Vincent van Gogh
| Vincent van Gogh | ||
 Self-Portrait, 1887, Art Institute of Chicago | ||
| Background information | ||
| Movement: | Post-Impressionism | |
| Birthdate: | Mar 30, 1853 | |
| Born as: | Vincent Willem van Gogh | |
| Location: | Zundert, Netherlands | |
| Date of death: | Jul 29, 1890 - age 36 | |
| Death place: | Auvers-sur-Oise, France | |
| Education: | Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Antwerp) Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts | |
Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsɛnt ˈʋɪləm vɑŋ ˈɣɔx] ✦30 March 1853 – †29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a period of 10 years, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits and are characterized by bold colors and dramatic, impulsive, and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Not commercially successful in his career, he struggled with severe depression and poverty, which eventually led to his suicide at age thirty-seven.
Born into an upper-middle-class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet, and thoughtful. As a young man, he worked as an art dealer, often traveling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion and spent time as a Protestant missionary in predominantly Roman Catholic southern Belgium. He drifted into ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881, having moved back home with his parents. His younger brother Theo supported him financially; the two kept a long correspondence by letter. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant laborers, contain few signs of the vivid color that distinguished his later work. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met avant-garde members, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed, he created a new approach to still lives and local landscapes. His paintings grew brighter as he developed a style that became fully realized during his stay in Arles in the South of France in 1888. During this period, he broadened his subject matter to include a series of olive trees, wheat fields, and sunflowers.
Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions, and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, ate poorly, and drank heavily. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor when, in a rage, he severed part of his own left ear. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, he came under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. His depression persisted, and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver, dying from his injuries two days later.
Van Gogh was commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime and was considered a madman and a failure. As he became famous only after his suicide, he came to be seen as a misunderstood genius in the public imagination. His reputation grew in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists. He attained widespread critical and commercial success over the ensuing decades and is remembered as an important but tragic painter whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honored by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world's most extensive collection of his paintings and drawings.
Letters
The most comprehensive primary source on Van Gogh is the correspondence between him and his younger brother, Theo. Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Vincent's thoughts and theories of art, are recorded in the hundreds of letters they exchanged from 1872 until 1890. Theo van Gogh was an art dealer and provided his brother with financial and emotional support as well as access to influential people on the contemporary art scene.
Theo kept all of Vincent's letters to him; but Vincent kept only a few of the letters he received. After both had died, Theo's widow Jo Bonger-van Gogh arranged to publish some of their letters. A few appeared in 1906 and 1913; most were published in 1914. Vincent's letters are eloquent and expressive and have been described as having a "diary-like intimacy", and read in parts like autobiography. Translator Arnold Pomerans wrote that their publication adds a "fresh dimension to the understanding of Van Gogh's artistic achievement, an understanding granted to us by virtually no other painter".
There are more than 600 letters from Vincent to Theo and around 40 from Theo to Vincent. There are 22 to his sister Wil, 58 to the painter Anthon van Rappard, 22 to Émile Bernard, and individual letters to Paul Signac, Paul Gauguin, and the critic Albert Aurier. Some are illustrated with sketches. Many are undated, but art historians have been able to place most in chronological order. Problems in transcription and dating remain, mainly with those posted by Arles. While there, Vincent wrote around 200 letters in Dutch, French, and English. There is a gap in the record of when he lived in Paris, as the brothers lived together and had no need to correspond.
Vincent's letters frequently mentioned the highly paid contemporary artist Jules Breton. In 1875 letters to Theo, Vincent mentions he saw Breton, discusses the Breton paintings he saw at a Salon, and discusses sending one of Breton's books but only on the condition that it be returned. In a March 1884 letter to Rappard, he discusses one of Breton's poems that had inspired one of his own paintings. In 1885 he described Breton's famous work The Song of the Lark as being "fine." In March 1880, roughly midway between these letters, Van Gogh set out on an 80-kilometer trip on foot to meet with Breton in the village of Courrières; however, he was apparently intimidated by Breton's success and/or the high wall around his estate. He turned around and returned without making his presence known. It appears Breton was unaware of Van Gogh or his attempted visit. There are no known letters between the two artists, and Van Gogh is not one of the contemporary artists discussed by Breton in his 1891 autobiography Life of an Artist.
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Vincent_van_Gogh ]
External links
- The Vincent van Gogh Gallery, the complete works and letters of Van Gogh
- Vincent van Gogh The letters, the complete letters of Van Gogh (translated into English and annotated)
- Vincent van Gogh, teaching resource on Van Gogh
- Works by Vincent van Gogh at Project Gutenberg
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