Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh – born March 30, 1853 – July 29, 1890

Dutch post-impressionist painter. Posthumously became one of the most famous painters in Western art. In just a decade, he created around 850 artistic paintings. He painted most of the pictures in the last two years of his life. His paintings include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits. He is characterized by strong colors, drama, impulsiveness and expressive technique. He laid the foundations of modern art. It was not a sales success itself. He struggled with severe psychological disorders and poverty. He committed suicide at the age of 37.

Van Gogh was born into a family into the middle class. Described as a serious, quiet and thoughtful child. He liked to draw. Already as a teenager he came into contact with art – as a merchant. He traveled frequently on business, but became depressed when he was transferred to London. He became religious and spent some time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. In 1881 he returned home and took up painting himself. He had a younger brother, Theo, who supported him financially. They corresponded a lot, so his life is well known. Early works, mostly still lifes and portrayals of farm workers, contain vivid colors that also characterized his later pictures. In 1886 he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émil Bernard and Paul Gauguin. Over time, he created a new approach to still life paintings and local landscapes. His paintings became brighter as he developed a style that was fully realized during his stay in Arles in the south of France in 1888. During that time he expanded his subject matter to pictures olive trees, wheat fields and sunflowers.

Van Gogh suffered from mental disorders. Although he was concerned about his mental health, he neglected his physical activity, ate poorly, drank heavily and smoked. The friendship with Gauguin ended after a fight when he cut off part of his own left ear with a razor in anger. According to another version, Gaugin cut off his ear. He moved to the Saint-Rémy clinic  When he was fired, he moved to theAuberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur -Oise near Paris – to homeopath and painter dr. Paul Gachet‘s. Depressive disorders persisted and on July 27, 1890 Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver. Died two days later from an infection.

Van Gogh was a business failure during his lifetime and was considered a madman. He became famous only after his suicide and became seen in the public eye as a misunderstood genius. His fame grew in the early 20th century when elements of his style were incorporated by the Fausts and German Expressionists. In the decades that followed, it achieved widespread critical and commercial success. He became an important painter whose troubled personality is the typical romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, van Gogh’s paintings are among the most expensive in the world. His legacy is mainly kept by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Early years

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30 1853 in Groot-Zundert, Netherlands. He was the eldest surviving child of his father Theodorus van Gogh (1822–1885), a minister in the Dutch Reformist Church, and his wife Anne Cornelie Carbentus (1819–1907). Vincent is named after his grandfather. Vincent was a common name in the Van Gogh family. The grandfather was a prominent art dealer (1789-1874) with six sons, three of whom became art dealers.

Van Gogh’s mother came from a wealthy family in The Hague. Her father was the son of a minister of state. She and Vincent’s father met when Anna’s younger sister Cornelia married Theodorus’ older brother Vincent (Cent). Van Gogh’s parents married in May 1851 and moved to Zundert. His brother Theo was born on May 1, 1857. He also had a brother Cor and three sisters: Elisabeth, Anna and Willemina (known as “Wil”). In later life, Van Gogh remained in contact only with Willemina and Theo.

Van Gogh’s mother was strict and a religious woman. Stressed the importance of family to the point of claustrophobia. Theodore’s income was modest, but the church provided the family with a house, a maid, two cooks, a gardener, a carriage and a horse. Ana instilled in her children the duty to maintain the high social status of the family.

Van Gogh was a serious kid. He was taught at home by his mother and governess. In 1860, he was sent to the village school. In 1864 he was sent to a boarding school in Zevenbergen. He did not feel well here and wanted to return home. Instead of home, in 1866 he was sent to a high school in Tilburg, where he was also very unhappy. His interest in art began at a young age. His mother encouraged him to paint as a child. His early drawings are expressive but do not approach the intensity of his later work.

In Tilburg, students were taught by Constant Cornelis Huijsmans, a successful artist from Paris. His philosophy was a rejection of technique in favor of capturing impressions of things, especially nature or ordinary objects. Van Gogh’s unhappiness in that period seems to have overlooked these lessons. He returned home in March 1868. He later recalled that his youth was “strict, cold and sterile”.

In July 1869, hee Uncle Cent secured a job with the art dealer Goupil & Cie in The Hague. After completing his training in 1873, he was transferred to the London branch. It was a happy time for Van Gogh. He was successful at work and by the age of 20 he was earning more than his father. Theo’s wife later recalled that these were the best years of Vincent’s life. He fell in love with the daughter of his landlady, Eugénie Loyer. The rejection, because she was secretly engaged to a former tenant, led him to loneliness and religious zeal. In 1875, his father and uncle arranged for him to be transferred to Paris, where he lasted only a year due to disputes at work.

According to his roommate at the time, Paulus van Görlitz, Van Gogh ate modestly and avoided meat.

