Biography of Vincent Van Gogh Essay

Vincent van Gogh is one of the world’s most well-known artists. He was the son of a pastor and was brought up in a religious atmosphere. He thought his true calling was to preach the gospel like his father. He became a preacher in a small coal mining town. This is when he starting becoming very interested in the people and things that surrounded him. He became an artist at the age of 27.

Van Gogh and Monet had both lived exceptionally different lives. Van Gogh did not start off wanting to become an artist, he was actually very interested in theology and had eventually become a minister. It had seemed as though Van Gogh had found his calling. Unfortunately, he was released from the church after his generosity had betrayed him. While trying to help miners, he gave away all of his clothes and was only left with a cloth. The church committee overseeing Van Gogh let him go because he did not dress or preach eloquently. This led to Van Gogh gaining an interest in art which would lead him to go to an art school in Paris to

Vincent Van Gogh is one of the most famous painters of all time. His style was post-impressionism. He was a Dutch man, born in an averaged sized town called Groot-Zundert, Netherlands. The reason he became an artist, and the thing that influenced him the most to become an artist was actually his mother. His mother was interested in nature, she did a lot of drawing and watercolors and that really influenced her son heavily and got him into art. When he was fifteen years old, his family was really struggling with their finances. Because of this, he was forced to get a job and help them provide. It ended up that his uncle owned an art dealership, so he got a job there.

He had nine people in his family Vincent Van Gogh was born the second of six children into a religious Dutch Reformed Church family in the south of the Netherlands. His father, Theodorus Van Gogh, was a clergyman and his mother, Anna Cornelia Carbentus, was the daughter of a bookseller. Van Gogh exhibited unstable moods during his childhood, one of his favorite things to do were to paint. Though he excelled at different languages like French and English while attending two boarding schools. In 1868, he abandoned his studies and never successfully returned to formal schooling.

His early paintings had an unconventional, unique, and unfinished look about them. The images were known to everyone in everyday life.

Everybody has heard of the name Vincent Van Gogh. Maybe you’ve heard about his ear or you’ve seen his painting “The Starry Night”. Perhaps you had seen one of his paintings but didn’t know who he was. I am happy to tell you: today is your lucky day. You will be learning a little about him. He was a Dutch painter which was one of the 4 artists who led the movement Post-Impressionism (the use vivid colors, thick application of paint, and real-life subject matter), Van Gogh made about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 paintings. He didn’t have a good life. Van Gogh was constantly depressed, got heartbroken multiple times in his life (he never got married), and was insane. He suffered from psychotic episodes and hallucinations. Often, he didn’t care and neglected he was mentally unstable. For this reason, he did not eat properly and drank a lot.

Vincent Van Gogh was named after his stillborn brother who died March, 30, 1852; exactly one year before Gogh was born. By the time Vincent was 15 his family was broke and he had to quit school. He went to work at his uncle’s art dealership to support himself and his mother, father and little brother Theo. However, he felt unsatisfied at his Uncle’s dealership and decided to become a minister (Biography.com).

"Vincent had queer manners and seemed to be more like an old man," said a servant of the Van Gogh family that worked for them when Vincent was a child. His mother was really disappointed in him and then eventually the entire family. Even his closes friend, his brother, Theo Van Gogh who helped him financially became disappointed. Vincent said that "Theo comforted his mother and is worthy to be comforted by his mother." On the other hand Vincent was rejected. Vincent later said that his childhood was "gloomy and cold and sterile." (Voyager)

Vincent then attended preparatory classes with intense lessons of Dutch, German, French, and English along with the traditional array of math and science courses. Yet for reasons unknown, in March of 1868, Vincent returned to his home in Zundert. His boyhood came to a close in July of 1869 when he joined the art business as a dealer for Goupil & Co. This was a family tradition, as three of his uncles, including one also by the name of Vincent, were also art dealers. Vincent’s brother Theo would also become an art dealer four years after him. As a young child, Vincent was not known for his own creation of art. Though his family made a great impact on his view of dealing art, he was not an art prodigy like other famous arts such as Henri de Toulous-Lautrec and Pablo Picasso were. While a handful of his drawings between the ages of eight and ten have survived, he did not truly take a serious interest in creating art until he was twenty-seven. (Hulsker & Miller, 5-14)

