Vincent Willem van Gogh

He was born on March 30, 1853, in Zundert, Netherlands. He was the oldest
surviving child of Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Carbentus. Eventually, he had five
younger siblings and the one he became close with was his younger brother, Theo.
Despite doing well in school, he left secondary school before graduating. At the age of 16,
he began his career by becoming an apprentice in Goupil & Co., where his uncle was a
partner.

He worked at Hague, then in London, and finally in Paris where he was dismissed
in 1876 which was two days after his 23rd birthday. After wandering in Europe for five
years, he moved back in with his parents in 1881 due to dire poverty. His parents were
worried about their son’s lack of direction in life. His brother, Theo, also started working
for the art dealer Goupil & Co and had risen through the ranks to become a manager and
began sending his older, jobless brother money. For the next few years, Vincent would
move out for periods but would return to his parent’s home. In Spring 1882, his uncle,
Cornelius Marinus – owner of a renowned gallery of contemporary art in Amsterdam –
asked him for drawings of Hague. In 1884, feeling bad for Theo for sending him money
all these years, Vincent wanted to start paying him back.

He began sending Theo his paintings in Paris for him to sell but unfortunately,
Vincent’s works were not admired by the Parisians. He considered his first major work,
The Potato Eaters in which he painted back in 1885. In the next 5 years, Vincent’s life
would appear to once again lost as he started a failed art collective and continued to
wander around Europe. During this period, the style of art associated with Vincent started
to take form. The tones used in his paintings began to lighten and developed a
characteristic style of using short brushstrokes, and focused on brighter and colorful
subjects such as portraits, often self-portraits, and city scenes. Unfortunately, the progress
of his art happened during a time declining mental health, culminating in 1888, when
Vincent famously severed his own ear and wrapped it up as a present for a sex worker.

Vincent was admitted to the hospital where he stayed until early 1889. For the next
few months, Vincent struggled with his mental health, eventually checking himself into a
psychiatric hospital in May. During his one year stay at the hospital, Vincent made some
of his most famous masterpieces. In his first week there, he started painting the irises in
the asylum’s garden. While he considered the paintings merely a study, “Irises” is
considered one of his most iconic pieces. “The Starry Night”, now one of the most famous
paintings in the world, depicts the view from window in the asylum, enhanced by his
Vincent’s imagination. In 1889, Theo and his wife named their son after Vincent. Vincent
sent them his famous painting, “Almond Blossom”, from the hospital, as a gift for his new
nephew. While in asylum, he made about 150 paintings and by 1890, his work was finally
exhibited and receiving positive reviews. After being released in May 1890, Vincent moved
to Auvers-sur-Oise , an area with other artists not far from Paris, which allowed for him to
easily visit Theo’s family in Paris. One visit in July, Theo told his brother that he was
considering opening up a business which greatly unsettled Vincent, who not only felt like
a burden to his brother who was still supporting him but also worried about the impact of
Theo taking this gamble on his own finances. After lunch on July 27 th, 1890, Vincent left
inn where he was staying with his easel and painting supplies. He went to paint in the
wheat fields where the painter, met his demise.

From this hereon, his works started to be recognized after his death. Nevertheless,
he left a legacy with his works and it forever changed the whole Art world. Often referred
to as the “Mad Artist”, Van Gogh is regarded as one of the most popular post-impressionist
painters. Indeed, his brushwork and contoured forms have immensely affected
Expressionism, Fauvism and early abstraction, including various art forms in the 20th
century. His personal life, most especially his mental illness overshadowed modern
perceptions of his art, but despite such, his contribution to the art world was immense and
making him as one of history’s greatest painters.
 His masterpiece, Starry Night, was considered to be one of his greatest
achievement, a magnum opus. It was primarily a result of his observations, imaginations,
mixed with emotions and memories. Van Gogh followed a strict principal of structure and
composition in which the forms are distributed across the surface of the canvas in an exact
order to create balance and tension amidst the swirling torsion of the cypress trees and
the night sky. It resulted into a landscape rendered through curves and lines, its seeming
chaos subverted by a rigorous formal arrangement. Evocative of the spirituality Van Gogh
found in nature, Starry Night is famous for advancing the act of painting beyond the
representation of the physical world. Although only selling a single painting in his whole
life, it was considered an icon of the modern art.

Church at Auvers
- One of the most well-known
images from the last few months
of Van Gogh's life. Infusing the
landscape with movement and
emotion, he rendered the scene
with a palette of vividly
contrasting colors and
brushstrokes that lead the
viewer through painting.
Distorted and flattened out-
architecture and caught within
its own shadow reflects Van
Gogh’s complex relationship to
spirituality and religion.