Vincent van gogh brief biography of william

His younger brother, Theosupported him financially, and the two of them maintained a long correspondence. Van Gogh's early works consist of mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers. Frustrated in Paris and inspired by a growing spirit of artistic change and collaboration, in February Van Gogh moved to Arles in southern France to establish an artistic retreat and commune.

Once there, his paintings grew brighter and he turned his attention to the natural world, depicting local olive groveswheat fields and sunflowers. Van Gogh invited Gauguin to join him in Arles and eagerly anticipated Gauguin's arrival in late Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions. He worried about his mental stability, and often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily.

His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor when, in a rage, he mutilated his left ear. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, he came under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. His depression persisted, and on 29 July Van Gogh died from his injuries after shooting himself in the chest with a revolver.

Van Gogh's work began to attract critical artistic attention in the last year of his life. After his death, his art and life story captured public imagination as an emblem of misunderstood genius, due in large part to the efforts of his widowed sister-in-law Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. Van Gogh's work gained widespread critical and commercial success in the following decades, and he has become a lasting icon of the romantic ideal of the tortured artist.

Today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings ever sold. His legacy is celebrated by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world's largest collection of his paintings and drawings. The most comprehensive primary source on Van Gogh is his correspondence with his younger brother, Theo. Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Vincent's thoughts and theories of art, are recorded in the hundreds of letters they exchanged from until Theo kept all of Vincent's letters to him; [ 10 ] but Vincent kept only a few of the letters he received.

After both had died, Theo's widow Jo Bonger-van Gogh arranged for the publication of some of their letters. A few appeared in and ; the majority were published in There are more than letters from Vincent to Theo and around 40 from Theo to Vincent. Some are illustrated with sketches. Problems in transcription and dating remain, mainly with those posted from Arles.

While there, Vincent wrote around letters in Dutch, French, and English. The highly paid contemporary artist Jules Breton was frequently mentioned in Vincent's letters. In letters to Theo, Vincent mentions he saw Breton, discusses the Breton paintings he saw at a Salonand discusses sending one of Breton's books but only on condition that it be returned.

There are no known letters between the two artists and Van Gogh is not one of the contemporary artists discussed by Breton in his autobiography Life of an Artist. Van Gogh was given the name of his grandfather and of a brother stillborn exactly a year before his birth. This Vincent had six sons, three of whom became art dealers, and may have been named after his great-uncle, a sculptor — Van Gogh's mother came from a prosperous family in The Hague.

Van Gogh's parents married in May and moved to Zundert. In later life, Van Gogh remained in touch only with Willemina and Theo. Van Gogh was a serious and thoughtful child. Inhe was placed in a boarding school at Zevenbergen[ 33 ] where he felt abandoned, and he campaigned to come home. Instead, inhis parents sent him to the middle school in Tilburgwhere he was also deeply unhappy.

He was encouraged to draw as a child by his mother, [ 35 ] and his early drawings are expressive, [ 33 ] but do not approach the intensity of his later work. His philosophy was to reject technique in favour of capturing the impressions of things, particularly nature or common objects. Van Gogh's profound unhappiness seems to have overshadowed the lessons, which had little effect.

He later wrote that his youth was "austere and cold, and sterile". Theo's wife, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, later remarked that this was the best year of Vincent's life. He grew more isolated and religiously fervent. His father and uncle arranged a transfer to Paris inwhere he became resentful of issues such as the degree to which the art dealers commodified art, and he was dismissed a year later.

In Aprilhe returned to England to take unpaid work as a supply teacher in a small boarding school in Ramsgate. When the proprietor moved to Isleworth in Middlesex, Van Gogh went with him. He was unhappy in the position, and spent his time doodling or translating passages from the Bible into English, French, and German. To support his religious conviction and his desire to become a pastor, inthe family sent him to live with his uncle Johannes Strickera respected theologian, in Amsterdam.

He undertook, but also failed, a three-month course at a Protestant missionary school in Lakennear Brussels. In Januaryhe took up a post as a missionary at Petit-Wasmes [ 52 ] in the working class, coal-mining district of Borinage in Belgium. To show support for his impoverished congregation, he gave up his comfortable lodgings at a bakery to a homeless person and moved to a small hut, where he slept on straw.

