Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) was a Dutch painter whose formal distortions and humanistic concerns made him a principal forerunner of 20th-century expressionism.

Born on March 30, 1853, at Groot-Zundert in the province of Brabant, Vincent Van Gogh was the son of a Protestant minister. His uncle was a partner in Goupil and Company, art dealers, and Vincent entered the firm at the age of 16 and remained with it for 6 years. He served the firm first in The Hague and then in London, where he fell in love with his landlady's daughter, who rejected him; then he worked for Goupil's branch in Paris.

Because of Van Gogh's irritability, Goupil dismissed him in 1876, and that year he returned to England, worked at a small school at Ramsgate, and did some preaching. In early 1877 he clerked in a bookshop in Dordrecht; then, convinced that the ministry ought to be his vocation, he entered a religious seminary in Brussels. He left 3 months later to become an evangelist in a poor mining section of Belgium, the Borinage. Van Gogh exhibited the zeal and devotion of a martyr, even giving away his clothes, but his eccentricities alienated the miners, and he was dismissed in July 1879. This period was a dark one for Van Gogh. He wished to give himself to others but was constantly being rejected.

After much introspection, Van Gogh decided in 1880 to devote his life to art, a profession he accepted as a spiritual calling. When in London, he had visited museums, and he had done some drawing while in the Borinage. In October 1880 he attended an art school in Brussels, where he studied the rudiments of perspective and anatomy. From April to December 1881 he stayed with his parents, who were then in Etten, and continued to work at his art. At this time his cousin from Amsterdam, a widow with a 4-year-old son, rejected him, and he subsequently formed a close relationship with a pregnant prostitute, a move that precipitated a break with his family. At this time, too, he studied at the academic art school at The Hague, where his cousin Anton Mauve, who worked in the sentimentalized fashion of the Barbizon painters, taught.

Dutch Period

During his Dutch period (1880-1886) Van Gogh executed works in which his overriding humanitarian concerns were overtly manifest. His subjects were poor people, miners, peasants, and inhabitants of almshouses. Among his favorite painters at this time were Jean François Millet, Rembrandt, Honoré Daumier; among his favorite authors, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Harriet Beecher Stowe—all of them interested in the poor and dispossessed. Complementing Van Gogh's dismal subject matter of this time were his colors, dark brownish and greenish tones. The masterpiece of the Dutch period is the Potato Eaters (1885), a night scene in which peasants sit at their meal around a table. The coarseness of the peasants is emphasized; in rendering them Van Gogh approached caricature. Yet he caught, too, a warm communality, a remarkable sense of love and fellowship which his painted peasants seem to share.

Years in Paris

Van Gogh decided to go to Paris in early 1886, partially because he was drawn to the bohemian life and artistic activity of the French city. His brother, Theo, was then living in Paris, where he directed a small gallery maintained by Goupil's. Theo supported Vincent financially and emotionally from the time he decided to become a painter. The letters between the brothers are among the most moving documents in all the history of Western art. Vincent shared Theo's apartment and studied at an art school run by the conventional painter Fernand Cormon, where he met Émile Bernard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who became his friends. In part through the contacts provided by Theo, Vincent met the leaders of impressionism—Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Paul Gauguin—and the neo-impressionist Georges Seurat.

Largely under the influence of the impressionists, especially Pissarro, Van Gogh was persuaded to give up the gloomy tones of his Dutch period for bright, high-keyed colors. Also, his subject matter changed from the world of peasants to a typically impressionist subject matter, such as cafés and cityscapes about Montmartre, and he copied Japanese prints. But while subjects and handling were obviously derived from impressionism, there could frequently be detected a certain forlorn quality, as in a scene of Montmartre (1886), where pedestrians are pushed poignantly to the periphery of an open square.

Van Gogh remained in Paris for 20 months and profited from his stay. Under the influence of impressionism his palette was liberated. But the frenetic life was too much for him; he wanted a place of light and warmth, and he did not want to be entirely financially dependent on Theo, so in February 1888 he left for Arles in southern France.

Stay at Arles

The pleasant country about Arles and the warmth of the place restored Van Gogh to health. He worked feverishly: in his 15 months there he painted over 200 pictures. At this time he applied color in simplified, highly saturated masses, his drawing became more virile and incisive than ever before, and objects seemed to radiate a light of their own without giving off shadows. During this period he also turned to portraiture and executed several self-portraits. Among the masterpieces of his Arles period are the Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries (June 1888); the Night Café (September); and the Artist's Bedroom at Arles (October), where the chairs about the bed seem to be acting out a spectacle and almost appear to be living beings conversing.

