Винсент ван гог как пишется

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Уважаемая Грамота! Почему мы пишем Ван Гог без дефиса, а Ван-Дейк через дефис? Буду благодарна за ответ.

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Оба имени пишутся раздельно.

Словарь имён собственных

ВАН ДЕЙК Антонис, Ван Дейка Антониса [дэ]

ВАН ГОГ Винсент, Ван Гога Винсента [сэ] (голл. художник)

Господа, подскажите, пожалуйста, как писать частицу «-то» в таком случае? А ты «Мертвые души-то» читал? А ты «Мертвые души»-то читал?

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Рекомендаций для подобных случаев в справочниках по правописанию пока нет. Из предложенных Вами вариантов лучше второй. Он выглядит диковинно, но не искажает названия, как в первом варианте. Однако более предпочтительным представляется написание без знака препинания: А ты «Мертвые души» то читал?  Когда приставка или часть сложного слова, требующая слитного написания, присоединяется к словосочетанию, она пишется раздельно. Ср.: лже доктор наук, псевдо произведение искусства, теле круглый стол, мини стиральная машина; экс Советский Союз, псевдо Ван Гог, пол рабочего дня, пол столовой ложки, пол Московской области. Это правило можно распространить и на написание постфикса то, присоединяемого к словосочетанию. 

Спасибо за очень интересный вопрос. Мы передадим его в Орфографическую комиссию РАН.

Здравствуйте, уважаемые сотрудники «Грамоты.ру»! В процессе вычитки монографии о взаимодействии колеса и рельса столкнулась с непростым случаем. Помогите, пожалуйста, разобраться: как следует написать словосочетание _чудо смазочный материал_? Смущает то, что приложение относится к сочетанию слов, а не к одному слову. В «Справочнике по правописанию и литературной правке» Д. Э. Розенталя подобного случая, к сожалению, не нашла. Замена на _чудо-смазку_ нежелательна, т. к. авторы по определенным причинам не употребляют слово «смазка» в своей работе. Заранее благодарна вам за ответ и спасибо за вашу непростую работу! С уважением, Любовь

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Правильно раздельное написание. Оно соответствует следующему правилу.

Недопустимо слитное или дефисное написание с приставкой или первой частью сложного слова, если вторая часть содержит пробел, т. е. представляет собой сочетание слов. В этих случаях слитные или дефисные написания, рекомендуемые основными правилами, должны заменяться раздельными. Например, следует писать: лже доктор наук, псевдо произведение искусства, теле круглый стол, мини стиральная машина; экс Советский Союз, псевдо Ван Гог, пол рабочего дня, пол столовой ложки, пол Московской области (Правила русской орфографии и пунктуации. Полный академический справочник / Под ред. В. В. Лопатина. М., 2006. § 153).

Спасибо за ответ про «экс»! А «экс начальник управления» и «экс директор программы» тоже можно писать по-разному? И какой вариант предпочесть? Спасибо!

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Нужно писать раздельно. Вот общее правило на этот счет:

«Недопустимо слитное или дефисное написание с приставкой или первой частью сложного слова, если вторая часть содержит пробел, т. е. представляет собой сочетание слов. В этих случаях слитные или дефисные написания, рекомендуемые основными правилами, должны заменяться раздельными. Например, следует писать: лже доктор наук, псевдо произведение искусства, теле круглый стол, мини стиральная машина; экс Советский Союз, псевдо Ван Гог, пол рабочего дня, пол столовой ложки, пол Московской области; то же в парных конструкциях с полу: полудеревни — полу дачные посёлки, полусанаторий — полу дом отдыха, полупародия — полу литературный фельетон, полуясли — полу детский сад«.

Добрый день! Подскажите, пожалуйста, как писать лже крымское шампанское? И есть ли какое-то правило на этот случай, когда приставка «лже-» относится к двум словам?

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Да, такие правила существуют. Они называются правилами координации. Вот выдержка из этих правил.

Недопустимо слитное или дефисное написание с приставкой или первой частью сложного слова, если вторая часть содержит пробел, т. е. представляет собой сочетание слов. В этих случаях слитные или дефисные написания, рекомендуемые основными правилами, должны заменяться раздельными. Например, следует писать: лже доктор наук, псевдо произведение искусства, теле круглый стол, мини стиральная машина; экс Советский Союз, псевдо Ван Гог, пол рабочего дня, пол столовой ложки, пол Московской области. (Правила русской орфографии и пунктуации. Полный академический справочник / Под ред. В. В. Лопатина. М., 2006.)

Однако сочетание (лже) крымское шампанское может быть понято двояко и, соответственно, иметь разные написания. Лже крымское шампанское – это какой-то напиток, выдаваемый за крымское шампанское (лже + крымское шампанское), лжекрымское шампанское – это шампанское, которое сделано не в Крыму, но выдается за крымское.

Как в именном указателе помещать людей с фамилиями: ван Ховен, Ди Каприо, Де Агостини, фон Лилиенфель? На букву «основной» фамилии: Агостини, де? Ховен, ван? или все же начинать надо с частицы?

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Служебные элементы (артикли, предлоги) ван, да, де, ле и т. п., входящие в состав иноязычной фамилии, могут быть ее неотъемлемой частью, и обычно в этих случаях мы не употребляем фамилию без служебного элемента. Ср.: мы говорим Ван Гог (не Гог), Ди Каприо (не Каприо), Де Костер (не Костер). Но при этом обычно употребляют: Бальзак (не де Бальзак), Бетховен (не ван Бетховен). 

Это различие сказывается, как Вы, наверное, обратили внимание, и на написании. Служебные элементы, входящие в состав иноязычных фамилий, обычно пишутся со строчной буквы: Людвиг ван Бетховен, Оноре де Бальзак, Гёц фон Берлихинген. Однако если служебный элемент «спаян» с фамилией, он пишется с прописной буквы: Ван Гог, Шарль Де Костер, Леонардо Ди Каприо.

От «спаянности» служебного элемента с фамилией (и, соответственно, написания его с прописной или строчной буквы) зависит и алфавитный порядок. Например, в «Словаре собственных имен русского языка» Ф. Л. Агеенко: БАЛЬЗАК Оноре де, БЕРЛИХИНГЕН Гёц фон, БЕТХОВЕН Людвиг ван – на букву Б; но: ВАН ГОГ Винсент – на букву В, ДЕ КОСТЕР Шарль и ДИ КАПРИО Леонардо – на букву Д.

Меня интересует написание имени восточного философа Аль-Фараби. В одних источниках его имя дается по аналогии написания всех арабских имен с приставкой «аль», то есть со сточной буквы. В других — как закрепившееся в виде исключения из общего правила, как-то: Ибн-Сина, Ван Гог и т.д. Как все же правильно и где можно уточнить написание?

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Рекомендация «Словаря имен собственных» Ф. Л. Агеенко: аль-Фараби.

Как правильно: Ван Гог или Ван-Гог (второй вариант в справочнике Розенталя)?

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Корректно написание с пробелом: Ван Гог.

здравствуйте, наткнулась на заголовок : «Ван Гог, самоубитый обществом»

слово «самоубитый» очень напрягает, есть ли вообще такое слово в русском языке и насколько оно здесь уместно. Какие аналоги можно подобрать к этому? Понимаю, что «доведенный до самоубийства обществом» было бы правильнее, но менее выразительно

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

В русском литературном языке такого слова нет. Это окказионализм, результат индивидуального словотворчества. Именно за счет своей необычности такие слова и обладают повышенной выразительностью. Использование окказионализмов не редкость в литературно-художественной и публицистической речи.

Здравствуйте! Как объяснить различное написание артикля или предлога(?) «ВАН» в именах: Людвиг ван Бетховен и Клод Ван Дам? А может, нужно одинаково, со строчной?

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Служебный элемент ван обычно пишется со строчной буквы, написание Людвиг ван Бетховен соответствует правилу. Однако в некоторых личных именах компонент ван может быть написан с прописной буквы (такое орфографическое оформление часто соответствует написанию с прописной в языке-источнике и проверяется в словарном порядке): Ван Гог, Ван Дамм.

Здравствуйте! Помогите, пожалуйста, разобраться. Как правильно пишутся нидерландские фамилии типа Ван (ван ?) Бастен? Есть ли общее правило для их написания? А то у нас в газете принято писать Винсент Ван Гог, но Тео ван Гог (режиссер). Помогите разобраться!

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

См. ответ № 239351.

Скажите, пожалуйста, как пишется частица «ван» в голландских (фламандских) фамилиях: с прописной или строчной буквы? Или возможно и то, и другое написание?
Для примера: Людвиг ван Бетховен (со строчной). Но: Жан-Клод Ван Дамм (хотя это, кажется, псевдоним).
Мне думается, правильнее писать «ван» со строчной — как немецкое «фон» (оно всегда пишется со строчной).
Спасибо.

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Служебный элемент ван обычно пишется со строчной буквы: Людвиг ван Бетховен. Однако в некоторых личных именах компонент ван может быть написан с прописной буквы (такое орфографическое оформление часто соответствует написанию с прописной в языке-источнике и проверяется в словарном порядке): Ван Гог, Ван Дамм. 

Подскажите,пожалуйста,как правильно пишутся на русском языке иностранные голландские фамилии с такими составными частями как van или de.Например,Pieter van Vuuren,Nick van de Vert — Питер ван Вююрен или Питер Ван Вююрен и Ник ван де Верт или Ник Ван Де Верт?

Заранее спасибо

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Общее правило таково: служебные слова, входящие в состав западноевропейских фамилий, пишутся со строчной буквы (ван, де, делла и т. п.). Однако есть исключения: Ван Гог, Ван Дамм.

Здравствуйте, скажите, пожалуйста, в каких случаях слово «де» в начале иностранных фамилий пишется со строчной, а в каких — с заглавной буквы. Спасибо.

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Служебные элементы (артикли, предлоги) ван, да, де, ле и т. п., входящие в состав иноязычных фамилий, пишутся со строчной буквы: Р. ле Вин; Т. де Фрэнк; K. ван Вормер. С прописной буквы эти элементы пишутся по традиции лишь в некоторых личных именах (Ван Гог, Шарль Де Костер). Проверять следует по орфографическому словарю.

Vincent van Gogh
Self-Portrait, 1887, Art Institute of Chicago
Born	Vincent Willem van Gogh 30 March 1853 Zundert, Netherlands
Died	29 July 1890 (aged 37) Auvers-sur-Oise, France
Cause of death	Gunshot wound
Resting place	Cimetière d’Auvers-sur-Oise, France 49°04′31″N 2°10′44″E / 49.07531°N 2.17894°E
Education	Royal Academy of Fine Arts Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
Known for	Painting, drawing still life, portraits and landscapes
Notable work	The Potato Eaters (1885) Sunflowers (1887) Bedroom in Arles (1888) The Starry Night (1889) Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1890) Wheatfield with Crows (1890) The Siesta (1890) Church at Auvers (1890) Sorrowing Old Man (1890)
Movement	Post-Impressionism
Family	Theodorus van Gogh (brother)

Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsɛnt ˈʋɪləm vɑŋ ˈɣɔx] (listen);^{[note 1]} 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Not commercially successful, he struggled with severe depression and poverty, eventually leading to his suicide at age thirty-seven.

Born into an upper-middle class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet, and thoughtful. As a young man, he worked as an art dealer, often traveling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881, having moved back home with his parents. His younger brother Theo supported him financially; the two kept a long correspondence by letter. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers, contain few signs of the vivid colour that distinguished his later work. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed he created a new approach to still lifes and local landscapes. His paintings grew brighter as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the South of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include series of olive trees, wheat fields and sunflowers.

Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he 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 severed part of his own left ear. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. 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 27 July 1890, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver, dying from his injuries two days later.

Van Gogh was commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime, and he was considered a madman and a failure. As he only became famous after his suicide, he came to be seen as a misunderstood genius in the public imagination.^[6] His reputation grew in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists. He attained widespread critical and commercial success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh’s works are among the world’s most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world’s largest collection of his paintings and drawings.

Letters

The most comprehensive primary source on Van Gogh is the correspondence between him and 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 1872 until 1890.^[7] Theo van Gogh was an art dealer and provided his brother with financial and emotional support as well as access to influential people on the contemporary art scene.^[8]

Theo kept all of Vincent’s letters to him;^[10] but Vincent kept only 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 1906 and 1913; the majority were published in 1914.^[11][12] Vincent’s letters are eloquent and expressive and have been described as having a «diary-like intimacy»,^[8] and read in parts like autobiography.^[8] Translator Arnold Pomerans wrote that their publication adds a «fresh dimension to the understanding of Van Gogh’s artistic achievement, an understanding granted to us by virtually no other painter».^[13]

There are more than 600 letters from Vincent to Theo and around 40 from Theo to Vincent. There are 22 to his sister Wil, 58 to the painter Anthon van Rappard, 22 to Émile Bernard as well as individual letters to Paul Signac, Paul Gauguin, and the critic Albert Aurier. Some are illustrated with sketches.^[8] Many are undated, but art historians have been able to place most in chronological order. Problems in transcription and dating remain, mainly with those posted from Arles. While there, Vincent wrote around 200 letters in Dutch, French, and English.^[14] There is a gap in the record when he lived in Paris as the brothers lived together and had no need to correspond.^[15]

The highly paid contemporary artist Jules Breton was frequently mentioned in Vincent’s letters. In 1875 letters to Theo, Vincent mentions he saw Breton, discusses the Breton paintings he saw at a Salon, and discusses sending one of Breton’s books but only on the condition that it be returned.^[16][17] In a March 1884 letter to Rappard he discusses one of Breton’s poems that had inspired one of his own paintings.^[18] In 1885 he describes Breton’s famous work The Song of the Lark as being «fine».^[19] In March 1880, roughly midway between these letters, Van Gogh set out on an 80-kilometre trip on foot to meet with Breton in the village of Courrières; however, he was apparently intimidated by Breton’s success and/or the high wall around his estate. He turned around and returned without making his presence known.^[20][21][22] It appears Breton was unaware of Van Gogh or his attempted visit. There are no known letters between the two artists and Van Gogh is not one of the contemporary artists discussed by Breton in his 1891 autobiography Life of an Artist.

Life

Early years

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, in the predominantly Catholic province of North Brabant in the Netherlands.^[23] He was the oldest surviving child of Theodorus van Gogh (1822–1885), a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and his wife, Anna Cornelia Carbentus (1819–1907). Van Gogh was given the name of his grandfather and of a brother stillborn exactly a year before his birth.^{[note 2]} Vincent was a common name in the Van Gogh family. The name had been borne by his grandfather, the prominent art dealer Vincent (1789–1874), and a theology graduate at the University of Leiden in 1811. This Vincent had six sons, three of whom became art dealers, and may have been named after his own great-uncle, a sculptor (1729–1802).^[25]

Van Gogh’s mother came from a prosperous family in The Hague,^[26] and his father was the youngest son of a minister.^[27] The two met when Anna’s younger sister, Cornelia, married Theodorus’s older brother Vincent (Cent). Van Gogh’s parents married in May 1851, and moved to Zundert.^[28] His brother Theo was born on 1 May 1857. There was another brother, Cor, and three sisters: Elisabeth, Anna, and Willemina (known as «Wil»). In later life, Van Gogh remained in touch only with Willemina and Theo.^[29] Van Gogh’s mother was a rigid and religious woman who emphasized the importance of family to the point of for those around her.^[30] Theodorus’s salary as a minister was modest, but the Church also supplied the family with a house, a maid, two cooks, a gardener, a carriage and horse; his mother Anna instilled in the children a duty to uphold the family’s high social position.^[31]

Van Gogh was a serious and thoughtful child.^[32] He was taught at home by his mother and a governess, and in 1860, was sent to the village school. In 1864, he was placed in a boarding school at Zevenbergen,^[33] where he felt abandoned, and he campaigned to come home. Instead, in 1866, his parents sent him to the middle school in Tilburg, where he was also deeply unhappy.^[34] His interest in art began at a young age. 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.^[36] Constant Cornelis Huijsmans, who had been a successful artist in Paris, taught the students at Tilburg. 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.^[37] In March 1868, he abruptly returned home. He later wrote that his youth was «austere and cold, and sterile».^[38]

In July 1869, Van Gogh’s uncle Cent obtained a position for him at the art dealers Goupil & Cie in The Hague.^[39] After completing his training in 1873, he was transferred to Goupil’s London branch on Southampton Street, and took lodgings at 87 Hackford Road, Stockwell.^[40] This was a happy time for Van Gogh; he was successful at work and, at 20, was earning more than his father. Theo’s wife, Jo Van Gogh-Bonger, later remarked that this was the best year of Vincent’s life. He became infatuated with his landlady’s daughter, Eugénie Loyer, but she rejected him after confessing his feelings; she was secretly engaged to a former lodger. He grew more isolated and religiously fervent. His father and uncle arranged a transfer to Paris in 1875, where he became resentful of issues such as the degree to which the art dealers commodified art, and he was dismissed a year later.^[41]

In April 1876, he 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.^[42][43] The arrangement was not successful; he left to become a Methodist minister’s assistant.^[44] His parents had meanwhile moved to Etten;^[45] in 1876 he returned home at Christmas for six months and took work at a bookshop in Dordrecht. He was unhappy in the position and spent his time doodling or translating passages from the Bible into English, French, and German.^[46] He immersed himself in Christianity, and became increasingly pious and monastic.^[47] According to his flatmate of the time, Paulus van Görlitz, Van Gogh ate frugally, avoiding meat.^[48]

To support his religious conviction and his desire to become a pastor, in 1877, the family sent him to live with his uncle Johannes Stricker, a respected theologian, in Amsterdam.^[49] Van Gogh prepared for the University of Amsterdam theology entrance examination;^[50] he failed the exam and left his uncle’s house in July 1878. He undertook, but also failed, a three-month course at a Protestant missionary school in Laken, near Brussels.^[51]

In January 1879, he 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.^[53] His humble living conditions did not endear him to church authorities, who dismissed him for «undermining the dignity of the priesthood». 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 1880,^{[note 3]} 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.^{[56][57][note 4]}

Van Gogh returned to Cuesmes in August 1880, where he lodged with a miner until October.^[59] He became interested in the people and scenes around him, and he recorded them in drawings after Theo’s suggestion that he take up art in earnest. He traveled to Brussels later in the year, to follow Theo’s recommendation that he study with the Dutch artist Willem Roelofs, who persuaded him – in spite of his dislike of formal schools of art – to attend the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. He registered at the Académie in November 1880, where he studied anatomy and the standard rules of modelling and perspective.^[60]

Etten, Drenthe and The Hague

Van Gogh returned to Etten in April 1881 for an extended stay with his parents.^[61] He continued to draw, often using his neighbours as subjects. In August 1881, his recently widowed cousin, Cornelia «Kee» Vos-Stricker, daughter of his mother’s older sister Willemina and Johannes Stricker, arrived 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.^[62] She refused with the words «No, nay, never» («nooit, neen, nimmer«).^[63] After Kee returned to Amsterdam, Van Gogh went to The Hague to try to sell paintings and to meet with his second cousin, Anton Mauve. Mauve was the successful artist Van Gogh longed to be.^[64] Mauve invited him to return in a few months and suggested he spend the intervening time working in charcoal and pastels; Van Gogh returned to Etten and followed this advice.^[64]

Late in November 1881, Van Gogh wrote a letter to Johannes Stricker, one which he described to Theo as an attack.^[65] Within days he left for Amsterdam.^[66] Kee would not meet him, and her parents wrote that his «persistence is disgusting«.^[67] In despair, he held his left hand in the flame of a lamp, with the words: «Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the flame.»^[67][68] He did not recall the event well, but later assumed that his uncle had blown out the flame. 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.^[69]

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.^[70] He quarrelled with his father, refusing to attend church, and left for The Hague.^{[note 5][71]} In January 1882, Mauve introduced him to painting in oil and lent him money to set up a studio.^[72][73] Within a month Van Gogh and Mauve fell out, possibly over the viability of drawing from plaster casts.^[74] Van Gogh could afford to hire only people from the street as models, a practice of which Mauve seems to have disapproved.^[75] In June Van Gogh suffered a bout of gonorrhoea and spent three weeks in hospital.^[76] Soon after, he first painted in oils,^[77] bought with money borrowed from Theo. 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.^[78]

By March 1882, Mauve appeared to have gone cold towards Van Gogh, and he stopped replying to his letters.^[79] He had learned of Van Gogh’s new domestic arrangement with an alcoholic prostitute, Clasina Maria «Sien» Hoornik (1850–1904), and her young daughter.^[80] Van Gogh had met Sien towards the end of January 1882, when she had a five-year-old daughter and was pregnant. She had previously borne two children who died, but Van Gogh was unaware of this.^[81] On 2 July, she gave birth to a baby boy, Willem.^[82] When Van Gogh’s father discovered the details of their relationship, he put pressure on his son to abandon Sien and her two children. Vincent at first defied him,^[83] and considered moving the family out of the city, but in late 1883, he left Sien and the children.^[84]

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.^[85] Willem remembered visiting Rotterdam when he was about 12, when an uncle tried to persuade Sien to marry to legitimise the child.^[86] He believed Van Gogh was his father, but the timing of his birth makes this unlikely.^[87] Sien drowned herself in the River Scheldt in 1904.^[88]

In September 1883, Van Gogh moved to Drenthe in the northern Netherlands. In December driven by loneliness, he went to live with his parents, then in Nuenen, North Brabant.^[88]

Emerging artist

Nuenen and Antwerp (1883–1886)

In Nuenen, Van Gogh focused on painting and drawing. Working outside and very quickly, he completed sketches and paintings of weavers and their cottages. Van Gogh also completed The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen, which was stolen from the Singer Laren in March 2020.^[89][90] From August 1884, Margot Begemann, a neighbour’s daughter ten years his senior, joined him on his forays; she fell in love and he reciprocated, though less enthusiastically. They wanted to marry, but neither side of their families were in favour. Margot was distraught and took an overdose of strychnine, but survived after Van Gogh rushed her to a nearby hospital.^[82] On 26 March 1885, his father died of a heart attack.^[91]

