Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh

1853, Vincent Van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert, Holland. The son of a preist, Van Gogh was brought up in a structured, religious family that restricted any sort of creative growth. As any priest, he had high expectations for Vincent and being such an emotional person, growing up was very dificult. His childhood was desrcibed to have been gloomy and sterile. In July 1869 at age 16, Vincent’s uncle helped him obtain a position at an Art dealer in The Hague. After training was finished in 1873, he was transferred to work in London. By 20 he was making more money than his father, and at the happiest he had ever been in his life. Shortly after experiencing his first taste of love, a bitter one at that, he became depressed and quickly isolated. His employment was terminated after he became resentful at how art was treated as a commodity.

Still suffering from depression, Theo recomended that Vincent study with Dutch artist Willem Roelofs who realized Vincent’s incredible talent. Despite Van gogh’s aversion to formal schools, Willem recomended he attend the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts. With this amount of support and encouragement, Vincent’s talent flowered as he kept painting and sketching. Some say some of his best work was from 1883-1888 when he was living in Nuenen and Paris. His work was noticed by Paris for the first time as he became increasingly more depressed.

In 1886 he went to Paris to join his brother Theo, the manager of Goupil's gallery. In Paris, van Gogh studied with Cormon, met Pissarro, Monet, and Gauguin, and began to lighten his very dark coloured style and began to paint in the short brushstrokes of the Impressionists. His nervous and irritable personality 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. Near the end of 1888, an incident led Gauguin to ultimately leave Arles. Van Gogh pursued him with an open razor, was stopped by Gauguin, but ended up cutting a portion of his own ear lobe off. Van Gogh then began to alternate between fits of madness and lucidity and was sent to the asylum in Saint-Remy for treatment.

In May of 1890, he seemed better but was still depressed and went to live in Auvers-sure-Oise under the watchful eye of Dr.Gatchet. Unfortuantely July 27, Vincent shot himself with a revolver in the chest. His very last painting was of the field he shot himself in, a very famous painting at that. Vincent Van Gogh killed himself at age 37, after living a very deeply depressive life filled with many mental illnesses. To this day over 150 pschiatrists have attempted to label his mental state and have diagnosed it with a combination of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy and acute intermittent porphyria.