To support his religious beliefs and desire to become a pastor , the family sent him in 1877 to his uncle Johannes Stricker, a prominent theologian, in Amsterdam. When he failed the theological university exam, he left his uncle’s house in July 1878. He attended a three-month course at a Protestant mission school in Laeken, near Brussels. Without success.

In January 1879, he got a job as a missionary in Petit-Wasmes. The Borinage coalfield in Belgium. To show support for his impoverished congregation, he gave up his comfortable lodgings in a bakery to a homeless man and moved into a small hut where he slept on straw. However, his poor living conditions did not please the church authorities. He was dismissed for “undermining the dignity of the priesthood”. He walked 75 kilometers to Brussels and then returned home to Etten. He stayed there in March 1880. His father was disappointed and took his son to the Geel asylum.

In August 1980, he returned to Cuesmes. He stayed with the miner until October. It was during this time that he decided to become a painter. He was interested in the people and scenes around him. He recreated the drawings after Theo’s suggestion that he take up art seriously. Later that year he traveled to Brussels to follow Theo’s idea to study with the Dutch painter Willem Roelofs. Despite the fact that he did not like formal art schools, he allowed himself to be convinced – in November 1880 he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Arts, where he studied anatomy and the standard rules of modeling and perspective.

In April 1881 he returned to Etten. He continued painting. In August 1881, his recently widowed cousin Cornelia “Kee” Vos-Stricker came to visit. They went for long walks and van Gogh fell in love. Kee was seven years older and had an eight-year-old son. Van Gogh surprised everyone when he confessed his love to her and proposed marriage. She rejected him with the words “No, no, never”. Van Gogh went to The Hague with the intention of selling paintings and met his cousin, Anton Mauve. Mauve, a successful artist, invited him to return in a few months. He suggested that in the meantime he draws with charcoal and pastels. Van Gogh returned to Etten and followed the advice.

In November 1881 he went to Amsterdam. Kee refused to accept him, and her parents wrote that his “obstinacy was disgusting”. In desperation, he held his left hand in the flame of the lamp, saying, “Let me see her while I can keep my hand in the flame.” He did not remember the event very well, but later concluded that his uncle had passed outflame. Kee’s father was clear – she must consider her refusal. Marriage is not possible due to van Gogh’s inability to support himself.

Mauve took van Gogh as a student and introduced him to watercolor, with which he engaged in for a month before returning home for Christmas. She and her father had an argument because he refused to go to church. He returned to The Hague and in January 1882 Mauve turned him to oil painting. He lent him money for the studio. Within a month, Van Gogh and Mauve had an argument. Van Gogh paid models – people off the street – which Mauve disapproved of. In June, van Gogh contracted gonorrhea and spent three weeks in the hospital. Then he continued painting. He bought the painting materials with money borrowed from Theo. He enjoyed working with this medium. Sprayed the paint heavily, scraped it off the canvas and applied it back with a brush. He wrote that he was surprised at how good the results were.

By March 1882, Mauve had distanced himself from Van Gogh and stopped answering his letters. He found out about Van Gogh’s new relationship with the prostitute Clasina Maria “Sien” Hoornik (1850-1904) and her young daughter. Van Gogh met Sien in January 1882, when she had a five-year-old daughter and was pregnant. She had previously given birth to two children who died, but Van Gogh did not know this. On July 2, she gave birth to a boy, Willem. When Van Gogh’s father discovered the relationship, he insisted that he leave Sien and her two children. Vincent initially defied him and considered moving the family out of town, but at the end of 1883 he left Siena and the children.

Van Gogh may have felt that family life was incompatible with his artistic development. Sien gave her daughter to her mother and Willem to her brother. Willem remembered visiting Rotterdam when he was about 12 years old. The uncle tried to convince Sien to marry in order to legitimize the child. He believed that van Gogh was his father. However, given the time of birth, this is unlikely. Sien drowned in 1904.

In September 1883, Van Gogh moved to Drenthe in the north of the Netherlands. In December, loneliness brought him back to his parents, and then to Nuenen.

Rise in Art

Here van Gogh really concentrated on painting and drawing. He painted outdoors and very quickly completed sketches and pictures of weavers and their houses. During this time, he painted Parsonage Garden in Nuenen, stolen from Singer Laren in March 2020. From August 1884, Margot Begemann, a neighbor’s daughter ten years older, joined him on his excursions. She professed her love for him and he responded, albeit less enthusiastically. They wanted to get married, but neither side of their families was in favor. In desperation, Margot took an overdose of strychnine, but survived when van Gogh took her to a nearby hospital. On March 26, 1885, his father died of a heart attack.

Van Gogh painted several still lifes in 1885. During his two-year stay in Nuenen, he completed watercolors and almost 200 oil paintings. His palette consisted mainly of gloomy earth tones, especially dark brown. There was no trace vivid colors that distinguished his later works.