He then walked the 75 kilometres 47 mi to Brussels, [ 54 ] returned briefly to Cuesmes in the Borinage, but he gave in to pressure from his parents to return home to Etten. He stayed there until around March[ note 4 ] which caused concern and frustration for his parents. His father was especially frustrated and advised that his son be committed to the lunatic asylum in Geel.

Van Gogh returned to Cuesmes in Augustwhere he lodged with a miner until October. Van Gogh returned to Etten in April for an extended stay with his parents. In Augusthis recently widowed cousin, Cornelia "Kee" Vos-Stricker, daughter of his mother's older sister Willemina and Johannes Strickerarrived for a visit. He was thrilled and took long walks with her.

Kee was seven years older than he was and had an eight-year-old son. Van Gogh surprised everyone by declaring his love to her and proposing marriage. Mauve was the successful artist Van Gogh longed to be. Kee's father made it clear that her refusal should be heeded and that the two would not marry, largely because of Van Gogh's inability to support himself.

Mauve took Van Gogh on as a student and introduced him to watercolour, which he worked on for the next month before returning home for Christmas. He liked the medium, and he spread the paint liberally, scraping from the canvas and working back with the brush. He wrote that he was surprised at how good the results were. By MarchMauve appeared to have gone cold towards Van Gogh, and stopped replying to his letters.

She had previously borne two children who died, but Van Gogh was unaware of this. Vincent at first defied him, [ 83 ] and considered moving the family out of the city, but in latehe left Sien and the children. Poverty may have pushed Sien back into prostitution; the home became less happy and Van Gogh may have felt family life was irreconcilable with his artistic development.

Sien gave her daughter to her mother and baby Willem to her brother. In December driven by loneliness, he went to live with his parents, then in NuenenNorth Brabant. In Nuenen, Van Gogh focused on painting and drawing. Working outside and very quickly, he completed sketches and paintings of weavers and their cottages. They wanted to marry, but neither side of their families approved.

Margot was distraught and took an overdose of strychninebut survived after Van Gogh rushed her to a nearby hospital. Van Gogh painted several groups of still lifes in His palette consisted mainly of sombre earth tones, particularly dark brown, and showed no sign of the vivid colours that distinguished his later work. There was interest from a dealer in Paris early in One of his young peasant sitters became pregnant in September ; Van Gogh was accused of forcing himself upon her, and the village priest forbade parishioners to model for him.

He moved to Antwerp that November and rented a room above a paint dealer's shop in the rue des Images Lange Beeldekensstraat. Bread, coffee and tobacco became his staple diet. In Februaryhe wrote to Theo that he could only remember eating six hot meals since the previous May. His teeth became loose and painful. Van Gogh bought Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts in the docklands, later incorporating elements of their style into the background of some of his paintings.

After his recovery, despite his antipathy towards academic teaching, he took the higher-level admission exams at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and, in Januarymatriculated in painting and drawing. He became ill and run down by overwork, poor diet and excessive smoking. He quickly got into trouble with Charles Verlatthe director of the academy and teacher of a painting class, because of his unconventional painting style.

Van Gogh had also clashed with the instructor of the drawing class Franz Vinck. Soon Siberdt and Van Gogh came into conflict when the latter did not comply with Siberdt's requirement that drawings express the contour and concentrate on the line. When Van Gogh was required to draw the Venus de Milo during a drawing class, he produced the limbless, naked torso of a Flemish peasant woman.

Siberdt regarded this as defiance against his artistic guidance and made corrections to Van Gogh's drawing with his crayon so vigorously that he tore the paper. Van Gogh then flew into a violent rage and shouted at Siberdt: 'You clearly do not know what a young woman is like, God damn it! A woman must have hips, buttocks, a pelvis in which she can carry a baby!

The story that Van Gogh was expelled from the academy by Siberdt is therefore unfounded. In June the brothers took a larger flat at 54 rue Lepic. In in Antwerp he had become interested in Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and had used them to decorate the walls of his studio; while in Paris he collected hundreds of them. He tried his hand at Japonaiserietracing a figure from a reproduction on the cover of the magazine Paris IllustreThe Courtesan or Oiranafter Keisai Eisenwhich he then graphically enlarged in a painting.

After seeing the portrait of Adolphe Monticelli at the Galerie Delareybarette, Van Gogh adopted a brighter palette and a bolder attack, particularly in paintings such as his Seascape at Saintes-Maries Van Gogh learned about Fernand Cormon 's atelier from Theo. Intwo large exhibitions were staged there, showing Pointillism and Neo-impressionism for the first time and bringing attention to Georges Seurat and Paul Signac.