Van Gogh painted several groups of still lifes in 1885.^[92] During his two-year stay in Nuenen, he completed numerous drawings and watercolours and nearly 200 oil paintings. His palette consisted mainly of sombre earth tones, particularly dark brown, and showed no sign of the vivid colours that distinguished his later work.^[93]

There was interest from a dealer in Paris early in 1885.^[94] Theo asked Vincent if he had paintings ready to exhibit.^[95] In May, Van Gogh responded with his first major work, The Potato Eaters, and a series of «peasant character studies» which were the culmination of several years of work.^[96] When he complained that Theo was not making enough effort to sell his paintings in Paris, his brother responded that they were too dark and not in keeping with the bright style of Impressionism.^[93] In August his work was publicly exhibited for the first time, in the shop windows of the dealer Leurs in The Hague. One of his young peasant sitters became pregnant in September 1885; Van Gogh was accused of forcing himself upon her, and the village priest forbade parishioners to model for him.^[97]

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  Worn Out, pencil on watercolour paper, 1882. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam^[98]

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He moved to Antwerp that November and rented a room above a paint dealer’s shop in the rue des Images (Lange Beeldekensstraat).^[99] He lived in poverty and ate poorly, preferring to spend the money Theo sent on painting materials and models. Bread, coffee and tobacco became his staple diet. In February 1886, he wrote to Theo that he could only remember eating six hot meals since the previous May. His teeth became loose and painful.^[100] In Antwerp he applied himself to the study of colour theory and spent time in museums—particularly studying the work of Peter Paul Rubens—and broadened his palette to include carmine, cobalt blue and emerald green. Van Gogh bought Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts in the docklands, later incorporating elements of their style into the background of some of his paintings.^[101] He was drinking heavily again,^[102] and was hospitalised between February and March 1886,^[103] when he was possibly also treated for syphilis.^{[104][note 6]}

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 January 1886, matriculated in painting and drawing. He became ill and run down by overwork, poor diet and excessive smoking.^[107] He started to attend drawing classes after plaster models at the Antwerp Academy on 18 January 1886. He quickly got into trouble with Charles Verlat, the 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. Van Gogh finally started to attend the drawing classes after antique plaster models given by Eugène Siberdt. 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!’ According to some accounts, this was the last time Van Gogh attended classes at the academy and he left later for Paris.^[108] On 31 March 1886, which was about a month after the confrontation with Siberdt, the teachers of the academy decided that 17 students, including Van Gogh, had to repeat a year. The story that Van Gogh was expelled from the academy by Siberdt is therefore unfounded.^[109]

Paris (1886–1888)

Van Gogh moved to Paris in March 1886 where he shared Theo’s rue Laval apartment in Montmartre and studied at Fernand Cormon’s studio. In June the brothers took a larger flat at 54 rue Lepic.^[111] In Paris, Vincent painted portraits of friends and acquaintances, still life paintings, views of Le Moulin de la Galette, scenes in Montmartre, Asnières and along the Seine. In 1885 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 Japonaiserie, tracing a figure from a reproduction on the cover of the magazine Paris Illustre, The Courtesan or Oiran (1887), after Keisai Eisen, which he then graphically enlarged in a painting.^[112]

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 (1888).^[113][114] Two years later, Vincent and Theo paid for the publication of a book on Monticelli paintings, and Vincent bought some of Monticelli’s works to add to his collection.^[115]

Van Gogh learned about Fernand Cormon’s atelier from Theo.^[116] He worked at the studio in April and May 1886,^[117] where he frequented the circle of the Australian artist John Russell, who painted his portrait in 1886.^[118] Van Gogh also met fellow students Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – who painted a portrait of him in pastel. They met at Julien «Père» Tanguy’s paint shop,^[117] (which was, at that time, the only place where Paul Cézanne’s paintings were displayed). In 1886, two 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.^[119]

Conflicts arose between the brothers. At the end of 1886 Theo found living with Vincent to be «almost unbearable».^[117] By early 1887, they were again at peace, and Vincent had moved to Asnières, a northwestern suburb of Paris, where he got to know Signac. 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.^[95][117]

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  Courtesan (after Eisen), 1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

• 

While in Asnières Van Gogh painted parks, restaurants and the Seine, including Bridges across the Seine at Asnières. In November 1887, Theo and Vincent befriended Paul Gauguin who had just arrived in Paris.^[120] Towards the end of the year, Vincent arranged an exhibition alongside Bernard, Anquetin, and probably Toulouse-Lautrec, at the Grand-Bouillon Restaurant du Chalet, 43 avenue de Clichy, Montmartre. In a contemporary account, Bernard wrote that the exhibition was ahead of anything else in Paris.^[121] There, Bernard and Anquetin sold their first paintings, and Van Gogh exchanged work with Gauguin. 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 Lucien, Signac and Seurat. In February 1888, feeling worn out from life in Paris, Van Gogh left, having painted more than 200 paintings during his two years there. Hours before his departure, accompanied by Theo, he paid his first and only visit to Seurat in his studio.^[122]

Artistic breakthrough

Arles (1888–89)

Ill from drink and suffering from smoker’s cough, in February 1888 Van Gogh sought refuge in Arles.^[14] He seems to have moved with thoughts of founding an art colony. The Danish artist Christian Mourier-Petersen became his companion for two months, and, at first, Arles appeared exotic. In a letter, he described it as a foreign country: «The Zouaves, the brothels, the adorable little Arlésienne going to her First Communion, the priest in his surplice, who looks like a dangerous rhinoceros, the people drinking absinthe, all seem to me creatures from another world.»^[123]

The time in Arles became one of Van Gogh’s more prolific periods: he completed 200 paintings and more than 100 drawings and watercolours.^[124] He was enchanted by the local countryside and light; his works from this period are rich in yellow, ultramarine and mauve. They include harvests, wheat fields and general rural landmarks from the area, including The Old Mill (1888), one of seven canvases sent to Pont-Aven on 4 October 1888 in an exchange of works with Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard, Charles Laval and others.^[125]
The portrayals of Arles are informed by his Dutch upbringing; the patchworks of fields and avenues are flat and lacking perspective, but excel in their use of colour.^[126]

In March 1888 he painted landscapes using a gridded «perspective frame»; three of the works were shown at the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. In April, he was visited by the American artist Dodge MacKnight, who was living nearby at Fontvieille.^[127][128] On 1 May 1888, for 15 francs per month, he signed a lease for the eastern wing of the Yellow House at 2 place Lamartine. The rooms were unfurnished and had been uninhabited for months.^[129]

On 7 May, Van Gogh moved from the Hôtel Carrel to the Café de la Gare,^[130] having befriended the proprietors, Joseph and Marie Ginoux. The Yellow House had to be furnished before he could fully move in, but he was able to use it as a studio.^[131] He wanted a gallery to display his work and started a series of paintings that eventually included Van Gogh’s Chair (1888), Bedroom in Arles (1888), The Night Café (1888), Café Terrace at Night (September 1888), Starry Night Over the Rhone (1888), and Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers (1888), all intended for the decoration for the Yellow House.^[132]

Van Gogh wrote that with The Night Café he tried «to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime».^[133] When he visited Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in June, he gave lessons to a Zouave second lieutenant – Paul-Eugène Milliet^[134] – and painted boats on the sea and the village.^[135] MacKnight introduced Van Gogh to Eugène Boch, a Belgian painter who sometimes stayed in Fontvieille, and the two exchanged visits in July.^[134]

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  The Sower with Setting Sun, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

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  Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries, June 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

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Gauguin’s visit (1888)

When Gauguin agreed to visit Arles in 1888, Van Gogh hoped for friendship and to realize his idea of an artists’ collective. Van Gogh prepared for Gauguin’s arrival by painting four versions of Sunflowers in one week.^[136] «In the hope of living in a studio of our own with Gauguin,» he wrote in a letter to Theo, «I’d like to do a decoration for the studio. Nothing but large Sunflowers.»^[137]

When Boch visited again, Van Gogh painted a portrait of him, as well as the study The Poet Against a Starry Sky.^{[138][note 7]}

In preparation for Gauguin’s visit, Van Gogh bought two beds on advice from the station’s postal supervisor Joseph Roulin, whose portrait he painted. On 17 September, he spent his first night in the still sparsely furnished Yellow House.^[140] When Gauguin consented to work and live in Arles with him, Van Gogh started to work on the Décoration for the Yellow House, probably the most ambitious effort he ever undertook.^[141] He completed two chair paintings: Van Gogh’s Chair and Gauguin’s Chair.^[142]

After much pleading from Van Gogh, Gauguin arrived in Arles on 23 October and, in November, the two painted together. Gauguin depicted Van Gogh in his The Painter of Sunflowers; Van Gogh painted pictures from memory, following Gauguin’s suggestion. Among these «imaginative» paintings is Memory of the Garden at Etten.^{[143][note 8]} Their first joint outdoor venture was at the Alyscamps, when they produced the pendants Les Alyscamps.^[144] The single painting Gauguin completed during his visit was his portrait of Van Gogh.^[145]

Van Gogh and Gauguin visited Montpellier in December 1888, where they saw works by Courbet and Delacroix in the Musée Fabre.^[146] Their relationship began to deteriorate; Van Gogh admired Gauguin and wanted to be treated as his equal, but Gauguin was arrogant and domineering, which frustrated Van Gogh. 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.^[147]

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• 

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  Paul Gauguin’s Armchair, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Hospital in Arles (December 1888)

The exact sequence 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.^[149] Their relationship was complex and Theo may have owed money to Gauguin, who suspected the brothers were exploiting him financially.^[150] It seems likely that Vincent realised that Gauguin was planning to leave.^[150] The following days saw heavy rain, leading to the two men being shut in the Yellow House.^[151] Gauguin recalled that Van Gogh followed him after he left for a walk and «rushed towards me, an open razor in his hand.»^[151] This account is uncorroborated;^[152] Gauguin was almost certainly absent from the Yellow House that night, most likely staying in a hotel.^[151]

After an altercation on the evening of 23 December 1888,^[153] 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 9]} causing severe bleeding.^[154] He bandaged the wound, wrapped the ear in paper and delivered the package to a woman at a brothel Van Gogh and Gauguin both frequented.^[154] Van Gogh was found unconscious the next morning by a policeman and taken to hospital,^[157][158] where he was treated by Félix Rey, a young doctor still in training. The ear was brought to the hospital, but Rey did not attempt to reattach it as too much time had passed.^[151] Van Gogh researcher and art historian Bernadette Murphy discovered the true identity of the woman named Gabrielle, who died in Arles at the age of 80 in 1952, and whose descendants still live just outside Arles. Gabrielle, known in her youth as «Gaby,» was a 17-year-old cleaning girl at the brothel and other local establishments at the time Van Gogh presented her with his ear.^{[153][159][160]}

Van Gogh had no recollection of the event, suggesting that he may have suffered an acute mental breakdown.^[161] The hospital diagnosis was «acute mania with generalised delirium»,^[162] and within a few days, the local police ordered that he be placed in hospital care.^[163][164] Gauguin immediately notified Theo, who, on 24 December, had proposed marriage to his old friend Andries Bonger’s sister Johanna.^[165] That evening, Theo rushed to the station to board a night train to Arles. 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.^[166]

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.»^[167] Gauguin fled Arles, never to see Van Gogh again. They continued to correspond, and in 1890, Gauguin proposed they form a studio in Antwerp. Meanwhile, other visitors to the hospital included Marie Ginoux and Roulin.^[168]

Despite a pessimistic diagnosis, Van Gogh recovered and returned to the Yellow House on 7 January 1889.^[169] He spent the following month between hospital and home, suffering from hallucinations and delusions of poisoning.^[170] In March, the police closed his house after a petition by 30 townspeople (including the Ginoux family) who described him as le fou roux «the redheaded madman»;^[163] Van Gogh returned to hospital. Paul Signac visited him twice in March;^[171] in April Van Gogh moved into rooms owned by Dr Rey after floods damaged paintings in his own home.^[172] Two months later, he left Arles and voluntarily entered an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. 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.»^[173]

Van Gogh gave his 1889 Portrait of Doctor Félix Rey to Dr Rey. The physician was not fond of the painting and used it to repair a chicken coop, then gave it away.^[174] In 2016, the portrait was housed at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and estimated to be worth over $50 million.^[175]

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  Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, 1889, private collection

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  The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles, 1889, Oskar Reinhart Collection «Am Römerholz», Winterthur, Switzerland

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  Ward in the Hospital in Arles, 1889, Oskar Reinhart Collection «Am Römerholz», Winterthur, Switzerland

Saint-Rémy (May 1889 – May 1890)

Van Gogh entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum on 8 May 1889, accompanied by his caregiver, Frédéric Salles, a Protestant clergyman. Saint-Paul was a former monastery in Saint-Rémy, located less than 30 kilometres (19 mi) from Arles, and it was run by a former naval doctor, Théophile Peyron. Van Gogh had two cells with barred windows, one of which he used as a studio.^[176] The clinic and its garden became the main subjects of his paintings. He made several studies of the hospital’s interiors, such as Vestibule of the Asylum and Saint-Rémy (September 1889), and its gardens, such as Lilacs (May 1889). 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 Above, Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background 1889, Cypresses 1889, Cornfield with Cypresses (1889), Country road in Provence by Night (1890). In September 1889, he produced two further versions of Bedroom in Arles and The Gardener.^[177]

Limited access to life outside the clinic resulted in a shortage of subject matter. Van Gogh instead worked on interpretations of other artist’s paintings, such as Millet’s The Sower and Noonday Rest, and variations on his own earlier work. Van Gogh was an admirer of the Realism of Jules Breton, Gustave Courbet and Millet,^[178] and he compared his copies to a musician’s interpreting Beethoven.^[179]

His Prisoners’ Round (after Gustave Doré) (1890) was painted after an engraving by Gustave Doré (1832–1883). Tralbaut suggests that the face of the prisoner in the centre of the painting looking towards the viewer is Van Gogh himself;^[180] Jan Hulsker discounts this.^[181]

Between February and April 1890, Van 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,^[182] and he later wrote to Theo that he had made a few small canvases «from memory … reminisces of the North».^[183] Among these was Two Peasant Women Digging in a Snow-Covered Field at Sunset. 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. He comments that this short period was the only time that Van Gogh’s illness had a significant effect on his work.^[184] Van Gogh asked his mother and his brother to send him drawings and rough work he had done in the early 1880s so he could work on new paintings from his old sketches.^[185] Belonging to this period is Sorrowing Old Man («At Eternity’s Gate»), a colour study Hulsker describes as «another unmistakable remembrance of times long past».^[98][186] His late paintings show an artist at the height of his abilities, according to the art critic Robert Hughes, «longing for concision and grace».^[123]

After the birth of his nephew, Van Gogh wrote, «I started right away to make a picture for him, to hang in their bedroom, branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky.»^[187]

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1890 Exhibitions and recognition

See also Vincent van Gogh’s display at Les XX, 1890

Albert Aurier praised his work in the Mercure de France in January 1890 and described him as «a genius».^[188] In February, Van Gogh painted five versions of L’Arlésienne (Madame Ginoux), based on a charcoal sketch Gauguin had produced when she sat for both artists in November 1888.^{[189][note 10]} Also in February, Van Gogh was invited by Les XX, a society of avant-garde painters in Brussels, to participate in their annual exhibition. At the opening dinner a Les XX member, Henry de Groux, insulted Van Gogh’s work. Toulouse-Lautrec demanded satisfaction, and Signac declared he would continue to fight for Van Gogh’s honour if Lautrec surrendered. De Groux apologised for the slight and left the group.

From 20 March to 27 April 1890, Van Gogh was included in the sixth exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in the Pavillon de la Ville de Paris on the Champs-Elysées. Van Gogh exhibited ten paintings. Eight of these can be identified as Cypresses (F 613 / JH 1746 ), Road menders (‘The tall plane trees’) (F 657 / JH 1860 ), Ravine (F 662 / JH 1804 ), Avenue of chestnut trees in blossom (F 517 / JH 1689 ), Mulberry tree (F 637 / JH 1796 ), Trees with ivy in the garden of the asylum (F 609 / JH 1693 ), Wheatfield at sunrise (F 737 / JH 1862 ). ‘Les Tournesols’ is either Sunflowers in a vase (F 454 / JH 1562 ) or Sunflowers in a vase (F 456 / JH 1561 ) Wheatfield after a storm (F 611 / JH 1723 ) and Olive grove (F 586 / JH 1854 ).^[190]

While Van Gogh’s exhibit was on display with the Artistes Indépendants in Paris, Claude Monet said that his work was the best in the show.^[191]

Auvers-sur-Oise (May–July 1890)

In May 1890, Van Gogh left the clinic in Saint-Rémy to move nearer to both Dr Paul Gachet in the Paris suburb of Auvers-sur-Oise and to Theo. Gachet was an amateur painter and had treated several other artists – Camille Pissarro had recommended him. Van Gogh’s first impression was that Gachet was «iller than I am, it seemed to me, or let’s say just as much.»^[192]

The painter Charles Daubigny moved to Auvers in 1861 and in turn drew other artists there, including Camille Corot and Honoré Daumier. In July 1890, Van Gogh completed two paintings of Daubigny’s Garden, one of which is likely his final work.^[193]

During his last weeks at Saint-Rémy, his thoughts returned to «memories of the North»,^[183] and several of the approximately 70 oils, painted during as many days in Auvers-sur-Oise, are reminiscent of northern scenes.^[194] In June 1890, he painted several portraits of his doctor, including Portrait of Dr Gachet, and his only etching. In each the emphasis is on Gachet’s melancholic disposition.^[195] There are other paintings which are probably unfinished, including Thatched Cottages by a Hill.^[193]

In July, Van Gogh wrote that he had become absorbed «in the immense plain against the hills, boundless as the sea, delicate yellow».^[196] He had first become captivated by the fields in May, when the wheat was young and green. In July, he described to Theo «vast fields of wheat under turbulent skies».^[197]

He wrote that they represented his «sadness and extreme loneliness» and that the «canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words, that is, how healthy and invigorating I find the countryside».^[198] Wheatfield with Crows, although not his last oil work, is from July 1890 and Hulsker discusses it as being associated with «melancholy and extreme loneliness».^[199] Hulsker identifies seven oil paintings from Auvers that follow the completion of Wheatfield with Crows.^[200]

Research published in 2020 by senior researchers at the museum Louis van Tilborgh and Teio Meedendorp, reviewing findings of Wouter van der Veen, the scientific director of the Institut Van Gogh, concluded that it was «highly plausible» that the exact location where Van Gogh’s final work Tree Roots was some 150 metres (490 ft) from the Auberge Ravoux inn where he was staying, where a stand of trees with a tangle of gnarled roots grew on a hillside. These trees with gnarled roots are shown in a postcard from 1900 to 1910. Mr Van der Veen believes Van Gogh may have been working on the painting just hours before his death.^[201][202]

Death

On 27 July 1890, aged 37, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a 7 mm Lefaucheux pinfire revolver.^[203][204] There were no witnesses and he died 30 hours after the incident.^[174] The shooting may have taken place in the wheat field in which he had been painting, or in a local barn.^[205] The bullet was deflected by a rib and passed through his chest without doing apparent damage to internal organs – probably stopped by his spine. He was able to walk back to the Auberge Ravoux, where he was attended to by two doctors, but without a surgeon present the bullet could not be removed. The doctors tended to him as well as they could, then left him alone in his room, smoking his pipe. The following morning, Theo rushed to his brother’s side, finding him in good spirits. But within hours Vincent’s health began to fail, suffering from an untreated infection resulting from the wound. He died in the early hours of 29 July. According to Theo, Vincent’s last words were: «The sadness will last forever».^{[206][207][208][209]}

Van Gogh was buried on 30 July, in the municipal cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise. The funeral was attended by Theo van Gogh, Andries Bonger, Charles Laval, Lucien Pissarro, Émile Bernard, Julien Tanguy and Paul Gachet, among twenty family members, friends and locals. Theo had been ill, and his health began to decline further after his brother’s death. Weak and unable to come to terms with Vincent’s absence, he died on 25 January 1891 at Den Dolder and was buried in Utrecht.^[210] In 1914, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger had Theo’s body exhumed and moved from Utrecht to be re-buried alongside Vincent’s at Auvers-sur-Oise.^[211]

There have been numerous debates as to the nature of Van Gogh’s illness and its effect on his work, and many retrospective diagnoses have been proposed. The consensus is that Van Gogh had an episodic condition with periods of normal functioning.^[212] Perry was the first to suggest bipolar disorder in 1947,^[213] and this has been supported by the psychiatrists Hemphill and Blumer.^[214][215] Biochemist Wilfred Arnold has countered that the symptoms are more consistent with acute intermittent porphyria, noting that the popular link between bipolar disorder and creativity might be spurious.^[212] Temporal lobe epilepsy with bouts of depression has also been suggested.^[215] Whatever the diagnosis, his condition was likely worsened by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia and alcohol.^[215]

The gun Van Gogh was reputed to have used was rediscovered in 1965 and was auctioned, on 19 June 2019, as «the most famous weapon in art history». The gun sold for €162,500 (£144,000; $182,000), almost three times more than expected.^{[216][217][218]}

Style and works

Artistic development

Van Gogh drew, and painted with watercolours while at school, but only a few examples survive and the authorship of some has been challenged.^[219] When he took up art as an adult, he began at an elementary level. In early 1882, his uncle, Cornelis Marinus, owner of a well-known gallery of contemporary art in Amsterdam, asked for drawings of The Hague. Van Gogh’s work did not live up to expectations. Marinus offered a second commission, specifying the subject matter in detail, but was again disappointed with the result. Van Gogh persevered; he experimented with lighting in his studio using variable shutters and different drawing materials. For more than a year he worked on single figures – highly elaborate studies in black and white,^{[note 11]} which at the time gained him only criticism. Later, they were recognised as early masterpieces.^[221]

