Vincent Van Gogh - Paintings, Quotes and Death (2023)

(1853-1890)

Were you Vincent van Gogh?

Vincent van Gogh was a post-impressionist painter whose work - notable for its beauty, emotion and color - greatly influenced 20th-century art. He struggled with mental illness and remained poor and virtually unknown throughout his life.

Early life and family

Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853 in Groot-Zundert, Netherlands. Van Gogh's father, Theodorus van Gogh, was a strict land minister, and his mother, Anna Cornelia Carbentus, was a temperamental artist whose love of nature, drawing and watercolors was passed on to her son.

Van Gogh was born exactly one year after the birth of his parents' first child, also named Vincent. At an early age - with his name and date of birth already inscribed on his dead brother's tombstone - van Gogh was melancholic.

Theo van Gogh

The eldest of six surviving children, Van Gogh had two younger brothers (Theo, who worked as an art dealer and supported his older brother's art, and Cor) and three younger sisters (Anna, Elizabeth, and Willemien).

Theo van Gogh would come to play an important role in his older brother's life as a confidant, supporter and art dealer.

childhood and education

At the age of 15, Van Gogh's family was struggling financially and he was forced to drop out of school and go to work. He got a job at Goupil & Cie., art dealer for his uncle Cornelis, an art company in The Hague. By this time, van Gogh was fluent in French, German, and English, as well as his native Dutch.

In June 1873 van Gogh was transferred to the Groupil Gallery in London. There he fell in love with English culture. In his spare time, he frequented art galleries and also became a fan of the writings ofCharles Dickense Jorge Elliot.

He also fell in love with his landlady's daughter, Eugenie Loyer. When she turned down his marriage proposal, Van Gogh suffered a nervous breakdown. He threw away all his books except the Bible and dedicated his life to God. He got mad at people at work, told customers not to buy the "worthless art" and was eventually fired.

life as a preacher

Van Gogh then taught at a Methodist boys' school and also preached to the congregation. Although raised in a religious family, it was only at this time that he began to think seriously about dedicating his life to the Church.

With the hope of becoming a pastor, he prepared for the entrance exam to the School of Theology in Amsterdam. After studying diligently for a year, he refused to take the Latin exams, calling Latin the "dead language" of the poor, and was subsequently denied entry.

The same thing happened in the Church of Belgium: in the winter of 1878, van Gogh offered to move to an impoverished coal mine in southern Belgium, a place where preachers were often sent as punishment. He preached and ministered to the sick, and also drew for miners and their families, who called him "the Christ of the coal mines".

The evangelical commissions were not so pleased. They did not approve of van Gogh's lifestyle, which was beginning to take on a martyred tone. They refused to renew Van Gogh's contract and he was forced to look for another job.

find solace in art

In the autumn of 1880, van Gogh decided to move to Brussels and become an artist. Although he had no formal art training, his brother Theo offered to support Van Gogh financially.

He started taking classes on his own, studied books likefieldworkvon Jean-François Millet unddrawing classesby Charles Bargue.

Van Gogh's art helped him stay emotionally balanced. In 1885 he began work on his first masterpiece, Potato Eaters. Theo, who was living in Paris at the time, believed that the painting would not go down well in the French capital, whereimpressionismhad become a trend.

Nevertheless, van Gogh decided to move to Paris and showed up at Theo's house uninvited. In March 1886, Theo welcomed his brother into his small apartment.

It was in Paris that van Gogh first saw impressionist art and was inspired by color and light. he started to studyHenri from Toulouse-Lautrec,Camille Pissarroand another.

love life

Van Gogh's love life was nothing short of disastrous: he was attracted to women in trouble and thought he could help them. When he fell in love with his recently widowed cousin Kate, she was repulsed and fled to her home in Amsterdam.

Van Gogh then moved to The Hague and fell in love with Clasina Maria Hoornik, an alcoholic prostitute. She became his companion, lover and role model.

When Hoornik returned to prostitution, Van Gogh was completely depressed. In 1882, his family threatened to cut his money if he didn't leave Hoornik and The Hague.