At Arles, Van Gogh suffered fainting spells and seizures. The local population began to object to him. Gauguin, responding to his invitation, visited him in October 1888, but the two men quarreled violently; Gauguin left for Paris, and Van Gogh in a fit of remorse and anger cut off his ear. On May 9, 1889, he asked to be interned in the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de Provence.

Production at Saint-Rémy

In the year he spent at the asylum Van Gogh worked as feverishly as at Arles and produced 150 paintings and hundreds of drawings. He copied engravings after Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, and Millet. Van Gogh suffered several attacks but was completely lucid in between. At this time he received his first critical acclaim, an article by the writer Albert Aurier.

During Van Gogh's stay at Saint-Rémy his art changed markedly. His colors lost the intensity of the Arles period: yellows became coppered, vermilions verged toward brownish tones. His lines became writhing and restless. He applied the paint more violently with thicker impasto. Van Gogh was drawn to objects in nature under stress: whirling suns, twisted cypresses, and surging mountains. In Starry Night (1889) the whole world seems engulfed by a paroxysm of circular movements. Some critics have attempted to link the linear movements of his Saint-Rémy period with the vogue of Art Nouveau, but Van Gogh's paintings at this time reveal an intensity and convulsive force found in none of the Art Nouveau painters.

Van Gogh went to Paris on May 17, 1890, to visit his brother. On the advice of Pissarro, Theo had Vincent go to Auvers, just outside Paris, to submit to the care of Dr. Paul Gachet, himself an amateur painter and a friend of Pissarro and Paul Cézanne.

Last Year at Auvers

Van Gogh arrived at Auvers on May 21. He painted a portrait of Dr. Gachet and portraits of his daughters, as well as the Church of Auvers, agitated by a baroque rhythm with the church silhouetted against a cobalt sky. The blue of the Auvers period was not the fully saturated blue of Arles but a more mysterious, flickering blue. In his last painting, the Cornfield with Crows, Van Gogh showed a topsy-turvy world: the spectator himself becomes the object of perspective, and it is toward him that the crows appear to be flying.

At first Van Gogh felt relieved at Auvers, but toward the end of June he experienced fits of temper. He quarreled with Gachet. On July 27, 1890, he shot himself in a lonely field and died the morning of the 29th. Theo died insane 6 months later in the Netherlands, and his body was taken to France to be buried next to that of his brother.

Further Reading

The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh (3 vols., 1958) is more engrossing than most novels. The catalogue raisonné is by J. Bernard de la Faille, ed., L'Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh (4 vols., 1928). A good introduction to Van Gogh's life and works is Abraham M. Hammacher, Genius and Disaster: The Ten Creative Years of Vincent van Gogh (1968). An excellent study of the artist is Marc Edo Tralbaut, Vincent Van Gogh (1969). Other useful studies are H. R. Graetz, The Symbolic Language of Vincent van Gogh (1963), and Frank Elgar, Van Gogh: A Study of His Life and Work trans. 1966). Brilliant analyses of a selected number of paintings are in Meyer Schapiro, Vincent van Gogh (1950). See also John Rewald, Post-impressionism (vol. 1 1956; 2d ed. 1962). □

Vincent Van Gogh

Born: March 30, 1853
Groot-Zundert, Holland
Died: July 29, 1890
Auvers, France
Dutch painter

Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch painter whose formal distortions and humanistic concerns made him a major pioneer of twentieth-century expressionism, an artistic movement that emphasized expression of the artist's experience.

Childhood

Born on March 30, 1853, at Groot-Zundert in the province of Brabant, Holland, Vincent Willem Van Gogh was the son of a Protestant minister, Theodorus Van Gogh. Exactly a year before his birth, his mother, Cornelia, gave birth to an infant, also named Vincent, who was stillborn, or dead upon birth. His grieving parents buried the child and set up a tombstone to mark the grave. As a result, Vincent Van Gogh grew up near the haunting sight of a grave with his own name upon it. His mother later gave birth to Theo, his younger brother, and three younger sisters. Not much is known about Van Gogh's earlier education, but he did receive some encouragement from his mother to draw and paint. As a teenager he drew and painted regularly.

