Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist who lived from 1853 to 1890. He pervades our culture. Most people can identify his work, even if they aren’t interested in art. He sparks our imaginations, from his gorgeous paintings to his sad character, to his shortened life, to his lack of respect in the art world until after his death. He painted with bold colors and emotional honesty that gives his work a personal feeling all these years later.
Vincent Van Gogh drew for most of his life, though he didn’t actually start painting until near the end of his 20s. As a young adult, Van Gogh became exposed to the art world through his time as an art dealer (his brother Theo was an art dealer as well). Finding no moral satisfaction in his job, he abandoned his career to try the life of a pastor, which he continued to do for several years. After failing at the life of a pastor, Van Gogh decided to try and pursue art. In 1885, Van Gogh completed “The Potato Eaters” which many believe to be his first masterpiece. This early period to Van Gogh’s work was heavily inspired by the Barbizon School artist, Jean-Francois Millet, and the Dutch Golden Age art master, Rembrandt van Rijn.
He moved to Paris in 1886 and, after much hesitation, lightened his palette in a change of direction in his art, where he absorbed the French Impressionists. The Impressionist style became an inspiration for Van Gogh, which helped him to lighten his palette, loosen his brushwork, and to paint in the plein air style. He spent the last few years of his life in and out of mental hospitals at the same time as he was making huge strides in his art. In Paris, Van Gogh immersed himself in the art scene, become acquainted with other notable and soon to be famous artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec who painted his portrait in 1887.
During this period in the art world, the impressionists had radically changed the art scene. The newer, more modern way of painting spurred many other artists to attempt to modernize art in their own way. The impressionists paved the way for the neo-impressionists, pointillists, and cloisonnism, which all often fell under the umbrella terms of post-impressionism. Van Gogh experimented with his art and started using brighter colors, often complementary contrasts, in his own attempt to modernize the art subject.
In 1888, Van Gogh had moved from Paris where he was living with his brother, to southern France in an attempt to get new inspiration for his work and help his deteriorating health. Heavy drinking, smoking, and frequent trips to the brothels in Paris had taken their toll on his health. While in southern France, he had a dream of starting an art colony with other like-minded artists. To entice his artist friends south from Paris and to prove his point, Van Gogh created new paintings at a feverish rate, sometimes finishing several a day. His art flourished, though his mental state did not. Famously, Paul Gauguin did move south to join Vincent in Arles in the fall of 1888. It is often cited that tensions with Gauguin were the reason that Van Gogh cut off his ear.
In 1889, Van Gogh admitted himself to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, an asylum housed in a former twelfth century monastery in Saint-Rémy, southern France, and just one year before his untimely death. Over his 1 year stay at the asylum, he would create 130 paintings while trying to improve his mental health. Van Gogh self-medicated with art, which he thought helped keep him sane. He had entered the asylum in hopes to cure the overwhelming personal angst he was suffering. The gardens and close walks at the asylum provided Van Gogh with access to nature and inspiration for many new paintings featuring nature, such as irises, lilacs, roses, sunflowers, almond blooms, and cypress trees. He found the strolls through the gardens therapeutic. Many of the paintings from this period exhibit thick layers of paint, with the brush strokes and knife edges visible still today in the paint, a technique known as impasto.
In May of 1890, Van Gogh discharged himself from the asylum in Saint-Rémy and moved to Auvers-sur-Oise just outside of Paris to be closer to his brother. Van Gogh died just two months later at just 37 years old from a gunshot to the chest, which most people believe was self-inflicted. He didn’t immediately die and was able to walk back to his home. His wound, though non-fatal, caught infection and Vincent Van Gogh died two days later. His last words were to his brother and were “The sadness will last forever.”
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