Vincent Van Gogh vɑn' xɔx}} (March 30th 1853 with Groot-Zundert in the Netherlands - July 29th 1890 with Auvers-sur-Oise) is a painter and Dessinateur Dutch.

Its work, almost unknown with its death, announces the Fauvisme and the Expressionnisme.

Biography

Its youth (1853 - 1869)

Vincent van Gogh is the son of Pasteur calvinist, he is born on March 30th, 1853 with Groot-Zundert, a Dutch small village in the west of the Brabant-Septentrional . His/her mother, Anna-Cornélia Carbentus, are the girl of a bookbinder of the court. The Van Gogh family is of old middle-class, already notable at the 16th century and 17th century. Vincent is the elder one of six children. He is born one year, day for day, after the death of his older brother who is still-born child; by family tradition, it carries the same first name as his late brother. It remained until death one tormented, one insulated, misunderstood and its life was a total failure in the fields of the love, the family and the human contacts. Only his/her Théo brother four years his junior, helped it morally and financially without never wearying itself and thus allowed him to achieve its work. The 652 letters that Vincent wrote to him in are taken.

Four years after the birth of Van Gogh, her brother Theodore (Théo) is born on May 1st 1857. He also had another brother called Cor and three sisters, Elisabeth, Anna and Wil. Vincent van Gogh was a serious, quiet and pensive child. In 1860, it goes to school in the village of Zundert where the only professor was catholic. Starting from 1861, van Gogh and its Anna sister follow their teaching near a teacher who their gives courses to the house until October 1st 1864, date on which it leaves for the boarding school Jan Provily in Zevenbergen, a city attached to the commune of Moerdijk. The boarding school being located at about thirty kilometers of the family home, van Gogh rather badly saw this separation with its family. The September 15th 1866, it enters to the college Willem II to Tilburg but in March 1866, it leaves the school abruptly and turns over to the house. In connection with its first years, van Gogh said: “ my youth was dark, cold and sterile… ”

Merchant of art and preacher (1869 - 1878)

In July 1869, at the fifteen years age, it obtains a station near the merchant of art Goupil & Co with $the Hague thanks to his/her uncle Vincent (" cent") who had made good deals for this gallery of Article After his formation, in June 1873, Adolphe Goupil sends it in one of the branches to London where it is placed in the district of Brixton. It was one happy period for van Gogh: it succeeded in its work and, at the 20 years age, gained already more than his father. It falls in love with the girl from her owner, Eugenie Loyer but, when it finally revealed his feelings to him, she rejected it explaining why she was already secretly committed with the preceding tenant. Van Gogh became more and more isolated and, in same time, it developed an enthusiastic interest for the religion. His/her father and his uncle sent it to Paris where it shocked way in which art was treated like a product and goods, and he denounced it with certain customers. At this point in time, on April 1st 1876, it is laid off.

It feels then called by a spiritual and religious vocation. It returns in England where, during some time, it works voluntarily, initially as temporary professor in a small boarding school giving on the port of Ramsgate. The school having thereafter to move in Isleworth in the Middlesex, van Gogh decides to go there. The removal will not finally take place but van Gogh remained on the spot and became near to the methodists by wanting " to preach the Gospel partout".

To Christmas, this same year 1876, it turns over in his parents and it works then in a bookstore of Dordrecht for six months. However, it was not happy has this new station and it passed the major part of its time in the back shop of the store to draw or translate passages of the Bible into English, French and German. His/her companion of room of the time, a young professor called Görlitz, explained later that van Gogh ate with parsimony, preferring not to eat meat.

Supporting in her desire to become Pasteur, his family sends it to Amsterdam in May 1877 where he lives with his uncle Jan van Gogh, an admiral of the marine. Van Gogh prepares for the university and studies the Théologie with her uncle Johannes Stricker, a respected theologist who published the first " life of Jésus" available to the Netherlands. However, van Gogh fails its examination and it then leaves the house of his uncle Jan in July 1878. It follows then courses for three months in the Protestant school of Laeken, close to Brussels, but it fails again and then gives up its studies to become a laic preacher.

Coal-mining and Brussels (1879 - 1880)

At the end of 1878, van Gogh obtains a mission of evangelist in Belgium, near the minors of the Borinage, in the area of Mons. It becomes there a preacher interdependent of the fights against employers.