Theo kept a stock of Impressionist paintings in his gallery on boulevard Montmartre, but Van Gogh was slow to acknowledge the new developments in art. Conflicts arose between the brothers. At the end of Theo found living with Vincent to be "almost unbearable". He adopted elements of Pointillism, a technique in which a multitude of small coloured dots are applied to the canvas so that when seen from a distance they create an optical blend of hues.

The style stresses the ability of complementary colours — including blue and orange — to form vibrant contrasts. In a contemporary account, Bernard wrote that the exhibition was ahead of anything else in Paris. Discussions on art, artists, and their social situations started during this exhibition, continued and expanded to include visitors to the show, like Camille Pissarro and his son LucienSignac and Seurat.

In Februaryfeeling worn out from life in Paris, Van Gogh left, having painted more than paintings during his two years there. Hours before his departure, accompanied by Theo, he paid his only visit to Seurat in his studio. Ill from drink and suffering from smoker's cough, in FebruaryVan Gogh sought refuge in Arles. The time in Arles was one of Van Gogh's more prolific periods: he completed paintings and more than drawings and watercolours.

When Gauguin agreed to visit Arles inVan Gogh hoped for friendship and to realise his idea of an artists' collective. Van Gogh prepared for Gauguin's arrival by painting four versions of Sunflowers in one week. Nothing but large Sunflowers. In preparation for Gauguin's visit, Van Gogh bought two beds on advice from the station's postal supervisor Joseph Roulinwhose portrait he painted.

On 17 September, he spent his first night in the vincent van gogh brief biography of william sparsely furnished Yellow House. Among these "imaginative" paintings is Memory of the Garden at Etten. They often quarrelled; Van Gogh increasingly feared that Gauguin was going to desert him, and the situation, which Van Gogh described as one of "excessive tension", rapidly headed towards crisis point.

The exact vincent van gogh brief biography of william that led to the mutilation of Van Gogh's ear is not known. Gauguin said, fifteen years later, that the night followed several instances of physically threatening behaviour. After an altercation on the evening of 23 December[ ] Van Gogh returned to his room where he seemingly heard voices and either wholly or in part severed his left ear with a razor [ note 10 ] causing severe bleeding.

The ear was brought to the hospital, but Rey did not attempt to reattach it as too much time had passed. Gabrielle, known in her youth as "Gaby", was a year-old cleaning girl at the brothel and other local establishments at the time Van Gogh presented her with his ear. Van Gogh had no recollection of the event, suggesting that he may have suffered an acute mental breakdown.

He arrived on Christmas Day and comforted Vincent, who seemed to be semi-lucid. That evening, he left Arles for the return trip to Paris. During the first days of his treatment, Van Gogh repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked for Gauguin, who asked a policeman attending the case to "be kind enough, Monsieur, to awaken this man with great care, and if he asks for me tell him I have left for Paris; the sight of me might prove fatal for him.

They continued to correspond, and inGauguin proposed they form a studio in Antwerp. Meanwhile, other visitors to the hospital included Marie Ginoux and Roulin. Despite a pessimistic diagnosis, Van Gogh recovered and returned to the Yellow House on 7 January Paul Signac visited him twice in March; [ ] in April, Van Gogh moved into rooms owned by Rey after floods damaged paintings in his own home.

Around this time, he wrote, "Sometimes moods of indescribable anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and fatality of circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant. The doctor was not fond of the painting and used it to repair a chicken coop, then gave it away.

Vincent van gogh brief biography of william

Van Gogh had two cells with barred windows, one of which he used as a studio. Some of his works from this time are characterised by swirls, such as The Starry Night. He was allowed short supervised walks, during which time he painted cypresses and olive trees, including Valley with Ploughman Seen from AboveOlive Trees with the Alpilles in the BackgroundCypressesCornfield with CypressesCountry road in Provence by Night Limited access to life outside the clinic resulted in a shortage of subject matter.

Van Gogh instead worked on interpretations of other artist's paintingssuch as Millet 's The Sower and Noonday Restand variations on his own earlier work. Van Gogh was an admirer of the Realism of Jules BretonGustave Courbet and Millet, [ ] and he compared his copies to a musician's interpreting Beethoven. Tralbaut suggests that the face of the prisoner in the centre of the painting looking towards the viewer is Van Gogh himself; [ ] Jan Hulsker discounts this.

