Vincent Van Gogh

 

 Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch impressionist painter who is among the most
famous and Influential Figures in the hitory of Western art. In just over a decade
he created about 2,100 artworks, inlcuding around 860 oil paintings most of them in
the last two years of his life.

 

Born

Died

Notable Works

Movement/Style

Van Gogh, the eldest of six children of a Protestant pastor, was born and reared in a small village
in the Brabant Region of the Southern Netherlands. He was Quiet, self-contained youth, spending his
free time wandering the country side to observe nature. At 16 he was apprenticed of The Hauge branch
of the art dealers Goupil and Co., of which his unvale was his partner.

Van Gogh worked for Goupil in London from 1873 to May 1875 and in Paris from that date until April 1876.
Daily contact with works of Art aroused his artistic sensibility, and he soon formed a taste for Rembrandt,
Frans Hals, and other Dutch Masters, although his preference was for two contemporary French panters, Jean
Francois Millet and Camille Corot, whose influnce was to last his throughout his life. Van Gogh disliked art
dealing. Moreover, his approach to life darkened when his love was rejected ba a London Girl in 1874. His
burning desire for human affection thwarted, he became increasingly solitary. He worked as a language teacher
and lay preacher in England and, in 1877, worked for a bookseller in Dordrecht, Netherlands.

In the winter of 1879-80, he experienced the first great spiritual crisis of his life. Living among the poor, he
gave all away his worldly goods in an impassioned moment: he was thereupon dismissed by church authorities for a too
literal interpretation of Christian teachings. Penniless and feeling that his faith was destroyed, he sank into despair
and withdrew from everyone. "They think i'm a madman," he told an acquaintance,"because i wanted to be a true Christian.
They turned me out like a dog, saying that i was causing a scandal." It was then that van Gogh began to draw seriously,
thereby discovering in 1880 his true vocation as an artist. Van Gogh decided that his mission from then on would be to
bring consolation to humanity through art. "I want to give the wretched a brotherly message," he explained to his brother
Theo. "When I sign[my paintings] 'Vincent,' it is as one of them". This realization of his creative powers restored his
self-confidence.