On March 30, 1853, the famous Dutch post-impressionist artist Vincent Van Gogh was born, whose exhibition was sung by the famous group “Leningrad” in their song last year. The editors decided to remind their readers what kind of master this is, why he is famous and how he ended up without an ear.

Who is Vincent Van Gogh and what did he paint?

Van Gogh is a world famous artist, author of the famous “Sunflowers”, “Irises” and “Starry Night”. The master lived only 37 years, of which he devoted no more than ten to painting. Despite the short duration of his career, his legacy is enormous: he managed to paint more than 800 paintings and thousands of drawings.

What was Van Gogh like as a child?

Vincent van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853 in the Dutch village of Grote-Zundert. His father was a Protestant minister, and his mother was the daughter of a bookbinder and bookseller. The future artist received his name in honor of his paternal grandfather, but it was not intended for him, but for the first child of his parents, who was born a year before Van Gogh, but died on the very first day. So, Vincent, being born second, became the eldest in the family.

Little Vincent's household considered him to be wayward and strange, and he was often punished for his mischief. Outside the family, on the contrary, he was very quiet and thoughtful, and almost did not play with other children. He went to the village school for only a year, after which he was sent to a boarding school 20 km from his home - the boy perceived this departure as a real nightmare and could not forget about what happened, even as an adult. Afterwards he was transferred to another boarding school, which he left in the middle of the school year and never recovered. Approximately the same attitude awaited all subsequent places where he tried to get an education.

When and how did you start drawing?

In 1869, Vincent joined his uncle's large art and trading company as a dealer. It was here that he began to understand painting, learn to appreciate and understand it. Afterwards he got tired of selling paintings, and little by little he began to draw and make sketches himself. Van Gogh did not receive any education as such: in Brussels he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, but left it after a year. The artist also visited the prestigious private art studio of the famous European teacher Fernand Cormon, studied impressionist painting, Japanese engraving, and the works of Paul Gauguin.

How was his personal life?

Van Gogh had only unsuccessful relationships in his life. He fell in love for the first time while still working for his uncle as a dealer. Regarding this young lady and her name, the artist’s biographers are still arguing, without going into details, it is worth saying that the girl rejected Vincent’s advances. Afterwards, the master fell in love with his cousin, she also refused him, and the young man’s persistence turned all their common relatives against him. His next chosen one was a pregnant street woman, Christine, whom Vincent met by chance. Without hesitation, she moved in with him. Van Gogh was happy - he had a model, but Christine turned out to have such a harsh disposition that the lady turned the young man’s life into hell. So every love story ended very tragically, and Vincent could not recover for a long time from the psychological trauma inflicted on him.

Is it true that Van Gogh wanted to become a priest?

This is true. Vincent was from a religious family: his father was a pastor, one of his relatives was a recognized theologian. When Van Gogh lost interest in the painting trade, he decided to become a priest. The first thing he did after finishing his career as a dealer was move to London, where he worked as a teacher in several boarding schools. Afterwards, however, he returned to his homeland and worked in a bookstore. He spent most of his time sketching and translating passages from the Bible into German, English and French.

At the same time, Vincent expressed a desire to become a pastor, and his family supported him in this and sent him to Amsterdam to prepare for entering the university to study theology. Only his studies, just like at school, disappointed him. Leaving this institution, he took courses at the Protestant Missionary School (or maybe he did not graduate from them - there are different versions) and spent six months as a missionary in the mining village of Paturage in Borinage. The artist worked so zealously that the local population and members of the Evangelical Society assigned him a salary of 50 francs. After completing a six-month internship, Van Gogh intended to enter an evangelical school to continue his education, but considered the introduced tuition fees to be a manifestation of discrimination and abandoned his intentions. Then he decided to fight for the rights of workers and turned to the management of the mines with a petition to improve working conditions. They did not listen to him and removed him from his position as a preacher. This was a serious blow to the artist’s emotional and mental state.

Why did he cut off his ear and how did he die?

Van Gogh was in close contact with another, no less famous artist, Paul Gauguin. When Vincent settled in the south of France in the town of Arles in 1888, he decided to create the “Workshop of the South,” which was to become a special fraternity of like-minded artists; Van Gogh assigned an important role in the workshop to Gauguin.

On October 25 of the same year, Paul Gauguin arrived in Arles to discuss the idea of ​​​​creating a workshop. But peaceful communication did not work out; conflicts arose between the masters. In the end, Gauguin decided to leave. After another argument on December 23, Van Gogh attacked his friend with a razor in his hands, but Gauguin managed to stop him. How this quarrel occurred, under what circumstances and what was the reason is unknown, but that same night Vincent did not cut off his entire ear, as many are accustomed to believe, but only his earlobe. Whether he expressed his repentance this way or whether it was a manifestation of his illness is unclear. The next day, December 24, Van Gogh was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where the attack repeated, and the master was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy.

The tendency to hurt himself was also the cause of Van Gogh’s death, although there are many legends regarding this too. The main version is that the artist went for a walk with drawing materials and shot himself in the heart area with a revolver, bought to scare away birds while working plein air. But the bullet went lower. So the master independently reached the hotel where he lived, he was given first aid, but it was not possible to save Vincent Van Gogh. On July 29, 1890, he died from loss of blood.

How much are Van Gogh's paintings worth now?

Vincent Van Gogh, by the mid-20th century, came to be regarded as one of the greatest and most recognizable artists. His works, according to auction houses, are considered one of the most expensive. A myth has spread that during his life the master sold only one painting - “Red Vineyards in Arles”, but this is not entirely true. This painting was the first for which a significant sum was paid - 400 francs. At the same time, documents on the lifetime sale of at least 14 more works by Van Gogh have been preserved. How many real transactions he made is unknown, but we should not forget that he started out as a dealer and was capable of trading his paintings.