Van Gogh's uncle was a partner in Goupil and Company, art dealers. Vincent entered the firm at the age of sixteen and remained there for six years. He served the firm first in The Hague, the political seat of the Netherlands, and then in London, England, where he fell in love with his landlady's daughter, who rejected him. Later he worked for Goupil's branch in Paris, France.

Because of Van Gogh's unpleasant attitude, Goupil dismissed him in 1876. That year he returned to England, worked at a small school at Ramsgate, and did some preaching. In early 1877 he clerked in a bookshop in Dordrecht. Then, convinced that the ministry ought to be his calling, he joined a religious seminary in Brussels, Belgium. He left three months later to become an evangelist (a preacher) in a poor mining section of Belgium, the Borinage. Van Gogh exhibited the necessary dedication, even giving away his clothes, but his odd behavior kept the miners at a distance. Once again, in July 1879, he found himself dismissed from a job. This period was a dark one for Van Gogh. He wished to give himself to others but was constantly being rejected.

In 1880, after much soul searching, Van Gogh decided to devote his life to art, a profession he accepted as a spiritual calling. When in London he had visited museums, and he had drawn a little while in the Borinage. In October 1880 he attended an art school in Brussels, where he studied the basics of perspective (representing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface) and anatomy (the human body). From April to December 1881 he stayed with his parents, who were then in Etten, and continued to work on his art. At this time, too, he studied at the academic art school at The Hague, where his cousin Anton Mauve taught.

Dutch period

During Van Gogh's Dutch period (1880–1886) he created works in which his overriding concerns for his fellow man were growing. His subjects were poor people, miners, peasants, and inhabitants of almshouses, or houses for the poor. Among his favorite painters at this time were Jean François Millet (1814–1875), Rembrandt (1606–1669), and Honoré Daumier (1808–1879). Complementing Van Gogh's dreary subject matter of this time were his colors, dark brownish and greenish shades. The masterpiece of Van Gogh's Dutch period is the Potato Eaters (1885), a night scene in which peasants sit at their meal around a table.

Van Gogh decided to go to Paris in early 1886, partially because he was drawn to the simple and artistic life of the French city. His younger brother, Theo, was living in Paris, where he directed a small gallery maintained by Goupil and Company. Theo had supported Vincent financially and emotionally from the time he decided to become a painter, and would continue to do so throughout his life. The letters between the brothers are among the most moving documents in all the history of Western art. Vincent shared Theo's apartment and studied at an art school run by the traditional painter Fernand Cormon, where he met Émile Bernard (1868–1941) and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), who became his friends.

By now Van Gogh was largely under the influence of the impressionists, a style of painting where the artist concentrates on the immediate impression of a scene by the use of light and color. Especially influenced by Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), Van Gogh was persuaded to give up the gloomy tones of his Dutch period for bright, high-keyed colors. Also, his subject matter changed from the world of peasants to a typically impressionistic subject matter, such as cafés and cityscapes around Montmartre, an area of northern Paris. He also copied Japanese prints. While subjects and handling were obviously taken from impressionism, there frequently could be detected a certain sad quality, as in a scene of Montmartre (1886), where pedestrians are pushed to the outer sides of an open square.

Stay at Arles

Longing for a place of light and warmth, and tired of being entirely financially dependent on Theo, Van Gogh left for Arles in southern France in February 1888. The pleasant country about Arles and the warmth of the place restored Van Gogh to health. In his fifteen months there he painted over two hundred pictures. At this time he applied color in simplified, highly dense masses, his drawing became more energetic and confused than ever before, and objects seemed to radiate a light of their own without giving off shadows. During this period he also turned to painting portraits and executed several self-portraits. Among the masterpieces of his Arles period are the Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries (June 1888); the Night Café (September); and the Artist's Bedroom at Arles (October).

At Arles Van Gogh suffered fainting spells and seizures (involuntary muscle spasms). The local population began to turn against him as well. Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), responding to his invitation, visited him in October 1888, but the two men quarreled violently. Gauguin left for Paris. Van Gogh, in a fit of remorse and anger, cut off his ear. On May 9, 1889, he asked to be admitted to the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de Provence, a hospital for the mentally ill.

Production at Saint-Rémy

In the year Van Gogh spent at the asylum he worked as much as he had at Arles, producing 150 paintings and hundreds of drawings. Van Gogh suffered several attacks but was completely peaceful in between. At this time he received his first critical praise (a good review), an article by the writer Albert Aurier.