In August 1882 Theo gave Vincent money to buy materials for working en plein air. Vincent wrote that he could now «go on painting with new vigour».^[222] From early 1883 he worked on multi-figure compositions. He had some of them photographed, but when his brother remarked that they lacked liveliness and freshness, he destroyed them and turned to oil painting. Van Gogh turned to well-known Hague School artists like Weissenbruch and Blommers, and he received technical advice from them as well as from painters like De Bock and Van der Weele, both of the Hague School’s second generation.^[223] He moved to Nuenen after a short period of time in Drenthe and began work on several large paintings but destroyed most of them. The Potato Eaters and its companion pieces are the only ones to have survived.^[223] Following a visit to the Rijksmuseum Van Gogh wrote of his admiration for the quick, economical brushwork of the Dutch Masters, especially Rembrandt and Frans Hals.^{[224][note 12]} He was aware many of his faults were due to lack of experience and technical expertise,^[223] so in November 1885 he travelled to Antwerp and later Paris to learn and develop his skills.^[225]

Theo criticised The Potato Eaters for its dark palette, which he thought unsuitable for a modern style.^[226] During Van Gogh’s stay in Paris between 1886 and 1887, he tried to master a new, lighter palette. His Portrait of Père Tanguy (1887) shows his success with the brighter palette and is evidence of an evolving personal style.^[227] Charles Blanc’s treatise on colour interested him greatly and led him to work with complementary colours. Van Gogh came to believe that the effect of colour went beyond the descriptive; he said that «colour expresses something in itself».^[228][229] According to Hughes, Van Gogh perceived colour as having a «psychological and moral weight», as exemplified in the garish reds and greens of The Night Café, a work he wanted to «express the terrible passions of humanity».^[230] Yellow meant the most to him, because it symbolised emotional truth. He used yellow as a symbol for sunlight, life, and God.^[231]

Van Gogh strove to be a painter of rural life and nature;^[232] during his first summer in Arles he used his new palette to paint landscapes and traditional rural life.^[233] His belief that a power existed behind the natural led him to try to capture a sense of that power, or the essence of nature in his art, sometimes through the use of symbols.^[234] His renditions of the sower, at first copied from Jean-François Millet, reflect Van Gogh’s religious beliefs: the sower as Christ sowing life beneath the hot sun.^[235] These were themes and motifs he returned to often to rework and develop.^[236] His paintings of flowers are filled with symbolism, but rather than use traditional Christian iconography he made up his own, where life is lived under the sun and work is an allegory of life.^[237] In Arles, having gained confidence after painting spring blossoms and learning to capture bright sunlight, he was ready to paint The Sower.^[228]

Van Gogh stayed within what he called the «guise of reality»^[238] and was critical of overly stylised works.^[239] He wrote afterwards that the abstraction of Starry Night had gone too far and that reality had «receded too far in the background».^[239] Hughes describes it as a moment of extreme visionary ecstasy: the stars are in a great whirl, reminiscent of Hokusai’s Great Wave, the movement in the heaven above is reflected by the movement of the cypress on the earth below, and the painter’s vision is «translated into a thick, emphatic plasma of paint».^[240]

Between 1885 and his death in 1890, Van Gogh appears to have been building an oeuvre,^[241] a collection that reflected his personal vision and could be commercially successful. He was influenced by Blanc’s definition of style, that a true painting required optimal use of colour, perspective and brushstrokes. Van Gogh applied the word «purposeful» to paintings he thought he had mastered, as opposed to those he thought of as studies.^[242] He painted many series of studies;^[238] most of which were still lifes, many executed as colour experiments or as gifts to friends.^[243] The work in Arles contributed considerably to his oeuvre: those he thought the most important from that time were The Sower, Night Cafe, Memory of the Garden in Etten and Starry Night. With their broad brushstrokes, inventive perspectives, colours, contours and designs, these paintings represent the style he sought.^[239]

Major series

Van Gogh’s stylistic developments are usually linked to the periods he spent living in different places across Europe. He was inclined to immerse himself in local cultures and lighting conditions, although he maintained a highly individual visual outlook throughout. His evolution as an artist was slow, and he was aware of his painterly limitations. He moved home often, perhaps to expose himself to new visual stimuli, and through exposure develop his technical skill.^[244] Art historian Melissa McQuillan believes the moves also reflect later stylistic changes, and that Van Gogh used the moves to avoid conflict, and as a coping mechanism for when the idealistic artist was faced with the realities of his then current situation.^[245]

Portraits

Van Gogh said portaiture was his greatest interest. «What I’m most passionate about, much much more than all the rest in my profession,» he wrote in 1890, «is the portrait, the modern portrait.»^[246] It is «the only thing in painting that moves me deeply and that gives me a sense of the infinite.»^[243][247] He wrote to his sister that he wished to paint portraits that would endure, and that he would use colour to capture their emotions and character rather than aiming for photographic realism.^[248] Those closest to Van Gogh are mostly absent from his portraits; he rarely painted Theo, Van Rappard or Bernard. The portraits of his mother were from photographs.^[249]

Van Gogh painted Arles’ postmaster Joseph Roulin and his family repeatedly. In five versions of La Berceuse (The Lullaby), Van Gogh painted Augustine Roulin quietly holding a rope that rocks the unseen cradle of her infant daughter. Van Gogh had planned for it to be the central image of a triptych, flanked by paintings of sunflowers. ^[250]

• 

  La Berceuse (Augustine Roulin), 1889, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Self-portraits

Van Gogh created more than 43 self-portraits between 1885 and 1889.^{[251][note 13]} They were usually completed in series, such as those painted in Paris in mid-1887, and continued until shortly before his death.^[252] Generally the portraits were studies, created during periods when he was reluctant to mix with others, or when he lacked models, and so painted himself.^[243][253]

The self-portraits reflect a high degree of self-scrutiny.^[254] Often they were intended to mark important periods in his life; for example, the mid-1887 Paris series were painted at the point where he became aware of Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Signac.^[255] In Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, heavy strains of paint spread outwards across the canvas. It is one of his most renowned self-portraits of that period, «with its highly organized rhythmic brushstrokes, and the novel halo derived from the Neo-impressionist repertoire was what Van Gogh himself called a ‘purposeful’ canvas».^[256]

They contain a wide array of physiognomical representations.^[251] Van Gogh’s mental and physical condition is usually apparent; he may appear unkempt, unshaven or with a neglected beard, with deeply sunken eyes, a weak jaw, or having lost teeth. Some show him with full lips, a long face or prominent skull, or sharpened, alert features. His hair is sometimes depicted in a vibrant reddish hue and at other times ash colored.^[251]

Van Gogh’s self-portraits vary stylistically. In those painted after December 1888, the strong contrast of vivid colors highlight the haggard pallor of his skin.^[253] Some depict the artist with a beard, others without. He can be seen with bandages in portraits executed just after he mutilated his ear. In only a few does he depict himself as a painter.^[251] Those painted in Saint-Rémy show the head from the right, the side opposite his damaged ear, as he painted himself reflected in his mirror.^[257][258]

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  Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, Winter 1887–88. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

• 

  Self-Portrait, 1889. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. His Saint-Rémy self-portraits show his side with the unmutilated ear, as he saw himself in the mirror

• 

  Self-Portrait Without Beard, c. September 1889. This painting may have been Van Gogh’s last self-portrait. He gave it to his mother as a birthday gift.^[259][260]

Flowers

Van Gogh painted several landscapes with flowers, including roses, lilacs, irises, and sunflowers. Some reflect his interests in the language of colour, and also in Japanese ukiyo-e.^[261] There are two series of dying sunflowers. The first was painted in Paris in 1887 and shows flowers lying on the ground. The second set was completed a year later in Arles and is of bouquets in a vase positioned in early morning light.^[262] Both are built from thickly layered paintwork, which, according to the London National Gallery, evoke the «texture of the seed-heads».^[263]

In these series, Van Gogh was not preoccupied by his usual interest in filling his paintings with subjectivity and emotion; rather, the two series are intended to display his technical skill and working methods to Gauguin,^[145] who was about to visit. The 1888 paintings were created during a rare period of optimism for the artist. Vincent wrote to Theo in August 1888: «I’m painting with the gusto of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won’t surprise you when it’s a question of painting large sunflowers … If I carry out this plan there’ll be a dozen or so panels. The whole thing will therefore be a symphony in blue and yellow. I work on it all these mornings, from sunrise. Because the flowers wilt quickly and it’s a matter of doing the whole thing in one go.»^[264]

The sunflowers were painted to decorate the walls in anticipation of Gauguin’s visit, and Van Gogh placed individual works around the Yellow House’s guest room in Arles. Gauguin was deeply impressed and later acquired two of the Paris versions.^[145] After Gauguin’s departure, Van Gogh imagined the two major versions of the sunflowers as wings of the Berceuse Triptych, and included them in his Les XX in Brussels exhibit. Today the major pieces of the series are among his best known, celebrated for the sickly connotations of the colour yellow and its tie-in with the Yellow House, the expressionism of the brush strokes, and their contrast against often dark backgrounds.^[265]

• 

• 

• 

  Still Life: Vase with Irises Against a Yellow Background, May 1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam^[266]

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  Still Life: Pink Roses in a Vase, May 1890, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York^[266]

Cypresses and olives

Fifteen canvases depict cypresses, a tree he became fascinated with in Arles.^[267] He brought life to the trees, which were traditionally seen as emblematic of death.^[234] The series of cypresses he began in Arles featured the trees in the distance, as windbreaks in fields; when he was at Saint-Rémy he brought them to the foreground.^[268] Vincent wrote to Theo in May 1889: «Cypresses still preoccupy me, I should like to do something with them like my canvases of sunflowers»; he went on to say, «They are beautiful in line and proportion like an Egyptian obelisk.»^[269]

In mid-1889, and at his sister Wil’s request, Van Gogh painted several smaller versions of Wheat Field with Cypresses.^[270] The works are characterised by swirls and densely painted impasto, and include The Starry Night, in which cypresses dominate the foreground.^[267] In addition to this, other notable works on cypresses include Cypresses (1889), Cypresses with Two Figures (1889–90), and Road with Cypress and Star (1890).^[271]

During the last six or seven months of the year 1889, he had also created at least fifteen paintings of olive trees, a subject which he considered as demanding and compelling.^[272] Among these works are Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background (1889), about which in a letter to his brother Van Gogh wrote, «At last I have a landscape with olives».^[271] While in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh spent time outside the asylum, where he painted trees in the olive groves. In these works, natural life is rendered as gnarled and arthritic as if a personification of the natural world, which are, according to Hughes, filled with «a continuous field of energy of which nature is a manifestation».^[234]

• 

  Cypresses in Starry Night, a reed pen drawing executed by Van Gogh after the painting in 1889.

• 

  Cypresses and Two Women, February 1890. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

• 

  Cypresses, 1889. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Orchards

The Flowering Orchards (also the Orchards in Blossom) are among the first groups of work completed after Van Gogh’s arrival in Arles in February 1888. The 14 paintings are optimistic, joyous and visually expressive of the burgeoning spring. They are delicately sensitive and unpopulated. He painted swiftly, and although he brought to this series a version of Impressionism, a strong sense of personal style began to emerge during this period. The transience of the blossoming trees, and the passing of the season, seemed to align with his sense of impermanence and belief in a new beginning in Arles. During the blossoming of the trees that spring, he found «a world of motifs that could not have been more Japanese».^[273] Vincent wrote to Theo on 21 April 1888 that he had 10 orchards and «one big [painting] of a cherry tree, which I’ve spoiled».^[274]

During this period Van Gogh mastered the use of light by subjugating shadows and painting the trees as if they are the source of light – almost in a sacred manner.^[273] Early the following year he painted another smaller group of orchards, including View of Arles, Flowering Orchards.^[275] Van Gogh was enthralled by the landscape and vegetation of the south of France, and often visited the farm gardens near Arles. In the vivid light of the Mediterranean climate his palette significantly brightened.^[276]

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  Pink Peach Tree in Blossom (Reminiscence of Mauve), watercolour, March 1888. Kröller-Müller Museum

• 

  The Pink Orchard also Orchard with Blossoming Apricot Trees, March 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

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  Orchard in Blossom, Bordered by Cypresses, April 1888. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

• 

Wheat fields

Van Gogh made several painting excursions during visits to the landscape around Arles. He made paintings of harvests, wheat fields and other rural landmarks of the area, including The Old Mill (1888); a good example of a picturesque structure bordering the wheat fields beyond.^[125] At various points, Van Gogh painted the view from his window – at The Hague, Antwerp, and Paris. These works culminated in The Wheat Field series, which depicted the view from his cells in the asylum at Saint-Rémy.^[277]

Many of the late paintings are sombre but essentially optimistic and, right up to the time of Van Gogh’s death, reflect his desire to return to lucid mental health. Yet some of his final works reflect his deepening concerns.^[278][279] Writing in July 1890, from Auvers, Van Gogh said that he had become absorbed «in the immense plain against the hills, boundless as the sea, delicate yellow».^[196]

Van Gogh was captivated by the fields in May when the wheat was young and green. His Wheatfields at Auvers with White House shows a more subdued palette of yellows and blues, which creates a sense of idyllic harmony.^[280]

About 10 July 1890, Van Gogh wrote to Theo of «vast fields of wheat under troubled skies».^[281] Wheatfield with Crows shows the artist’s state of mind in his final days; Hulsker describes the work as a «doom-filled painting with threatening skies and ill-omened crows».^[199] Its dark palette and heavy brushstrokes convey a sense of menace.^[282]

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  Enclosed Wheat Field with Rising Sun, May 1889, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

• 

  Wheat Fields, early June 1889. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

Reputation and legacy

After Van Gogh’s first exhibitions in the late 1880s, his reputation grew steadily among artists, art critics, dealers and collectors.^[283] In 1887, André Antoine hung Van Gogh’s alongside works of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, at the Théâtre Libre in Paris; some were acquired by Julien Tanguy.^[284] In 1889, his work was described in the journal Le Moderniste Illustré by Albert Aurier as characterised by «fire, intensity, sunshine».^[285] Ten paintings were shown at the Société des Artistes Indépendants, in Brussels in January 1890.^[286] French president Marie François Sadi Carnot was said to have been impressed by Van Gogh’s work.^[287]

After Van Gogh’s death, memorial exhibitions were held in Brussels, Paris, The Hague and Antwerp. His work was shown in several high-profile exhibitions, including six works at Les XX; in 1891 there was a retrospective exhibition in Brussels.^[286] In 1892, Octave Mirbeau wrote that Van Gogh’s suicide was an «infinitely sadder loss for art … even though the populace has not crowded to a magnificent funeral, and poor Vincent van Gogh, whose demise means the extinction of a beautiful flame of genius, has gone to his death as obscure and neglected as he lived.»^[284]

Theo died in January 1891, removing Vincent’s most vocal and well-connected champion.^[288] Theo’s widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger was a Dutchwoman in her twenties who had not known either her husband or her brother-in-law very long and who suddenly had to take care of several hundreds of paintings, letters and drawings, as well as her infant son, Vincent Willem van Gogh.^{[283][note 14]} Gauguin was not inclined to offer assistance in promoting Van Gogh’s reputation, and Johanna’s brother Andries Bonger also seemed lukewarm about his work.^[283] Aurier, one of Van Gogh’s earliest supporters among the critics, died of typhoid fever in 1892 at the age of 27.^[290]

In 1892, Émile Bernard organised a small solo show of Van Gogh’s paintings in Paris, and Julien Tanguy exhibited his Van Gogh paintings with several consigned from Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. In April 1894, the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris agreed to take 10 paintings on consignment from Van Gogh’s estate.^[290] In 1896, the Fauvist painter Henri Matisse, then an unknown art student, visited John Russell on Belle Île off Brittany.^[291][292] Russell had been a close friend of Van Gogh; he introduced Matisse to the Dutchman’s work, and gave him a Van Gogh drawing. Influenced by Van Gogh, Matisse abandoned his earth-coloured palette for bright colours.^[292][293]

In Paris in 1901, a large Van Gogh retrospective was held at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, which excited André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, and contributed to the emergence of Fauvism.^[290] Important group exhibitions took place with the Sonderbund artists in Cologne in 1912, the Armory Show, New York in 1913, and Berlin in 1914.^[294] Henk Bremmer was instrumental in teaching and talking about Van Gogh,^[295] and introduced Helene Kröller-Müller to Van Gogh’s art; she became an avid collector of his work.^[296] The early figures in German Expressionism such as Emil Nolde acknowledged a debt to Van Gogh’s work.^[297] Bremmer assisted Jacob Baart de la Faille, whose catalogue raisonné L’Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh appeared in 1928.^{[298][note 15]}
Van Gogh’s fame reached its first peak in Austria and Germany before World War I,^[301] helped by the publication of his letters in three volumes in 1914.^[302] His letters are expressive and literate, and have been described as among the foremost 19th-century writings of their kind.^[8] These began a compelling mythology of Van Gogh as an intense and dedicated painter who suffered for his art and died young.^[303] In 1934, the novelist Irving Stone wrote a biographical novel of Van Gogh’s life titled Lust for Life, based on Van Gogh’s letters to Theo.^[304] This novel and the 1956 film further enhanced his fame, especially in the United States where Stone surmised only a few hundred people had heard of Van Gogh prior to his surprise best-selling book.^[305][306]

In 1957, Francis Bacon based a series of paintings on reproductions of Van Gogh’s The Painter on the Road to Tarascon, the original of which was destroyed during the Second World War. Bacon was inspired by an image he described as «haunting», and regarded Van Gogh as an alienated outsider, a position which resonated with him. Bacon identified with Van Gogh’s theories of art and quoted lines written to Theo: «[R]eal painters do not paint things as they are … [T]hey paint them as they themselves feel them to be.»^[307]

Van Gogh’s works are among the world’s most expensive paintings. Those sold for over US$100 million (today’s equivalent) include Portrait of Dr Gachet,^[308] Portrait of Joseph Roulin and Irises. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired a copy of Wheat Field with Cypresses in 1993 for US$57 million by using funds donated by publisher, diplomat and philanthropist Walter Annenberg.^[309] In 2015, L’Allée des Alyscamps sold for US$66.3 million at Sotheby’s, New York, exceeding its reserve of US$40 million.^[310]

Minor planet 4457 van Gogh is named in his honour.^[311]

In October 2022, two activists protesting the effects of the fossil fuel industry on climate change threw a can of tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the National Gallery, London, and then glued their hands to the gallery wall. As the painting was covered by glass it was not damaged. ^[312][313]

Van Gogh Museum

Van Gogh’s nephew and namesake, Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890–1978),^[314] inherited the estate after his mother’s death in 1925. During the early 1950s he arranged for the publication of a complete edition of the letters presented in four volumes and several languages. He then began negotiations with the Dutch government to subsidise a foundation to purchase and house the entire collection.^[315] Theo’s son participated in planning the project in the hope that the works would be exhibited under the best possible conditions. The project began in 1963; architect Gerrit Rietveld was commissioned to design it, and after his death in 1964 Kisho Kurokawa took charge.^[316] Work progressed throughout the 1960s, with 1972 as the target for its grand opening.^[314]

The Van Gogh Museum opened in the Museumplein in Amsterdam in 1973.^[317] It became the second most popular museum in the Netherlands, after the Rijksmuseum, regularly receiving more than 1.5 million visitors a year. In 2015 it had a record 1.9 million.^[318] Eighty-five percent of the visitors come from other countries.^[319]

Nazi-looted art

During the Nazi period (1933–1945) a great number of artworks by Van Gogh changed hands, many of them looted from Jewish collectors who were forced into exile or murdered. Some of these works have disappeared into private collections. Others have since resurfaced in museums, or at auction, or have been reclaimed, often in high-profile lawsuits, by their former owners.^[320] The German Lost Art Foundation still lists dozens of missing van Goghs^[321] and the American Alliance of Museums lists 73 van Goghs on the Nazi Era Provenance Internet Portal.^[322]

References

Footnotes

References

Sources

External links

• The Vincent van Gogh Gallery, the complete works and letters of Van Gogh
• Vincent van Gogh The letters, the complete letters of Van Gogh (translated into English and annotated)
• Vincent Van Gogh, teaching resource on Van Gogh
• Works by Vincent van Gogh at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Vincent van Gogh at Internet Archive
• Works by Vincent van Gogh at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Vincent van Gogh
Self-Portrait, 1887, Art Institute of Chicago
Born	Vincent Willem van Gogh 30 March 1853 Zundert, Netherlands
Died	29 July 1890 (aged 37) Auvers-sur-Oise, France
Cause of death	Gunshot wound
Resting place	Cimetière d’Auvers-sur-Oise, France 49°04′31″N 2°10′44″E / 49.07531°N 2.17894°E
Education	Royal Academy of Fine Arts Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
Known for	Painting, drawing still life, portraits and landscapes
Notable work	The Potato Eaters (1885) Sunflowers (1887) Bedroom in Arles (1888) The Starry Night (1889) Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1890) Wheatfield with Crows (1890) The Siesta (1890) Church at Auvers (1890) Sorrowing Old Man (1890)
Movement	Post-Impressionism
Family	Theodorus van Gogh (brother)

Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsɛnt ˈʋɪləm vɑŋ ˈɣɔx] (listen);^{[note 1]} 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Not commercially successful, he struggled with severe depression and poverty, eventually leading to his suicide at age thirty-seven.