Its crossing of Coal-mining started with Pâturages, in 1878. It is accommodated there by Pasteur who installs it in a hawker with the n° 39 of the street of the Church. It leaves then for Wasmes, in a house that very quickly, it will judge too luxurious and that it will not be long in leaving for a hut. Pushing Christianity with its logical conclusion, van selected Gogh of living like those auprès of which he preaches, sharing their difficulties until sleeping on the straw in a small hut at the bottom of the house of the baker in whom he resides. He devotes all to the minors and their family. He goes even until going down to 700 meters in the pits. At the time of a blow of Firedamp, it saves a minor. But its activities are not long in being disapproved, one does not accept his function of “working priest” and that shocks it. Shown to be a leader, Vincent Van Gogh fails but it will keep the image of human misery and part of its work shows the condition of humblest.

It goes then to Brussels then briefly returns to the Borinage to Cuesmes, where it moves into the house located at the n° 3 of the street of the House. However, under the pressure of his parents, it returns in their house of Etten. There remains there until March 1880 to the great displeasure of his parents who are worried more and more in his connection. There was a considerable conflict between Vincent and his father, this last energy until getting information to make admit his son with the asylum of Geel. Van Gogh then runs away himself again with Cuesmes where it places with a minor naming Charles Decrucq, with which it remains until October 1880. It is interested more and more in the people surrounding it and the daily scenes, which it starts to represent in sketches

From 1880, van Gogh followed the suggestion of his/her Théo brother and takes art with the serious one. To the autumn 1880, it goes to Brussels, intending to follow the recommendations of Théo which had to encourage it to study painting with the Dutch artist Willem Roelofs which succeeded in persuading van Gogh, in spite of its aversion for the formal schools of art, to be registered with the Academy Royal of Article It studied not only there the anatomy, but also the rules of the composition and the perspective .

The painter

1880 - 1885: with the Netherlands

Van Gogh begins her training by copying Lithographie S and engravings from wood while taking as a starting point the Millet works, artist for whom it preserved until the end a true veneration. It is materially constant by Théo, then employed Goupil with Brussels then, starting from 1873 with $the Hague. In 1881, with Etten, where his/her parents resident, it draws portraits, subjects country according to nature but especially of the landscapes of a great calligraphic richness and worthy of the Far-Eastern tradition. He studies the drawing with Antwerp and begins the Oil-base paint, in 1882.

In family conflict with his/her father who ends up driving out it his house, and victim of a second sentimental failure, Vincent settles a time in $the Hague. It there then receives lessons of painting of his cousin Anton Mauve and practical primarily the watercolour and studies the prospect. The twenty months that it passes to $the Hague (between 1882 and 1883) seem decisive for the artist, where it carries out his will to break with conventions morals of his social environment, and its impossibility of carrying out a normal existence. Many readings, Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola or Charles Dickens, come to enrich its vision of the world, and reinforce it in its social convictions.

From September to December 1883, Vincent remains as a recluse in the province of Drenthe, in the north of the Netherlands, where he baits himself to work to achieve his destiny of painter. It is the single remedy which it finds with a deep feeling of distress. At the end of this new experiment, it decides to join its family installed recently with Nuenen, in the Brabant-Septentrional , the paternal presbytery.

It is in this small village of the Brabant that the talent of Van Gogh definitively will appear, of powerful studies of peasants to work with the black stone, but also some two hundred tables with the dark pallet, and to the expressive blows of brush, then come to confirm its talent of draftsman and painter, and lead to the Mangeurs of potatoes , work major which reveals its anxious and vehement sensitivity. Technically its work still presents many awkwardnesses, nevertheless the period of Nuenen is repurchased by a sincere inspiration and its will of an exemplary human testimony, revealing of the ideals of Van Gogh and her interior problems. At this same time, Zola was critic art and Joris-Karl Huysmans dreamed painter.

With Antwerp again (of November 1885 at February 1886), it is impressed by the Rubens and with the revelation of the Japanese prints , which it starts to collect in this city. It is as in the Flemish capital as the artist inaugurates his famous series of self-portraits, on the register of macabre humor.

1886 - 1888: with Paris

Only the knowledge of the Parisian artistic medium could truly make it possible van Gogh to renew and enrich its vision, which justifies its installation with Paris in 1886. This year there is that of the last impressionist exposure, and in 1887 was to take place the first retrospective of the Millet work. It settles near his Théo brother who directs the Parisian branch of Goupil since 1880.

In Paris in the years 1886 - 1887, it attends one moment the academy of the painter Cormon, where it becomes acquainted with Henri of Toulouse-Lautrec, of Louis Anquetin and Emile Bernard. It also meets, via his brother, almost all the impressionists, in particular Georges Seurat and Camille Pissarro, like Paul Gauguin. In the shop of the Tanguy Father, he becomes the friend of Paul Signac. Under the influence of the Japanese prints, its compositions acquire little by little more freedom and of ease, while it is tested with the technique of the coloured flat tint. Pissarro also initiates it with the new theories on the light and with the divisionnist treatment of let us tons. The pallet of the artist grows rich then by bright colors and its key becomes animated and splits up, this grace also to Signac with which it works in 1887. It is one very fertile period where its art is directed towards the Impressionnisme but the wormwood and tiredness worsen its mental state.

