Gogh, Vincent van
Gogh, Vincent (Willem) van (b. March 30, 1853, Zundert, Neth.--d. July
29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris), generally considered the
greatest Dutch painter after
Rembrandt;
he powerfully influenced the
current of
Expressionism
in modern art. His work, all of it produced
during a period of only 10 years, hauntingly conveys through its
striking colour, coarse brushwork, and contoured forms the anguish of
a mental illness that eventually resulted in suicide. Among his
masterpieces are numerous self-portraits and the well-known
The Starry Night (1889).
[Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1994]
Photographs by Mark Harden.
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Montmartre
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Vegetable Gardens in Montmartre
1887 (170 Kb); 96 x 120 cm
Photograph by Richard Darsie
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Starry Night over the Rhone
1888 (160 Kb); 72.5 x 92 cm
Photograph by Richard Darsie
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The Starry Night
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The White House at Night
June 1890 (Auvers); Oil on canvas, 59 x 72.5 cm (23 1/4 x 28 1/2");
No. 3KP 511. Formerly collection Otto Krebs, Holzdorf;
Last exhibited 1924
At the end of WWII, as the Soviets pulled back from Germany, they took
with them many German-owned works of art. These masterpieces were
stored in the basement of the Hermitage in Leningrad, a Soviet state
secret for nearly a half century. They have now been put on public
exhibition.
-- Mark Harden
Gogh, Vincent van
(1853-90).
Dutch painter and draughtsman, with
Cézanne and
Gauguin
the greatest of
Post-Impressionist
artists.
His uncle was a partner in the international firm of picture
dealers Goupil and Co. and in 1869 van Gogh went to work in
the branch at The Hague. In 1873 he was sent to the London
branch and fell unsuccessfully in love with the daughter of the
landlady. This was the first of several disastrous attempts to
find happiness with a woman, and his unrequited passion affected
him so badly that he was dismissed from his job. He returned to
England in 1876 as an unpaid assistant at a school, and his
experience of urban squalor awakened a religious zeal and a
longing to serve his fellow men. His father was a Protestant
pastor, and van Gogh first trained for the ministry, but he
abandoned his studies in 1878 and went to work as a lay preacher
among the impoverished miners of the grim Borinage district in
Belgium. In his zeal he gave away his own worldly goods to the
poor and was dismissed for his literal interpretation of Christ's
teaching. He remained in the Borinage, suffering acute poverty and
a spiritual crisis, until 1880, when he found that art was his
vocation and the means by which he could bring consolation to
humanity. From this time he worked at his new `mission' with
single-minded frenzy, and although he often suffered from extreme
poverty and undernourishment, his output in the ten remaining
years of his life was prodigious: about 800 paintings and a similar
number of drawings.
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The Potato Eaters
1885 (180 Kb); Oil on canvas, 81.5 x 114.5 cm;
Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam
From 1881 to 1885 van Gogh lived in the Netherlands, sometimes in
lodgings, supported by his devoted brother Theo, who regularly sent
him money from his own small salary. In keeping with his humanitarian
outlook he painted peasants and workers, the most famous picture
from this period being
The Potato Eaters
(Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; 1885).
Of this he wrote to Theo:
`I have tried to emphasize that those people, eating their potatoes
in the lamp-light have dug the earth with those very hands they put
in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labour, and how they have
honestly earned their food'.
In 1885 van Gogh moved to Antwerp on the advice of
Antoine Mauve
(a cousin by marriage), and studied for some months at the Academy
there. Academic instruction had little to offer such an individualist,
however, and in February 1886 he moved to Paris, where he met
Pissarro,
Degas,
Gauguin,
Seurat, and
Toulouse-Lautrec.
At this time his painting underwent a violent metamorphosis under
the combined influence of
Impressionism
and Japanese woodcuts, losing its moralistic flavour of social realism.
Van Gogh became obsessed by the symbolic and expressive values
of colors and began to use them for this purpose rather than, as did
the Impressionists, for the reproduction of visual appearances,
atmosphere, and light.
`Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes,'
he wrote, `I use color more arbitrarily so as to express myself more
forcibly'.
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The night café
1888; Yale University Art Gallery
Of his
Night Café,
he said: `I have tried to express with red and green the terrible
passions of human nature.'
For a time he was influenced by Seurat's delicate
pointillist
manner, but he abandoned this for broad, vigorous, and swirling
brush-strokes.
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La chambre de Van Gogh à Arles (Van Gogh's Room at Arles)
1889 (200 Kb);
Oil on canvas, 57 x 74 cm (22 1/2 x 29 1/3 in);
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
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Vincent's Room, Arles
1888; Vincent Van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam
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Entrance to the Public Garden in Arles
1888 (240 Kb); Oil on canvas, 72.5 x 91 cm (28 1/2 x 35 3/4 in);
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
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Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
1889 (250 Kb); Oil on canvas, 60 x 49 cm;
Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
In February 1888 van Gogh settled at Arles, where he painted more
than 200 canvases in 15 months. During this time he sold no pictures,
was in poverty, and suffered recurrent nervous crisis with
hallucinations and depression. He became enthusiastic for the idea
of founding an artists' co-operative at Arles and towards the end
of the year he was joined by Gauguin. But as a result of a quarrel
between them van Gogh suffered the crisis in which occured the
famous incident when he cut off his left ear (or part of it),
an event commemorated in his
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
(Courtauld Institute, London).
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Landscape at Saint-Rémy
1889; Ny Carlsberg Glypotek, Copenhagen
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Mountains at Saint-Remy
1889 (220 Kb); Oil on canvas, 71.8 x 90.8 cm (28 1/4 x 35 3/4 in);
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
In May 1889 he went at his own request into an asylum at St Rémy, near
Arles, but continued during the year he spent there a frenzied
production of tumultuous pictures such as
Starry Night
(MOMA, New York).
He did 150 paintings besides drawings in the course of this year.
In 1889 Theo married and in May 1890 van Gogh moved to Auvers-sur-Oise
to be near him, lodging with the patron and connoisseur Dr Paul
Gachet. There followed another tremendous burst of strenuous activity
and during the last 70 days of his life he painted 70 canvases.
But his spiritual anguish and depression became more acute and on
29 July 1890 he died from the results of a self-inflicted bullet
wound.
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Dr Paul Gachet
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L'église d'Auvers-sur-Oise (The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise)
1890 (220 Kb); Oil on canvas, 94 x 74 cm (37 x 29 1/8 in);
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
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Village Street in Auvers
1890 (230 Kb); Oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm (28 3/4 x 36 1/4 in);
Ateneumin Taidemuseo, Helsinki
He sold only one painting during his lifetime
(Red Vineyard at Arles;
Pushkin Museum, Moscow),
and was little known to the art world at the time of his death,
but his fame grew rapidly thereafter.
His influence on
Expressionism,
Fauvism
and early abstraction was enormous, and it can be seen in many
other aspects of 20th-century art.
His stormy and dramatic life and his unswerving devotion to his ideals
have made him one of the great cultural heroes of modern times,
providing the most auspicious material for the 20th-century vogue
in romanticized psychological biography.
© 20 May 1996,
Nicolas Pioch -
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