During Van Gogh's stay at Saint-Rémy, his art changed markedly. His colors lost the intensity of the Arles period: yellows became coppers; reds verged toward brownish tones. His lines became restless. He applied the paint more violently with thicker impasto, the application of thick layers. Van Gogh was drawn to objects in nature under stress: whirling suns, twisted cypress trees, and surging mountains. In Starry Night (1889) the whole world seems engulfed by circular movements.

Van Gogh went to Paris on May 17, 1890, to visit his brother. On the advice of Pissarro, Theo had Vincent go to Auvers, just outside Paris, to submit to the care of Dr. Paul Gachet, an amateur painter and a friend of Pissarro and Paul Cézanne (1839–1906).

Last year at Auvers

Van Gogh arrived at Auvers on May 21, 1890. He painted a portrait of Dr. Gachet and portraits of his daughters, as well as the Church of Auvers. The blue of the Auvers period was not the full blue of Arles but a more mysterious, flickering blue. In his last painting, the Cornfield with Crows, Van Gogh showed a topsy-turvy world. The spectator himself becomes the object of perspective, and it is toward him that the crows appear to be flying.

At first Van Gogh felt relieved at Auvers, but toward the end of June he experienced fits of temper and often quarreled with Gachet. On July 27, 1890, he shot himself in a lonely field and died the morning of July 29, 1890.

For More Information

Arnold, Wilfred Niels. Vincent Van Gogh: Chemicals, Crises, and Creativity. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1992.

Greenberg, Jan. Vincent Van Gogh: Portrait of an Artist. New York: Delacorte Press, 2001.

Hammacher, Abraham M. Genius and Disaster: The Ten Creative Years of Vincent Van Gogh. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1968.

Isom, Joan Shaddox. The First Starry Night. Dallas: Whispering Coyote Press, 1997.

Lubin, Albert J. Stranger on the Earth: A Psychological Biography of Vincent Van Gogh. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996.

Metzger, Rainer, and Ingo F. Walther. Vincent Van Gogh: 1853–1890. New York: Taschen, 1998.

Schapiro, Meyer. Vincent Van Gogh. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980.

Gogh, Vincent van (b Zundert, North Brabant, 30 Mar. 1853; d Auvers-sur-Oise, 29 July 1890). Dutch painter and draughtsman, active for much of his brief career in France, with Cézanne and Gauguin the greatest of Post-Impressionist artists. His uncle was a partner in Goupil, the international firm of art dealers, and in 1869 van Gogh got a job as a clerk in the branch at The Hague. Between 1873 and 1876 he worked in the London and Paris branches; initially he did well, but early in 1876 he was obliged to resign because of his erratic behaviour. During his time in London he fell unsuccessfully in love with his landlady's daughter (or perhaps with the widowed landlady herself; the evidence is vague)—the first of several disastrous attempts to find happiness with a woman. Throughout most of 1876 he was again in England, working as a teacher in Ramsgate, Kent, and Isleworth, Middlesex, and as an assistant to a Methodist minister, his experience of urban squalor having awakened a religious zeal and a longing to serve his fellow men. His father was a Protestant pastor, and after returning to the Netherlands van Gogh began to train for the ministry; however, he abandoned his studies in 1878 and went to work as a lay preacher among the impoverished miners of the grim Borinage district in Belgium. In his zeal he gave away his own worldly goods to the poor and was dismissed for his literal interpretation of Christ's teaching. He remained in the Borinage, suffering acute poverty and a spiritual crisis, until 1880, when he found that art was his vocation and the means by which he could bring consolation to humanity. From this time he worked at his new ‘mission’ with single-minded intensity, and although he often suffered from extreme poverty and undernourishment, his output in the ten remaining years of his life was prodigious: about 1,000 paintings and a similar number of drawings. The spontaneous, irrational side of his character has often been stressed, but he was a cultivated and well-read man, who in spite of his speed of work thought deeply about his paintings and planned them carefully.