Born into an upper-middle class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet, and thoughtful. As a young man, he worked as an art dealer, often traveling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881, having moved back home with his parents. His younger brother Theo supported him financially; the two kept a long correspondence by letter. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers, contain few signs of the vivid colour that distinguished his later work. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed he created a new approach to still lifes and local landscapes. His paintings grew brighter as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the South of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include series of olive trees, wheat fields and sunflowers.

Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he 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 severed part of his own left ear. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. 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 27 July 1890, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver, dying from his injuries two days later.

Van Gogh was commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime, and he was considered a madman and a failure. As he only became famous after his suicide, he came to be seen as a misunderstood genius in the public imagination.^[6] His reputation grew in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists. He attained widespread critical and commercial success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh’s works are among the world’s most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world’s largest collection of his paintings and drawings.

Letters

The most comprehensive primary source on Van Gogh is the correspondence between him and 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 1872 until 1890.^[7] Theo van Gogh was an art dealer and provided his brother with financial and emotional support as well as access to influential people on the contemporary art scene.^[8]

Theo kept all of Vincent’s letters to him;^[10] but Vincent kept only 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 1906 and 1913; the majority were published in 1914.^[11][12] Vincent’s letters are eloquent and expressive and have been described as having a «diary-like intimacy»,^[8] and read in parts like autobiography.^[8] Translator Arnold Pomerans wrote that their publication adds a «fresh dimension to the understanding of Van Gogh’s artistic achievement, an understanding granted to us by virtually no other painter».^[13]

There are more than 600 letters from Vincent to Theo and around 40 from Theo to Vincent. There are 22 to his sister Wil, 58 to the painter Anthon van Rappard, 22 to Émile Bernard as well as individual letters to Paul Signac, Paul Gauguin, and the critic Albert Aurier. Some are illustrated with sketches.^[8] Many are undated, but art historians have been able to place most in chronological order. Problems in transcription and dating remain, mainly with those posted from Arles. While there, Vincent wrote around 200 letters in Dutch, French, and English.^[14] There is a gap in the record when he lived in Paris as the brothers lived together and had no need to correspond.^[15]

The highly paid contemporary artist Jules Breton was frequently mentioned in Vincent’s letters. In 1875 letters to Theo, Vincent mentions he saw Breton, discusses the Breton paintings he saw at a Salon, and discusses sending one of Breton’s books but only on the condition that it be returned.^[16][17] In a March 1884 letter to Rappard he discusses one of Breton’s poems that had inspired one of his own paintings.^[18] In 1885 he describes Breton’s famous work The Song of the Lark as being «fine».^[19] In March 1880, roughly midway between these letters, Van Gogh set out on an 80-kilometre trip on foot to meet with Breton in the village of Courrières; however, he was apparently intimidated by Breton’s success and/or the high wall around his estate. He turned around and returned without making his presence known.^[20][21][22] It appears Breton was unaware of Van Gogh or his attempted visit. There are no known letters between the two artists and Van Gogh is not one of the contemporary artists discussed by Breton in his 1891 autobiography Life of an Artist.

Life

Early years

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, in the predominantly Catholic province of North Brabant in the Netherlands.^[23] He was the oldest surviving child of Theodorus van Gogh (1822–1885), a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and his wife, Anna Cornelia Carbentus (1819–1907). Van Gogh was given the name of his grandfather and of a brother stillborn exactly a year before his birth.^{[note 2]} Vincent was a common name in the Van Gogh family. The name had been borne by his grandfather, the prominent art dealer Vincent (1789–1874), and a theology graduate at the University of Leiden in 1811. This Vincent had six sons, three of whom became art dealers, and may have been named after his own great-uncle, a sculptor (1729–1802).^[25]

Van Gogh’s mother came from a prosperous family in The Hague,^[26] and his father was the youngest son of a minister.^[27] The two met when Anna’s younger sister, Cornelia, married Theodorus’s older brother Vincent (Cent). Van Gogh’s parents married in May 1851, and moved to Zundert.^[28] His brother Theo was born on 1 May 1857. There was another brother, Cor, and three sisters: Elisabeth, Anna, and Willemina (known as «Wil»). In later life, Van Gogh remained in touch only with Willemina and Theo.^[29] Van Gogh’s mother was a rigid and religious woman who emphasized the importance of family to the point of for those around her.^[30] Theodorus’s salary as a minister was modest, but the Church also supplied the family with a house, a maid, two cooks, a gardener, a carriage and horse; his mother Anna instilled in the children a duty to uphold the family’s high social position.^[31]

Van Gogh was a serious and thoughtful child.^[32] He was taught at home by his mother and a governess, and in 1860, was sent to the village school. In 1864, he was placed in a boarding school at Zevenbergen,^[33] where he felt abandoned, and he campaigned to come home. Instead, in 1866, his parents sent him to the middle school in Tilburg, where he was also deeply unhappy.^[34] His interest in art began at a young age. 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.^[36] Constant Cornelis Huijsmans, who had been a successful artist in Paris, taught the students at Tilburg. 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.^[37] In March 1868, he abruptly returned home. He later wrote that his youth was «austere and cold, and sterile».^[38]

In July 1869, Van Gogh’s uncle Cent obtained a position for him at the art dealers Goupil & Cie in The Hague.^[39] After completing his training in 1873, he was transferred to Goupil’s London branch on Southampton Street, and took lodgings at 87 Hackford Road, Stockwell.^[40] This was a happy time for Van Gogh; he was successful at work and, at 20, was earning more than his father. Theo’s wife, Jo Van Gogh-Bonger, later remarked that this was the best year of Vincent’s life. He became infatuated with his landlady’s daughter, Eugénie Loyer, but she rejected him after confessing his feelings; she was secretly engaged to a former lodger. He grew more isolated and religiously fervent. His father and uncle arranged a transfer to Paris in 1875, where he became resentful of issues such as the degree to which the art dealers commodified art, and he was dismissed a year later.^[41]

In April 1876, he 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.^[42][43] The arrangement was not successful; he left to become a Methodist minister’s assistant.^[44] His parents had meanwhile moved to Etten;^[45] in 1876 he returned home at Christmas for six months and took work at a bookshop in Dordrecht. He was unhappy in the position and spent his time doodling or translating passages from the Bible into English, French, and German.^[46] He immersed himself in Christianity, and became increasingly pious and monastic.^[47] According to his flatmate of the time, Paulus van Görlitz, Van Gogh ate frugally, avoiding meat.^[48]

To support his religious conviction and his desire to become a pastor, in 1877, the family sent him to live with his uncle Johannes Stricker, a respected theologian, in Amsterdam.^[49] Van Gogh prepared for the University of Amsterdam theology entrance examination;^[50] he failed the exam and left his uncle’s house in July 1878. He undertook, but also failed, a three-month course at a Protestant missionary school in Laken, near Brussels.^[51]

In January 1879, he 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.^[53] His humble living conditions did not endear him to church authorities, who dismissed him for «undermining the dignity of the priesthood». 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 1880,^{[note 3]} 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.^{[56][57][note 4]}

Van Gogh returned to Cuesmes in August 1880, where he lodged with a miner until October.^[59] He became interested in the people and scenes around him, and he recorded them in drawings after Theo’s suggestion that he take up art in earnest. He traveled to Brussels later in the year, to follow Theo’s recommendation that he study with the Dutch artist Willem Roelofs, who persuaded him – in spite of his dislike of formal schools of art – to attend the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. He registered at the Académie in November 1880, where he studied anatomy and the standard rules of modelling and perspective.^[60]

Etten, Drenthe and The Hague

Van Gogh returned to Etten in April 1881 for an extended stay with his parents.^[61] He continued to draw, often using his neighbours as subjects. In August 1881, his recently widowed cousin, Cornelia «Kee» Vos-Stricker, daughter of his mother’s older sister Willemina and Johannes Stricker, arrived 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.^[62] She refused with the words «No, nay, never» («nooit, neen, nimmer«).^[63] After Kee returned to Amsterdam, Van Gogh went to The Hague to try to sell paintings and to meet with his second cousin, Anton Mauve. Mauve was the successful artist Van Gogh longed to be.^[64] Mauve invited him to return in a few months and suggested he spend the intervening time working in charcoal and pastels; Van Gogh returned to Etten and followed this advice.^[64]

Late in November 1881, Van Gogh wrote a letter to Johannes Stricker, one which he described to Theo as an attack.^[65] Within days he left for Amsterdam.^[66] Kee would not meet him, and her parents wrote that his «persistence is disgusting«.^[67] In despair, he held his left hand in the flame of a lamp, with the words: «Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the flame.»^[67][68] He did not recall the event well, but later assumed that his uncle had blown out the flame. 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.^[69]

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.^[70] He quarrelled with his father, refusing to attend church, and left for The Hague.^{[note 5][71]} In January 1882, Mauve introduced him to painting in oil and lent him money to set up a studio.^[72][73] Within a month Van Gogh and Mauve fell out, possibly over the viability of drawing from plaster casts.^[74] Van Gogh could afford to hire only people from the street as models, a practice of which Mauve seems to have disapproved.^[75] In June Van Gogh suffered a bout of gonorrhoea and spent three weeks in hospital.^[76] Soon after, he first painted in oils,^[77] bought with money borrowed from Theo. 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.^[78]

By March 1882, Mauve appeared to have gone cold towards Van Gogh, and he stopped replying to his letters.^[79] He had learned of Van Gogh’s new domestic arrangement with an alcoholic prostitute, Clasina Maria «Sien» Hoornik (1850–1904), and her young daughter.^[80] Van Gogh had met Sien towards the end of January 1882, when she had a five-year-old daughter and was pregnant. She had previously borne two children who died, but Van Gogh was unaware of this.^[81] On 2 July, she gave birth to a baby boy, Willem.^[82] When Van Gogh’s father discovered the details of their relationship, he put pressure on his son to abandon Sien and her two children. Vincent at first defied him,^[83] and considered moving the family out of the city, but in late 1883, he left Sien and the children.^[84]

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.^[85] Willem remembered visiting Rotterdam when he was about 12, when an uncle tried to persuade Sien to marry to legitimise the child.^[86] He believed Van Gogh was his father, but the timing of his birth makes this unlikely.^[87] Sien drowned herself in the River Scheldt in 1904.^[88]

In September 1883, Van Gogh moved to Drenthe in the northern Netherlands. In December driven by loneliness, he went to live with his parents, then in Nuenen, North Brabant.^[88]

Emerging artist

Nuenen and Antwerp (1883–1886)

In Nuenen, Van Gogh focused on painting and drawing. Working outside and very quickly, he completed sketches and paintings of weavers and their cottages. Van Gogh also completed The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen, which was stolen from the Singer Laren in March 2020.^[89][90] From August 1884, Margot Begemann, a neighbour’s daughter ten years his senior, joined him on his forays; she fell in love and he reciprocated, though less enthusiastically. They wanted to marry, but neither side of their families were in favour. Margot was distraught and took an overdose of strychnine, but survived after Van Gogh rushed her to a nearby hospital.^[82] On 26 March 1885, his father died of a heart attack.^[91]

Van Gogh painted several groups of still lifes in 1885.^[92] During his two-year stay in Nuenen, he completed numerous drawings and watercolours and nearly 200 oil paintings. His palette consisted mainly of sombre earth tones, particularly dark brown, and showed no sign of the vivid colours that distinguished his later work.^[93]

There was interest from a dealer in Paris early in 1885.^[94] Theo asked Vincent if he had paintings ready to exhibit.^[95] In May, Van Gogh responded with his first major work, The Potato Eaters, and a series of «peasant character studies» which were the culmination of several years of work.^[96] When he complained that Theo was not making enough effort to sell his paintings in Paris, his brother responded that they were too dark and not in keeping with the bright style of Impressionism.^[93] In August his work was publicly exhibited for the first time, in the shop windows of the dealer Leurs in The Hague. One of his young peasant sitters became pregnant in September 1885; Van Gogh was accused of forcing himself upon her, and the village priest forbade parishioners to model for him.^[97]

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  Worn Out, pencil on watercolour paper, 1882. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam^[98]

• 

He moved to Antwerp that November and rented a room above a paint dealer’s shop in the rue des Images (Lange Beeldekensstraat).^[99] He lived in poverty and ate poorly, preferring to spend the money Theo sent on painting materials and models. Bread, coffee and tobacco became his staple diet. In February 1886, he wrote to Theo that he could only remember eating six hot meals since the previous May. His teeth became loose and painful.^[100] In Antwerp he applied himself to the study of colour theory and spent time in museums—particularly studying the work of Peter Paul Rubens—and broadened his palette to include carmine, cobalt blue and emerald green. Van Gogh bought Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts in the docklands, later incorporating elements of their style into the background of some of his paintings.^[101] He was drinking heavily again,^[102] and was hospitalised between February and March 1886,^[103] when he was possibly also treated for syphilis.^{[104][note 6]}

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 January 1886, matriculated in painting and drawing. He became ill and run down by overwork, poor diet and excessive smoking.^[107] He started to attend drawing classes after plaster models at the Antwerp Academy on 18 January 1886. He quickly got into trouble with Charles Verlat, the 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. Van Gogh finally started to attend the drawing classes after antique plaster models given by Eugène Siberdt. 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!’ According to some accounts, this was the last time Van Gogh attended classes at the academy and he left later for Paris.^[108] On 31 March 1886, which was about a month after the confrontation with Siberdt, the teachers of the academy decided that 17 students, including Van Gogh, had to repeat a year. The story that Van Gogh was expelled from the academy by Siberdt is therefore unfounded.^[109]

Paris (1886–1888)

Van Gogh moved to Paris in March 1886 where he shared Theo’s rue Laval apartment in Montmartre and studied at Fernand Cormon’s studio. In June the brothers took a larger flat at 54 rue Lepic.^[111] In Paris, Vincent painted portraits of friends and acquaintances, still life paintings, views of Le Moulin de la Galette, scenes in Montmartre, Asnières and along the Seine. In 1885 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 Japonaiserie, tracing a figure from a reproduction on the cover of the magazine Paris Illustre, The Courtesan or Oiran (1887), after Keisai Eisen, which he then graphically enlarged in a painting.^[112]

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 (1888).^[113][114] Two years later, Vincent and Theo paid for the publication of a book on Monticelli paintings, and Vincent bought some of Monticelli’s works to add to his collection.^[115]

Van Gogh learned about Fernand Cormon’s atelier from Theo.^[116] He worked at the studio in April and May 1886,^[117] where he frequented the circle of the Australian artist John Russell, who painted his portrait in 1886.^[118] Van Gogh also met fellow students Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – who painted a portrait of him in pastel. They met at Julien «Père» Tanguy’s paint shop,^[117] (which was, at that time, the only place where Paul Cézanne’s paintings were displayed). In 1886, two 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.^[119]

Conflicts arose between the brothers. At the end of 1886 Theo found living with Vincent to be «almost unbearable».^[117] By early 1887, they were again at peace, and Vincent had moved to Asnières, a northwestern suburb of Paris, where he got to know Signac. 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.^[95][117]

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  Courtesan (after Eisen), 1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

• 

While in Asnières Van Gogh painted parks, restaurants and the Seine, including Bridges across the Seine at Asnières. In November 1887, Theo and Vincent befriended Paul Gauguin who had just arrived in Paris.^[120] Towards the end of the year, Vincent arranged an exhibition alongside Bernard, Anquetin, and probably Toulouse-Lautrec, at the Grand-Bouillon Restaurant du Chalet, 43 avenue de Clichy, Montmartre. In a contemporary account, Bernard wrote that the exhibition was ahead of anything else in Paris.^[121] There, Bernard and Anquetin sold their first paintings, and Van Gogh exchanged work with Gauguin. 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 Lucien, Signac and Seurat. In February 1888, feeling worn out from life in Paris, Van Gogh left, having painted more than 200 paintings during his two years there. Hours before his departure, accompanied by Theo, he paid his first and only visit to Seurat in his studio.^[122]

Artistic breakthrough

Arles (1888–89)

Ill from drink and suffering from smoker’s cough, in February 1888 Van Gogh sought refuge in Arles.^[14] He seems to have moved with thoughts of founding an art colony. The Danish artist Christian Mourier-Petersen became his companion for two months, and, at first, Arles appeared exotic. In a letter, he described it as a foreign country: «The Zouaves, the brothels, the adorable little Arlésienne going to her First Communion, the priest in his surplice, who looks like a dangerous rhinoceros, the people drinking absinthe, all seem to me creatures from another world.»^[123]

The time in Arles became one of Van Gogh’s more prolific periods: he completed 200 paintings and more than 100 drawings and watercolours.^[124] He was enchanted by the local countryside and light; his works from this period are rich in yellow, ultramarine and mauve. They include harvests, wheat fields and general rural landmarks from the area, including The Old Mill (1888), one of seven canvases sent to Pont-Aven on 4 October 1888 in an exchange of works with Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard, Charles Laval and others.^[125]
The portrayals of Arles are informed by his Dutch upbringing; the patchworks of fields and avenues are flat and lacking perspective, but excel in their use of colour.^[126]

In March 1888 he painted landscapes using a gridded «perspective frame»; three of the works were shown at the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. In April, he was visited by the American artist Dodge MacKnight, who was living nearby at Fontvieille.^[127][128] On 1 May 1888, for 15 francs per month, he signed a lease for the eastern wing of the Yellow House at 2 place Lamartine. The rooms were unfurnished and had been uninhabited for months.^[129]

On 7 May, Van Gogh moved from the Hôtel Carrel to the Café de la Gare,^[130] having befriended the proprietors, Joseph and Marie Ginoux. The Yellow House had to be furnished before he could fully move in, but he was able to use it as a studio.^[131] He wanted a gallery to display his work and started a series of paintings that eventually included Van Gogh’s Chair (1888), Bedroom in Arles (1888), The Night Café (1888), Café Terrace at Night (September 1888), Starry Night Over the Rhone (1888), and Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers (1888), all intended for the decoration for the Yellow House.^[132]

Van Gogh wrote that with The Night Café he tried «to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime».^[133] When he visited Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in June, he gave lessons to a Zouave second lieutenant – Paul-Eugène Milliet^[134] – and painted boats on the sea and the village.^[135] MacKnight introduced Van Gogh to Eugène Boch, a Belgian painter who sometimes stayed in Fontvieille, and the two exchanged visits in July.^[134]

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  The Sower with Setting Sun, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

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  Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries, June 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

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Gauguin’s visit (1888)

When Gauguin agreed to visit Arles in 1888, Van Gogh hoped for friendship and to realize his idea of an artists’ collective. Van Gogh prepared for Gauguin’s arrival by painting four versions of Sunflowers in one week.^[136] «In the hope of living in a studio of our own with Gauguin,» he wrote in a letter to Theo, «I’d like to do a decoration for the studio. Nothing but large Sunflowers.»^[137]

When Boch visited again, Van Gogh painted a portrait of him, as well as the study The Poet Against a Starry Sky.^{[138][note 7]}

In preparation for Gauguin’s visit, Van Gogh bought two beds on advice from the station’s postal supervisor Joseph Roulin, whose portrait he painted. On 17 September, he spent his first night in the still sparsely furnished Yellow House.^[140] When Gauguin consented to work and live in Arles with him, Van Gogh started to work on the Décoration for the Yellow House, probably the most ambitious effort he ever undertook.^[141] He completed two chair paintings: Van Gogh’s Chair and Gauguin’s Chair.^[142]

After much pleading from Van Gogh, Gauguin arrived in Arles on 23 October and, in November, the two painted together. Gauguin depicted Van Gogh in his The Painter of Sunflowers; Van Gogh painted pictures from memory, following Gauguin’s suggestion. Among these «imaginative» paintings is Memory of the Garden at Etten.^{[143][note 8]} Their first joint outdoor venture was at the Alyscamps, when they produced the pendants Les Alyscamps.^[144] The single painting Gauguin completed during his visit was his portrait of Van Gogh.^[145]

Van Gogh and Gauguin visited Montpellier in December 1888, where they saw works by Courbet and Delacroix in the Musée Fabre.^[146] Their relationship began to deteriorate; Van Gogh admired Gauguin and wanted to be treated as his equal, but Gauguin was arrogant and domineering, which frustrated Van Gogh. 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.^[147]

• 

• 

• 

  Paul Gauguin’s Armchair, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Hospital in Arles (December 1888)

The exact sequence 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.^[149] Their relationship was complex and Theo may have owed money to Gauguin, who suspected the brothers were exploiting him financially.^[150] It seems likely that Vincent realised that Gauguin was planning to leave.^[150] The following days saw heavy rain, leading to the two men being shut in the Yellow House.^[151] Gauguin recalled that Van Gogh followed him after he left for a walk and «rushed towards me, an open razor in his hand.»^[151] This account is uncorroborated;^[152] Gauguin was almost certainly absent from the Yellow House that night, most likely staying in a hotel.^[151]

After an altercation on the evening of 23 December 1888,^[153] 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 9]} causing severe bleeding.^[154] He bandaged the wound, wrapped the ear in paper and delivered the package to a woman at a brothel Van Gogh and Gauguin both frequented.^[154] Van Gogh was found unconscious the next morning by a policeman and taken to hospital,^[157][158] where he was treated by Félix Rey, a young doctor still in training. The ear was brought to the hospital, but Rey did not attempt to reattach it as too much time had passed.^[151] Van Gogh researcher and art historian Bernadette Murphy discovered the true identity of the woman named Gabrielle, who died in Arles at the age of 80 in 1952, and whose descendants still live just outside Arles. Gabrielle, known in her youth as «Gaby,» was a 17-year-old cleaning girl at the brothel and other local establishments at the time Van Gogh presented her with his ear.^{[153][159][160]}

Van Gogh had no recollection of the event, suggesting that he may have suffered an acute mental breakdown.^[161] The hospital diagnosis was «acute mania with generalised delirium»,^[162] and within a few days, the local police ordered that he be placed in hospital care.^[163][164] Gauguin immediately notified Theo, who, on 24 December, had proposed marriage to his old friend Andries Bonger’s sister Johanna.^[165] That evening, Theo rushed to the station to board a night train to Arles. 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.^[166]