1888 - 1889: with Arles

February 2nd 1888, it is installed with Arles on the councils of Toulouse-Lautrec which speaks to him about the luminosity of the southernmost landscapes. Van Gogh indeed starts to take her distances with respect to impressionism, too allusive with her taste, to find the unit structural of the image and to concentrate on the expression and the symbolism of the form and the color. The next marriage of his/her Théo brother, whom it feels like an abandonment, seems well to be nevertheless one of the major reasons which decides Van Gogh to leave Paris.

Although it arrives in the city with a time of snow, a new page of its work will open with the discovery of the light of Provence. He traverses with foot the area and painted landscapes, scenes of harvests and portraits.

At the beginning of the month of June 1888, having received a ticket of one hundred francs sound brother Theodore, it coaches to the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer for a five days short stay. It painted there the famous boat “Friendship” and the village gathered around the church fortress.

In parallel, Vincent who lives the “yellow house”, dream of a community of artists fraternally linking their experiments and their research: Paul Gauguin comes to join it to this end in October 1888 and they start to work together such as for example on the series of tables devoted to the Alyscamps. But the two men get along badly: the permanent tension and the exaltation that imply their creative step and such an urgency to paint lead to a crisis: December 24th, 1888, following an argument more violent than the others, Van Gogh, in prey with is delirious tent to kill her companion, then, car-to punish itself, mutilates the left ear before going to offer it to a prostitute (December 1888). It is looked after by Doctor Rey of which it paints the portrait at that time. In March 1889, after one period of respite during which it paints inter alia the Autoportrait with the bandaged ear (janv. 1889), a petition of the inhabitants of Arles involves his internment with the Hospital.

1889 - 1890: with Saint-Rémy-of-Provence

May 8th 1889, haunted by the idea of the suicide but fully conscious of the evil which corrodes it, it leaves Arles, having decided itself to enter an asylum close to Saint-Rémy-of-Provence where there remains one year. Its state varies major depression with the phases of remission and intense activity, which involve new modifications of its style: the graphics and the key whose discontinuous and sinuous features give to the corn fields, the olive-trees and the vault of heaven of the Alpilles and of the Beam-of-Provence same movements of its pathology.

Van Gogh also starts to leave her anonymity: in January 1890 an article of Albert Aurier in the Mercure de France , stresses for the first time the importance of its research. One month later, the painter Anna Boch acquires one of his tables, the red vine , exposed to the Living room of the XX with Brussels, for the sum of four hundred francs.

1890 : with Auvers-sur-Oise

In May 1890, the artist leaves the South and joined his/her brother Théo with Paris which installs it with Auvers-sur-Oise in the modest Ravoux inn where it rents a small room of a great sobriety, under the monitoring of the doctor Paul Gachet, friend of Paul Cézanne and the impressionist painters, and itself painter amateur.

Its key remains animated and feverish, but its color acquires, under the light of Île-de-France, a renewal of promptness and freshness. In this calm village of the French Vexin, near to the capital, its artistic activity is intense, it produces for two months more than seventy tables. However the respite is of short duration: when Théo informs him of its desire to turn over to Holland, Vincent feels again abandoned.

The July 27th 1890, in a field where it painted an ultimate fabric, it draws a blow from revolver in the chest. Brought back dying to the Ravoux inn, he dies two days later, constant by his brother Théo and always unknown of the general public. “My work with me, I risk my life there, and my reason sank there with half…” reads one in the last letter (652F) bound for his/her brother that Vincent related to him the fatal on July 29th.

The symbolism, as for him, sought in the capacity of the verb “the gasoline of poetry i.e. pure poetry, that which will say how the spirit and the world are made by revealing the ideal structure of the universe to him. (...) Symbolism invites poetry to join the mystic. ” (G. Michaud, poetic Message of Symbolism, Nizet, 1947).
The search of Van Gogh is identical, like it writes it with his/her brother Théo:

And in a table I would like to say something of comforting like a music. I would like to paint men or women with this I do not know what of eternal, whose formerly nimbus was the symbol, and which we even seek by the radiation, by the vibration of our colorings.

Vincent Van Gogh borrows and prepares thus all the paths of the modern Art, of the Impressionnisme to the Expressionnisme. This dead painter on July 29th, 1890 in the destitution sold only one fabric; today its tables are among most expensive of the world.

