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Art > Magritte
| Van Gogh |
Dali
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)
Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch postimpressionist painter.
Early in life he displayed a moody, restless temperament that was to
thwart his
every pursuit. By the age of 27 he had been in turn a salesman in an
art
gallery, a French tutor, a theological student, and an evangelist among
the miners at Wasmes in Belgium. His experiences as a preacher are
reflected
in his first paintings of peasants and potato diggers; of these early
works,
the best known is the rough, earthy Potato Eaters (1885, Rijksmuseum
Vincent
van Gogh, Amsterdam). Dark and somber, sometimes crude, these early
works
evidence van Gogh's intense desire to express the misery and poverty of
humanity as he saw it among the miners in Belgium.
In 1886 van Gogh went to Paris to live with his brother Théo van
Gogh,
an art dealer, and became familiar with the new art movements
developing at
the time. Influenced by the work of the impressionists and by the work
of
such Japanese printmakers as Hiroshige and Hokusai, van Gogh began to
experiment with current techniques (see Ukiyo-E). Subsequently, he
adopted
the brilliant hues found in the paintings of the French artists
Camille Pissarro and Georges Seurat.
In 1888 van Gogh left Paris for southern France, where, under the
burning sun of Provence, he painted scenes of the fields, cypress
trees, peasants, and rustic life characteristic of the region. During
this period, living at Arles, he began to use the swirling brush
strokes and intense yellows, greens, and blues associated with such
typical works as Bedroom at Arles (1888, Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh),
and Starry Night (1889, Museum of Modern Art, New York City). For Van
Gogh
all visible phenomena, whether he painted or drew them, seemed to be
endowed with a physical and spiritual vitality. In his enthusiasm he
induced the painter Paul Gauguin, whom he had met earlier in Paris,
to join him. After less than two months they began to have violent
disagreements, culminating in a quarrel in which van Gogh wildly
threatened Gauguin with a razor; the same night, in deep remorse,
Van Gogh cut off part of his own ear. For a time he was in a hospital
at Arles. He then spent a year in the nearby asylum of
Saint-Rémy,
working between repeated spells of madness. Under the care of a
sympathetic doctor, whose portrait he painted ( Dr. Gachet, 1890,
Louvre, Paris), van Gogh spent three months at Auvers. Just after
completing his ominous Crows in the Wheatfields (1890, Rijksmuseum
Vincent Van Gogh), he shot himself on July 27, 1890, and died two days
later.
The more than 700 letters that van Gogh wrote to his brother
Théo
constitute a remarkably illuminating record of the life of an artist
and a thorough documentation of his unusually fertile output?about
750 paintings and 1600 drawings.
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The Irises |
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Starry Night, 1889 |
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The Sunflowers |
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The Church at Auvers |
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Road with Cypresses and Star |
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Cafe Terrance at Night |
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Harvest at la Crau |
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Cornfield and Cypresses |
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Van Gogh's Bedroom |
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Bandage on Ear, Portrait |
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Van Gogh's Portrait |
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Night Cafe in the Place Lamartine in Arles |
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