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.»^[167] Gauguin fled Arles, never to see Van Gogh again. They continued to correspond, and in 1890, Gauguin proposed they form a studio in Antwerp. Meanwhile, other visitors to the hospital included Marie Ginoux and Roulin.^[168]

Despite a pessimistic diagnosis, Van Gogh recovered and returned to the Yellow House on 7 January 1889.^[169] He spent the following month between hospital and home, suffering from hallucinations and delusions of poisoning.^[170] In March, the police closed his house after a petition by 30 townspeople (including the Ginoux family) who described him as le fou roux «the redheaded madman»;^[163] Van Gogh returned to hospital. Paul Signac visited him twice in March;^[171] in April Van Gogh moved into rooms owned by Dr Rey after floods damaged paintings in his own home.^[172] Two months later, he left Arles and voluntarily entered an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. 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.»^[173]

Van Gogh gave his 1889 Portrait of Doctor Félix Rey to Dr Rey. The physician was not fond of the painting and used it to repair a chicken coop, then gave it away.^[174] In 2016, the portrait was housed at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and estimated to be worth over $50 million.^[175]

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  Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, 1889, private collection

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  The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles, 1889, Oskar Reinhart Collection «Am Römerholz», Winterthur, Switzerland

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  Ward in the Hospital in Arles, 1889, Oskar Reinhart Collection «Am Römerholz», Winterthur, Switzerland

Saint-Rémy (May 1889 – May 1890)

Van Gogh entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum on 8 May 1889, accompanied by his caregiver, Frédéric Salles, a Protestant clergyman. Saint-Paul was a former monastery in Saint-Rémy, located less than 30 kilometres (19 mi) from Arles, and it was run by a former naval doctor, Théophile Peyron. Van Gogh had two cells with barred windows, one of which he used as a studio.^[176] The clinic and its garden became the main subjects of his paintings. He made several studies of the hospital’s interiors, such as Vestibule of the Asylum and Saint-Rémy (September 1889), and its gardens, such as Lilacs (May 1889). 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 Above, Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background 1889, Cypresses 1889, Cornfield with Cypresses (1889), Country road in Provence by Night (1890). In September 1889, he produced two further versions of Bedroom in Arles and The Gardener.^[177]

Limited access to life outside the clinic resulted in a shortage of subject matter. Van Gogh instead worked on interpretations of other artist’s paintings, such as Millet’s The Sower and Noonday Rest, and variations on his own earlier work. Van Gogh was an admirer of the Realism of Jules Breton, Gustave Courbet and Millet,^[178] and he compared his copies to a musician’s interpreting Beethoven.^[179]

His Prisoners’ Round (after Gustave Doré) (1890) was painted after an engraving by Gustave Doré (1832–1883). Tralbaut suggests that the face of the prisoner in the centre of the painting looking towards the viewer is Van Gogh himself;^[180] Jan Hulsker discounts this.^[181]

Between February and April 1890, Van 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,^[182] and he later wrote to Theo that he had made a few small canvases «from memory … reminisces of the North».^[183] Among these was Two Peasant Women Digging in a Snow-Covered Field at Sunset. 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. He comments that this short period was the only time that Van Gogh’s illness had a significant effect on his work.^[184] Van Gogh asked his mother and his brother to send him drawings and rough work he had done in the early 1880s so he could work on new paintings from his old sketches.^[185] Belonging to this period is Sorrowing Old Man («At Eternity’s Gate»), a colour study Hulsker describes as «another unmistakable remembrance of times long past».^[98][186] His late paintings show an artist at the height of his abilities, according to the art critic Robert Hughes, «longing for concision and grace».^[123]

After the birth of his nephew, Van Gogh wrote, «I started right away to make a picture for him, to hang in their bedroom, branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky.»^[187]

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1890 Exhibitions and recognition

See also Vincent van Gogh’s display at Les XX, 1890

Albert Aurier praised his work in the Mercure de France in January 1890 and described him as «a genius».^[188] In February, Van Gogh painted five versions of L’Arlésienne (Madame Ginoux), based on a charcoal sketch Gauguin had produced when she sat for both artists in November 1888.^{[189][note 10]} Also in February, Van Gogh was invited by Les XX, a society of avant-garde painters in Brussels, to participate in their annual exhibition. At the opening dinner a Les XX member, Henry de Groux, insulted Van Gogh’s work. Toulouse-Lautrec demanded satisfaction, and Signac declared he would continue to fight for Van Gogh’s honour if Lautrec surrendered. De Groux apologised for the slight and left the group.

From 20 March to 27 April 1890, Van Gogh was included in the sixth exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in the Pavillon de la Ville de Paris on the Champs-Elysées. Van Gogh exhibited ten paintings. Eight of these can be identified as Cypresses (F 613 / JH 1746 ), Road menders (‘The tall plane trees’) (F 657 / JH 1860 ), Ravine (F 662 / JH 1804 ), Avenue of chestnut trees in blossom (F 517 / JH 1689 ), Mulberry tree (F 637 / JH 1796 ), Trees with ivy in the garden of the asylum (F 609 / JH 1693 ), Wheatfield at sunrise (F 737 / JH 1862 ). ‘Les Tournesols’ is either Sunflowers in a vase (F 454 / JH 1562 ) or Sunflowers in a vase (F 456 / JH 1561 ) Wheatfield after a storm (F 611 / JH 1723 ) and Olive grove (F 586 / JH 1854 ).^[190]

While Van Gogh’s exhibit was on display with the Artistes Indépendants in Paris, Claude Monet said that his work was the best in the show.^[191]

Auvers-sur-Oise (May–July 1890)

In May 1890, Van Gogh left the clinic in Saint-Rémy to move nearer to both Dr Paul Gachet in the Paris suburb of Auvers-sur-Oise and to Theo. Gachet was an amateur painter and had treated several other artists – Camille Pissarro had recommended him. Van Gogh’s first impression was that Gachet was «iller than I am, it seemed to me, or let’s say just as much.»^[192]

The painter Charles Daubigny moved to Auvers in 1861 and in turn drew other artists there, including Camille Corot and Honoré Daumier. In July 1890, Van Gogh completed two paintings of Daubigny’s Garden, one of which is likely his final work.^[193]

During his last weeks at Saint-Rémy, his thoughts returned to «memories of the North»,^[183] and several of the approximately 70 oils, painted during as many days in Auvers-sur-Oise, are reminiscent of northern scenes.^[194] In June 1890, he painted several portraits of his doctor, including Portrait of Dr Gachet, and his only etching. In each the emphasis is on Gachet’s melancholic disposition.^[195] There are other paintings which are probably unfinished, including Thatched Cottages by a Hill.^[193]

In July, Van Gogh wrote that he had become absorbed «in the immense plain against the hills, boundless as the sea, delicate yellow».^[196] He had first become captivated by the fields in May, when the wheat was young and green. In July, he described to Theo «vast fields of wheat under turbulent skies».^[197]

He wrote that they represented his «sadness and extreme loneliness» and that the «canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words, that is, how healthy and invigorating I find the countryside».^[198] Wheatfield with Crows, although not his last oil work, is from July 1890 and Hulsker discusses it as being associated with «melancholy and extreme loneliness».^[199] Hulsker identifies seven oil paintings from Auvers that follow the completion of Wheatfield with Crows.^[200]

Research published in 2020 by senior researchers at the museum Louis van Tilborgh and Teio Meedendorp, reviewing findings of Wouter van der Veen, the scientific director of the Institut Van Gogh, concluded that it was «highly plausible» that the exact location where Van Gogh’s final work Tree Roots was some 150 metres (490 ft) from the Auberge Ravoux inn where he was staying, where a stand of trees with a tangle of gnarled roots grew on a hillside. These trees with gnarled roots are shown in a postcard from 1900 to 1910. Mr Van der Veen believes Van Gogh may have been working on the painting just hours before his death.^[201][202]

Death

On 27 July 1890, aged 37, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a 7 mm Lefaucheux pinfire revolver.^[203][204] There were no witnesses and he died 30 hours after the incident.^[174] The shooting may have taken place in the wheat field in which he had been painting, or in a local barn.^[205] The bullet was deflected by a rib and passed through his chest without doing apparent damage to internal organs – probably stopped by his spine. He was able to walk back to the Auberge Ravoux, where he was attended to by two doctors, but without a surgeon present the bullet could not be removed. The doctors tended to him as well as they could, then left him alone in his room, smoking his pipe. The following morning, Theo rushed to his brother’s side, finding him in good spirits. But within hours Vincent’s health began to fail, suffering from an untreated infection resulting from the wound. He died in the early hours of 29 July. According to Theo, Vincent’s last words were: «The sadness will last forever».^{[206][207][208][209]}

Van Gogh was buried on 30 July, in the municipal cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise. The funeral was attended by Theo van Gogh, Andries Bonger, Charles Laval, Lucien Pissarro, Émile Bernard, Julien Tanguy and Paul Gachet, among twenty family members, friends and locals. Theo had been ill, and his health began to decline further after his brother’s death. Weak and unable to come to terms with Vincent’s absence, he died on 25 January 1891 at Den Dolder and was buried in Utrecht.^[210] In 1914, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger had Theo’s body exhumed and moved from Utrecht to be re-buried alongside Vincent’s at Auvers-sur-Oise.^[211]

There have been numerous debates as to the nature of Van Gogh’s illness and its effect on his work, and many retrospective diagnoses have been proposed. The consensus is that Van Gogh had an episodic condition with periods of normal functioning.^[212] Perry was the first to suggest bipolar disorder in 1947,^[213] and this has been supported by the psychiatrists Hemphill and Blumer.^[214][215] Biochemist Wilfred Arnold has countered that the symptoms are more consistent with acute intermittent porphyria, noting that the popular link between bipolar disorder and creativity might be spurious.^[212] Temporal lobe epilepsy with bouts of depression has also been suggested.^[215] Whatever the diagnosis, his condition was likely worsened by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia and alcohol.^[215]

The gun Van Gogh was reputed to have used was rediscovered in 1965 and was auctioned, on 19 June 2019, as «the most famous weapon in art history». The gun sold for €162,500 (£144,000; $182,000), almost three times more than expected.^{[216][217][218]}

Style and works

Artistic development

Van Gogh drew, and painted with watercolours while at school, but only a few examples survive and the authorship of some has been challenged.^[219] When he took up art as an adult, he began at an elementary level. In early 1882, his uncle, Cornelis Marinus, owner of a well-known gallery of contemporary art in Amsterdam, asked for drawings of The Hague. Van Gogh’s work did not live up to expectations. Marinus offered a second commission, specifying the subject matter in detail, but was again disappointed with the result. Van Gogh persevered; he experimented with lighting in his studio using variable shutters and different drawing materials. For more than a year he worked on single figures – highly elaborate studies in black and white,^{[note 11]} which at the time gained him only criticism. Later, they were recognised as early masterpieces.^[221]

In August 1882 Theo gave Vincent money to buy materials for working en plein air. Vincent wrote that he could now «go on painting with new vigour».^[222] From early 1883 he worked on multi-figure compositions. He had some of them photographed, but when his brother remarked that they lacked liveliness and freshness, he destroyed them and turned to oil painting. Van Gogh turned to well-known Hague School artists like Weissenbruch and Blommers, and he received technical advice from them as well as from painters like De Bock and Van der Weele, both of the Hague School’s second generation.^[223] He moved to Nuenen after a short period of time in Drenthe and began work on several large paintings but destroyed most of them. The Potato Eaters and its companion pieces are the only ones to have survived.^[223] Following a visit to the Rijksmuseum Van Gogh wrote of his admiration for the quick, economical brushwork of the Dutch Masters, especially Rembrandt and Frans Hals.^{[224][note 12]} He was aware many of his faults were due to lack of experience and technical expertise,^[223] so in November 1885 he travelled to Antwerp and later Paris to learn and develop his skills.^[225]

Theo criticised The Potato Eaters for its dark palette, which he thought unsuitable for a modern style.^[226] During Van Gogh’s stay in Paris between 1886 and 1887, he tried to master a new, lighter palette. His Portrait of Père Tanguy (1887) shows his success with the brighter palette and is evidence of an evolving personal style.^[227] Charles Blanc’s treatise on colour interested him greatly and led him to work with complementary colours. Van Gogh came to believe that the effect of colour went beyond the descriptive; he said that «colour expresses something in itself».^[228][229] According to Hughes, Van Gogh perceived colour as having a «psychological and moral weight», as exemplified in the garish reds and greens of The Night Café, a work he wanted to «express the terrible passions of humanity».^[230] Yellow meant the most to him, because it symbolised emotional truth. He used yellow as a symbol for sunlight, life, and God.^[231]

Van Gogh strove to be a painter of rural life and nature;^[232] during his first summer in Arles he used his new palette to paint landscapes and traditional rural life.^[233] His belief that a power existed behind the natural led him to try to capture a sense of that power, or the essence of nature in his art, sometimes through the use of symbols.^[234] His renditions of the sower, at first copied from Jean-François Millet, reflect Van Gogh’s religious beliefs: the sower as Christ sowing life beneath the hot sun.^[235] These were themes and motifs he returned to often to rework and develop.^[236] His paintings of flowers are filled with symbolism, but rather than use traditional Christian iconography he made up his own, where life is lived under the sun and work is an allegory of life.^[237] In Arles, having gained confidence after painting spring blossoms and learning to capture bright sunlight, he was ready to paint The Sower.^[228]

Van Gogh stayed within what he called the «guise of reality»^[238] and was critical of overly stylised works.^[239] He wrote afterwards that the abstraction of Starry Night had gone too far and that reality had «receded too far in the background».^[239] Hughes describes it as a moment of extreme visionary ecstasy: the stars are in a great whirl, reminiscent of Hokusai’s Great Wave, the movement in the heaven above is reflected by the movement of the cypress on the earth below, and the painter’s vision is «translated into a thick, emphatic plasma of paint».^[240]

Between 1885 and his death in 1890, Van Gogh appears to have been building an oeuvre,^[241] a collection that reflected his personal vision and could be commercially successful. He was influenced by Blanc’s definition of style, that a true painting required optimal use of colour, perspective and brushstrokes. Van Gogh applied the word «purposeful» to paintings he thought he had mastered, as opposed to those he thought of as studies.^[242] He painted many series of studies;^[238] most of which were still lifes, many executed as colour experiments or as gifts to friends.^[243] The work in Arles contributed considerably to his oeuvre: those he thought the most important from that time were The Sower, Night Cafe, Memory of the Garden in Etten and Starry Night. With their broad brushstrokes, inventive perspectives, colours, contours and designs, these paintings represent the style he sought.^[239]

Major series

Van Gogh’s stylistic developments are usually linked to the periods he spent living in different places across Europe. He was inclined to immerse himself in local cultures and lighting conditions, although he maintained a highly individual visual outlook throughout. His evolution as an artist was slow, and he was aware of his painterly limitations. He moved home often, perhaps to expose himself to new visual stimuli, and through exposure develop his technical skill.^[244] Art historian Melissa McQuillan believes the moves also reflect later stylistic changes, and that Van Gogh used the moves to avoid conflict, and as a coping mechanism for when the idealistic artist was faced with the realities of his then current situation.^[245]

Portraits

Van Gogh said portaiture was his greatest interest. «What I’m most passionate about, much much more than all the rest in my profession,» he wrote in 1890, «is the portrait, the modern portrait.»^[246] It is «the only thing in painting that moves me deeply and that gives me a sense of the infinite.»^[243][247] He wrote to his sister that he wished to paint portraits that would endure, and that he would use colour to capture their emotions and character rather than aiming for photographic realism.^[248] Those closest to Van Gogh are mostly absent from his portraits; he rarely painted Theo, Van Rappard or Bernard. The portraits of his mother were from photographs.^[249]

Van Gogh painted Arles’ postmaster Joseph Roulin and his family repeatedly. In five versions of La Berceuse (The Lullaby), Van Gogh painted Augustine Roulin quietly holding a rope that rocks the unseen cradle of her infant daughter. Van Gogh had planned for it to be the central image of a triptych, flanked by paintings of sunflowers. ^[250]

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  La Berceuse (Augustine Roulin), 1889, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Self-portraits

Van Gogh created more than 43 self-portraits between 1885 and 1889.^{[251][note 13]} They were usually completed in series, such as those painted in Paris in mid-1887, and continued until shortly before his death.^[252] Generally the portraits were studies, created during periods when he was reluctant to mix with others, or when he lacked models, and so painted himself.^[243][253]

The self-portraits reflect a high degree of self-scrutiny.^[254] Often they were intended to mark important periods in his life; for example, the mid-1887 Paris series were painted at the point where he became aware of Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Signac.^[255] In Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, heavy strains of paint spread outwards across the canvas. It is one of his most renowned self-portraits of that period, «with its highly organized rhythmic brushstrokes, and the novel halo derived from the Neo-impressionist repertoire was what Van Gogh himself called a ‘purposeful’ canvas».^[256]

They contain a wide array of physiognomical representations.^[251] Van Gogh’s mental and physical condition is usually apparent; he may appear unkempt, unshaven or with a neglected beard, with deeply sunken eyes, a weak jaw, or having lost teeth. Some show him with full lips, a long face or prominent skull, or sharpened, alert features. His hair is sometimes depicted in a vibrant reddish hue and at other times ash colored.^[251]

Van Gogh’s self-portraits vary stylistically. In those painted after December 1888, the strong contrast of vivid colors highlight the haggard pallor of his skin.^[253] Some depict the artist with a beard, others without. He can be seen with bandages in portraits executed just after he mutilated his ear. In only a few does he depict himself as a painter.^[251] Those painted in Saint-Rémy show the head from the right, the side opposite his damaged ear, as he painted himself reflected in his mirror.^[257][258]

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  Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, Winter 1887–88. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

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  Self-Portrait, 1889. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. His Saint-Rémy self-portraits show his side with the unmutilated ear, as he saw himself in the mirror

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  Self-Portrait Without Beard, c. September 1889. This painting may have been Van Gogh’s last self-portrait. He gave it to his mother as a birthday gift.^[259][260]

Flowers

Van Gogh painted several landscapes with flowers, including roses, lilacs, irises, and sunflowers. Some reflect his interests in the language of colour, and also in Japanese ukiyo-e.^[261] There are two series of dying sunflowers. The first was painted in Paris in 1887 and shows flowers lying on the ground. The second set was completed a year later in Arles and is of bouquets in a vase positioned in early morning light.^[262] Both are built from thickly layered paintwork, which, according to the London National Gallery, evoke the «texture of the seed-heads».^[263]

In these series, Van Gogh was not preoccupied by his usual interest in filling his paintings with subjectivity and emotion; rather, the two series are intended to display his technical skill and working methods to Gauguin,^[145] who was about to visit. The 1888 paintings were created during a rare period of optimism for the artist. Vincent wrote to Theo in August 1888: «I’m painting with the gusto of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won’t surprise you when it’s a question of painting large sunflowers … If I carry out this plan there’ll be a dozen or so panels. The whole thing will therefore be a symphony in blue and yellow. I work on it all these mornings, from sunrise. Because the flowers wilt quickly and it’s a matter of doing the whole thing in one go.»^[264]

The sunflowers were painted to decorate the walls in anticipation of Gauguin’s visit, and Van Gogh placed individual works around the Yellow House’s guest room in Arles. Gauguin was deeply impressed and later acquired two of the Paris versions.^[145] After Gauguin’s departure, Van Gogh imagined the two major versions of the sunflowers as wings of the Berceuse Triptych, and included them in his Les XX in Brussels exhibit. Today the major pieces of the series are among his best known, celebrated for the sickly connotations of the colour yellow and its tie-in with the Yellow House, the expressionism of the brush strokes, and their contrast against often dark backgrounds.^[265]

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  Still Life: Vase with Irises Against a Yellow Background, May 1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam^[266]

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  Still Life: Pink Roses in a Vase, May 1890, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York^[266]

Cypresses and olives

Fifteen canvases depict cypresses, a tree he became fascinated with in Arles.^[267] He brought life to the trees, which were traditionally seen as emblematic of death.^[234] The series of cypresses he began in Arles featured the trees in the distance, as windbreaks in fields; when he was at Saint-Rémy he brought them to the foreground.^[268] Vincent wrote to Theo in May 1889: «Cypresses still preoccupy me, I should like to do something with them like my canvases of sunflowers»; he went on to say, «They are beautiful in line and proportion like an Egyptian obelisk.»^[269]

In mid-1889, and at his sister Wil’s request, Van Gogh painted several smaller versions of Wheat Field with Cypresses.^[270] The works are characterised by swirls and densely painted impasto, and include The Starry Night, in which cypresses dominate the foreground.^[267] In addition to this, other notable works on cypresses include Cypresses (1889), Cypresses with Two Figures (1889–90), and Road with Cypress and Star (1890).^[271]

During the last six or seven months of the year 1889, he had also created at least fifteen paintings of olive trees, a subject which he considered as demanding and compelling.^[272] Among these works are Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background (1889), about which in a letter to his brother Van Gogh wrote, «At last I have a landscape with olives».^[271] While in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh spent time outside the asylum, where he painted trees in the olive groves. In these works, natural life is rendered as gnarled and arthritic as if a personification of the natural world, which are, according to Hughes, filled with «a continuous field of energy of which nature is a manifestation».^[234]

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  Cypresses in Starry Night, a reed pen drawing executed by Van Gogh after the painting in 1889.