Van Gogh left in mid-September of the same year to travel to Drenthe, a rather desolate neighborhood in the Netherlands. For the next six weeks, he led a nomadic life, roaming the region sketching and painting the landscape and its people.

arles

Influenced by Japanese art, Van Gogh began studying Eastern philosophy to improve his art and his life. He dreamed of traveling there, but Toulouse-Lautrec told him that the light in the village of Arles was the same as the light in Japan.

In February 1888, van Gogh boarded a train bound for the south of France. He moved into what is now a famous "yellow house" and spent his money on paint instead of food.

paint

Vincent van Gogh completed more than 2,100 works, comprising 860 oil paintings and over 1,300 watercolors, drawings and sketches.

Some of his paintings are now among the most expensive in the world; "Irises" sold for a record $53.9 million and his "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" sold for $82.5 million. Some of van Gogh's most famous artworks are:

'Starry Night'

Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in 1889, a year before his death, in the asylum where he was staying in Saint-Rémy, France. "This morning I saw the view from my window long before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star looking very large," he wrote to his brother Theo.

A combination of imagination, memory, emotion and observation, the oil painting on canvas depicts an expressive swirling night sky and a sleepy village with a large flame-shaped cypress tree in the foreground, which represents the bridge between life and death. The painting is currently onModern Art Museumin New York, New York.

'Sunflowers'

Van Gogh painted two series of sunflowers in Arles, France: four between August and September 1888 and one in January 1889; The versions and replicas are debated among art historians.

The oil paintings on canvas, depicting yellow sunflowers wilting in a vase, are now displayed in museums in London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Munich and Philadelphia.

'Iris'

After van Gogh entered an asylum in Saint-Rémy, France, in 1889, he began painting irises, using the plants and flowers he found in the asylum's garden. Critics believe that the painting was influenced by Japanese woodcuts.

French critic Octave Mirbeau, the painting's first owner and one of Van Gogh's earliest followers, commented, "How well he understood the exquisite nature of flowers!"

'Self Portrait'

Over the course of 10 years, van Gogh created more than 43 self-portraits, both as paintings and as drawings. "I seek a similarity deeper than that of a photographer," he wrote to his sister.

"People say, and I'm happy to believe it, that it's hard to know yourself. But it's not easy to paint yourself either. Rembrandt's portraits are more than a vision of nature, they're more like a revelation," he wrote further. late to brother.

Van Gogh's self-portraits are now displayed in museums around the world, including Washington, D.C., Paris, New York and Amsterdam.

Self-portrait painting by Vincent van Gogh Courtesy of the Musée d'Orsay via Wikimedia Commons

Oh de Van Gogh

In December 1888, living on coffee, bread, and absinthe in Arles, France, Van Gogh was feeling ill and strange.

It wasn't long before it became apparent that along with his physical illness, his mental health was also deteriorating. Around this time, he drank turpentine and ate ink.

His brother Theo was concerned and offeredPaul GauguinMoney to take care of Vincent in Arles. Within a month, van Gogh and Gauguin were constantly arguing, and one night Gauguin left. Van Gogh followed, and when Gauguin turned around he saw Van Gogh holding a straight razor.

Hours later, van Gogh went to the local brothel and paid for a prostitute named Rachel. With blood dripping from her hand, he offered her his ear and asked her to "guard this item with care".

The police found van Gogh in his room the next morning and took him to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital. Theo arrived on Christmas Day to see Van Gogh, who was weak from blood loss and violent fits.

Doctors assured Theo that his brother would live and be well cared for, and on January 7, 1889, Van Gogh was released from the hospital.

However, he remained lonely and depressed. Desperate, he turned to painting and nature, but found no peace and was hospitalized again. During the day he painted in the yellow house and returned to the hospital at night.

Asylum

Van Gogh decided to move to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence after residents of Arles signed a petition saying he was dangerous.

On May 8, 1889, he began to paint in the hospital garden. In November 1889 he was invited to exhibit his paintings in Brussels. He submitted six paintings, including "Iris" and "Starry Night".

On January 31, 1890, Theo and his wife Johanna gave birth to a baby boy and named him after Theo's brother, Vincent Willem van Gogh. At this time, Theo van Gogh's painting The Red Vineyards was selling for 400 francs.