In 1990, at a Christie's auction in New York, Van Gogh's "Portrait of Doctor Gachet" was purchased for $82.5 million, and "Portrait of the Artist without a Beard" cost $71.5 million. The paintings "Irises", "Landscape with Thunderstorms" clouds”, “Wheat field with cypress trees” are estimated at approximately $50 million to $60 million. The still life “Vase with daisies and poppies” was bought in 2014 for $61.8 million.

When 37-year-old Vincent Van Gogh died on July 29, 1890, his work was virtually unknown. Today, his paintings cost eye-popping sums and adorn the best museums in the world.

125 years after the death of the great Dutch painter, the time has come to learn more about him and dispel some of the myths with which his biography, like the entire history of art, is full.

He changed several jobs before becoming an artist

The son of a minister, Van Gogh began working at age 16. His uncle took him on as a trainee as an art dealer in The Hague. He had occasion to travel to London and Paris, where the company's branches were located. In 1876 he was fired. After this, he worked for some time as a school teacher in England, then as a bookstore salesman. From 1878 he served as a preacher in Belgium. Van Gogh was in need, he had to sleep on the floor, but less than a year later he was fired from this post. Only after this did he finally become an artist and did not change his occupation again. In this field he became famous, however, posthumously.

Van Gogh's career as an artist was short

In 1881, the self-taught Dutch artist returned to the Netherlands, where he devoted himself to painting. He was supported financially and materially by his younger brother Theodore, a successful art dealer. In 1886, the brothers settled in Paris, and these two years in the French capital turned out to be fateful. Van Gogh took part in exhibitions of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists; he began to use a light and bright palette and experiment with brush stroke techniques. The artist spent the last two years of his life in the south of France, where he created a number of his most famous paintings.

In his entire ten-year career, he sold only a few of his more than 850 paintings. His drawings (about 1,300 of them remained) were then unclaimed.

Most likely he didn't cut off his own ear.

In February 1888, after living in Paris for two years, Van Gogh moved to the south of France, to the city of Arles, where he hoped to found a community of artists. He was accompanied by Paul Gauguin, with whom he became friends in Paris. The officially accepted version of events is as follows:

On the night of December 23, 1888, they quarreled and Gauguin left. Van Gogh, armed with a razor, pursued his friend, but, not catching up, returned home and, in frustration, partially cut off his left ear, then wrapped it in newspaper and gave it to some prostitute.

In 2009, two German scientists published a book in which they suggested that Gauguin, being a good swordsman, cut off part of Van Gogh's ear with a saber during a duel. According to this theory, Van Gogh, in the name of friendship, agreed to hide the truth, otherwise Gauguin would have faced prison.

The most famous paintings were painted by him in a psychiatric clinic

In May 1889, Van Gogh sought help at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole psychiatric hospital, located in a former monastery in the city of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in Southern France. The artist was initially diagnosed with epilepsy, but examination also revealed bipolar disorder, alcoholism and metabolic disorders. Treatment consisted mainly of baths. He remained in the hospital for a year and painted a number of landscapes there. More than one hundred paintings from this period include some of his most famous works, such as Starry Night (acquired by New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1941) and Irises (purchased by an Australian industrialist in 1987 for a then-record sum of $ 53.9 million)

Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: Vincent Willem van Gogh; March 30, 1853, Grot-Zundert, near Breda, Netherlands - July 29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, France) - Dutch post-impressionist artist.

Biography of Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh born in the Dutch town of Groot-Zundert on March 30, 1853. Van Gogh was the first child in the family (not counting his brother, who was stillborn). His father's name was Theodore Van Gogh, his mother's name was Carnelia. They had a large family: 2 sons and three daughters. In Van Gogh's family, all the men dealt with paintings in one way or another or served the church. By 1869, without even finishing school, he began working in a company that sold paintings. To tell the truth, Van Gogh was not good at selling paintings, but he had a boundless love for painting, and he was also good at languages. In 1873, at the age of 20, he came to London, where he spent 2 years that changed his whole life.

Van Gogh lived happily in London. He had a very good salary, which was enough to visit various art galleries and museums. He even bought himself a top hat, which he simply could not live without in London. Everything was going to the point that Van Gogh could become a successful merchant, but ... as often happens, love, yes, exactly love, got in the way of his career. Van Gogh fell madly in love with the daughter of his landlady, but upon learning that she was already engaged, he became very withdrawn and became indifferent to his work. When he returned to Paris he was fired.

In 1877, Van Gogh began living in Holland again, and increasingly found solace in religion. After moving to Amsterdam, he began studying to become a priest, but soon dropped out of his studies, as the situation at the faculty did not suit him.

In 1886, at the beginning of March, Van Gogh moved to Paris to live with his brother Theo, and lived in his apartment. There he takes painting lessons from Fernand Cormon, and meets such personalities as Pissarro, Gauguin and many other artists. Very quickly he forgets all the darkness of Dutch life, and quickly gains respect as an artist. He draws clearly and brightly in the style of impressionism and post-impressionism.

Vincent Van Gogh After spending 3 months at an evangelical school located in Brussels, he became a preacher. He distributed money and clothes to the needy poor, although he himself was not well off. This aroused suspicion among the church authorities, and his activities were banned. He did not lose heart and found solace in drawing.

By the age of 27, Van Gogh understood what his calling was in this life, and decided that he must become an artist at all costs. Although Van Gogh took drawing lessons, he can confidently be considered self-taught, because he himself studied many books, tutorials, and copied paintings by famous artists. At first he thought of becoming an illustrator, but then, when he took lessons from his artist relative Anton Mouve, he painted his first works in oils.

It seemed that life began to get better, but Van Gogh again began to be haunted by failures, and love ones at that.