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  Cypresses and Two Women, February 1890. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

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  Cypresses, 1889. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Orchards

The Flowering Orchards (also the Orchards in Blossom) are among the first groups of work completed after Van Gogh’s arrival in Arles in February 1888. The 14 paintings are optimistic, joyous and visually expressive of the burgeoning spring. They are delicately sensitive and unpopulated. He painted swiftly, and although he brought to this series a version of Impressionism, a strong sense of personal style began to emerge during this period. The transience of the blossoming trees, and the passing of the season, seemed to align with his sense of impermanence and belief in a new beginning in Arles. During the blossoming of the trees that spring, he found «a world of motifs that could not have been more Japanese».^[273] Vincent wrote to Theo on 21 April 1888 that he had 10 orchards and «one big [painting] of a cherry tree, which I’ve spoiled».^[274]

During this period Van Gogh mastered the use of light by subjugating shadows and painting the trees as if they are the source of light – almost in a sacred manner.^[273] Early the following year he painted another smaller group of orchards, including View of Arles, Flowering Orchards.^[275] Van Gogh was enthralled by the landscape and vegetation of the south of France, and often visited the farm gardens near Arles. In the vivid light of the Mediterranean climate his palette significantly brightened.^[276]

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  Pink Peach Tree in Blossom (Reminiscence of Mauve), watercolour, March 1888. Kröller-Müller Museum

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  The Pink Orchard also Orchard with Blossoming Apricot Trees, March 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

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  Orchard in Blossom, Bordered by Cypresses, April 1888. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

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Wheat fields

Van Gogh made several painting excursions during visits to the landscape around Arles. He made paintings of harvests, wheat fields and other rural landmarks of the area, including The Old Mill (1888); a good example of a picturesque structure bordering the wheat fields beyond.^[125] At various points, Van Gogh painted the view from his window – at The Hague, Antwerp, and Paris. These works culminated in The Wheat Field series, which depicted the view from his cells in the asylum at Saint-Rémy.^[277]

Many of the late paintings are sombre but essentially optimistic and, right up to the time of Van Gogh’s death, reflect his desire to return to lucid mental health. Yet some of his final works reflect his deepening concerns.^[278][279] Writing in July 1890, from Auvers, Van Gogh said that he had become absorbed «in the immense plain against the hills, boundless as the sea, delicate yellow».^[196]

Van Gogh was captivated by the fields in May when the wheat was young and green. His Wheatfields at Auvers with White House shows a more subdued palette of yellows and blues, which creates a sense of idyllic harmony.^[280]

About 10 July 1890, Van Gogh wrote to Theo of «vast fields of wheat under troubled skies».^[281] Wheatfield with Crows shows the artist’s state of mind in his final days; Hulsker describes the work as a «doom-filled painting with threatening skies and ill-omened crows».^[199] Its dark palette and heavy brushstrokes convey a sense of menace.^[282]

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  Enclosed Wheat Field with Rising Sun, May 1889, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

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  Wheat Fields, early June 1889. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

Reputation and legacy

After Van Gogh’s first exhibitions in the late 1880s, his reputation grew steadily among artists, art critics, dealers and collectors.^[283] In 1887, André Antoine hung Van Gogh’s alongside works of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, at the Théâtre Libre in Paris; some were acquired by Julien Tanguy.^[284] In 1889, his work was described in the journal Le Moderniste Illustré by Albert Aurier as characterised by «fire, intensity, sunshine».^[285] Ten paintings were shown at the Société des Artistes Indépendants, in Brussels in January 1890.^[286] French president Marie François Sadi Carnot was said to have been impressed by Van Gogh’s work.^[287]

After Van Gogh’s death, memorial exhibitions were held in Brussels, Paris, The Hague and Antwerp. His work was shown in several high-profile exhibitions, including six works at Les XX; in 1891 there was a retrospective exhibition in Brussels.^[286] In 1892, Octave Mirbeau wrote that Van Gogh’s suicide was an «infinitely sadder loss for art … even though the populace has not crowded to a magnificent funeral, and poor Vincent van Gogh, whose demise means the extinction of a beautiful flame of genius, has gone to his death as obscure and neglected as he lived.»^[284]

Theo died in January 1891, removing Vincent’s most vocal and well-connected champion.^[288] Theo’s widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger was a Dutchwoman in her twenties who had not known either her husband or her brother-in-law very long and who suddenly had to take care of several hundreds of paintings, letters and drawings, as well as her infant son, Vincent Willem van Gogh.^{[283][note 14]} Gauguin was not inclined to offer assistance in promoting Van Gogh’s reputation, and Johanna’s brother Andries Bonger also seemed lukewarm about his work.^[283] Aurier, one of Van Gogh’s earliest supporters among the critics, died of typhoid fever in 1892 at the age of 27.^[290]

In 1892, Émile Bernard organised a small solo show of Van Gogh’s paintings in Paris, and Julien Tanguy exhibited his Van Gogh paintings with several consigned from Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. In April 1894, the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris agreed to take 10 paintings on consignment from Van Gogh’s estate.^[290] In 1896, the Fauvist painter Henri Matisse, then an unknown art student, visited John Russell on Belle Île off Brittany.^[291][292] Russell had been a close friend of Van Gogh; he introduced Matisse to the Dutchman’s work, and gave him a Van Gogh drawing. Influenced by Van Gogh, Matisse abandoned his earth-coloured palette for bright colours.^[292][293]

In Paris in 1901, a large Van Gogh retrospective was held at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, which excited André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, and contributed to the emergence of Fauvism.^[290] Important group exhibitions took place with the Sonderbund artists in Cologne in 1912, the Armory Show, New York in 1913, and Berlin in 1914.^[294] Henk Bremmer was instrumental in teaching and talking about Van Gogh,^[295] and introduced Helene Kröller-Müller to Van Gogh’s art; she became an avid collector of his work.^[296] The early figures in German Expressionism such as Emil Nolde acknowledged a debt to Van Gogh’s work.^[297] Bremmer assisted Jacob Baart de la Faille, whose catalogue raisonné L’Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh appeared in 1928.^{[298][note 15]}
Van Gogh’s fame reached its first peak in Austria and Germany before World War I,^[301] helped by the publication of his letters in three volumes in 1914.^[302] His letters are expressive and literate, and have been described as among the foremost 19th-century writings of their kind.^[8] These began a compelling mythology of Van Gogh as an intense and dedicated painter who suffered for his art and died young.^[303] In 1934, the novelist Irving Stone wrote a biographical novel of Van Gogh’s life titled Lust for Life, based on Van Gogh’s letters to Theo.^[304] This novel and the 1956 film further enhanced his fame, especially in the United States where Stone surmised only a few hundred people had heard of Van Gogh prior to his surprise best-selling book.^[305][306]

In 1957, Francis Bacon based a series of paintings on reproductions of Van Gogh’s The Painter on the Road to Tarascon, the original of which was destroyed during the Second World War. Bacon was inspired by an image he described as «haunting», and regarded Van Gogh as an alienated outsider, a position which resonated with him. Bacon identified with Van Gogh’s theories of art and quoted lines written to Theo: «[R]eal painters do not paint things as they are … [T]hey paint them as they themselves feel them to be.»^[307]

Van Gogh’s works are among the world’s most expensive paintings. Those sold for over US$100 million (today’s equivalent) include Portrait of Dr Gachet,^[308] Portrait of Joseph Roulin and Irises. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired a copy of Wheat Field with Cypresses in 1993 for US$57 million by using funds donated by publisher, diplomat and philanthropist Walter Annenberg.^[309] In 2015, L’Allée des Alyscamps sold for US$66.3 million at Sotheby’s, New York, exceeding its reserve of US$40 million.^[310]

Minor planet 4457 van Gogh is named in his honour.^[311]

In October 2022, two activists protesting the effects of the fossil fuel industry on climate change threw a can of tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the National Gallery, London, and then glued their hands to the gallery wall. As the painting was covered by glass it was not damaged. ^[312][313]

Van Gogh Museum

Van Gogh’s nephew and namesake, Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890–1978),^[314] inherited the estate after his mother’s death in 1925. During the early 1950s he arranged for the publication of a complete edition of the letters presented in four volumes and several languages. He then began negotiations with the Dutch government to subsidise a foundation to purchase and house the entire collection.^[315] Theo’s son participated in planning the project in the hope that the works would be exhibited under the best possible conditions. The project began in 1963; architect Gerrit Rietveld was commissioned to design it, and after his death in 1964 Kisho Kurokawa took charge.^[316] Work progressed throughout the 1960s, with 1972 as the target for its grand opening.^[314]

The Van Gogh Museum opened in the Museumplein in Amsterdam in 1973.^[317] It became the second most popular museum in the Netherlands, after the Rijksmuseum, regularly receiving more than 1.5 million visitors a year. In 2015 it had a record 1.9 million.^[318] Eighty-five percent of the visitors come from other countries.^[319]

Nazi-looted art

During the Nazi period (1933–1945) a great number of artworks by Van Gogh changed hands, many of them looted from Jewish collectors who were forced into exile or murdered. Some of these works have disappeared into private collections. Others have since resurfaced in museums, or at auction, or have been reclaimed, often in high-profile lawsuits, by their former owners.^[320] The German Lost Art Foundation still lists dozens of missing van Goghs^[321] and the American Alliance of Museums lists 73 van Goghs on the Nazi Era Provenance Internet Portal.^[322]

References

Footnotes

References

Sources

External links

• The Vincent van Gogh Gallery, the complete works and letters of Van Gogh
• Vincent van Gogh The letters, the complete letters of Van Gogh (translated into English and annotated)
• Vincent Van Gogh, teaching resource on Van Gogh
• Works by Vincent van Gogh at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Vincent van Gogh at Internet Archive
• Works by Vincent van Gogh at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Винсент ван Гог
Автопортрет
Имя при рождении:	Vincent Willem van Gogh
Дата рождения:	30 марта 1853 г.
Место рождения:	Грот-Зюндерт, Нидерланды
Дата смерти:	29 июля 1890 г.
Место смерти:	Овер-сюр-Уаз, Франция
Гражданство:	Нидерланды
Жанр:	пейзаж
Стиль:	постимпрессионизм
Запись на родоводе:	2072
Работы на Викискладе

Винсе́нт Виллем ван Гог (нидерл. Vincent Willem van Gogh, 30 марта 1853, Грот-Зюндерт, около Бреды, Нидерланды — 29 июля 1890, Овер-сюр-Уаз, Франция) — всемирно известный нидерландский и французский художник-постимпрессионист.

Биография

Винсент ван Гог родился в 11 часов утра 30 марта 1853 года в деревушке Грот-Зюндерт (Groot Zundert) в провинции Северный Брабант на юге Нидерландов, недалеко от бельгийской границы. Отцом Винсента был Теодор ван Гог, протестантский пастор, а матерью — Анна Корнелия Карбентус, дочь почтенного переплётчика и продавца книг из Гааги. Винсент был вторым из семи детей Теодора и Анны Корнелии. Имя своё он получил в честь деда по отцовской линии, который также всю свою жизнь посвятил протестантской церкви. Это имя предназначалось для первого ребенка Теодора и Анны, который родился на год раньше Винсента и умер в первый же день. Так Винсент, хотя и был рождён вторым, стал старшим из детей.

Четыре года спустя после рождения Винсента, 1 мая 1857 года, родился его брат Теодорус ван Гог (Тео). Помимо него, у Винсента был брат Кор (Корнелис Винсент, 17 мая 1867) и три сестры — Анна Корнелия (17 февраля 1855), Лиз (Элизабет Губерта, 16 мая 1859) и Вил (Виллемина Якоба, 16 марта 1862). Домашние помнят Винсента как своенравного, трудного и нудного ребёнка со «странными манерами», что было причиной его частых наказаний. По словам гувернантки, было в нем что-то странное, что отличало его от других: из всех детей Винсент был ей менее приятен, и она не верила, что из него может выйти нечто стоящее. Вне семьи, напротив, Винсент показывал обратную сторону своего характера — был тихим, серьёзным и задумчивым. Он почти не играл с другими детьми. В глазах односельчан он был добродушным, дружелюбным, предупредительным, сострадательным, милым и скромным ребёнком. Когда ему исполнилось 7 лет, он пошёл в деревенскую школу, но через год его забрали оттуда, и вместе со своей сестрой Анной он обучался дома, у гувернантки. 1 октября 1864 года он уезжает в школу-интернат в Зевенберген, 20 км от родного дома. Отъезд из дома причинил много страданий Винсенту, он не мог забыть этого, даже будучи взрослым. 15 сентября 1866 года он начинает обучение в другом интернате — колледже Виллема II в Тилбурге. Винсенту хорошо даются языки — французский, английский, немецкий. Там же он получал уроки рисования. В марте 1868 года, посреди учебного года, Винсент неожиданно бросает школу и возвращается в отчий дом. На этом заканчивается его формальное образование. О своём детстве он вспоминает так: «Моё детство было мрачным, холодным и пустым…»

В июле 1869 года Винсент устраивается на службу в Гаагский филиал крупной художественно-торговой фирмы Goupil & Cie, владельцем которого является его дядя Винсент («дядя Цент»). Там он получает необходимое обучение в качестве дилера. В июне 1873 года его переводят в Лондонский филиал Goupil & Cie. Благодаря ежедневному контакту с произведениями искусства Винсент начинает разбираться в живописи и ценить ее. Помимо этого, он посещает городские музеи и галереи, любуясь работами Жана-Франсуа Милле и Жюля Бретона. В Лондоне Винсент становится успешным дилером, и в возрасте 20 лет зарабатывает уже больше, чем его отец. Здесь же он влюбляется в дочь хозяйки дома, у которой он снимает комнату, Урсулу Лойер, но когда Винсент признается ей в своих чувствах, она отвергает его, объясняя это тем, что она уже помолвлена. Это событие потрясло и разочаровало Винсента; постепенно он теряет интерес к своей работе и обращается к Библии. В 1874 году Винсента переводят в Парижский филиал фирмы, но после трёх месяцев работы он снова уезжает в Лондон. Дела у него идут все хуже, и в мае 1875 он опять переводится в Париж. Здесь он посещает выставки в Салоне и Лувре. В конце марта 1876 года его увольняют из фирмы Goupil & Cie. Движимый состраданием и желанием быть полезным своим ближним, он решает стать священником.

В 1876 году Винсент возвращается в Англию, где он нашёл неоплачиваемую работу в качестве учителя в интернате в Рэмсгейте. В июле Винсент переходит в другую школу — в Айслворте (под Лондоном), где он выполняет работу учителя и помощника пастора. 4 ноября Винсент читает свою первую проповедь. Его интерес к Евангелию растёт, и он загорается идеей проповедовать беднякам.

На Рождество Винсент едет домой, и родители уговаривают его не возвращаться в Англию. Винсент остается в Нидерландах и в течение полугода работает в книжном магазине в Дордрехте. Эта работа ему не по душе; большую часть времени он проводит, делая наброски или переводя отрывки из Библии на немецкий, английский и французский. Пытаясь поддержать стремление Винсента стать пастором, семья посылает его в мае 1877 в Амстердам, где он поселяется у своего дяди — адмирала Яна ван Гога. Здесь он усердно занимается под руководством своего дяди Йоганесса Стрикера, уважаемого и признанного теолога, готовясь к сдаче вступительного экзамена в университет на отделение теологии. В конце концов он разочаровывается в учёбе, бросает свои занятия и в июле 1878 уезжает из Амстердама. Желание быть полезным простым людям направляет его в Протестантскую миссионерскую школу в Лакене под Брюсселем, где он проходит трёхмесячный курс проповеди.

В декабре 1878 его направляют на полгода миссионером в Боринаж, бедный шахтерский район на юге Бельгии. Видя нищету и безысходное положение шахтёров и их семей, Винсент отказывается от всех удобств и живёт подстать шахтёрам. Он спит на полу в полуразвалившейся, почти неотапливаемой лачуге, живёт впроголодь, раздаёт своё имущество нуждающимся и тратит свое жалованье на лекарства и еду для шахтёров. Руководство церкви шокировано таким непомерным участием Винсента в жизни шахтеров и немедленно освобождает Винсента от миссионерской деятельности за то, что он «подрывает достоинство духовенства». Несмотря на распоряжение, Винсент, слабый и больной, все-таки продолжает миссионерскую деятельность.

В 1880-х Ван Гог обратился к искусству, посещал Академию художеств в Брюсселе (1880—1881) и Антверпене (1885—1886), пользовался советами живописца А. Мауве в Гааге, с увлечением рисовал шахтёров, крестьян, ремесленников. В серии картин и этюдов середины 1880-х гг. («Крестьянка», 1885, Государственный музей Крёллер-Мюллер, Оттёрло; «Едоки картофеля», 1885, Государственный музей Винсента ван Гога, Амстердам), написанных в тёмной живописной гамме, отмеченных болезненно-острым восприятием людских страданий и чувства подавленности, художник воссоздаёт гнетущую атмосферу психологической напряжённости.

В 1886—1888 Ван Гог жил в Париже, посещал частную художественную студию, изучал живопись импрессионизма, японскую гравюру, синтетические произведения Поля Гогена. В этот период палитра Ван Гога стала светлой, исчезли землистого оттенка краски, появились чистые голубые, золотисто-жёлтые, красные тона, характерный для него динамичный, как бы струящийся мазок («Мост через Сену», 1887, Государственный музей Винсента ван Гога, Амстердам; «Папаша Танги», 1887, Музей Родена, Париж).

В 1888 году Ван Гог переехал в Арль, где окончательно определилось своеобразие его творческой манеры. Пламенный художественный темперамент, мучительный порыв к гармонии, красоте и счастью и, одновременно, страх перед враждебными человеку силами, находят воплощение то в сияющих солнечными красками юга пейзажах («Жатва. Долина Ла-Кро», 1888, Государственный музей Винсента ван Гога, Амстердам), то в зловещих, напоминающих ночной кошмар образах («Ночное кафе», 1888, частное собрание, Нью-Йорк); динамика цвета и мазка наполняет одухотворённой жизнью и движением не только природу и населяющих её людей («Красные виноградники в Арле», 1888, Государственный музей изобразительных искусств имени А. С. Пушкина, Москва), но и неодушевлённые предметы («Спальня ван Гога в Арле», 1888, Государственный музей Винсента ван Гога, Амстердам).

Напряжённая работа Ван Гога в последние годы сопровождалась приступами психической болезни, которая привела его в больницу для душевнобольных в Арле (врачи поставили диагноз «эпилепсия височных долей»), затем в Сен-Реми (1889—1890) и в Овер-сюр-Уаз, где он покончил жизнь самоубийством 29 июля 1890 года, смертельно ранив себя выстрелом из пистолета. По словам брата Тео (Theo), который был при Винсенте в его смертные минуты, последними словами художника были: La tristesse durera toujours («Печаль будет длиться вечно»).

В честь Ван Гога назван кратер на Меркурии.

Галерея

Автопортреты

Подсолнухи

Четыре увядающих подсолнуха(1887)

Ирисы

Пейзаж

Разное

Ссылки

• Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
• Энциклопедия Винсента ван Гога
• Винсент ван Гог. Биография. Картины
• Биография и работы Винсента Ван Гога
• Жажда жизни — книга о Винсенте Ван Гоге
• биография и картины Ван Гога по жанрам

Литература

• Ван Гог. Письма. Пер. с голл. — Л.-М., 1966.
• Ревалд Дж. Постимпрессионизм. Пер. с англ. Т. 1. — Л.-М, 1962.
• Перрюшо А. Жизнь Ван Гога. Пер. с франц. — М., 1973.
• Мурина Е. Ван Гог. — М., 1978.
• Дмитриева Н. А. Винсент Ван Гог. Человек и художник. — М., 1980.
• Стоун И. Жажда жизни (книга). Повесть о В. Ван Гоге. Пер. с англ. — М., 1992.
• Constantino Porcu Van Gogh. Zijn leven en de kunst. (из серии Kunstklassiekers) Недерланды, 2004.
• Wolf Stadler Vincent van Gogh. (из серии De Grote Meesters) Amsterdam Boek, 1974.
• Frank Kools Vincent van Gogh en zijn geboorteplaats: als een boer van Zundert. De Walburg Pers, 1990.

29 июля скончался знаменитый художник-постимпрессионист Винсент ван Гог.

Голландский художник-постимпрессионист Винсент Ван Гог (Vincent Willem Van Gogh) родился 30 марта 1853 г. в Гроот Зюндерте около южной границы Голландии.

При крещении ему было дано имя Винсент Виллем в честь его дедушки, а приставка Гог, возможно, идет от названия маленького городка Гог, что стоял у дремучего леса по соседству с границей.

Родителями художника были протестантский пастор Теодор Ван Гог и его жена Корнелия. Впоследствии у них родились еще дети: сын Тео и три дочери. Все мужчины в роду Ван Гогов традиционно были либо священниками, либо торговцами картинами (помимо отца Винсента в церкви служили и некоторые его родственники).

В 1869 г., не успев окончить школу, Винсент стал служащим гаагской фирмы «Гуниль и Ко», торговавшей картинами, совладельцем которой был его дядя. В июне 1873 г., когда ему исполнилось 20 лет, он был направлен на работу в лондонское отделение фирмы. В 1875 г. Ван Гога ненадолго переводят в парижское отделение фирмы, затем он на какое то время он возвращается в Лондон и, наконец, вновь приезжает в Париж. За эти годы он остыл к своей работе и был уволен.

В 1876 г. он вернулся в Англию, где сначала преподавал в школе в Рамсгейте, на юго-восточном побережье, а затем в Айлуорте, неподалеку от Лондона. В начале 1877 г., вернувшись в Голландию и проработав несколько месяцев клерком в книготорговой компании в Дордрехте, он переехал в Амстердам и начал учиться на священника, но уже в июле 1878 г. бросил учебу и ненадолго вернулся в родительский дом.

В 1880 х гг. Ван Гог обратился к искусству, посещал Академию художеств в Брюсселе и Антверпене, с увлечением рисовал шахтеров, крестьян, ремесленников. В серии картин и этюдов середины 1880 х гг. («Крестьянка», «Едоки картофеля»), написанных в темной живописной гамме, отмеченных болезненно острым восприятием людских страданий и чувства подавленности, художник воссоздал гнетущую атмосферу психологической напряженности.