In early 1885, he attracted the interest of an art dealer in Paris. Theo asked Vincent if he had the paintings ready for exhibition. In May, van Gogh responded with his first major work The Potato Eaters  and a series of “studies of peasant characters”, which were the culmination of many years of work. He complained to his brother about the sale of the paintings, and Theo replied that they were too dark and not in keeping with the bright style of Impressionism. In August, his work was exhibited publicly in shop windows for the first time of the dealer Leurs in The Hague.

One of the painter’s young peasant extras became pregnant in September 1885. Van Gogh was accused of forcing himself on her, and the village priest forbade the priests to paint for him.

In November left Antwerp and settled above a paint shop in the Rue des Images. He lived in poverty and ate poorly. The money that Theo sent was spent on painting materials and extras. Bread, coffee and tobacco became his staple diet. In February 1886 he wrote to Theo that he remembered only six hot meals the previous May. He had problems with his teeth, which became loose and painful.

In Antwerp he studied color theory and visited museums – studied Rubens – and expanded the color palette to carmine, cobalt blue and emerald green. He drank heavily and was hospitalized for alcoholism between February and March 1886, when he was probably also being treated for syphilis.

After his recovery, despite his resistance to academic teaching, he took the higher level entrance exams at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and graduated in painting and drawing in January 1886. He fell ill and suffered from overwork, poor diet and excessive smoking.

He started attending drawing classes with extras at Academy in Antwerp in January 1886. He quickly argued with Charles Verlat, director of the academy and class painting teacher. A dispute over his painting style. Van Gogh also argued with his drawing instructor Franz Vinck. He began attending drawing classes based on antique plaster models brought to him by Eugène Siberdt.

He and Siberdt had an argument when he failed to comply with Siberdt’s instructions that drawings should express contour and focus on line. Van Gogh painted the Venus de Milo during the course, but he drew the naked body without limbs. Siberdt took this as a contempt of management and corrected the drawing with his pencil so much that he tore the paper. Van Gogh burst out and yelled at Siberdt: ‘You obviously don’t know what a young woman is like, dammit! A woman must have hips, buttocks, a pelvis in which she can carry a child!’ According to some sources, this incident was the last time he visited the academy. He went to Paris – March 31, 1886,  a month after the incident with Siberdt. At that time, the academy decided that 17 students, including Van Gogh, had to repeat the year. The story that van Gogh was expelled from the academy by Siberdt is therefore unfounded.

In early 1885, he attracted the interest of an art dealer in Paris. Theo asked Vincent if he had the paintings ready for exhibition. In May, van Gogh responded with his first major work The Potato Eaters  and a series of “studies of peasant characters”, which were the culmination of many years of work. He complained to his brother about the sale of the paintings, and Theo replied that they were too dark and not in keeping with the bright style of Impressionism. In August, his work was exhibited publicly in shop windows for the first time of the dealer Leurs in The Hague.

One of the painter’s young peasant extras became pregnant in September 1885. Van Gogh was accused of forcing himself on her, and the village priest forbade the priests to paint for him.

In November left Antwerp and settled above a paint shop in the Rue des Images. He lived in poverty and ate poorly. The money that Theo sent was spent on painting materials and extras. Bread, coffee and tobacco became his staple diet. In February 1886 he wrote to Theo that he remembered only six hot meals the previous May. He had problems with his teeth, which became loose and painful.

In Antwerp he studied color theory and visited museums – studied Rubens – and expanded the color palette to carmine, cobalt blue and emerald green. He drank heavily and was hospitalized for alcoholism between February and March 1886, when he was probably also being treated for syphilis.

After his recovery, despite his resistance to academic teaching, he took the higher level entrance exams at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and graduated in painting and drawing in January 1886. He fell ill and suffered from overwork, poor diet and excessive smoking.

He started attending drawing classes with extras at Academy in Antwerp in January 1886. He quickly argued with Charles Verlat, director of the academy and class painting teacher. A dispute over his painting style. Van Gogh also argued with his drawing instructor Franz Vinck. He began attending drawing classes based on antique plaster models brought to him by Eugène Siberdt.

He and Siberdt had an argument when he failed to comply with Siberdt’s instructions that drawings should express contour and focus on line. Van Gogh painted the Venus de Milo during the course, but he drew the naked body without limbs. Siberdt took this as a contempt of management and corrected the drawing with his pencil so much that he tore the paper. Van Gogh burst out and yelled at Siberdt: ‘You obviously don’t know what a young woman is like, dammit! A woman must have hips, buttocks, a pelvis in which she can carry a child!’ According to some sources, this incident was the last time he visited the academy. He went to Paris – March 31, 1886,  a month after the incident with Siberdt. At that time, the academy decided that 17 students, including Van Gogh, had to repeat the year. The story that van Gogh was expelled from the academy by Siberdt is therefore unfounded.