Vincent Van Gogh - The Talent and The Torment
Today one of the most popular of the post impressionist painters, Van Gogh was not widely appreciated during his lifetime. In fact, he only sold one painting while he was alive. He is now revered for the great vitality of his works which are characterised by expressive and emotive use of brilliant colour and energetic application of impasto paint.
Van Gogh was born in Holland, the son of a pastor on 30 March 1853 in Zundert in the Netherlands. In 1869, he took his first job, working in the Hague branch of an international art dealing firm. He began to write to his younger brother Theo, a correspondence which continued for the rest of Van Gogh's life. The correspondence between the brothers provided much of the information we know about Vincent’s life today.
Vincent Van Gogh - Self-Portrait, September 1889.
Van Gogh's job took him to London and Paris, but he was not interested in the work and was dismissed in 1876. He briefly became a teacher in England, and then, still deeply interested in Christianity, became a preacher in a mining community in Belgium. By 1883 he had started painting, and in 1885-6 he attended the academy in Antwerp where he was impressed by Japanese prints and by the work of Rubens.
Vincent van Gogh - Farm with stacks of peat ( 1883 )
In 1880, at the age of 27, he decided to become an artist. He moved around, teaching himself to draw and paint and receiving financial support from Theo. In 1886, Vincent joined Theo in Paris, and met many artists including Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro and Gauguin, with whom he became friends. His style changed significantly under the influence of Impressionism, becoming lighter and brighter. He painted a large number of self-portraits in this period.
Vincent van Gogh - ‘Le Moulin de Blute-Fin’ (1886)
Van Gogh ‘Portrait of Pere Tanguy’ ( 1887-8 )
In 1888 Van Gogh settled in Arles in Provence, to establish an artistic retreat and commune. Once there, his paintings grew brighter and he turned his attention to the natural world, depicting local Olive Groves, surrounding fields and his now famous series of 'Sunflowers'. He worried about his mental stability, and often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily.
Vincent Van Gogh - Still Life ‘Vase With 12 Sunflowers’ ( c. 1888 )
He invited Gauguin to join him but they soon began to quarrel and one night, Van Gogh threatened Gauguin with a razor. Deeply remorseful he then cut off part of his own ear. This was the first serious sign of the mental health problems that were to afflict Van Gogh for the rest of his life. In the following year a nervous breakdown brought him to a sanatorium at St Remy; it was at this period that he painted ‘A Wheatfield With Cypresses’. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals and swung between periods of inertia, depression and incredibly concentrated artistic activity, his work reflecting the intense colours and strong light of the countryside around him.
Vincent Van Gogh - ‘Wheat Field with Cypresses’ September 1889.
Van Gogh's work began to attract critical artistic attention in the last year of his life. On 27 July 1890, again suffering from depression, Van Gogh shot himself. He died two days later. After his death, his art and life story captured public imagination as an emblem of misunderstood genius, due in large part to the efforts of his widowed sister-in-law Joanna Van Gogh-Bonger. Van Gogh's work gained widespread critical and commercial success in the following decades, and he has become a lasting icon of the romantic ideal of the ‘Tortured artist’. His legacy is celebrated by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world's largest collection of his paintings and drawings.
Vincent Van Gogh - ‘Starry Night’ ( 1889 )
Largely self-taught, he produced nearly 900 paintings and more than 1,100 works on paper.
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