His cousin Keya Vos became a widow. He really liked her, but he received a refusal, which he experienced for a long time. In addition, because of Kei, he had a very serious quarrel with his father. This disagreement was the reason for Vincent's move to The Hague. It was there that he met Klazina Maria Hoornik, who was a girl of easy virtue. Van Gogh lived with her for almost a year, and more than once he had to be treated for sexually transmitted diseases. He wanted to save this poor woman, and even thought of marrying her. But then his family intervened, and thoughts of marriage were simply dispelled.

Returning to his homeland to his parents, who had already moved to Nyonen by that time, his skills began to improve.

He spent 2 years in his homeland. In 1885 Vincent settled in Antwerp, where he attended classes at the Academy of Arts. Then, in 1886, Van Gogh returned to Paris again, to his brother Theo, who throughout his life helped him, both morally and financially. France became Van Gogh's second home. It was in it that he lived the rest of his life. He didn't feel like a stranger here. Van Gogh drank a lot and had a very explosive temper. He could be described as a difficult person to deal with.

In 1888 he moved to Arles. Local residents were not happy to see him in their town, which was located in the south of France. They considered him an abnormal sleepwalker. Despite this, Vincent found friends here and felt quite good. Over time, he came up with the idea of ​​​​creating a settlement here for artists, which he shared with his friend Gauguin. Everything went well, but there was a disagreement between the artists. Van Gogh rushed at Gauguin, who had already become an enemy, with a razor. Gauguin barely escaped with his feet, miraculously surviving. Out of anger at failure, Van Gogh cut off part of his left ear. After spending 2 weeks in a psychiatric clinic, he returned there again in 1889, as he began to suffer from hallucinations.

In May 1890, he finally left the asylum and went to Paris to live with his brother Theo and his wife, who had just given birth to a boy, who was named Vincent in honor of his uncle. Life began to improve, and Van Gogh was even happy, but his illness returned again. On July 27, 1890, Vincent Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a pistol. He died in the arms of his brother Theo, who loved him very much. Six months later, Theo also died. The brothers are buried in the Auvers cemetery nearby.

Van Gogh's work

Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890) is considered a great Dutch artist who had a very strong influence on impressionism in art. His works, created over a ten-year period, are striking in their color, carelessness and roughness of strokes, and images of a mentally ill person, exhausted by suffering, who committed suicide.

Van Gogh became one of the greatest Post-Impressionist artists.

He can be considered self-taught, because... studied painting by copying paintings by old masters. During his life in the Netherlands, Van G. painted pictures about nature, labor and the life of peasants and workers, which he observed around him (“The Potato Eaters”).

In 1886, he moved to Paris and entered the studio of F. Cormon, where he met A. Toulouse-Lautrec and E. Bernard. Under the impression of impressionist painting and Japanese engravings, the artist’s style changed: an intense color scheme and a wide, energetic brush stroke characteristic of the late Van G. (“Boulevard of Clichy”, “Portrait of Father Tanguy”) appeared.

In 1888 he moved to the south of France, to the town of Arles. This was the most fruitful period of the artist’s work. During his life, Van G. created more than 800 paintings and 700 drawings in a variety of genres, but his talent was most clearly manifested in the landscape: it was in it that his choleric explosive temperament found an outlet. The moving, nervous texture of his paintings reflected the artist’s state of mind: he suffered from a mental illness, which ultimately led him to suicide.

Features of creativity

“Much remains unclear and controversial to this day in the pathography of this severe bionegative personality. It can be assumed that there is a syphilitic provocation of schizo-epileptic psychosis. His feverish creativity is quite comparable to the increased productivity of the brain before the onset of syphilitic brain disease, as was the case with Nietzsche, Maupassant, and Schumann. Van Gogh provides a good example of how a mediocre talent, thanks to psychosis, turned into an internationally recognized genius."

“The peculiar bipolarity, so clearly expressed in the life and psychosis of this remarkable patient, is simultaneously expressed in his artistic creativity. Essentially the style of his works remains the same all the time. Only the winding lines are repeated more and more often, giving his paintings a spirit of unbridledness, which reaches its culmination point in his last work, where the upward striving and the inevitability of destruction, fall, and annihilation are clearly emphasized. These two movements - the movement of ascent and the movement of fall - form the structural basis of epileptic manifestations, just as two poles form the basis of the epileptoid constitution.

“Van Gogh painted brilliant paintings in the intervals between attacks. And the main secret of his genius was the extraordinary purity of consciousness and the special creative enthusiasm that arose as a result of his illness between attacks. F.M. also wrote about this special state of consciousness. Dostoevsky, who at one time suffered from similar attacks of mysterious mental disorder.”

Bright colors of Van Gogh

Dreaming of a brotherhood of artists and collective creativity, he completely forgot that he himself was an incorrigible individualist, irreconcilable to the point of restraint in matters of life and art. But this was also his strength. You need to have a sufficiently trained eye to distinguish Monet's paintings from paintings by, for example, Sisley. But only once having seen “Red Vineyards”, you will never confuse Van Gogh’s works with anyone else. Every line and stroke is an expression of his personality.

The dominant feature of the impressionistic system is color. In Van Gogh’s painting system, everything is equal and crushed into one inimitable bright ensemble: rhythm, color, texture, line, form.

At first glance, this seems like a bit of a stretch. Are the “red vineyards” pushing around with a color unheard of in intensity, isn’t the ringing chord of cobalt blue active in “The Sea at Sainte-Marie”, aren’t the colors of “Landscape at Auvers after the Rain” dazzlingly pure and sonorous, next to which any impressionistic painting looks hopelessly faded?

Exaggeratedly bright, these colors have the ability to sound in any intonation throughout the entire emotional range - from burning pain to the most delicate shades of joy. Sounding colors alternately intertwine into a softly and subtly harmonized melody, and then rear up in ear-piercing dissonance. Just as in music there are minor and major scales, so the colors of Van Gogh’s palette are divided in two. For Van Gogh, cold and warm are like life and death. At the head of the opposing camps are yellow and blue, both colors are deeply symbolic. However, this “symbolism” has the same living flesh as Vangogh’s ideal of beauty.