When Van Gogh was sixteen, his first job was working for his uncle at Goupil et Cie, an art gallery in The Hague. When he was nineteen he went to work at the Groupil Gallery in London and then to the gallery in Paris. He was finally fired from the gallery because he was not happy with his job and discoursed customers from buying the artwork. After that he decided that he wanted to be a preacher and studied to get into a theological school but failed. In 1879 he went to Borinage, a coal mining town, as a missionary to the poor coal miners. He lasted there a couple of years and then was dismissed.

Both these artworks were constructed around the same times, 1889 in the 19th century. This was a time in Van Gogh’s life of great misplacement and the downhill run to his suicide in 1890 at 37. A series of events led to his downfall including such events as: chasing Gauguin with a knife, resulting in the fallout of their relationship; cutting his left ear off as a consequence for his misbehaviour and handing it to a prostitute as a ‘gift’ in 1888; finally shooting himself in the chest. Dying two days later in 1890. These series of events subsequently relate to Van Gogh’s paintings, as he painted with full attentive emotion within his artworks using colour as a vehicle to convey his subjective emotions.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30th 1853, in Zundert, The Netherlands. Van Gogh spent his teenage year’s working for a firm of art dealers; however, he did not embark upon his art career until 1880. Originally, he worked only with dark and gloomy colors, until he came across the art movements developed in Paris known as, Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism (Meier-Graefe 4). Van Gogh than included their brighter colors and unique style of painting into his very own creations. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life (Meier-Graefe 10). However, most of his best-known works were produced in his last

          4. Later Van Gogh decide to moved to his next and final career which was An Artist.

The one close relationship Van Gogh had with his siblings was with his brother Theo who supported him not only emotionally but financially. (Letters to Theo from Van Gogh are big parts in understanding Van Gogh’s life and the troubles he faced. published in 1959.) Van Gogh was largely self-taught as an artist, although he received help from his cousin, Mauve. His first works were heavily painted, mud-colored and clumsy attempts to represent the life of the poor (e.g. Potato-Eaters, 1885, Amsterdam), influenced by one of his artistic heroes, Millet. He moved to Paris in 1886, living with his devoted brother, Theo, who as a dealer introduced him to artists like Gauguin, Pissarro, Seurat and Toulouse-Lautrec. In Paris, he discovered color as well as the divisionist ideas which helped to create the distinctive dashed brushstrokes of his later work (e.g. Pere Tanguy, 1887, Paris). He moved to Arles, in the south of France, in 1888, hoping to establish an artists' colony there, and was immediately struck by the hot reds and yellows of the Mediterranean, which he increasingly used symbolically to represent his own moods (e.g. Sunflowers, 1888, London, National Gallery). He was joined briefly by Gauguin in October 1888, and managed in some works to combine his own ideas with the latter's Synthetism (e.g. The Sower, 1888, Amsterdam), but the visit was not a success. A final argument led to the infamous episode in which Van Gogh mutilated

Vincent Van Gogh had a rather depressing life. After being born into an upper-middle class family he quickly became depressed in life. He tried different things like working as an art dealer, becoming a Protestant missionary, and so on. None of these stuck for him as his mental health continued to decline. He was already a quiet, keep to himself kind of person, but over time he became more isolated. He got help from his younger brother Theo in the form of money and moved back home with his parents. This is when he began painting and eventually moved to Paris. Once moving there his paintings became more colorful and his painting style began to develop. He also began suffering from delusions and psychotic episodes and began neglecting his health by eating less and drinking alcohol more frequently and in