, syphilis, poisoning from swallowed
paints, temporal lobe epilepsy and acute intermittent porphyria. Any of
these could have been the culprit and been aggravated by malnutrition,
overwork, insomnia, and a fondness for alcohol, and absinthe in particular.
Medical theories have even been proposed to explain Van Gogh's use of
the color yellow. One theory holds that Van Gogh's color vision might have
been affected by his love of absinthe, a liquor that contains a neurotoxin
called thujone. High doses of thujone can cause xanthopsia: seeing objects
in yellow. However, a 1991 study indicated that an absinthe drinker would
become unconscious from the alcohol content long before consuming enough
thujone to develop yellow vision. Another theory suggests that Dr. Gachet
might have prescribed digitalis to Van Gogh as a treatment for epilepsy.
There is no direct evidence that he ever took digitalis, but he did paint
Gachet with some cut flower stalks of Common Foxglove, the plant from which
the drug is derived. Those who take large doses of digitalis often report
yellow-tinted vision or yellow spots surrounded by coronas, like those in
the The Starry Night.
Another recently proposed illness is lead poisoning. The paints used at
the time were lead-based, and one of the symptoms of lead poisoning is
a swelling of the retinas which could have caused the halo effect seen
in many of Van Gogh's works.
Van Gogh drew and painted water-colours, while he went to school, though
very few of these works survive, and his authorship is challenged for
many claimed to be from this period.
When Van Gogh committed himself to art as an adult (1880), he started at
the elementary level by copying the "Cours de dessin," edited by Charles
Bargue and published by Goupil & Cie. Within his first two years he began
to seek commissions, and in spring 1882, his uncle, Cornelis Marinus (owner
of a renowned gallery of contemporary art in Amsterdam) asked him to provide
drawings of the Hague; Van Gogh's work did not prove up to his uncle's
expectations. Despite this, Uncle Cor (or "C.M." as he was referred to by
his nephews) offered a second commission, specifying the subject matter in
detail, but he was once again disappointed with the result.
Nevertheless, Van Gogh persevered with his work. He improved the lighting
of his atelier (studio) by installing variable shutters, and experimented
with a variety of drawing materials. For more than a year he worked hard
on single figures�highly elaborated studied in "black and white," which
at the time gained him only criticism. Nowadays they are appreciated as
his first masterpieces. In spring 1883, he embarked on multi-figure
compositions, based on the drawings. He had some of them photographed,
but when his brother commented that they lack liveliness and freshness,
Vincent destroyed them and turned to oil painting.
Already in autumn 1882, Theo had enabled him to do his first paintings,
but the amount Theo could supply was soon spent. Then, in spring 1883,
Vincent turned to renowned Hague School artists like Weissenbruch and
Blommers, and received technical support from them, as well as from
painters like De Bock and Van der Weele, both Hague School artists of
the second generation. When he moved to Nuenen, after the intermezzo in
Drenthe, he started various large size paintings, but he destroyed most
of them himself. The Potato Eaters and its companion pieces, The Old Tower
on the Nuenen cemetery and The Cottage, are the only ones that have
survived. After a visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Vincent was
aware that many faults of his paintings were due to a lack of technical
experience. So he went to Antwerp, and later to Paris to improve his
technical skill.
This piece from the Hermitage Museum was painted six weeks before the
artist's death, at around eight o'clock on 16 June 1890, as astronomers
determined by Venus's position in the painting [1].More or less acquainted
to impressionist and neo-impressionist techniques and theories, Van Gogh
went to Arles to develop these new possibilities. But within a short time,
older ideas on art and work reappeared: ideas like doing series on related
or contrasting subject matter, which would reflect the purpose of art.
Already in 1884 in Nuenen he had worked on a series that was to decorate
the dining room of a friend in Eindhoven. Similarly in Arles, in spring
1888 he arranged his Flowering Orchards into triptychs, set out for a
series of figures which found its end in The Roulin Family, and finally,
when Gauguin had consented to work and live in Arles side by side with
Vincent, he started to work on the The D�coration for the Yellow House,
probably the most ambitious effort he ever undertook. Most of his later
work is elaborating or revising its fundamental settings.
The paintings from the Saint-R�my period are often characterized by swirls
and spirals. The patterns of luminosity in these images have been shown
to conform to Kolmogorov's statistical model of turbulence.
At various times in his life Van Gogh painted the view from his window;
this culminated in the great series of paintings of the wheat field he
could see from his adjoining cells in the asylum at Saint-R�my.
Main article: List of notable works by Vincent van Gogh
Many of Van Gogh's paintings, such as The Starry Night (1889) have
become iconic; some have established auction record prices, such as
his Portrait of Dr. Gachet, sold for USD $82.5 million at Christie's,
on May 15, 1990.
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam houses the estate of Vincent and Theo
van Gogh; it is, by the number of its holdings, the largest Van Gogh
collection in the world. Considering the quality of its holdings, the
Kr�ller-M�ller Museum in Otterlo (also in the Netherlands)�with some 270
works, the second-largest Van Gogh collection�is thought by many to house
the more important collection.
Since his first exhibits in the late 1880s, Van Gogh's fame grew
steadily, among his colleagues and among art critics, dealers and
collectors. After his death, memorial exhibitions were mounted in Brussels,
Paris, The Hague and Antwerp. After the turn of the century, they were
followed by vast retrospectives in Paris (1901 and 1905), Amsterdam (1905),
Cologne (1912), New York City (1913) and Berlin (1914). These prompted an
impact over a new generation of artists. The French Fauves, including Henri
Matisse, extended both his use of color and freedom in applying it, as did
German Expressionists in the Die Br�cke group. 1950s Abstract Expressionism
is seen as benefiting from the exploration Van Gogh started with gestural
marks. In 1957, Anglo-Irish artist Francis Bacon based several paintings on
reproductions of Van Gogh's The Painter on his Way to Work (which had been
destroyed in World War II).
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