Van Gogh saw some kind of bright beginning in yellow paint from soft lemon to intense orange. The color of the sun and ripened bread in his understanding was the color of joy, solar warmth, human kindness, benevolence, love and happiness - all that in his understanding was included in the concept of “life”. The opposite in meaning is blue, from blue to almost black-lead - the color of sadness, infinity, melancholy, despair, mental anguish, fatal inevitability and, ultimately, death. Van Gogh's late paintings are an arena for the clash of these two colors. They are like the struggle between good and evil, daylight and darkness, hope and despair. The emotional and psychological possibilities of color are the subject of constant reflection by Van Gogh: “I hope to make a discovery in this area, for example, to express the feelings of two lovers by a combination of two complementary colors, their mixing and contrast, the mysterious vibration of related tones. Or express a thought that has arisen in the brain with the radiance of a light tone on a dark background...”

Speaking about Van Gogh, Tugendhold noted: “...the notes of his experiences are the graphic rhythms of things and the response of the heartbeat.” The concept of peace is unknown to Van Gogh's art. His element is movement.

In Van Gogh’s eyes, it is the same life, which means the ability to think, feel, and empathize. Take a closer look at the painting of the “red vineyards”. The brushstrokes, thrown onto the canvas by a swift hand, run, rush, collide, scatter again. Similar to dashes, dots, blots, commas, they are a transcript of Vangogh’s vision. From their cascades and whirlpools, simplified and expressive forms are born. They are a line that is composed into a drawing. Their relief - sometimes barely outlined, sometimes piled up in massive clumps - like plowed earth, forms a delightful, picturesque texture. And from all this a huge image emerges: in the scorching heat of the sun, like sinners on fire, the grapevines are writhing, trying to tear themselves away from the rich purple earth, to escape from the hands of the winegrowers, and now the peaceful bustle of the harvest looks like a fight between man and nature.

So, does that mean color still dominates? But aren’t these colors at the same time rhythm, line, form, and texture? This is precisely the most important feature of Van Gogh’s pictorial language, in which he speaks to us through his paintings.

It is often believed that Van Gogh's painting is a kind of uncontrollable emotional element, whipped up by unbridled insight. This misconception is “helped” by the uniqueness of Van Gogh’s artistic style, which indeed seems spontaneous, but in fact is subtly calculated and thoughtful: “Work and sober calculation, the mind is extremely tense, like an actor playing a difficult role, when you have to think about a thousand things.” within one half hour...”

Van Gogh's inheritance and innovation

Van Gogh's inheritance

• [Mother’s sister] “...Epileptic seizures, which indicates a severe nervous heredity, which also affects Anna Cornelia herself. Naturally gentle and loving, she is prone to unexpected outbursts of anger.”
• [Brother Theo] “... died six months after Vincent’s suicide in a mental hospital in Utrecht, having lived 33 years.”
• “None of Van Gogh’s brothers and sisters had epilepsy, while it is absolutely certain that the younger sister suffered from schizophrenia and spent 32 years in a mental hospital.”

The human soul... not cathedrals

Let's turn to Van Gogh:

“I prefer to paint people’s eyes rather than cathedrals... the human soul, even the soul of an unfortunate beggar or a street girl, in my opinion, is much more interesting.”

“Whoever writes peasant life will stand the test of time better than the makers of cardinal receptions and harems written in Paris.” “I will remain myself, and even in crude works I will say strict, rude, but truthful things.” “The worker against the bourgeoisie is as ill-founded as a hundred years ago the third estate was against the other two.”

Could a person who, in these and a thousand similar statements, explain the meaning of life and art, count on success with the “powers of this world?” " The bourgeois environment rejected Van Gogh.

Van Gogh had the only weapon against rejection - confidence in the correctness of his chosen path and work.

“Art is a struggle... it’s better to do nothing than to express yourself weakly.” “You have to work like several blacks.” He turns even a half-starved existence into an incentive for creativity: “In the harsh trials of poverty, you learn to look at things with completely different eyes.”

The bourgeois public does not forgive innovation, and Van Gogh was an innovator in the most direct and genuine sense of the word. His reading of the sublime and beautiful came through an understanding of the inner essence of objects and phenomena: from insignificant ones like torn shoes to crushing cosmic hurricanes. The ability to present these seemingly disparate values ​​on an equally enormous artistic scale put Van Gogh not only outside the official aesthetic concept of academic artists, but also forced him to go beyond the boundaries of impressionistic painting.

Quotes by Vincent Van Gogh

(from letters to brother Theo)

• There is nothing more artistic than loving people.
• When something in you says: “You are not an artist,” immediately begin to write, my boy, - only in this way will you silence this inner voice. The one who, having heard it, runs to his friends and complains about his misfortune, loses part of his courage, part of the best that is in him.
• And you shouldn’t take your shortcomings too seriously, for those who don’t have them still suffer from one thing - the absence of shortcomings; the one who believes that he has achieved perfect wisdom will do well if he grows stupid again.
• A man carries a bright flame in his soul, but no one wants to bask near him; passersby notice only the smoke escaping through the chimney and go on their way.
• When reading books, as well as looking at paintings, one must neither doubt nor hesitate: one must be confident in oneself and find beautiful what is beautiful.
• What is drawing? How is it mastered? This is the ability to break through the iron wall that stands between what you feel and what you can do. How can one penetrate such a wall? In my opinion, banging your head against it is useless; you need to slowly and patiently dig it up and drill it out.
• Blessed is he who has found his business.
• I prefer not to say anything at all than to express myself indistinctly.
• I admit, I also need beauty and sublimity, but even more something else, for example: kindness, responsiveness, tenderness.
• You are a realist yourself, so bear with my realism.
• A person only needs to consistently love what is worthy of love, and not waste his feelings on insignificant, unworthy and insignificant objects.
• We cannot allow melancholy to stagnate in our souls, like water in a swamp.
• When I see the weak trampled underfoot, I begin to doubt the value of what is called progress and civilization.