Also at that time, Dr. Paul Gachet, who lived in Auvers, about 20 miles north of Paris, agreed to take on Van Gogh as a patient. Van Gogh moved to Auvers and rented a room.

tod

On the morning of July 27, 1890, Vincent van Gogh went to paint with a loaded pistol and shot himself in the chest, but the bullet did not kill him. He was found bleeding in his room.

Van Gogh was desperate about his future because his brother Theo visited him in May of this year and spoke to him about the need to be stricter with his finances. Van Gogh understood that Theo was no longer interested in selling his art.

Van Gogh was taken to a nearby hospital and his doctors sent for Theo, who arrived to find his brother sitting up in bed smoking a pipe. They spent the next few days talking and then Van Gogh asked Theo to drive him home.

On July 29, 1890, Vincent van Gogh died in the arms of his brother Theo. He was only 37 years old.

Theo, suffering from syphilis and weakened by his brother's death, died in a Dutch asylum six months after his brother. He was buried in Utrecht, but in 1914 Theo's wife Johanna, who was a dedicated supporter of van Gogh's work, had Theo's body reburied in Auvers Cemetery next to Vincent.

legacy

Theo's wife Johanna then collected as many van Gogh paintings as she could, but found that many had been destroyed or lost because van Gogh's mother herself had discarded boxes full of his art.

On March 17, 1901, 71 of Van Gogh's paintings were shown in an exhibition in Paris and his fame grew enormously. His mother lived long enough to see her son celebrated as an artistic genius. Today Vincent van Gogh is considered one of the greatest artists in human history.

Museum Van Gogh

1973 became theMuseum Van Goghopened its doors in Amsterdam to make the works of Vincent van Gogh accessible to the public. The museum houses more than 200 Van Gogh paintings, 500 drawings and 750 written documents, including letters to Vincent's brother Theo. It shows self-portraits, "The Potato Eaters", "The Bedroom" and "Sunflowers".

In September 2013, the museum discovered and unveiled a Van Gogh painting of a landscape entitled Sunset at Montmajour. Before it came into possession of the Van Gogh Museum, a Norwegian industrialist owned the painting and stored it in his attic, believing it to be inauthentic.

The painting is believed to have been created by van Gogh in 1888 - around the same time his artwork "Sunflowers" was created - just two years before his death.

Watch Vincent Van Gogh: A Stroke of Genius in the HISTORY Vault

Name: Vincent van Gogh
Year of birth: 1853
Date of birth: March 30, 1853
Place of birth: Zundert
Country of birth: Netherlands
Male gender
Best Known For: Vincent van Gogh was one of the world's greatest artists with paintings such as 'Starry Night' and 'Sunflowers', although he was unknown until after his death.
to industry

until

Zodiac sign: Aries
schools

Brussels Academy

nationalities

Dutch

interesting facts

Some of van Gogh's most famous works are Starry Night, Irises and Sunflowers.
In a moment of instability, Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear and offered it to a prostitute.
Van Gogh died in France aged 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Year of death: 1890
Date of death: July 29, 1890
Todesstadt: Auvers-sur-Oise
Country of death: France

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Title of Articles: Biography of Vincent van Gogh
Author: Biography.com Publisher
Website name: The Biography.com website
URL: https://www.biography.com/artists/vincent-van-gogh
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Publisher: A&E; television channel
Last updated: March 4, 2020
Original release date: April 3, 2014

As for me, I often feel uneasy inside because I feel like my life hasn't been smooth enough; All these bitter disappointments, adversities and changes prevent me from fully and naturally developing my artistic career.
I'm a fanatic! I feel a power within me... a fire I must not extinguish, but keep burning.
I get very angry when people tell me that going to sea is dangerous. At the heart of danger is safety.
I want to paint what I feel and feel what I paint.
As is my job, so am I.
The love of art is the bane of true love.
When you've got fire in you, you can't bottle it up again and again—it's better to burn than burst. What's inside will come out.
For my part, I'm not sure of anything, but looking at the stars makes me dream.
I'm not saying my work is good, but it's the least I can do. Everything else, relationships with people, is very secondary because I don't have the talent for that. I can't help myself.
What is wrought in sorrow lives forever.
I see clearly what I draw. In these [drawings] I can speak with enthusiasm. I found a voice.
Better to have too much fun than too little, and not to take art or love too seriously.
But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.