I went to a private art school for my degree and I spent a lot of class time studying the masters, I learned to appreciate various styles but I have always had an affinity for Vincent van Gogh. I studied his life, his style and his choices and while I am not a huge fan of Post-Impressionism I do love his paintings. Three of my Top 5 favorite paintings are van Gogh’s work; for the record my five favorite paintings are The Starry Night (van Gogh), The Scream (Munch), Starry Night Over the Rhone (van Gogh), The Great Wave Off Kanagawa (Hokusai) and Café Terrace at Night (van Gogh). There are actually four different versions of The Scream but that is a story for another day.
I have read what I can find about his life, I have watched documentaries and movies about his life, Vincent van Gogh’s life is not something of celebration but extremely interesting tale.
He was actually quite melancholy from an early age but he was surrounded by art early in life, his mother was a sketch artist and painted with water colors and his uncle owned an art dealership. He worked at his uncle’s dealership in his teens, eventually moving to the Groupil Gallery in London when he was 20 years old. Around this time his love life became catastrophic and led to a life time of falling in love with troubled woman and prostitutes. While in London he fell in love with a woman who rejected him and he turned to religion.
He taught at Methodist boy’s school before leaving and going to Belgium where he preached for coal miners, actually preaching in the mines at times, but he was very stubborn and unmotivated so he eventually lost interest and turned full time to painting in 1880, he spent his final 10 years as an artist in France and the Netherlands.
Vincent’s younger brother Theo took up the calling of the family business and was an art dealer and would set up shows to help display his brother’s, among other artists, work. He moved in with his brother and found himself surrounded by other artists and was introduced to styles he had never seen before. One thing that many people do not know is that van Gogh loved Japanese art and created his own style based on this and he called it “Japonaiserie” and he created dozens of paintings in this style like The Courtesan and The Bridge in The Rain.
His final two years he was in a downward mental illness spiral and was in and out of hospitals and asylums. In 1888 Vincent’s brother Theo asked that his friend, French painter Paul Gauguin, move in and basically become Vincent’s caretaker while they painted together. It was this friendship with Gauguin that led to the fateful night where he self-mutilated and the myth of him cutting off his ear began.
It was December 23, 1888 when van Gogh and Gauguin got in a fight and Gauguin left only to be followed out of the house by van Gogh who was holding a razor. Vincent turned back and returned home, this is when he cut off his left ear lobe (not his entire ear like most people think), which he wrapped in paper and later that evening gave to a prostitute and asked her to care for it carefully. He was found the next morning near death from blood loss and was admitted to the local hospital.
On July 27, 1890 he went out to paint in the morning but brought along a pistol. He shot himself in the chest but was able to return to his room before being found, the gun was actually never found. While in the hospital it was said that he was in good spirits, talking with the doctors and nurses and smoking his pipe but on July 29th he asked Theo to take him home. It was when they got home that Vincent perished while in Theo’s arms.
During his lifetime only one of his paintings sold, “The Red Vineyards”, in January 1890 for 400 francs. Currently there are around 2,100 pieces of his work that have survived and this includes 860 oil paintings and 1,300 watercolors, drawing and sketches and this is thanks to Theo’s wife Johanna who stored them. Much of his early work was destroyed for various reasons, his mother Anna was tired of storing his work in crates in her home so she trashed the crates and his famous 1889 Portrait of Doctor Felix Rey was used by Dr. Rey to repair his own chicken coop (it is said the doctor hated the painting). This painting is now on display at the Pushkin Museum and is estimated to be worth $50 million.
For the image sources I have used these links
Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam
The Museum of Modern Art
The Van Gogh Gallery website
The Complete Works