Bibliography

• Van Gogh.Letters. Per. from Dutch - L.-M., 1966.
• Rewald J. Post-Impressionism. Per. from English T. 1. - L.-M, 1962.
• Perryucho A. The Life of Van Gogh. Per. from French - M., 1973.
• Murina Elena. Van Gogh. - M.: Art, 1978. - 440 p. - 30,000 copies.
• Dmitrieva N. A. Vincent Van Gogh. Man and artist. - M., 1980.
• Stone I. Thirst for Life (book). The Tale of Vincent Van Gogh. Per. from English - M., Pravda, 1988.
• Constantino PorcuVan Gogh. Zijn leven en de kunst. (from the Kunstklassiekers series) Netherlands, 2004.
• Wolf StadlerVincent van Gogh. (from the De Grote Meesters series) Amsterdam Boek, 1974.
• Frank KoolsVincent van Gogh en zijn geboorteplaats: als een boer van Zundert. De Walburg Pers, 1990.
• G. Kozlov, “The Legend of Van Gogh”, “Around the World”, No. 7, 2007.
• Van Gogh V. Letters to friends / Trans. from fr. P. Melkova. - St. Petersburg: Azbuka, Azbuka-Atticus, 2012. - 224 p. - “ABC Classic” series - 5,000 copies, ISBN 978-5-389-03122-7
• Gordeeva M., Perova D. Vincent Van Gogh / In the book: Great Artists - T.18 - Kyiv, JSC "Komsomolskaya Pravda - Ukraine", 2010. - 48 p.

Vincent Van Gogh is a great artist that every person on Earth knows about today. But once upon a time no one knew about him at all: his path to the pinnacle of fame...

From Masterweb

30.05.2018 10:00

These days, few people do not know about the great artist Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh's biography was destined to be not too long, but eventful and full of hardships, brief ups and desperate downs. Few people know that in his entire life, Vincent managed to sell only one of his paintings for a significant amount, and only after his death did contemporaries recognize the enormous influence of the Dutch post-impressionist on 20th-century painting. Van Gogh's biography can be briefly summarized in the dying words of the great master:

The sadness will never end.

Unfortunately, the life of this amazing and original creator was full of pain and disappointment. But who knows, maybe if it weren’t for all the losses in life, the world would never have seen his amazing works, which people still admire?

Childhood

A brief biography and work of Vincent Van Gogh was restored through the efforts of his brother Theo. Vincent had almost no friends, so everything we now know about the great artist was told by a man who loved him immensely.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853 in North Brabant in the village of Grote-Zundert. The firstborn of Theodore and Anna Cornelia Van Gogh died in infancy - Vincent became the eldest child in the family. Four years after Vincent was born, his brother Theodorus was born, with whom Vincent was close until the end of his life. In addition, they also had a brother, Cornelius, and three sisters (Anna, Elizabeth and Willemina).

An interesting fact in Van Gogh’s biography is that he grew up as a difficult and stubborn child with extravagant manners. At the same time, outside the family, Vincent was serious, soft, thoughtful and calm. He did not like to communicate with other children, but his fellow villagers considered him a modest and friendly child.

In 1864 he was sent to a boarding school in Zevenbergen. The artist Van Gogh recalled this part of his biography with pain: his departure caused him a lot of suffering. This place doomed him to loneliness, so Vincent began studying, but already in 1868 he left his studies and returned home. In fact, this is all the formal education that the artist managed to receive.

A brief biography and work of Van Gogh is still carefully preserved in museums and a few testimonies: no one could have imagined that the enfant terrible would become a truly great creator - even if his importance was recognized only after his death.

Work and missionary activity

A year after returning home, Vincent goes to work at the Hague branch of his uncle's art and trading company. In 1873, Vincent was transferred to London. Over time, Vincent learned to appreciate and understand painting. He later moved to 87 Hackford Road, where he rented a room from Ursula Loyer and her daughter Eugenie. Some biographers add that Van Gogh was in love with Eugenie, although the facts suggest that he loved the German Carlina Haanebeek.

In 1874, Vincent was already working in the Paris branch, but he soon returned to London. Things are getting worse for him: a year later he is transferred to Paris again, visits art museums and exhibitions, and finally plucks up the courage to try his hand at painting. Vincent cools down to work, fired up by a new business. All this leads to the fact that in 1876 he was fired from the company for poor work.

Then there comes a moment in the biography of Vincent Van Gogh when he returns to London again and teaches at a boarding school in Ramsgate. During the same period of his life, Vincent devoted a lot of time to religion; he developed a desire to become a pastor, following in the footsteps of his father. A little later, Van Gogh moved to another school in Isleworth, where he began working as a teacher and assistant pastor. Vincent preached his first sermon there. His interest in writing grew, and he became inspired to preach to the poor.

At Christmas, Vincent went home, where he was begged not to go back to England. So he stayed in the Netherlands to help in a bookshop in Dordrecht. But this work did not inspire him: he mainly occupied himself with sketches and translations of the Bible.

His parents supported Van Gogh's desire to become a priest, sending him to Amsterdam in 1877. There he settles with his uncle Jan Van Gogh. Vincent studied hard under the supervision of Yoganess Stricker, a famous theologian, preparing for exams for admission to the theology department. But very soon he quits his studies and leaves Amsterdam.

The desire to find his place in the world led him to the Protestant Missionary School of Pastor Bokma in Laeken near Brussels, where he took a course in preaching. There is also an opinion that Vincent did not complete the full course because he was expelled due to his unkempt appearance, hot temper and fits of anger.

