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Vincent Van GoghVincent Van Gogh was a Dutch painter, generally considered one of the greatest painters in European art history. He produced all of his work (some 900 paintings and 1100 drawings) during a period of only 10 years before he succumbed to mental illness (possibly bipolar disorder) and committed suicide. Vincent Van Gogh had little success during his lifetime, but his posthumous fame grew rapidly, especially following a showing of 71 of Van Gogh's paintings in Paris on March 17, 1901 (11 years after his death). Van Gogh's influence on expressionism, fauvism and early abstraction was enormous, and can be seen in many other aspects of 20th-century art. The Vincent Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is dedicated to Van Gogh's work and that of his contemporaries. The Kr�ller-M�ller Museum in Otterlo (also in the Netherlands), has a considerable collection of Vincent Van Gogh paintings as well.
Several paintings by Vincent Van Gogh rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. On March 30, 1987, Van Gogh's painting, "Irises" was sold for a record US$53.9 million at Sotheby's, New York. On May 15, 1990, his, "Portrait of Doctor Gachet" was sold for $82.5 million at Christie's, thus establishing a new price record. At age 16, Vincent started to work for the art dealer Goupil & Co. in The Hague. His brother Theo, four years his junior and with whom Vincent cherished a lifelong friendship, would join the company later.
This friendship is amply documented in the large collection of letters they sent each other. These letters have been preserved and were published in 1914. They provide much insight into the life of the painter, and show him to be a talented writer with a keen mind. Theo would support Vincent financially throughout his life. In 1873, his firm transferred him to London, then to Paris. He became increasingly interested in religion; in 1876, Goupil dismissed him for lack of motivation. He became a teaching assistant in Ramsgate in Kent, England then returned to Amsterdam to study theology in 1877. After dropping out in 1878, he became a lay minister in Belgium in a poor mining region known as the Borinage. He even preached down in the mines and was extremely concerned with the lot of the workers. He was dismissed after 6 months and continued without pay. During this period he started to produce charcoal sketches. In 1880, Vincent followed the suggestion of his brother Theo and took up painting in earnest. For a brief period Vincent took painting lessons from Anton Mauve at The Hague. Although Vincent and Anton soon split over a divergence of artistic views, influences of the Hague School of painting would remain in Vincent's work, notably in the way he played with light and in the looseness of his brush strokes. However his usage of colours, favouring dark tones, set him apart from his teacher. In 1881, he declared his love to his widowed cousin Kee Vos, who rejected him. Later, he would move in with the prostitute Sien Hoornik and her children and considered marrying her; his father was strictly against this relationship and even his brother Theo advised against it. They later separated. Impressed and influenced by Jean-Fran�ois Millet, Van Gogh focused on painting peasants and rural scenes. He moved to the Dutch province Drenthe, later to Nuenen, North Brabant, also in The Netherlands. Here he painted, in 1885, "The Potato Eaters" (Dutch: "Aardappeleters"), now in The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. In the winter of 1885-1886, Van Gogh attended the art academy of Antwerp, Belgium. This proved a disappointment as he was dismissed after a few months by Professor Eug�ne Siberdt. Van Gogh did, however, get in touch with Japanese art during this period, which he started to collect eagerly. He admired its bright colors, use of canvas space and the role lines played in the picture. These impressions would influence him strongly. Van Gogh made some paintings in Japanese style. Also some of the portraits he painted are set against a background which shows Japanese art. In spring 1886, Van Gogh went to Paris, where he moved in with his brother Theo; they shared a house on Montmartre. Here, he met the painters Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Emile Bernard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin. He discovered impressionism and liked its use of light and colour. (It should be noted that Van Gogh is regarded as a post-impressionist, rather than an impressionist). He especially liked the technique known as pointillism (where many small dots are applied to the canvas that blend into rich colors only in the eye of the beholder, seeing it from a distance) which made its mark on Van Gogh's own style.
Vincent Van Gogh also used complementary colors, especially blue and orange, in close proximity, in order to enhance the brilliance of each. A lovely quote from one of his letters, "I want to use colors that complement each other, that cause each other to shine brilliantly, that complete each other, like a man and a woman." In 1888, when city life and living with his brother proved too much, Van Gogh left Paris and went to Arles, Bouches-du-Rh�ne, France. He was impressed with the local landscape and hoped to found an art colony there. He rented a yellow house and created his celebrated series of yellow sunflower paintings for the purpose of decorating the house. Only Paul Gauguin, whose simplified colour schemes and forms known as synthetism attracted Van Gogh, accepted his invitation. The admiration was mutual and Gauguin painted Van Gogh painting sunflowers. However, their encounter ended in a quarrel. Van Gogh suffered a mental breakdown (possibly induced by absinthe) and he cut off part of his left ear which he gave to a startled prostitute friend. Gauguin left in December, 1888. One of Vincent's famous paintings, "The Bedroom in Arles", of 1889, uses bright yellow and unusual perspective effects in depicting the interior of his bedroom. The boldly vanishing lines are sometimes attributed to his changing mental condition. The only painting he sold during his lifetime, "The Red Vineyard", was created in 1888. It is now on display in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, Russia. Van Gogh now exchanged painting dots for small stripes. He suffered from depression, and in 1889, on his own request, Vincent Van Gogh was admitted to the psychiatric center at Monastery Saint Paul de Mausole in Saint Remy de Provence, Bouches-du-Rh�ne, France. During his stay here the clinic and its garden became his main subject. At this time his work began to be dominated by swirls. In May, 1890, Vincent left the clinic and went to the physician Paul Gachet, in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, where he was closer to his brother Theo, who had recently married. Gachet had been recommended to him by Pissarro; he had treated several artists before. Here Van Gogh created his only etching: a portrait of the melancholic doctor Gachet. His depression deepened, and on July 27 of the same year, at the age of 37, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest. Without realizing that he was fatally wounded, he returned to the Ravoux Inn, where he died two days later, with Theo at his side, who reported his last words as, "La tristesse durera toujours" ("The sadness will last forever"). He was buried at the cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise. Theo, unable to come to terms with his brother's death, died 6 months later and, at his wife's request, was buried next to Vincent. Many have noted that, "Wheat Field with Crows", was Van Gogh's last work before his suicide because of its turbulent style. It is more likely that Van Gogh's last work was "Daubigny's Garden". It would not take long before Vincent's fame grew. Large exhibitions were organised: Paris 1901, Amsterdam 1905, Cologne 1912, New York 1913 and Berlin 1914.
Van Gogh's life forms the basis for Irving Stone's biographical novel, "Lust for Life".
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