From 1881 to 1885 van Gogh lived in the Netherlands, sometimes with his parents, sometimes in lodgings, supported by his devoted brother Theo (1857–91), a picture dealer in Paris who regularly sent him money from his own small salary as well as art materials and prints. Their correspondence is an extraordinarily rich source of information on van Gogh's life and art. Initially he confined himself to drawings, and they dominate the first half of his career. He experimented with various media, including waxy black lithographic chalk, which encouraged the bold, strongly outlined style he favoured in his early works; later he preferred pen and ink, which he used with much greater spontaneity in rapid dots and flicks that pulsate with the same kind of life as the swirling brushstrokes that came to characterize his paintings. He took up oils in 1882 and in keeping with his humanitarian outlook he painted peasants and workers, the most famous picture from this early period being The Potato Eaters (1885, Van Gogh Mus., Amsterdam). Of this he wrote to Theo: ‘I have tried to emphasize that those people, eating their potatoes in the lamp-light, have dug the earth with those very hands they put in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labour, and how they have honestly earned their food.’

In 1885 van Gogh moved to Antwerp on the advice of Anton Mauve (a cousin by marriage), and studied for some months at the Academy there. Academic instruction had little to offer such an individualist, however (essentially he was self-taught), and in February 1886 he moved to Paris, where he met Degas, Gauguin, Pissarro, Seurat, and Toulouse-Lautrec. At this time his painting changed abruptly in style under the combined influence of Impressionism and Japanese prints (see Ukiyo-e), losing its moralistic flavour and revelling in the beauty of colour. Unlike the Impressionists, however, he did not use colour for the reproduction of visual appearances, atmosphere, and light. ‘Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes,’ he wrote, ‘I use colour more arbitrarily so as to express myself more forcibly.’ Of his Night Café (1888, Yale Univ. AG), he said: ‘I have tried to express with red and green the terrible passions of human nature.’ For a time he was influenced by Seurat's delicate pointillist manner, but he abandoned this for broad, vigorous brushstrokes.

After two years in Paris van Gogh felt tired of city life and longed ‘to look at nature under a brighter sky’, so in February 1888 he settled at Arles in the south of France, where he painted more than 200 canvases in fifteen months (most of the celebrated masterpieces on which his huge reputation rests were produced in the last two or three years of his life—an unparalleled creative outpouring). Throughout 1888 he lived in poverty and suffered recurrent nervous crises with hallucinations and depression. However, he became enthusiastic for the idea of founding an artists' cooperative at Arles and in October he was joined by Gauguin. As a result of a quarrel between them van Gogh suffered a crisis in which (24 December 1888) he cut off his left ear (or part of it; contemporary sources disagree on this point), an event commemorated in his Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889, Courtauld Gal., London); epilepsy and schizophrenia are among the causes that have been suggested to account for his mental disturbances. In May 1889 he went at his own request into an asylum at Saint Rémy, near Arles, but during the year he spent there he continued a fervent output of pictures such as Starry Night (1889, MoMA, New York). He produced 150 paintings (as well as drawings) in the course of this year. In 1889 Theo married and in May 1890 van Gogh moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, to the north of Paris, to be near him, lodging with the patron and connoisseur Dr Paul Gachet. There followed another tremendous burst of activity and during the last 70 days of his life he painted 70 canvases. But his spiritual anguish and depression became more acute and on 27 July 1890 he shot himself in the chest and died two days later; Theo, who died six months afterwards, is buried alongside him in Auvers.

Van Gogh sold almost nothing during his lifetime and was little known to the art world at the time of his death, but thereafter his reputation grew rapidly (initially his fame was mainly in France and the Netherlands, but in the period between the turn of the century and the First World War it became international). His influence on Expressionism, Fauvism, and early abstraction was enormous, and it can be seen in many other aspects of 20th-century art. His passionate life and unswerving devotion to his ideals have made him one of the great cultural heroes of modern times, providing the most auspicious material for the 20th-century vogue in romanticized psychological biography, notably Irving Stone's novel Lust for Life (1934) and the Hollywood film of the same name (1956).