In 1878, Vincent became a missionary for six months in the village of Paturage in Borinage. Here he visited the sick, read Scripture to those who could not read, taught children, and spent his nights drawing maps of Palestine, earning his living. Van Gogh planned to enroll in an Evangelical school, but he considered paying for tuition discriminatory and abandoned the idea. Soon he was removed from the rank of preacher - this was a painful blow for the future artist, but also an important fact in Van Gogh’s biography. Who knows, perhaps, if not for this high-profile event, Vincent would have become a priest, and the world would never have known the talented artist.

Becoming an artist

Studying the short biography of Vincent Van Gogh, we can conclude: fate seemed to push him all his life in the right direction and led him to drawing. Seeking salvation from despondency, Vincent again turns to painting. He turns to his brother Theo for support and in 1880 goes to Brussels, where he attends classes at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. A year later, Vincent is forced to leave his studies again and return to his family. It was then that he decided that an artist does not need any talent, the main thing is to work hard and tirelessly. Therefore, he continues painting and drawing on his own.

During this period, Vincent experiences a new love, this time for his cousin, the widow Kay Vos-Stricker, who was visiting the Van Goghs' house. But she did not reciprocate, but Vincent continued to look after her, which caused the indignation of her relatives. Eventually he was told to leave. Van Gogh experiences another shock and abandons attempts to improve his further personal life.

Vincent leaves for The Hague, where he takes lessons from Anton Mauve. Over time, the biography and work of Vincent Van Gogh was filled with new colors, including in painting: he experimented with mixing different techniques. Then such works of his as “Backyards” were born, which he created with chalk, pen and brush, as well as the painting “Roofs. View from Van Gogh's studio", painted in watercolor and chalk. The development of his work was greatly influenced by Charles Bargue’s book “A Course in Drawing,” lithographs from which he diligently copied.

Vincent was a man of fine spiritual organization, and, one way or another, was drawn to people and emotional return. Despite his decision to forget about his personal life, in The Hague he still made another attempt to start a family. He met Christine right on the street and was so imbued with her plight that he invited her to live in his house with the children. This act finally broke Vincent’s relationship with all his loved ones, but they maintained a warm relationship with Theo. This is how Vincent got a girlfriend and a model. But Christine turned out to have a nightmare character: Van Gogh’s life turned into a nightmare.

When they parted, the artist went north to the province of Drenthe. He equipped his home as a workshop, and spent whole days outdoors, creating landscapes. But the artist did not call himself a landscape painter, dedicating his paintings to peasants and their everyday life.

Van Gogh's early works are classified as realism, but his technique does not quite fit into this direction. One of the problems that Van Gogh faced in his work was the inability to correctly depict the human figure. But this only played into the hands of the great artist: it became a characteristic feature of his manner: the interpretation of man as an integral part of the surrounding world. This can be clearly seen, for example, in the work “A Peasant and a Peasant Woman Planting Potatoes.” Human figures are like mountains in the distance, and the elevated horizon seems to press on them from above, preventing them from straightening their backs. A similar technique can be seen in his later work “Red Vineyards”.

During this period of his biography, Van Gogh writes a series of works, including:

• "Leaving the Protestant Church in Nuenen";
• "Potato Eaters";
• "Peasant Woman";
• "Old church tower in Nuenen."

The paintings are created in dark shades, which symbolize the author’s painful perception of human suffering and a feeling of general depression. Van Gogh depicted the heavy atmosphere of hopelessness of the peasants and the sad mood of the village. At the same time, Vincent formed his own understanding of landscapes: in his opinion, landscapes express a person’s state of mind through the connection between human psychology and nature.

Parisian period

The artistic life of the French capital is thriving: it was there that the great artists of the time flocked. A landmark event was the exhibition of impressionists on rue Lafitte: for the first time, works by Signac and Seurat, who heralded the beginning of the post-impressionism movement, were shown. It was impressionism that revolutionized art, changing the approach to painting. This movement presented a confrontation with academicism and outdated subjects: at the head of creativity are pure colors and the very impression of what he saw, which are later transferred to the canvas. Post-Impressionism was the final stage of Impressionism.

The Parisian period, lasting from 1986 to 1988, became the most fruitful in the artist’s life; his collection of paintings was replenished with more than 230 drawings and canvases. Vincent Van Gogh forms his own view of art: the realistic approach is becoming a thing of the past, replaced by a desire for post-impressionism.

With his acquaintance with Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet, the colors in his paintings begin to lighten and become brighter and brighter, eventually becoming a real riot of color, characteristic of his last works.

A landmark place was Papa Tanga's shop, where art materials were sold. Here many artists met and exhibited their works. But Van Gogh’s temper was still irreconcilable: the spirit of competition and tension in society often drove the impulsive artist crazy, so that Vincent soon quarreled with his friends and decided to leave the French capital.

Among the famous works of the Parisian period are the following paintings:

• “Agostina Segatori at the Tambourine Cafe”;
• "Papa Tanguy"
• "Still Life with Absinthe";
• "Bridge over the Seine";
• "View of Paris from Theo's apartment on Rue Lepic."

Provence

Vincent goes to Provence and is imbued with this atmosphere for the rest of his life. Theo supports his brother's decision to become a real artist and sends him money to live on, and he, in gratitude, sends him his paintings in the hope that his brother will be able to sell them profitably. Van Gogh checks into a hotel where he lives and works, periodically inviting random visitors or acquaintances to pose.

With the onset of spring, Vincent goes outside and draws flowering trees and reviving nature. The ideas of impressionism gradually leave his work, but remain in the form of a light palette and pure colors. During this period of his work, Vincent wrote “The Peach Tree in Bloom” and “Anglois Bridge in Arles.”