Between February and AprilVan Gogh suffered a severe relapse. Depressed and unable to bring himself to write, he was still able to paint and draw a little during this time, [ ] and he later wrote to Theo that he had made a few small canvases "from memory Hulsker believes that this small group of paintings formed the nucleus of many drawings and study sheets depicting landscapes and figures that Van Gogh worked on during this time.

After this, Van Gogh went crazy, Theo had to put him into a mental institution. He had two rooms, one for sleeping and one for painting. A good majority of these paintings like Starry Night had the ever-looming presence of death. The black Cypress in the painting is a symbol of death that reaches up into the night. InVan Gogh was released from the vincent van gogh brief biography of william institution, and relocated to Ravoux Inn, where he had a personal doctor to monitor him.

On July 1,he went out to the wheat fields and shot himself in the chest. He died two days later, on July 3, at the age of He was buried in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. Six months later, his brother Theo, died and was buried next to him. Now I think I know what you tried to say to me, and how you suffered for your sanity, and how you tried to set them free.

Art History U. Starry Night Over the Rhone The Potato Eaters During his lifetime, he was commercially unsuccessful and considered a madman. He suffered intense psychological breakdowns and inhe committed suicide at the age of Yet some people during his lifetime believed in his artistic genius, including his younger brother Theo van Gogh and fellow artist and friend Paul Gauguin.

Despite his life being tragically cut short, Van Gogh produced a vast body of work in the decade that he was active as an artist, leaving behind a total of artworks of which most date from the last two years of his life, when he spent time in psychiatric hospitals. He is now considered a pioneer of modern art and his works are among the most expensive paintings ever sold.

He was the oldest child of the Protestant minister Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Carbentus and was followed by five siblings: three sisters and two brothers. Vincent only found his true calling as an artist at the age of In he moved to Brussels, where he started to work on his drawing technique and associated with other artists. Without having had any training, and not knowing whether he had real talent, he started out with great determination.

He mostly taught himself the basics of art by studying the work of others. Like these artists, he wanted to portray life in the countryside and honor the humble existence of the peasants living and working there. The next years were spent living in various places in the Netherlands. In The Hague, he took painting and drawing lessons with an uncle, the artist Anton Mauve.

In this period, Vincent developed his perspective skills and also learned the basics of watercolor and oil paint. With blood pouring from his hand, he offered her his ear, asking her to "keep this object carefully. Theo arrived on Christmas Day to see van Gogh, who was weak from blood loss and having violent seizures. The doctors assured Theo that his brother would live and would be taken good care of, and on January 7,van Gogh was released from the hospital.

He remained, however, alone and depressed. For hope, he turned to painting and nature, but could not find peace and was hospitalized again. He would paint at the yellow house during the day and return to the hospital at night. On May 8,he began painting in the hospital gardens. In Novemberhe was invited to exhibit his paintings in Brussels.

He sent six paintings, including "Irises" and "Starry Night. Also around this time, Dr. Paul Gachet, who lived in Auvers, about 20 miles north of Paris, agreed to take van Gogh as his patient. Van Gogh moved to Auvers and rented a room. On July 27,Vincent van Gogh went out to paint in the morning carrying a loaded pistol and shot himself in the chest, but the bullet did not kill him.

He was found bleeding in his room. Van Gogh was distraught about his future because, in May of that year, his brother Theo had visited and spoke to him about needing to be stricter with his finances. Van Gogh took that to mean Theo was no longer interested in selling his art. Van Gogh was taken to a nearby hospital and his doctors sent for Theo, who arrived to find his brother sitting up in bed and smoking a pipe.

They spent the next couple of days talking together, and then van Gogh asked Theo to take him home. On July 29,Vincent van Gogh died in the arms of his brother Theo. He was only 37 years old. Theo, who was suffering from syphilis and weakened by his brother's death, died six months after his brother in a Dutch asylum. He was buried in Utrecht, but in Theo's wife, Johanna, who was a dedicated supporter of van Gogh's works, had Theo's body reburied in the Auvers cemetery next to Vincent.

Theo's wife Johanna then collected as many of van Gogh's paintings as she could, but discovered that many had been destroyed or lost, as van Gogh's own mother had thrown away crates full of his art. On March 17,71 of van Gogh's paintings were displayed at a show in Paris, and his fame grew enormously. His mother lived long enough to see her son hailed as an artistic genius.