Gogh, Vincent van (1853–90). Dutch painter and draughtsman, active for much of his brief career in France, with Cézanne and Gauguin the greatest of Post-Impressionist artists. His uncle was a partner in the international firm of picture dealers Goupil and Co. and in 1869 van Gogh went to work in the branch at The Hague. In 1873 he was sent to the London branch and fell unsuccessfully in love with the daughter of his landlady. This was the first of several disastrous attempts to find happiness with a woman, and his unrequited passion affected him so badly that he was dismissed from his job. He returned to England in 1876 as an unpaid assistant at a school, and his experience of urban squalor awakened a religious zeal and a longing to serve his fellow men. His father was a Protestant pastor, and van Gogh began to train for the ministry, but he abandoned his studies in 1878 and went to work as a lay preacher among the impoverished miners of the grim Borinage district in Belgium. In his zeal he gave away his own worldly goods to the poor and was dismissed for his literal interpretation of Christ's teaching. He remained in the Borinage, suffering acute poverty and a spiritual crisis, until 1880, when he found that art was his vocation and the means by which he could bring consolation to humanity. From this time he worked at his new ‘mission’ with single-minded intensity, and although he often suffered from extreme poverty and undernourishment, his output in the ten remaining years of his life was prodigious: about a thousand paintings and a similar number of drawings. The spontaneous, irrational side of his character has often been stressed, but he was a cultivated and well-read man, who in spite of his speed of work thought deeply about his paintings and planned them carefully.

From 1881 to 1885 van Gogh lived in the Netherlands, sometimes with his parents, sometimes in lodgings, supported by his devoted brother Theo (1857–91), a picture dealer in Paris who regularly sent him money from his own small salary as well as art materials and prints. Their correspondence is an extraordinarily rich source of information on van Gogh's life and art. Initially he confined himself to drawings, often using charcoal or boldly handled black chalk, but he took up oils in 1882. In keeping with his humanitarian outlook he painted peasants and workers, the most famous picture from this period being The Potato Eaters (1885, Van Gogh Mus., Amsterdam). Of this he wrote to Theo: ‘I have tried to emphasize that those people, eating their potatoes in the lamp-light have dug the earth with those very hands they put in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labour, and how they have honestly earned their food.’ In 1885 van Gogh moved to Antwerp on the advice of Anton Mauve (a cousin by marriage), and studied for some months at the Academy there. Academic instruction had little to offer such an individualist, however, and in February 1886 he moved to Paris, where he met Degas, Gauguin, Pissarro, Seurat, and Toulouse-Lautrec. At this time his painting underwent a violent metamorphosis under the combined influence of Impressionism and Japanese woodcuts (see Ukiyo-e), losing its moralistic flavour. Van Gogh became obsessed by the symbolic and expressive values of colours and began to use them for this purpose rather than, as did the Impressionists, for the reproduction of visual appearances, atmosphere, and light. ‘Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes,’ he wrote, ‘I use colour more arbitrarily so as to express myself more forcibly.’ Of his Night Café (1888, Yale Univ. AG), he said: ‘I have tried to express with red and green the terrible passions of human nature.’ For a time he as influenced by Seurat's delicate pointillist manner, but he abandoned this for broad, vigorous, and swirling brush-strokes.

In February 1888 van Gogh settled at Arles in the south of France, where he painted more than 200 canvases in fifteen months. During this time he lived in poverty and suffered recurrent nervous crises with hallucinations and depression. He became enthusiastic for the idea of founding an artists' co-operative at Arles and in October he was joined by Gauguin. However, as a result of a quarrel between them van Gogh suffered a crisis in which he cut off part of his left ear (24 December 1888), an event commemorated in his Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889, Courtauld Gal., London); epilepsy and schizophrenia are among the causes that have been suggested to account for his mental disturbances. In May 1889 he went at his own request into an asylum at St Rémy, near Arles, but during the year he spent there he continued a fervent output of tumultuous pictures such as Starry Night (1889, MoMA, New York). He produced 150 paintings (as well as drawings) in the course of this year. In 1889 Theo married and in May 1890 van Gogh moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, to the north of Paris, to be near him, lodging with the patron and connoisseur Dr Paul Gachet. There followed another tremendous burst of activity and during the last 70 days of his life he painted 70 canvases. But his spiritual anguish and depression became more acute and on 29 July 1890 he died from the results of a self-inflicted bullet wound; Theo died six months later and was buried alongside him in Auvers. Van Gogh sold almost nothing during his lifetime and was little known to the art world at the time of his death, but his fame grew rapidly thereafter. His influence on Expressionism, Fauvism, and early abstraction was enormous, and it can be seen in many other aspects of 20th-century art. His passionate life and unswerving devotion to his ideals have made him one of the great cultural heroes of modern times, providing the most auspicious material for the 20th-century vogue in romanticized psychological biography, notably Irving Stone's novel Lust for Life (1934) and the Hollywood film of the same name (1956).

