Vincent Willem 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.

The life span of 37 years saw Vincent Willem van Gogh (Vincent) in creating beautiful works he dearly loved. Painting was an avenue, which allowed him to express his inner thoughts or vent his struggles. My decision to research on Vincent’s painting, Starry Night (1889) came with the inspiration from Don Mclean’s Song, Starry Starry Night where his lyrics spoke about Vincent’s life that further intrigued me in writing this paper.

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.

Vincent was a quiet child growing up. He himself once described his childhood by saying “My youth was gloomy and cold and sterile”. At the age of 7 he attended the town 's school and at age 8 he and his sister Anna were taught by a governess in their home. At the age of 9 he attempts to draw his first drawing called The Goat Herd it is in a private collection. Then at age 11 he began schooling in Zevenbergen and studied French, English, and German. At the age of fifteen he had to quit school to help support his family, he worked at his Uncle Cornelis’ art dealership in Paris called the Hague. At the age of 20 he was transferred from the Paris branch to the London branch of Goupil & Cie, art dealers. This is thought to be one of the happiest years of his life. He was very successful and then he fell in love. However, when he confessed his love, the girl rejected him saying

The oldest of six children, Vincent was named after his parent’s first child that was stillborn. Vincent’s mother rejected him and this left a lasting despair within van Gogh. Due to financial difficulty, Vincent left school at an early age and began working at his Uncle’s art dealership. In 1873, he transferred to the Groupil Gallery in London where he enjoyed English culture and would frequent art galleries. This was also during a time Vincent first fell in love and upon rejection of his marriage proposal, he had a mental breakdown. It is understandable how rejection played a significant and damaging role in Vincent’s troubled life. Vincent then turned to religion, but his inability to conform and his willingness to suffer for his cause became disconcerting to others and he was compelled to find another

Van Gogh started gaining attention in his last 2 years. But this wasn’t enough. His brother Theo wanted to show the world who his brother was after his death. Sadly, Theo died 6 months after Van Gogh. His widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger did the work his dead husband couldn’t. She sold some of Vincent’s works, lend some for exhibitions and published the letters Van Gogh constantly wrote Theo. His unique life has inspired lots of people to become active in art. Who would think a “Redheaded Madman” could influence the world in the way he

Vincent Van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Zundert, southern Netherlands he was the son of a pastor. In 1869 Van Gogh started working at an art dealing firm whilst at the same time writing to his brother Theo. In 1880, at the young age of 27 it was his desire to become an artist. He travelled a lot teaching himself to paint and draw every moment elevating his artistic skills. Throughout his life he had a series of mental health problems eventually leading to his suicide. On 27 of July 1890, suffering from depression, Van Gogh shot himself only to die 2 days later. Vincent transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic

Vincent tried first to learn the art works to other artists. When he was 16, he started working as a art dealer at a firm of Goupil & Co. located in Belgium and

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.

Vincent Van Gogh was formed by his social, cultural and historical context. This is expressed clearly in the underlying stories of both paintings, Starry Night, 1889 and Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889. Both of these paintings portray a narrative relating to Van Gogh significantly as he emotionally connects to the subject in each painting. Van Gogh’s aim of these subjective works was to express meaning through colour and express the painting to a more personal emotion for the viewer. Van Gogh belonged to a small style of Post Impressionism which was a reaction against Impressionism and their formality.

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.Vincent would stay there for two years and transfer to paris for a year and then come back to london.

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