Van Gogh even worked at night, once inspired by the idea of ​​capturing the special night colors and glow of the stars. It works by candlelight: this is how the famous “Starry Night over the Rhone” and “Night Cafe” were created.

Severed ear

Vincent comes up with the idea of ​​​​creating a common home for the artist, where creators could create their masterpieces while living and working together. An important event is the arrival of Paul Gauguin, with whom Vincent had a long correspondence. Together with Gauguin, Vincent writes works filled with passion:

• "Yellow House";
• "Harvest. La Croe Valley";
• "Gauguin's Chair".

Vincent was overjoyed, but this union ends in a loud quarrel. Passions were heating up, and in one of his desperate moments, Van Gogh, according to some accounts, attacks a friend with a razor in his hands. Gauguin manages to stop Vincent, and he ends up cutting off his earlobe. Gauguin leaves his house, while he wrapped the bloody flesh in a napkin and handed it to a prostitute he knew, Rachelle. His friend Roulin found him in a pool of his own blood. Although the wound soon healed, the deep scar on Vincent’s heart affected Vincent’s mental health for the rest of his life. Vincent soon finds himself in a psychiatric hospital.

Creativity flourishes

During periods of remission, he asked to return to the studio, but the residents of Arles signed a statement to the mayor asking him to isolate the mentally ill artist from civilians. But the hospital did not forbid him to create: until 1889, Vincent worked on new paintings right there. During this time he created more than 100 drawings in pencil and watercolor. The canvases of this period are distinguished by tension, bright dynamics and juxtaposition of contrasting colors:

• "Starry Night";
• "Landscape with Olives";
• "Wheat field with cypress trees."

At the end of the same year, Vincent was invited to participate in the G20 exhibition in Brussels. His works aroused great interest among art connoisseurs, but this could no longer please the artist, and even a laudatory article about the “Red Vineyards in Arles” did not make the exhausted Van Gogh happy.

In 1890, he moved to Opera-sur-Ourz, near Paris, where he saw his family for the first time in a long time. He continued to write, but his style became increasingly gloomy and depressing. A distinctive feature of that period was the curved and hysterical contour, which can be seen in the following works:

• "Street and stairs in Auvers";
• “Rural road with cypress trees”;
• "Landscape in Auvers after the rain."

Recent years

The last bright memory in the life of the great artist was meeting Dr. Paul Gachet, who also loved to write. Friendship with him supported Vincent during the most difficult periods of his life - except for his brother, the postman Roulin and Doctor Gachet, by the end of his life he had no close friends left.

In 1890, Vincent painted the canvas “Wheat Field with Crows,” and a week later a tragedy occurred.

The circumstances of the artist's death look mysterious. Vincent died from a shot in the heart from his own revolver, which he carried with him to scare away birds. Dying, the artist admitted that he shot himself in the chest, but missed, hitting a little lower. He himself got to the hotel where he lived, and they called a doctor for him. The doctor was skeptical about the version of a suicide attempt - the angle of entry of the bullet was suspiciously low, and the bullet did not go through, which suggests that it was as if they were shooting from afar - or at least from a distance of a couple of meters. The doctor immediately called Theo - he arrived the next day and was with his brother until his death.

There is a version that on the eve of Van Gogh’s death, the artist had a serious quarrel with Dr. Gachet. He accused him of insolvency, while his brother Theo is literally dying from a disease that is eating him up, but still sends him money to live on. These words could have greatly hurt Vincent - after all, he himself felt enormous guilt before his brother. In addition, in recent years, Vincent had feelings for the lady, which again did not lead to reciprocity. Being as depressed as possible, upset by a quarrel with a friend, having recently left the hospital, Vincent could well have decided to commit suicide.

Vincent died on July 30, 1890. Theo loved his brother endlessly and experienced this loss with great difficulty. He began organizing an exhibition of Vincent's posthumous works, but less than a year later he died of severe nervous shock on January 25, 1891. Years later, Theo's widow reburied his remains next to Vincent: she believed that inseparable brothers should be close to each other at least after death.

Confession

There is a widespread misconception that during his lifetime Van Gogh was able to sell only one of his paintings - “Red Vineyards in Arles”. This work was only the first to be sold for a large sum - about 400 francs. However, there are documents indicating the sale of another 14 paintings.

Vincent Van Gogh received truly wide recognition only after his death. His commemorative exhibitions were organized in Paris, The Hague, Antwerp, and Brussels. Interest in the artist began to grow, and at the beginning of the 20th century, retrospectives began in Amsterdam, Paris, New York, Cologne and Berlin. People began to be interested in his work, and his work began to influence the younger generation of artists.

Gradually, prices for the artist's paintings began to increase until they became one of the most expensive paintings ever sold in the world, along with works by Pablo Picasso. Among his most expensive works:

• "Portrait of Doctor Gachet";
• "Irises";
• “Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin”;
• “Wheat field with cypress trees”;
• “Self-portrait with a cut off ear and a pipe”;
• "A plowed field and a plowman."

Influence

In his last letter to Theo, Vincent wrote that, having no children of his own, the artist perceived the paintings as his continuation. To some extent this was true: he did have children, and the first of them was Expressionism, which later began to have many heirs.

Many artists later adapted the features of Van Gogh’s style to their own work: Howard Hodgkin, Willem de Koening, Jackson Pollock. Fauvism soon came, which expanded the scope of color, and expressionism became widespread.

The biography of Van Gogh and his work gave the expressionists a new language that helped the creators delve deeper into the essence of things and the world around them. Vincent became, in a sense, a pioneer in modern art, trodden a new path in visual art.

It is almost impossible to briefly tell the biography of Van Gogh: his work during his unfortunately short life was influenced by so many different events that to omit at least one of them would be a terrible injustice. Vincent's difficult path in life led him to the pinnacle of fame, but posthumous fame. During his lifetime, the great painter knew neither about his own genius, nor about the enormous legacy that he left to the world of art, nor about how his family and friends missed him in the future. Vincent spent a lonely and sad life, rejected by everyone. He found salvation in art, but was never able to escape. But, one way or another, he gave the world many amazing works that warm people’s hearts to this day, so many years later.

