Vincent van Gogh

 Dutch Post-Impressionist painter; one of the most famous and influential figures

in Western art history.
 More than 2 100 artworks bold colors and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork
(modern art foundation)
 “misunderstood genius in the public imagination” / “tortured artist”
 Kept an enormous correspondence with his little brother Theo who supported him
financially and emotionally
 Born 30th of March 1853, Catholic province of North-Brabant, Netherlands.
 Oldest surviving child of a family of 6 children, named after his grandfather (art dealer) and
brother stillborn one year prior
 Father: minister of the Dutch Reformed Church; mother: religious, family matters
o Modest salary
o Church supplies house, maids, cooks…
o Duty to uphold family’s high social position
 Serious, thoughtful child
 Governess; 1860 village school; 1864 boarding school (abandoned); 1866 middle school in
Tilburg (deeply unhappy)
 Encouraged to draw by his mother, early drawings: expensive. Unhappiness overshadowed
painting lessons in Tilburg
 Youth: "austere and cold, and sterile"
 1869: (uncle) position at Goupil & Cie auction house in The Hague (city, western coast
Netherlands)
 1873: training done, transferred to London branch -> happy time (successful, $ )
 Rejected after confession by his landlady’s daughter, Eugénie Loyer -> isolation,reli.
 1875: transferred to Paris (dad, uncle)
 Dismissed a year later -> return to England (supply teacher, boarding school, Ramsgate)
 Middlesex, Etten, Dordrecht
 Immerses himself in religion, becomes monastic, desire to become a pastor
 1877: family sends him to Amsterdam, Johannes Stricker (theologian)
  University of Amsterdam theology entrance examination failed; course protestant
missionary school failed -> leaves his uncle’s
 1879: missionary post in Belgium -> belongings: homeless person; rents hut, sleeps in
straw -> church authorities dismissed him for "undermining the dignity of the priesthood"
 1880: father advised that his son be committed to the lunatic asylum
 November 1880: registers at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts (Brussels) persuaded by
Roelofs (through Theo)
 1881: Etten, meets Cornelia “Kee” Vos-Stricker (8yr old son) proposes to her “no, nay,
never” -> hand in flame, “can’t support himself”
 Becomes Anton Mauve’s (2º cousin) student -> watercolor, painting in oil, studio
 1882: X Mauve (plaster casts, street people; no replies); suffers from gonorrhea
 Domestic arrangement with a pregnant and alcoholic prostitute (Clasina), and daughter.
Baby boy -> Willem. Vincent’s father pressures him to abandon her (83)
 Moves to Nuenen (loneliness): painting, drawing, sketching (weavers, cottages); peasant
character studies (palette -> somber earth tones, dark brown)
 1884: falls in love w Margot Begemann, family disapproves, she khs
 Theo tries to sell art in Paris “too dark, not in keeping with the bright style of
impressionism
 1885: accused of rape, priests forbade people to model for him
 1886: moved and added new colors to his palette (emerald green) studying Rubens,
attending museums; hospitalized for drinking and syphilis
  Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp: matriculates in painting and drawing; conflicts
(expelled) and leaves for Paris
 Moves in with Theo; paints portraits of friends, acquaintances; meets Toulouse-Lautrec,
Seurat, Gauguin, Pissarro, Signac… Fernand Cormon’s atelier
 Conflict between brothers; moves out to Arles where he adds more colors to his palette
(such as yellow, mauve, ultramarine…)
o The Yellow House
o Bedroom in Arles
o The night café
o Starry night over the Rhone
 Gauguin visits and consents to live and work with him
o The painter of Sunflowers
 Relationship: downhill
o VG: treated as an equal
o PG: arrogant/domineering; thinks Theo and Vincent are exploiting financially
 1888: complex relationship
o Follows Gauguin w razor, he was planning to leave
o Gets to the Yellow House and severs his left ear with the same razor: severe
bleeding
o Puts ear in paper and sends it to a woman in a brothel him and Gauguin
frequented
o Found unconscious next morning by police, taken to the hospital
o No recollection of the event
o “acute mania with generalized delirium"
o Theo notified by Gauguin, goes to visit
o Gauguin flees Arles to never see VG again, who keeps asking for him
 1889: return to home
o Hallucinations / delusions
o Frequents hospital
o “redheaded madman”
o Visited by Signac
 Voluntarily enters the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
o 2 cells with bars = 1 studio
o Starry Night
o Clinic/garden = main subjects in paintings
o  worked on interpretations of other artist's paintings
o Admires realism
 1890: relapse of depression, can’t write, but keeps painting
o Small canvases from memory
o Les XX, small society of avant-garde painters in Brussels; participate in their annual
exhibition -> insulted; defended by Signac
 o Exhibition des Société des artistes Indépendants, Paris -> Monet best art
 Auvers-sur-Oise
o Closer to Gachet/Theo
 July 27th 1890, 37 years old, he shot himself in the chest with a revolver in a field.
o Went to the village, was attended by 2 doctors that couldn’t do anything
o Theo saw him smoking his pipe
 Died: July 29th “the sadness will last forever”
 Buried: July 30th municipal cemetery Auvers-sur-Oise along Theo in 1914
 1914: Johanna, Theo’s widow, published the letters that were conserved from their
correspondence and there are over 600 letters from Vincent to Theo and over 40 from
Theo to Vincent.