Vincent van Gogh - Starry Night
Post-Impressionist Dutch Painter and Artist
Brief biography of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, influential 20th-century artist especially on Fauves, Expressionism and Abstract Art.
Vincent Willem van Gogh, Dutch post-Impressionist painter famous for his paintings "The Starry Night," "Cornfield with Crows," and "Irises." He was a gifted yet disturbed and tormented artist, known cutting part of his ear.
Van Gogh's was born in Zundert on March 30, 1853, the oldest of eight children, whose father was a Lutheran pastor. He was closest to his brother Theo van Gogh. From the age of nine, van Gogh showed great talent in drawing, but it was in his late 20s, after a series of religious and emotional crises, that he took painting seriously.
Van Gogh's Career, Pre-Painting Years
- Assistant in an international firm of art dealers in their shops in The Hague, London and Paris, aged 16.
- Schoolmaster in England. An unrequited love affair with an English schoolmistress accentuated his inferiority complex, but his religious passion developed.
- Assistant master at Ramsgate and Isleworth, 1876, at the same time, trained unsuccessfully to become a Methodist minister.
- Evangelist at the Belgian coalmining centre of Le Borinage, 1878, a resident at first, and later a preacher. He practiced the Christian virtues with great zeal, sleeping on the floor of a derelict hut and giving away his possessions.
Van Gogh the Painter
- Began painting in the early 1880s.
- He set off for Brussels in April 1881 to study art, but another unfortunate love affair, this time with a cousin, threw him off balance.
- Settled in The Hague, studied under Antoine Mauve, and lived with his model, Sien, a prostitute. She appears in the drawing Sorrow (1882) and Sien Posing (1883). His early works were somber depictions of peasant life.
- At Nuenen, in his father's new parish, he painted the dark, depressing, domestic scene of peasant poverty, The Potato Eaters (1885), his first masterpiece.
Van Gogh in Paris and Arles
He moved to Paris (1886) where his devoted brother Theo van Gogh, an art dealer, financially helped him with his studies. There he met Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Seurat and the art-collector Tanguy, the subject of one of his remarkable portraits.
Influenced by both the Impressionists and Japanese prints, he developed a freer style characterized by intense colour and expressive brushwork, evident in Sunflowers, The Chair and the Pipe and The Bridge, all painted in 1888. On Lautrec's advice, van Gogh left Paris to seek the intense colours of the landscape at Arles, Provence. Eventually, his works at Arles became the subject of many of his best works. He also invited Gauguin to join him there.
Van Gogh in St Remy and Auvers-sur-Oise
Gauguin's stay ended in a tragic rift between the two artists. In remorse for having threatened the other with a razor, van Gogh cut off part of his own ear. The disturbed van Gogh was placed in an asylum at St Remy in 1889. There he painted the Ravine, with increasingly frantic brushstrokes. In 1890 he went to live at Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, under the supervision of a physician, Dr. Paul Gachet, himself an amateur painter and engraver, whom van Gogh painted. That year an exhaustive article by Albert Aurier appeared in the Mercure de France which finally drew van Gogh recognition. On July 27, 1890, Van Gogh shot himself at the scene of his last painting, the foreboding Cornfields with Flight of Birds, and died two days later. His deeply shocked brother Theo could not cope with the turn of events. He also died within six months.
Van Gogh's Legacies
- Van Gogh's works, over 850 paintings and 700 drawings, include still lifes, portraits, and landscapes, such as The Starry Night (1889), Irises (1889) and Cornfield with Crows (1890).
- Irises was sold for the record price of $53.9 million at Sotherby's, New York, 1987. (Dictionary of the Arts, Gramercy Books, NY, 1999.)
- Don McLean's second no. 1 hit single "Vincent" (1971) was a tribute to van Gogh, with an opening reference to "Starry, starry night."
- A biographical novel (1934) Lust for Life by Irving Stone was based on van Gogh's life, made into a film with the same title, directed by Vincent Minnelli.
Sources:
Chambers Biographical Dictionary (2002)
Larousse Dictionary of Painters (1989)
Masters of Art by Samm Sinclair Baker and Natalie Baker (1987)