Its health issues

Van Gogh cut the left ear lobe during a crisis of is delirious, the December 24th 1888. On several occasions, he knew real mental problems, in particular in the last years of his life. During its periods of disease, it did not paint or, at least, was not authorized to do it. With the passing of years, it was much question of the origin of the mental disease of Van Gogh and her repercussions about its work. More than 150 psychiatrists tried to identify his disease, and some 30 different diagnoses were suggested.

Among the diagnoses which were advanced one finds the Schizophrénie, the bipolar disorder, the Syphilis, the intoxication by ingestion of paintings, the epilepsy of the temporal Lobe and the intermittent Porphyrie acute. Each one of these diseases could be responsible for its disorders and would have been worsened by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia, and leaning for alcohol, in particular the Absinthe.

Certain medical theories even suggested that the taste of Van Gogh for the use of the yellow color could be related to its love of the Absinthe. Indeed, this alcohol contains a Neurotoxine called Thujone which, with strong amount, can cause the Xanthopsie, i.e. an eye trouble bringing to see the objects in yellow. However, a study carried out in 1991, highlighted that a consumer of wormwood would fall unconscious because of the alcoholic strength before to have been able to introduce Thujone sufficient. Another theory suggests that the Doctor Gachet would have prescribed Digitaline in Van Gogh to treat the epilepsy, substance which could involve a tinted vision of yellow and changes in the perception of the overall color. However, there does not exist any direct proof that Van Gogh took digitalin, even if one notices on table Portrait of Dr. Gachet with branch of digital the presence of some stems of Digitale crimson, plant from which digitalin is manufactured.

It recently was advanced that the disease of Van Gogh would be related to a intoxication by lead because it used paintings containing lead and because one of the symptoms of the intoxication by lead is a swelling of the retina which can lead to the appearance of an effect of Halo which appears besides in several tables of Van Gogh.

Its work

The " style" of van Gogh

Van Gogh drew and painted Aquarelle S whereas it went to school, but very few of this work survived. In 1880, become adult, it was devoted to art and it started at the elementary level by copying the Cours of drawing of Charles Bargue. During its first two years, he sought orders and in spring 1882, his/her uncle, Cornelis Marinus (owner of a gallery of Contemporary art re-elected with Amsterdam) required of him to provide drawings of $the Hague. The work of Van Gogh did not prove with the height of the hopes of his/her uncle, but this one offered a second order all the same to him. Although it described to him in detail what it awaited from him, it was disappointed again by the result.

Nevertheless, Van Gogh persevered in her work. It improved lighting of its workshop by installing variable obturators and it made many experiments of drawing with a large variety of materials. During more than one year he worked on simple figures, by in particular making studies in “black and white”, work which then brought only criticisms to him even if, today, these studies are regarded as its first masterpieces. As from spring 1883, it was interested in more worked out compositions, based on the drawing. Very little of these drawings have survived because, when his/her brother him told that they missed nervousness and of freshness, van Gogh destroyed them and turned to the Oil-base paint.

Van Gogh then was interested in the famous artists of the school of La Hague (a group of artist which, between 1860 and 1890, was strongly influenced by realistic painting of the École of Barbizon) like Johan Hendrik Weissenbruch or Bernard Blommers which brought a technical support to him, but also with painters like Theophilus de Bock and Hermann Johannes van der Weele. When it went to Nuenen, after an interlude with Drenthe, it started to carry out various paintings of big size which it for the majority destroyed. the potato Eaters , the old woman tower of the cemetery of Nuenen and the cottage , are the only ones which survived. After a visit with the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam, van Gogh realizes that its paintings present many defects due to a lack of experience and technique. It then went to Antwerp, and later to Paris to improve its technical training.

More or less to the fact of the techniques and the impressionist theories and neo-impressionist, van Gogh went to Arles to develop these new possibilities. However, of the older ideas on art and painting reappeared, like making series of tables on similar topics. Already in 1884 whereas it was still in Nuenen, it had worked on a series of paintings which were to decorate the dining room of one of his/her friends living with Eindhoven. In the same way, in Arles, in spring 1888, it carried out a series on the flowering Vergers in triptychs, as well as a series of portraits like those of the family Roulin. Lastly, when Paul Gauguin worked and lived in Arles side by side with van Gogh, this last started to work on the decoration of the Yellow Maison , probably the most ambitious effort which he ever made.

Paintings of the period when he lived with Saint-Rémy of Provence are often characterized by movements and spirals. At various periods of her life, Van Gogh also painted what he saw of his window, in particular at the end of his life with a great series of paintings of corn fields which he could admire of the room that he occupied with the Saint-Remy cheese asylum.

List its principal tables

Very productive, Van Gogh forever hesitated to reproduce works of major artists, free with them réapproprier: Jean-François Millet ( the Night , First steps …), Eugene Delacroix ( Pietà ), Rembrandt ( Resurrection of Lazare ).

Gallery

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