В 1886 1888 гг. Ван Гог жил в Париже, где некоторое время брал уроки живописи у Фернана Кормона (французский художник, реалист), в мастерской которого встретил Анри Тулуз-Лотрека (французский живописец, постимпрессионист). Здесь же он познакомился с несколькими другими художниками, наиболее известными из которых были Гоген и Писсарро. В этот период тёмная палитра в его творчестве постепенно уступала место сверканию чистых голубых, золотисто-жёлтых и красных тонов, свободнее и динамичнее становился мазок («Мост через Сену», «Портрет папаши Танги»).

В 1888 г. Ван Гог переехал в Арль, где окончательно определилось своеобразие его творческой манеры. Здесь он предпринял попытку создать поселение для художников и убедил своего друга Гогена присоединиться к нему. Художественный темперамент, порыв к гармонии, красоте и счастью и, одновременно, страх перед враждебными человеку силами находят воплощение то в сияющих солнечными красками юга пейзажах («Жатва. Долина Ла Кро»), то в зловещих, напоминающих ночной кошмар образах («Ночное кафе»). Динамика цвета и мазка наполняет одухотворенной жизнью и движением не только природу и населяющих ее людей («Красные виноградники в Арле»), но и неодушевленные предметы («Спальня Ван Гога в Арле»).

В декабре 1888 г. между Ван Гогом и Гогеном произошла размолвка: Винсент бросился на Гогена с бритвой. Когда же Гогену удалось убежать, Ван Гог в ярости отрезал себе этой бритвой часть левого уха. Это стало первым признаком душевного расстройства, болезни, которая привела художника к гибели. После этого он провел две недели в психиатрической лечебнице, вновь вернулся в нее в феврале 1889 г., когда его начали мучить галлюцинации. С мая 1889 г. по май 1890 г. Ван Гог находился на добровольных началах в лечебнице Сен Реми де Прованс, где был под постоянным наблюдением врачей. В промежутках между приступами болезни, истинная природа которой так и осталась загадкой, Винсент с бешеной скоростью писал картины, часто изображая окрестности больницы, ее пациентов и персонал.

Окончательно он покинул лечебницу в мае 1890 г. и перебрался в Овер сюр Уаз, деревушку, расположенную к северу от Парижа. В июле Винсент заехал в Париж, чтобы навестить брата Тео и его жену, только что родившую первенца. Мальчика назвали Винсентом в честь дяди. Сначала Ван Гог чувствовал себя на новом месте вполне счастливо, однако его болезнь вернулась, и 27 июля 1890 г. он выстрелил себе в грудь из пистолета. Спустя двое суток – 29 июля 1890 г.   художник тихо скончался на руках своего брата Тео. Ему было всего 37 лет. Спустя шесть месяцев умер и Тео. Оба брата были похоронены рядом на кладбище Овера

Творчество двух последних лет жизни художника отмечено одержимостью, предельно обостренной экспрессией цветовых сочетаний, резкими сменами настроения — от исступленного отчаяния («Дорога с кипарисами и звездами») до трепетного чувства просветления и умиротворения («Пейзаж в Овере после дождя»). Творчество Ван Гога отразило сложнейший переломный момент в художественной культуре конца XIX века, мучительные поиски художником духовных нравственных ценностей, определившие экспрессию и трагический пафос его работ, особое место Ван Гога в искусстве постимпрессионизма.

Материал подготовлен на основе информации РИА Новости и открытых источников.

ВАН ГОГ (van Gogh) Вин­сент Вил­лем (30.3.1853, Грот-Зюн­дерт, пров. Сев. Бра­бант – 29.7.1890, Овер-сюр-Уаз, близ Па­ри­жа), голл. жи­во­пи­сец и ри­со­валь­щик. Ро­дил­ся в се­мье пас­то­ра; не по­лу­чил сис­те­ма­тич. об­ра­зо­ва­ния. В 1869–1876 слу­жил ко­мис­сио­не­ром в га­аг­ской фир­ме по про­да­же про­из­ве­де­ний ис­кус­ст­ва, по­се­тил Брюс­сель, Лон­дон и Па­риж; в 1876 пре­по­да­вал в шко­ле в Рамс­ги­те (Анг­лия). В 1877 обу­чал­ся в мис­сио­нер­ской шко­ле в Ла­ке­не (близ Брюс­се­ля), в 1878–79 за­ни­мал­ся про­по­вед­нич. дея­тель­но­стью сре­ди гор­ня­ков Бо­ри­на­жа (Бель­гия). В эти го­ды В. Г. осоз­нал своё при­зва­ние – стать ху­дож­ни­ком уни­жен­ных и обез­до­лен­ных, изо­бра­жая их тя­жёлый труд. Не­дол­го по­се­щал АХ в Брюс­се­ле (1880–81), в Гаа­ге поль­зо­вал­ся со­ве­та­ми жи­во­пис­ца А. Мау­ве (1882–83), здесь же по­лу­чил свой пер­вый и един­ст­вен­ный за­каз (12 ри­сун­ков ви­дов го­ро­да). Ра­бо­тал так­же в Дрен­те (1883), Ну­эне­не (1884–85), Ан­твер­пе­не (1885–1886), где по­се­щал АХ и ча­ст­ную шко­лу ри­сун­ка, изу­чал жи­во­пись Рем­бранд­та, П. П. Ру­бен­са и др. ста­рых мас­те­ров, по­зна­ко­мил­ся с япон. гра­вю­рой. В сво­их ри­сун­ках голл. пе­рио­да (все­го св. 1300) и жи­во­пис­ных ра­бо­тах (с 1882) В. Г. об­ра­щал­ся к изо­бра­же­нию су­ро­вой при­ро­ды и бы­та шах­тё­ров, зем­ле­дель­цев, бра­бант­ских тка­чей. Счи­тая се­бя про­дол­жа­те­лем тра­ди­ций реа­лиз­ма 19 в., пре­ж­де все­го ра­бот Ф. Мил­ле на кре­сть­ян­скую те­му, В. Г. дос­ти­гал, тем не ме­нее, во мн. по­лот­нах сим­во­ли­ст­ско­го обоб­ще­ния: ри­су­нок «Скорбь» (1882, ча­ст­ное со­б­ра­ние, Гаа­га), кар­ти­ны «Едо­ки кар­то­фе­ля» (1885, Му­зей Ван Го­га, Ам­стер­дам, и Му­зей Крёл­лер-Мюл­лер, От­тер­ло), так­же на­тюр­мор­ты, на­пи­сан­ные в су­мрач­ной жи­во­пис­ной гам­ме и на­де­лён­ные ре­лиг.-фи­лос. под­тек­стом («На­тюр­морт с от­кры­той Биб­ли­ей и по­гас­шей све­чой», 1885, Му­зей Ван Го­га, Ам­стер­дам).

Стре­ми­тель­ная эво­лю­ция твор­че­ст­ва В. Г. на­ча­лась по­сле его пе­ре­ез­да во Фран­цию. В 1886–88 он по­се­щал сту­дию Ф. Кор­мо­на в Па­ри­же, где по­зна­ко­мил­ся с А. де Ту­луз-Лот­ре­ком; изу­че­ние жи­во­пи­си Э. Де­лак­руа, А. Мон­ти­чел­ли, мас­те­ров им­прес­сио­низ­ма, нео­им­прес­сио­низ­ма и понт-авен­ской шко­лы (П. Го­ге­на и др.) уси­ли­ло ин­те­рес В. Г. к про­бле­мам ко­ло­ри­та, ком­по­зи­ции, экс­прес­сии маз­ка. В этот пе­ри­од па­лит­ра В. Г. ста­но­вит­ся свет­лой, ис­че­за­ют зем­ля­ные крас­ки, по­яв­ля­ют­ся чис­тые го­лу­бые, зо­ло­ти­сто-жёл­тые, ро­зо­вые, крас­ные то­на; са­мо­цен­ную вы­ра­зи­тель­ность при­об­ре­та­ет фак­ту­ра кар­тин – ди­на­мич­ный, стре­ми­тель­ный, как бы струя­щий­ся ма­зок (ви­ды Мон­мар­тра, ин­терь­е­ры рес­то­ра­нов, на­тюр­мор­ты, порт­ре­ты – в т. ч. «Па­па­ша Тан­ги», 1887, Му­зей Ро­де­на, Па­риж). Мно­же­ст­вен­ность ис­пы­тан­ных В. Г. влия­ний, его ин­те­рес к са­мым раз­ным яв­ле­ни­ям совр. иск-ва не­из­мен­но пре­тво­ре­ны в уни­каль­ный инди­ви­ду­аль­ный стиль.

Окон­ча­тель­ное свое­об­ра­зие творч. ма­не­ры ху­дож­ни­ка оп­ре­де­ли­лось в его «арль­ский пе­ри­од» (февр. 1888 – май 1889). Му­чи­тель­ный по­иск гар­мо­нии и кра­со­ты, – од­но­вре­мен­но по­дав­лен­ность и страх пе­ред вра­ж­деб­ны­ми че­ло­ве­ку си­ла­ми – на­хо­ди­ли во­пло­ще­ние то в про­ни­зан­ных сол­неч­ным све­том, сияю­щих чис­ты­ми крас­ка­ми пей­за­жах Про­ван­са и на­тюр­мор­тах («Цве­ту­щая сли­ва», 1887, Му­зей Ван Го­га, Ам­стер­дам; «Под­сол­ну­хи», 1888, там же и Но­вая пи­на­ко­те­ка, Мюн­хен), то в зло­ве­щих, на­по­ми­наю­щих ноч­ной кош­мар об­раз­ах («Ноч­ное ка­фе в Ар­ле», 1888, Ху­дож. га­ле­рея Йель­ско­го ун-та, Нью-Хей­вен). Ди­на­ми­ка цве­та и маз­ка оду­хо­тво­ря­ет не толь­ко при­ро­ду и лю­дей («Крас­ные ви­но­град­ни­ки в Ар­ле», 1888, ГМИИ, и др.), но и не­оду­шев­лён­ные пред­ме­ты («Спаль­ня Ван Го­га в Ар­ле», 1888, Му­зей Ван Го­га, Ам­стер­дам). Жи­во­пис­ная сис­те­ма этих про­из­ве­де­ний по­строе­на на со­че­та­ни­ях яр­ких цве­тов, вы­ра­зит. рит­ме ри­сун­ка и сме­лых, сво­бод­ных ком­по­зи­ци­он­ных ре­ше­ни­ях. В кон. 1888 В. Г. в Ар­ле по­се­тил П. Го­ген; о дра­ма­тич. раз­ры­ве ме­ж­ду ху­дож­ни­ка­ми по­ве­ст­ву­ют по­лот­на «Крес­ло Го­ге­на» (1888, Му­зей Ван Го­га, Ам­стер­дам) и ав­то­порт­ре­ты В. Г. («Ав­то­порт­рет с пе­ре­вя­зан­ным ухом», 1889, со­б­ра­ние Ли Б. Блок, Чи­ка­го и Ин-т Кур­то, Лон­дон).

На­пря­жён­ная ра­бо­та В. Г. в по­след­ние го­ды жиз­ни со­про­во­ж­да­лась при­сту­па­ми де­прес­сии, ко­то­рая при­ве­ла его в кли­ни­ку для ду­шев­но­боль­ных в Ар­ле (фев­раль–май 1889), за­тем в Сен-Ре­ми-де-Про­ванс (май 1889 – май 1890) и в Овер-сюр-Уаз (май–июль 1890). Твор­че­ст­во двух по­след­них лет жиз­ни от­ме­че­но экс­та­тич. одер­жи­мо­стью, пре­дель­но обо­ст­рён­ной экс­прес­си­ей цве­то­вых со­че­та­ний, рез­ки­ми сме­на­ми на­строе­ния – от ис­сту­п­лён­но­го от­чая­ния и мрач­но­го ви­зио­нер­ст­ва, сбли­жаю­ще­го его с сим­во­лиз­мом («Про­гул­ка за­клю­чён­ных» по мо­ти­вам гра­вю­ры Г. До­ре, 1890, ГМИИ; «До­ро­га с ки­па­ри­са­ми и звёз­да­ми», 1890, Му­зей Крёл­лер-Мюл­лер, От­тер­ло; «Во­ро­ны в пше­нич­ном по­ле», 1890, Му­зей Ван Го­га, Ам­стер­дам), до тре­пет­но­го чув­ст­ва про­свет­ле­ния и уми­ро­тво­ре­ния («Пей­заж в Ове­ре по­сле до­ж­дя», 1890, ГМИИ). В боль­шой се­рии его ав­то­порт­ре­тов, как и в зна­ме­ни­тых пись­мах к бра­ту Тео Ван Го­гу (1857–1891) и не­мно­гим друзь­ям (из­да­ны в 4 тт., 1952–54), от­ра­зи­лись бо­лез­нен­но-му­чи­тель­ные по­ис­ки ду­хов­ных, нрав­ст­вен­ных цен­но­стей. Во вре­мя оче­ред­но­го при­сту­па бо­лез­ни 27.7.1890 ху­дож­ник на­нёс се­бе смер­тель­ное ог­не­стрель­ное ра­не­ние.

Твор­че­ст­во В. Г. от­ра­зи­ло слож­ней­ший пе­ре­лом­ный мо­мент в ху­дож. куль­ту­ре кон. 19 в., со­ци­аль­ную дра­му но­во­го иск-ва. Глу­бо­ко лич­но­ст­ное ми­ро­вос­прия­тие и тра­гич. па­фос, вы­ра­жен­ные в его про­из­ве­де­ни­ях, оп­ре­де­ли­ли осо­бое ме­сто В. Г. в иск-ве пост­им­прес­сио­низ­ма и ока­за­ли зна­чит. воз­дей­ст­вие на аван­гар­дизм 20 в. (в ча­ст­но­сти, на мас­те­ров франц. фо­виз­ма и нем. экс­прес­сио­низ­ма).

Винсент Виллем Ван Гог (нидерл. Vincent Willem van Gogh; 30 марта 1853, Грот-Зюндерт, Нидерланды – 29 июля 1890, Овер-сюр-Уаз, Франция) – нидерландский художник-постимпрессионист, не получивший почти никакого специального образования, но за недолгие 10 лет своей творческой карьеры написавший огромное количество полотен, многие из которых стали признанными мировыми шедеврами живописи. Картины Ван Гога начали набирать популярность только после смерти художника, и сейчас входят в список самых дорогих полотен мира и выставляются на обозрение широкой публики на самых престижных выставках.

Особенности творчества художника Винсента Ван Гога: ранние работы относят к такому направлению живописи, как реализм. Они написаны в довольно мрачной цветовой гамме. Для цикла под названием «Головы крестьян» и первой своей значимой картины «Едоки картофеля» Ван Гог использует в основном землистые оттенки. Палитра художника меняется после переезда в Париж в 1886 году, его полотна насыщаются чистыми, яркими цветами. Собственный неповторимый стиль в творчестве Винсента Ван Гога выработался под влиянием одновременно такого направления живописи, как импрессионизм, и японских гравюр. В последние годы на картинах он чаще всего отдает предпочтение желтому и синему цветам.

Самые известные картины Винсента Ван Гога: «Звездная ночь», «Подсолнухи», «Портрет доктора Гаше», «Ирисы», «Портрет почтальона Жозефа Рулена», «Ночное кафе в Арле», «Автопортрет с перевязанным ухом и трубкой», «Спальня в Арле».

Мог ли архетипический «бедный художник» Винсент Ван Гог догадываться, что спустя столетие после его смерти его имя для многих станет синонимом слова «живопись»? Что его подсолнухи, причудливые завихрения ночного неба и тонконогие столики маленького французского кафе одними из первых будут всплывать в памяти при слове «картина», и их стоимость будет равна миллионам? Мог ли он хотя бы подозревать, что города, где он жил и работал, превратятся в места паломничества ценителей изобразительного искусства, а то самое ничем не примечательное кафе в Арле станет туристической Меккой?

Скажи кто-нибудь об этом Винсенту при его жизни, он бы, скорее всего, покрутил пальцем у виска, в ужасе схватился за голову и, возможно, даже отказался бы от творчества в пользу занятия, которое наверняка не сделает его знаменитым. Ван Гог утверждал, что люди равнодушны к живописи, и считал, что художникам нужно писать в первую очередь для того, чтобы быть ближе к народу, чтобы нести искусство в каждый дом.

Практически все, что мы знаем о жизни Ван Гога, стало известно из его обширной многолетней переписки с братом Тео. В одном из этих писем можно встретить такое утверждение: «Единственное счастье, ощутимое материальное счастье – быть всегда молодым». Винсент Ван Гог, выстреливший себе в грудь в возрасте 37 лет, лишил себя возможности состариться и проверить, насколько соответствует истине эта его мысль. 

Жизнь взаймы
В 1851 году молодой священник Теодор Ван Гог, назначенный служить в небольшой голландский городок Гроот Зюндерт, женился на Анне Корнелии Карбентус. Их первенец появился на свет – как по учебнику – спустя почти ровно девять месяцев. Мальчика счастливые родители решили назвать Винсентом – в честь деда, тоже священника, и в честь дяди, живущего в Гааге. Но радость была недолгой, малыш прожил всего шесть недель. Анна Корнелия была безутешна, справиться с потерей ребенка ей помогла только вторая беременность. И в том, что второй мальчик родился год спустя после первого – день в день, 30 марта 1853 года – и молодая мать, и ее религиозный супруг, вероятнее всего, усмотрели некий знак свыше. Ребенка окрестили… Винсентом. Винсентом Виллемом Ван Гогом. Сделав его лекарством от скорби, «пластырем», прикрывающим безобразный шрам от утраты.

В психологии для обозначения подобных ситуаций используется термин «замещенная фигура». Вот только не могли раздавленные горем родители знать, как часто это губительно сказывается на психике человека, вынужденного всю жизнь быть заменой кого-то другого. Не потому ли Винсент так спешил жить, постоянно разрываясь между противоречивыми чувствами? Не потому ли он так тяжело сходился с людьми и не мог обзавестись друзьями? Не потому ли нигде не чувствовал себя дома? Не потому ли страдал от изматывающего душевного недуга? Не потому ли Ван Гог никак не мог найти своего места в жизни, что проживал не свою судьбу?

Большую часть сознательной жизни Винсент конфликтовал с родителями, особенно с отцом, потому что у него никак не получалось стать тем сыном, каким его хотели видеть. Он мог быть грубым, импульсивным, своенравным, не стеснялся высказывать собственное мнение и очень любил поспорить. Именно несдержанность стала причиной разрыва многих отношений в его жизни. Но при этом Ван Гог отчаянно нуждался в элементарном человеческом тепле и близости, изо всех сил цепляясь за каждого человека, к которому испытывал привязанность. В его жизни было довольно много друзей и приятелей (и со всеми Винсент рано или поздно разругивался в пух и прах), и целая череда женщин (большинство из которых не отвечали ему взаимностью). Только один человек был для Ван Гога константой – младший брат Тео, всегда остававшийся для художника поддержкой, опорой, идеальным собеседником и лучшим другом. По всей видимости, именно серьезная размолвка с братом окончательно подорвала психическое здоровье Винсента и толкнула его на самоубийство.

От любви до ненависти

Религия, если можно так выразиться, была у Винсента в генах. По большому счету, как старший ребенок в семье он должен был пойти по стопам отца и деда. Но вместо этого после окончания школы Ван Гога по протекции дяди устроили работать в художественную компанию «Гупиль и Ко». К Богу он обратится лишь несколько лет спустя. Как это часто бывает с молодыми людьми, причиной тому послужила неразделенная любовь.

В 1873 году Винсент получил повышение и был переведен в лондонский филиал компании. Год, прожитый в британской столице, стал едва ли не самым счастливым временем в его жизни. Ван Гог с удовольствием окунулся в культурную жизнь Лондона, он хорошо зарабатывал и мог позволить себе снимать приличное жилье в доме Урсулы Лойер. Но самое главное – он был влюблен. Его избранницей стала дочь миссис Лойер Евгения. Целый год Винсент был окрылен любовью, не решаясь признаться девушке в своих чувствах. Но потом, встретив отказ, он впал в отчаяние. Тогда-то ему на помощь пришла Библия.

Ван Гог погрузился в религию со всей свойственной ему страстью, порой доходившей до одержимости. В итоге он лишился работы у Гупиля и полностью посвятил себя спасению душ. Миссионерская деятельность, с которой Винсент в 1879 году приехал в бельгийский шахтерский поселок Боринаж, однако, не увенчалась успехом. Молодой проповедник принял слишком близко к сердцу тяготы жизни шахтеров, стал отдавать им одежду и еду, подрывая собственное здоровье, и перестал мыться, чтобы походить на черных от угольной пыли жителей поселка. В конце концов, Винсента Ван Гога отстранили от работы в Боринаже, посчитав, что он подает плохой пример своей пастве.

Ван Гог очень страдал из-за своего провала в качестве миссионера, однако именно в этот период он начал много рисовать. И чем больше он увлекался живописью, тем слабее становился в нем религиозный пыл. Постепенно в этом отношении плюс сменился на минус. Спустя годы Винсент стал презирать религию и священнослужителей. А своего отца он и вовсе считал лицемером после того, как пастор Теодор не одобрил связь сына с гаагской проституткой Син (Винсент собирался жениться на ней, чтобы спасти от нищеты и порочной профессии, и считал, что священник должен как никто другой поддержать такое решение).

Основные мотивы в картинах и творчестве Винсента Ван Гога

В картинах Винсента Ван Гога есть несколько повторяющихся мотивов, которые он использует довольно часто. Пусть и не так часто, как, например, сеятелей и жнецов в поле (а их художник написал несметное количество), но именно эти объекты заслуживают особого внимания.

