Vincent van Gogh:
Birth Year : 1853
Death Year : 1890
Country : Netherlands
Van Gogh Short Facts;
Vincent had an older brother who died at birth. His name was also Vincent van Gogh.
Van Gogh was close friends with Paul Gauguin, another famous artist.
Van Gogh suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy as well as other mental and physical conditions.
Vincent shot himself in a wheatfield in Auvers, France but did not die until 2 days later at the age of 37.
Vincent’s brother Theo died six months after Vincent and is buried next to him in Auvers, France.
Vincent’s brother’s wife collected Vincent’s paintings and letters after his death and dedicated herself to getting his work the recognition it deserved.
In a short period of ten years Van Gogh made approximately 900 paintings.
Vincent only sold one painting during his lifetime and only became famous after his death.
Vincent van Gogh did not cut off his ear. He only cut off a small portion of his ear lobe.
Van Gogh created his most famous work The Starry Night while staying in an asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France.
Vincent’s earliest career aspiration was to be a pastor in the Dutch Reformed Church like his father.
Van Gogh wrote over 800 letters in his lifetime. The majority of them written to his brother and closest friend Theo.
Vincent van Gogh, for whom color was the chief symbol of expression, was born in Groot-Zundert, Holland. The son of a pastor, brought up in a religious and cultured atmosphere, Vincent was highly emotional and lacked self-confidence. Between 1860 and 1880, when he finally decided to become an artist, van Gogh had had two unsuitable and
unhappy romances and had worked unsuccessfully as a clerk in a bookstore, an art salesman, and a preacher in the Borinage (a dreary mining district in Belgium), where he was dismissed for overzealousness. He remained in Belgium to study art, determined to give happiness by creating beauty. The works of his early Dutch period are somber-toned, sharply lit, genre paintings of which the most famous is "The Potato Eaters" (1885). In that year van Gogh went to Antwerp where he discovered the works of Rubens and purchased many Japanese prints.
In 1886 he went to Paris to join his brother Théo, the manager of Goupil's gallery. In Paris, van Gogh studied with Cormon, inevitably met Pissarro, Monet, and Gauguin, and began to lighten his very dark palette and to paint in the short brushstrokes of the Impressionists. His nervous temperament made him a difficult companion and night-long discussions combined with painting all day undermined his health. He decided to go south to Arles where he hoped his friends would join him and help found a school of art. Gauguin did join him but with disastrous results. In a fit of epilepsy, van Gogh pursued his friend with an open razor, was stopped by Gauguin, but ended up cutting a portion of his ear lobe off (which he gave to a prostitute). Van Gogh then began to alternate between fits of madness and lucidity and was sent to the asylum in Saint-Remy for treatment.
