Details

Name

Vincent van Gogh

Brief Biography

1853 - 1890, Dutch

Occupation

Artist

Description

Too many of the books, films and articles that have been devoted to Van Gogh have concentrated on the tragedies of his life and have unfortunately masked his true role as a hard-working artist who consistently stove to develop his own individual style. He was aware that he would probably not achieve financial success in his own lifetime but wrote to his brother Theo that he was sure that one day his work would be worth more than what it actually cost to paint. He believed firmly in the future, writing that ‘Painters….dead and buried, speak to the next generation or to several succeeding generations through their work….In a painter’s life death is not perhaps the hardest thing there is.’

The son of a Dutch Protestant minister, Van Gogh tried various careers – the art trade, teaching, the ministry and missionary work – before deciding to become a painter around 1880. He studied briefly under Anton Mauve in The Hague in 1883, then worked at Nuenen, before leaving to study in Antwerp in the winter of 1885-6. He joined his brother Theo in Paris in March 1886, studying briefly at Cormon’s studio where he met Toulouse-Lautrec and Emile Bernard. Through seeing the works of, and meeting, many of the Impressionists and the Neo-Impressionists, he began to use lighter, more vivid colours and his brushwork became looser.

In February 1888 he moved to Arles in Provence to escape both the turmoil of city life and the welter of influences that he had been open to in Paris. Van Gogh dreamt of establishing an artistic community in Arles and was delighted when Gauguin joined him there in October 1888. This dream was shattered when the two artists quarreled over art. While both used heightened colours and simplified forms for expressive purposes Van Gogh firmly maintained that only nature could be the true source of inspiration while Gauguin argued that dreams and imagination were equally valid. On Gauguin’s departure from Arles in December 1888 Van Gogh suffered a breakdown. He lived in the hospital at Saint Rémy, near Arles, from May 1889 to May 1890, and then moved to Auvers in northern France, where he committed suicide in July 1890. Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo give a marvelous insight into the life and mind of the artist. Through them we learn of his struggles and of what he hoped to achieve, 'in a picture I want to say something comforting as music is comforting. I want to paint men and women with that something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolize, and which we seek to confer by the actual radiance and vibration of our colourings.’