Стулья. Любимым английским писателем Винсента Ван Гога был Чарльз Диккенс, который ушел из жизни незадолго до переезда художника в Лондон. Однажды Винсенту попалась на глаза гравюра Люка Филдеса, которую он создал вскоре после смерти великого писателя. На ней было изображено сиротливо опустевшее рабочее место Диккенса – стол и отодвинутое от него кресло. Ван Гог купил эту гравюру и очень дорожил ею. Его поразило то, как с помощью такой простой вещи, как стул, можно показать тоску по ушедшему безвозвратно человеку. Позже, в Арле, Винсент снова и снова рисует свою комнату с пустыми стульями, на которых было не суждено сидеть никому, кроме него самого. В декабре 1888 года, незадолго до трагической рождественской ночи он рисует пустое кресло Гогена (который к тому моменту уже твердо решил уехать) и свой собственный стул с одиноко лежащей на нем курительной трубкой. Интересно то, что обе эти знаменитые картины написаны Ван Гогом в той же цветовой гамме, в которой он изображал соответственно Гогена и себя.

Башмаки. На протяжении своей жизни Винсент много ходил пешком. Живя в Лондоне, он каждый день совершал 45-минутную прогулку до работы и обратно. Позже, в период своей религиозной горячки, Ван Гог три дня шел пешком в Айлворт, куда он нанялся школьным учителем, воображая себя неким паломником, идущим на богомолье. Спустя три года, после оглушительного провала в качестве миссионера, он совершает еще более длительное (и, по сути, совершенно бессмысленное) пешее путешествие – из Боринажа в Брюссель. Конечно, по большей части, Винсент делает это в целях экономии, но создается впечатление, что так он словно наказывал себя за неудачи. Свою первую картину со старыми, стоптанными и потертыми башмаками Ван Гог пишет уже в Париже, купив пару на блошином рынке. Позже из этого полотна родилась целая серия, ставшая символом непростого жизненного пути художника (1, 2, 3, 4).

Мертвое живое. Винсент был очень увлекающейся натурой. С религиозной страсти он резко переключился на страсть художественную. И в своей одержимости Ван Гог порой забывал о пределах разумного, уподобляясь ребенку, ради интереса отрывающему крылья жукам. Во время жизни в Нуэнене он полюбил рисовать птичьи гнезда, которые часто снимал с веток прямо вместе с яйцами. Спустя несколько лет в Сен-Реми Винсент поймал в больничном саду большую красивую бабочку Павлиний глаз. Художник умертвил ее, чтобы получше рассмотреть и запечатлеть рисунок на крыльях. Ван Гог ошибочно счел ее Бражником, и именно под этим названием знаменитая картина часто встречается до сих пор.

Безумие Ван Гога

Если продолжить тему жестокости, то можно с уверенностью сказать, что никто не пострадал от действий Винсента больше, чем он сам. Всю жизнь он изводил и фактически уничтожал себя самыми разными способами. Венерические болезни, страсть к абсенту, бессонные ночи… Ван Гог уже в возрасте тридцати лет был в ужасающем физическом состоянии. Он рано стал импотентом и лишился большей части зубов из-за плохого питания, постоянного курения и употребления алкоголя (поэтому ни на одном из автопортретов художник не улыбается – он попросту стеснялся своего щербатого рта).

Постепенно приходило в упадок и его психическое здоровье. Вероятнее всего, Винсент окончательно загнал себя в бездну безумия еще в те дни, когда ждал в «Желтом доме» приезда Поля Гогена. Он тогда безостановочно писал подсолнухи, литрами вливая в себя крепкий кофе. По словам художника, только находясь в таком крайне возбужденном состоянии, он мог достичь в своем творчестве нужной «высокой ноты желтого». Перелом наступил на Рождество, когда Ван Гог отрезал себе часть уха. С этого момента безумие с каждым днем укоренялось в нем все прочнее, несмотря на лечение и кажущиеся улучшения.

До сих пор точно неизвестно, каким именно недугом страдал Винсент. Существует около тридцати разных версий, включающих биполярное расстройство (более известное как маниакально-депрессивный психоз), эпилепсию, шизофрению, хроническую депрессию и порфирию. Как бы то ни было, закончилось все выстрелом, а последней картиной Ван Гога предположительно стало полотно «Пшеничное поле с воронами». Винсент прожил еще полтора дня. Он сидел на постели с пулей в груди и безостановочно курил. Тео уверял брата, что его спасут. «Бесполезно, — ответил художник. – Тоска все равно не пройдет никогда».

Автор: Евгения Сидельникова

Винсент Ван Гог — биография

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Винсент Ван Гог – художник-постимпрессионист из Нидерландов, автор портретов, натюрмортов, автопортретов, пейзажей.

Винсента Ван Гога обуревали сильные эмоции вперемешку с тяжелыми психическими состояниями, и может быть благодаря этому он стал одним из самых значимых художников в мире. Он начал рисовать в 27 и стремился запечатлеть все, что видел вокруг себя. Он рисовал пылко и много, но его картины никто не признавал искусством. А он продолжал наносить на холст все новые и новые задумки. Результатом его жизни стали восемьсот полотен, причем более четырехсот из них он написал в последние три года перед смертью.

Ван Гог никому не пытался доказать, что он художник, у него совершенно отсутствовало тщеславие. Единственным человеком, которому он стремился это доказать, был он сам. Художник умер нищим, считая, что его работы не имеют художественной ценности. Зато сейчас в нем видят эпоху постимпрессионизма, а его полотна выставляются на аукционах по баснословной цене.

Детство и юность

Родился Винсент Ван Гог 30 марта 1853 года в деревне Грот-Зюндерт в Нидерландах. Его родителями были пастор Теодор Ван Гог и Анна Корнелия Карбентус. Кроме Винсента в семье было еще пятеро детей. И только один из братьев – Тео, старался во всем помочь Винсенту, пытался облегчить его нелегкую судьбу.

Дома Винсент был очень непослушным, проявлял некоторые странности в поведении, и родители частенько наказывали его за непослушание. В обществе он вел себя тихо, серьезно и часто над чем-то задумывался. Он особо ни с кем не дружил и не принимал участия в детских играх. По мнению односельчан Винсент отличался скромностью, дружелюбием, состраданием. В школу он пошел как и все, в семь лет, но через год его пришлось оттуда забрать и продолжить обучение дома. В 1864 году родители отдали его в интернат в городе Зевенберген.

Расставание с домом плохо сказалось на мальчике, он очень страдал в школе. Спустя два года, в 1866-м, Винсента определили в другую школу-интернат. Мальчику понравилось изучать языки, и в эти годы он впервые проявляет свои творческие способности к рисованию. В 1868 году, прямо посреди учебного процесса он бросил школу и отправился домой. На процессе образования поставлена точка. Впоследствии известный художник не любил вспоминать детство – от него веяло мрачностью и холодом.

Все мужчины семьи Ван Гогов занимались либо торговлей картинами, либо служили в церкви. Винсент решил сразу стать проповедником, потом пробовал торговать произведениями искусства. Каждому из своих занятий он отдавался целиком. У него все получалось, но парень решительно отказался от обеих работ и решил заняться тем, что ему было больше всего по душе – живописью.

Начало карьеры

В 1868 году, в возрасте 15 лет, молодой человек стал сотрудником филиала художественной компании «Гупиль и Ко», которая находилась в Гааге. Он показал отличные результаты, был любознательным и исполнительным, и вскоре его поощрили переводом в один из филиалов, расположенных в Лондоне. Он пробыл там два года, проявил себя как настоящий коммерсант, начал хорошо разбираться в гравюрах местных мастеров, разговаривать цитатами Диккенса и Элиота. В общем, обычный молодой человек, с приятной внешностью и лоском. В перспективе он должен был получить место комиссионера в центральном парижском отделении фирмы.

Однако в 1875-м в жизни Винсента что-то случилось, и это что-то полностью изменило его биографию.

Он часто писал письма своему братишке Тео, и в одном из них он сказал, что пребывает в «болезненном одиночестве».

Спустя годы историки предположили, что в это время юноша влюбился, но девушка отвергла его любовь. Как звали эту девушку, так и осталось загадкой, да и была ли она, точно никто не скажет. Просто такое объяснение его состояния было более чем логичным. На ситуацию не повлиял и скорый перевод во Францию. Винсент полностью охладел к еще недавно любимой работе, и его уволили.

Теология и миссионерство

Молодой человек занят поисками себя и своего предназначения, и вскоре приходит к выводу, что оно связано с религией. В 1877 году он поселяется в Амстердаме у своего дяди Иоганнеса, и собирается начать обучение на факультете теологии. Но учеба принесла только разочарование, Винсент бросает теологию и уезжает. Однако он видит свое предназначение в служении людям, поэтому парень становится учеником миссионерской школы. В 1879 году его назначили проповедником в Ваме, расположенной к югу Бельгии.

Винсент стал преподавателем Закона Божьего для шахтеров Боринажа, старается помочь их семьям, возится с больными, учит детей, проповедует. Чтобы заработать на жизнь, занимается изготовлением карт Палестины. Жильем ему служила бедная лачуга, из еды были только хлеб и вода, спать приходилось на полу – он просто физически себя истязал. Помимо этого он еще борется на стороне рабочих за их права.

Власти города вскоре сняли его с этой должности, потому что такая крайность и слишком бурная деятельность проповедника их сильно настораживала. Винсент продолжает рисовать, из-под его кисти выходят портреты, на которых изображены шахтеры и их семьи.

Становление

Ван Гог пытается бороться с депрессией, которая настигла его после увольнения в Патюраже. В этом ему помогает живопись. Благодаря поддержке брата Тео, Винсент учится в Академии изящных искусств. Однако спустя год он бросает обучение и отправляется домой, к родителям. Теперь он занимается изобразительным искусством самостоятельно.

И снова его накрывает любовь, в этот раз предметом его страсти стала кузина. И снова любовь безответная, однако юноша не теряет надежды и продолжает ухаживать за любимой. Но родные были категорически настроены против этих отношений, и даже предложили Винсенту уехать. Новое потрясение оказалось слишком сильным, и привело к полному отказу от личной жизни. Ван Гог бросает родной дом и переезжает в Гаагу, где продолжает писать картины. Там он поступает в ученики к Антону Мауве, работает на износ, пристально интересуется жизнью горожан, особенно его привлекают бедные кварталы. Винсент начал копировать литографии, штудирует книгу Шарля Барга «Курс обучения рисунку». Ван Гог начал экспериментировать с различными техниками, смешивать их на холсте, чтобы выработать свою и получить новую цветовую гамму.

В это время происходит еще одна попытка стать семейным человеком. Он познакомился с беременной женщиной, и она со своим ребенком поселилась у него. Это стало причиной ссоры Винсента со своими друзьями и близкими, но именно в это время художник был по-настоящему счастлив. Однако счастливой семейной жизни не получилось, женщина вскоре проявила свой крутой нрав, и семья распалась.

После расставания Винсент поселился в провинции Дренте, ближе к северу Нидерландов. Жильем ему служила хижина, переоборудованная под мастерскую. Он много работает, пишет картины крестьянского быта, изображает их самих на полотнах, создает пейзажи. Те ранние произведения художника несколько не дотягивают до реалистичных. Он так и не получил академическое образование, поэтому в его рисунках того периода заметны некоторые неправильные очертания человеческих фигур.

Прошло немного времени, и Винсент снова переехал к родителям, на этот раз в Нюэнен. Он продолжает много рисовать, одновременно с этим набирает учеников, запоем читает и занимается музыкой. Героями его полотен снова становится природа, люди, причем все это изображалось в темных, можно даже сказать, мрачных тонах. Самым значимым полотном голландского периода Ван Гога считается «Едоки картофеля», написанное художником в 1885 году. На картине изображена сцена из крестьянской жизни.

Париж

Винсент долго пребывал в раздумьях, но в конце концов решился, и в 1886 году переехал в Париж. В этом городе состоялась встреча художника и его брата Тео, который в то время уже стал директором художественной галереи. Творческая жизнь столицы Франции в те годы была очень бурной.

Самым значимым событием того периода стала выставка художников-импрессионистов в салоне на улице Лафит. Там впервые представили свои полотна Синьяк и Сера, ставшие во главе постимпрессионизма, которое стало завершающим этапом импрессионизма. Импрессионизм был своеобразной революцией в живописи, благодаря которому с полотен исчезла академическая техника и сюжеты. Считается, что важнее руководствоваться первым впечатлением, отдавать предпочтение чистым тонам.

В Париже Винсент попал под опеку брата Тео, который поселил его у себя дома, познакомил с известными художниками. Ван Гог впервые побывал в студии Фернана Кормона, слывшего художником традиционалистом, и именно там он встретил Эмиля Бернара, Тулуз-Лотрека, Луи Анкетена. Винсент в восторге от импрессионизма и постимпрессионизма. В это время художник полюбил абсент и даже написал натюрморт с любимым напитком.

С 1886 по 1888 год, когда Винсент жил в Париже, он написал больше всего картин. Этот период потом назовут самым плодотворным в биографии художника, потому что его коллекция стала больше на 230 полотен. Он упорно ищет свою технику, изучает все новшества и тенденции современного написания картин. В эти годы Ван Гог по-новому взглянул на живопись, он нашел свою манеру, в которой в большей степени присутствовал импрессионизм и постимпрессионизм, отойдя от реалистического восприятия мира. Это видно по его пейзажам и натюрмортам, созданным в парижском периоде.

С легкой руки брата Тео среди знакомых Винсента появляются художники Клод Моне, Камиль Писсарро, Пьер-Огюст Ренуар. В этой компании Ван Гог часто бывает на пленэре. Палитра мастера постепенно приобретает светлые тона, становится более яркой, чтобы спустя некоторое время превратиться в буйство тонов и оттенков, ставшее характерным для него в последние годы.

В парижском периоде у Винсента значительно расширился круг общения. Вместе в братьями он ходит по разным местам, знакомится с девушками и даже заводит романы. В кафе «Тамбурин» у него появилась знакомая по имени Агостина Сегатори, которая владела этим заведением. Он написал ее портрет за столиком в ее кафе, потом было несколько картин в стиле «ню». У них даже был кратковременный роман. Часто художники собирались в лавочке папаши Танги, который торговал красками и всем необходимым для художников. В этой лавочке, как и в других, ей подобных, проводились целые выставки художников.

Вскоре Ван Гог и его товарищи, которые не были знаменитыми и признанными, сформировали свою группу Малых бульваров, потому что в группе Больших бульваров имели честь находиться только художники с мировым именем. Между ними витал настоящий дух соперничества, царило постоянное напряжение, и Ван Гог чувствует, что для него это невыносимо. Он бесконечно конфликтует со всеми, часто ссорится, и поэтому решает покинуть Париж.

Отрубленное ухо

В феврале 1888 года импульсивный и бескомпромиссный художник оставляет столицу и переезжает в Прованс. Вскоре он полюбил эту местность всеми силами души. Тео продолжает поддерживать брата, он полностью содержит его, ежемесячно отправляя Винсенту 250 франков. Благодарный художник высылает Тео все свои произведения. Винсент поселился в гостинице, в его распоряжении было четыре комнаты, питание в кафе. Он очень быстро подружился с хозяевами гостиницы, и начал писать их портреты.

Новая волна вдохновения пришла к художнику весной, когда под ярким солнцем Юга расцвели деревья. Он восторгался яркостью красок, прозрачностью воздуха, и постепенно отходил от идей импрессионизма. Но светлая палитра по-прежнему присутствует в его полотнах, и он так же работает на пленэре. Работы того периода окрашены желтым цветом, как будто художник хотел донести душевное сияние, вырывающееся из глубин его души.

Ван Гог любил работать по ночам, и чтобы иметь возможность творить на пленэре, он прикрепил к этюднику и шляпе свечи, обеспечив таким образом освещение рабочего места. Так он написал свои шедевры под названием «Ночное кафе» и «Звездная ночь над Роной». По приглашению Винсента к нему приезжает Поль Гоген, которого он давно ждал в гости. Однако очень скоро они рассорились между собой и разорвали дружеские отношения. Гоген всегда был уверенным и педантичным, а Ван Гог наоборот, беспокойным и очень несобранным.

Перед наступлением Рождества 1888-го, у них состоялось очередное выяснение отношений, в результате которого Ван Гог отрубил собственное ухо. Гоген испугался нападения, он решил, что покушаются на него. Пока он скрывался в гостинице, Винсент упаковал в бумагу отрубленную мочку своего уха и приказал доставить проститутке по имени Рашель, их общей приятельнице. Окровавленного Ван Гога нашел один из его друзей – Рулен. Рана затянулась достаточно быстро, однако душевное состояние художника привело его на больничную кровать.

Личная жизнь

Психическое заболевание великого художника могло быть вызвано неустроенностью его личной жизни, ведь он так и не женился. Первый шок он испытал, когда признался в любви дочери своей хозяйки. Предложение странного молодого человека было для девушки неожиданным, и она отказала ему в грубой форме.

Та же история повторилась с Ки Стрикер Вое, доводившейся ему кузиной. Она не принимала его ухаживания, но художник принял решение не сдаваться. Когда он в третий раз появился в их доме, то поставил руку над горящей свечой и сказал, что не уберет ее, пока не получит согласие на брак. Отец девушки рассмотрел в этом поступке всю его неуравновешенность и просто выдворил из своего дома.

Недостаток секса приводит к нервному состоянию. Художник начал увлекаться проститутками, причем худшими из них. Среди них он выбрал беременную, у которой к тому же была пятилетняя дочь. Когда родился сын, Винсент полюбил его и даже решил жениться. Она стала ему позировать и жила примерно год. Эта женщина заразила Винсента гонореей. Вскоре он прекратил с ней отношения, и она вернулась у прежней жизни. Расстроенный художник уезжает из Гааги.

В последнее время Винсент просто отбивался от преследований соседки Марго Бегеманн. Ей исполнился 41 год и она стремилась выйти замуж. Когда родители не благословили этот брак, она чуть не наложила на себя руки, но художник спас ее. Винсент вел беспорядочную половую жизнь, был частым посетителем публичных домов и периодически проходил курс лечения от «болезней от удовольствия».

Смерть

Горожане Арли с некоторой опаской начали относиться к художнику, который был им чужим и непонятным. В 1889 году они составляют петицию, в которой высказывают просьбу оградить их от общества безумца. Винсент прекрасно понимает, что его состояние представляет опасность для окружающих, поэтому по доброй воле ложится в клинику в Сен-Реми. Доктора не запрещают ему работать на улице, но только в сопровождении медицинского персонала. Именно в тот период он написал картины «Дорога с кипарисами и звездой» и «Звездная ночь», в которых присутствуют завихрения и волнообразные линии.

В лечебнице его состояние менялось достаточно часто – то бурная активность, то затяжная депрессия. Болезнь часто обострялась, однако несмотря на это, Тео Ван Гог сумел добиться разрешения на участие брата в Салоне Независимых, который проходил в сентябре в Париже. В начале 1890 года Ван Гог выставил свое полотно «Красные виноградники в Арле», которое купили за 400 франков. Это была достаточно приличная сумма, полученная за единственную картину, которую Винсент продал в своей жизни.

Он радовался как ребенок, и принялся за работу с тройным усердием. Успех от продажи картины вдохновил и брата Тео. Он присылал Винсенту все необходимое для творчества, но художник начал есть краски. Весной 1890-го Тео уговорил терапевта-гомеопата доктора Гаше принять Винсента в свою клинику. Врач сам любил рисовать, поэтому охотно соглашается поработать с художником. Винсент быстро привык к доктору, тот показался ему добрым и оптимистичным человеком.

Через месяц художнику разрешили съездить в Париж. Тео не очень обрадовался встрече, на него в то время навалилась куча финансовых проблем, к тому же сильно заболела дочь. Винсент огорчился такому приему, он понял, что всю жизнь был обузой брату. Это открытие его потрясло, и он немедленно вернулся в клинику.

27 июля 1890 года он по обычаю ушел на этюды, но принес не готовые рисунки, а пулю в груди, которую сам выпустил из пистолета. Он попал себе в ребро, и это не привело к летальному исходу во время выстрела. Он дошел до приюта, лег на кровать и закурил. Казалось, что никаких физических мучений он не испытывает.

Доктор немедленно отправил телеграмму брату, который примчался мгновенно. Он начал успокаивать Винсента, говорил, что его вылечат обязательно. На что художник ответил: «Печаль продлится вечно». Винсент Ван Гог умер 29 июля 1890 года в 1 час 30 минут. Похоронили известного художника в местечке Мери на следующий день.

Провести Винсента в последний путь приехало много его друзей. На стенах комнаты художника развесили его последние работы. Гаше хотел сказать прощальное слово, но был так расстроен, что речь получилась торопливой и бессвязной. Единственное, что можно было из нее понять, что умер великий художник и честный человек, и его имя когда-то будет увековечено потомками.

Брат Тео умер через шесть месяцев после этого. Он винил себя за ссору с братом, и пребывал в таком отчаянии, что это было просто невыносимо. У него случилось нервное расстройство. Он писал своей маме, что не может найти слов, чтобы описать свое горе и найти оправдание и утешение, что он будет пребывать в этом состоянии до своих последних дней. Он считал, что единственное, чему можно порадоваться, это то, что Винсент наконец-то обрел такой долгожданный покой.

Винсент тоже написал письмо брату перед смертью, в котором говорится, что не нужно никаких выяснений отношений, что он понимает всех, но не знает, как сделать так, чтобы всем стало хорошо. Он говорил, что был рад встрече с братом, несмотря на его занятость и взвинченность.

В 1914-м вдова Тео Ван Гога добилась разрешения на перезахоронение останков мужа рядом с братом Винсентом.

Картины

Небо

Портреты

Пейзажи

Натюрморты

Ссылки

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