Vincent van Gogh

Painting, Visual Artist

1853 – 1890

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Who was Vincent van Gogh?

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died aged 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted. His work was then known to only a handful of people and appreciated by fewer still.

Van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. His work included self portraits, landscapes, still lifes, portraits and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.

Van Gogh spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers, traveling between The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught for a time in England. One of his early aspirations was to become a pastor and from 1879 he worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium where he began to sketch people from the local community. In 1885, he painted his first major work The Potato Eaters. His palette at the time consisted mainly of somber earth tones and showed no sign of the vivid coloration that distinguished his later work. In March 1886, he moved to Paris and discovered the French Impressionists. Later, he moved to the south of France and was influenced by the strong sunlight he found there. His work grew brighter in color, and he developed the unique and highly recognizable style that became fully realized during his stay in Arles in 1888.

Famous Quotes:

  • What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
  • Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.
  • A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.
  • If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?
  • I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
  • The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic that to love others.
  • The Mediterranean has the color of mackerel, changeable I mean. You don't always know if it is green or violet, you can't even say it's blue, because the next moment the changing reflection has taken on a tint of rose or gray.
  • Conscience is a man's compass.
  • It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.
  • The best way to know God is to love many things.

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Born
Mar 30, 1853
Zundert
Also known as
  • Vincent Willem van Gogh
Parents
Siblings
Ethnicity
  • Dutch people
Nationality
  • Netherlands
Profession
Education
  • Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
    (1880/11/15 - )
  • Willem II College
    (1866/09/15 - 1868/03)
  • Royal Academy of Fine Arts
    (1886/01/18 - 1886)
Lived in
  • North Brabant
  • Zundert
Died
Jul 29, 1890
Auvers-sur-Oise

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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