Vincent Van Gogh , 1853-90, postimpressionist painter, b. the Netherlands. Van Gogh's works are perhaps better known generally than those of any other painter. His brief, turbulent, and tragic life is thought to epitomize the mad genius legend.

During his lifetime, Van Gogh's work was represented in two very small exhibitions and two larger ones. Only one of Van Gogh's paintings was sold while he lived. The great majority of the works by which he is remembered were produced in 29 months of frenzied activity and intermittent bouts with epileptoid seizures and profound despair that finally ended in suicide. In his grim struggle Vincent had one constant ally and support, his younger brother Théo, to whom he wrote revealing and extraordinarily beautiful letters detailing his conflicts and aspirations. As a youth Van Gogh worked for a picture dealer, antagonizing customers until he was dismissed. Compulsively humanitarian, he tried to preach to oppressed mining families and was jeered at. His difficult, contradictory personality was rejected by the women he fell in love with, and his few friendships usually ended in bitter arguments.

Ten years before his death Van Gogh decided to be a painter, fully conscious of the sacrifices this decision would require of him. His early work, the Dutch period of 1880-85, consists of dark greenish-brown, heavily painted studies of peasants and miners, e.g., The Potato Eaters (1885; Van Gogh Mus., Amsterdam). He copied the work of Millet, whose idealization of the rural poor he admired. In 1886 he joined Théo in Paris, where he met the foremost French painters of the postimpressionist period. The kindly Pissarro convinced him to adopt a colorful palette and thereby made a tremendously significant contribution to Van Gogh's art. His painting Père Tanguy (1887; Niarchos Coll., Paris) was the first complete and successful work in his new colors. Impressed by the theories of Seurat and Signac, Van Gogh briefly adopted a pointillist style.

In 1888, in ill health and longing for release from Paris and what he felt was his imposition upon Théo's life, he took a house at Arles. At Arles he was joined by Gauguin for a brief period fraught with tension, during which he mutilated his left ear in the course of his first attack of dementia. His paintings from this period include the incomparable series of sunflowers (1888; one version: National Gall., London); The Night Café (Yale Univ.); and The Public Gardens in Arles (Phillips Coll., Washington, D.C.). During his illness he was confined first to the Arles Hospital, then to the asylum at Saint-Rémy, where, in 1889, he painted the swirling, climactic Starry Night (Mus. of Modern Art, New York City).

Van Gogh's last three months were spent in Auvers near Pissarro, painting the postman Roulin and the sympathetic, eccentric Dr. Gachet, a physician and collector who watched over him. Vincent's consciousness of his burden upon Théo, by then married and a father, increased. His work tempo was pushed to the limit; one of his last paintings, Wheat Field With Crows (Van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam), projected ominous overtones of distress. He despaired and shot himself, dying two days later in the arms of his brother. Théo died shortly thereafter.

Bibliography: See his works ed. by J. B. de la Faille (rev. ed. 1970); his Complete Letters (tr. 1958); Van Gogh: His Life and His Art (1990) by D. Sweetman; studies by J. Leymarie (1968), M. E. Tralbaut (1969), R. J. Philpott (1984), and R. Pickvance (1984).

Van Gogh, Vincent (1853–90) Dutch painter, a leading exponent of expressionism. He was a lay preacher to Belgian coal miners before suffering a psychological crisis. Virtually self-taught, Van Gogh's early works, such as The Potato Eaters (1885), are Millet-influenced studies of working-class life. In 1886, he left Holland for Paris, where his palette was transformed by post-impressionism, experimenting briefly with pointillism. In 1888, Van Gogh moved to Arles, Provence, where he was joined by Gauguin. Suffering from mental illness and depression, he cut off part of his left ear after a quarrel with Gauguin. Van Gogh's paintings from this period include the Sunflower series (1888), and the Night Café (1888). He entered an asylum at Saint Rémy, where he painted a series of intense landscapes, such as Starry Night (1889). These paintings are executed with heavy brushwork in heightened, flame-like colour, with passionate expression of light and emotion. Van Gogh committed suicide in Auvers. In a brief and turbulent life, he sold only one painting and was supported by his younger brother Théo.

http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl; http://org; http://www.nga.gov

Gogh, Vincent van. See EXPRESSIONISM and POST-IMPRESSIONISM.

Vincent Van Gogh see Van Gogh, Vincent .