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Vincent Willem van Gogh is a Dutch artist who laid the foundations of the post-impressionism movement, which largely determined the principles of creativity of modern masters.

Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853 in the village of Groot Zundert in the province of North Brabant, bordering Belgium.

Father Theodore Van Gogh was a Protestant clergyman. Mother Anna Cornelia Carbentus is from the family of a respected bookseller and bookbinding specialist from the city (Den Haag).

Vincent was the second child, but his brother died immediately after birth, so the boy was the eldest, and after him five more children were born in the family:

• Theodorus (Theo) (Theodorus, Theo);
• Cornelis (Cor) (Cornelis, Cor);
• Anna Cornelia;
• Elizabeth (Liz) (Elizabeth, Liz);
• Willemina (Vil) (Willamina, Vil).

The baby was named after his grandfather, a minister of Protestantism. This name was supposed to be borne by the first child, but due to his early death it went to Vincent.

Memories of loved ones portray Vincent's character as very strange, capricious and wayward, disobedient and capable of unexpected antics. Outside of home and family, he was well-mannered, quiet, polite, modest, kind, distinguished by an amazingly intelligent look and a heart full of compassion. However, he avoided his peers and did not join in their games and fun.

At the age of 7, his father and mother enrolled him in school, but a year later he and his sister Anna were transferred to home schooling, and a governess taught the children.

At the age of 11, in 1864, Vincent was sent to school in Zevenbergen. Although it was only 20 km from his homeland, the child had a hard time withstanding the separation, and these experiences were remembered forever.

In 1866, Vincent was assigned as a student to the educational institution of Willem II in Tilburg (College Willem II in Tilburg). The teenager made great progress in mastering foreign languages; he spoke and read French, English, and German perfectly. Teachers also noted Vincent’s ability to draw. However, in 1868 he suddenly abandoned his studies and returned home. He was no longer sent to educational institutions; he continued to receive his education at home. The famous artist’s memories of the beginning of his life were sad; childhood was associated with darkness, cold and emptiness.

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Business

In 1869, in The Hague, Vincent was recruited by his uncle, who bore the same name, whom the future artist called “Uncle Saint”. Uncle was the owner of a branch of the Goupil&Cie company, which was engaged in the examination, evaluation and sale of art objects. Vincent acquired the profession of a dealer and made significant progress, so in 1873 he was sent to work in London.

Working with works of art was very interesting to Vincent, he learned to understand fine arts, and became a regular visitor to museums and exhibition halls. His favorite authors were Jean-François Millet and Jules Breton.

The story of Vincent's first love dates back to the same period. But the story was incomprehensible and confusing: he lived in a rented apartment with Ursula Loyer and her daughter Eugene; biographers argue about who was the object of love: one of them or Carolina Haanebeek. But no matter who the beloved was, Vincent was refused and lost interest in life, work, and art. He begins to read the Bible thoughtfully. During this period, in 1874, he had to transfer to the Paris branch of the company. There he again becomes a regular at museums and enjoys creating drawings. Having hated the dealer's activities, he stopped bringing income to the company, and he was fired in 1876.

Teaching and religion

In March 1876, Vincent moved to Great Britain and became a free teacher at a school in Ramsgate. At the same time, he is thinking about a career as a clergyman. In July 1876 he moved to school in Isleworth, where he additionally assisted the priest. In November 1876, Vincent reads a sermon and becomes convinced of his destiny to convey the truth of religious teaching.

In 1876, Vincent came to his home for the Christmas holidays, and his mother and father begged him not to leave. Vincent got a job in a bookstore in Dordrecht, but he doesn’t like the trade. He devotes all his time to translating biblical texts and drawing.

His father and mother, rejoicing at his desire for religious service, send Vincent to Amsterdam, where, with the help of a relative, Johannes Stricker, he prepares in theology for admission to university, and lives with his uncle, Jan Van Gogh. Gogh), who had the rank of admiral.

After admission, Van Gogh was a theological student until July 1878, after which, disappointed, he abandoned further studies and fled from Amsterdam.

The next stage of the search was associated with the Protestant missionary school in the city of Laken, near Brussels. The school was led by Pastor Bokma. Vincent gains experience in composing and reading sermons for three months, but leaves this place too. Biographers' information is contradictory: either he quit his job himself, or was fired due to sloppiness in clothing and unbalanced behavior.

In December 1878, Vincent continued his missionary service, but now in the southern region of Belgium, in the village of Paturi. Mining families lived in the village, Van Gogh selflessly worked with children, visited houses and talked about the Bible, and cared for the sick. To support himself, he drew maps of the Holy Land and sold them. Van Gogh proved himself to be an ascetic, sincere and tireless, and as a result he was given a small salary from the Evangelical Society. He planned to enter the Evangelical school, but the tuition was paid, and this, according to Van Gogh, is incompatible with true faith, which cannot be associated with money. At the same time, he submits a request to the mine management to improve the working conditions of the miners. He was refused and deprived of the right to preach, which shocked him and led to another disappointment.

First steps

Van Gogh found peace at his easel, and in 1880 he decided to try himself at the Brussels Royal Academy of Arts. His brother Theo supports him, but a year later his studies are abandoned again, and the eldest son returns under his parents' roof. He is absorbed in self-education and works tirelessly.

He feels love for his widowed cousin Kee Vos-Stricker, who raised their son and came to visit the family. Van Gogh is rejected, but persists and is kicked out of his father's house. These events shocked the young man, he flees to The Hague, immerses himself in creativity, takes lessons from Anton Mauve, comprehends the laws of fine art, and makes copies of lithographic works.

Van Gogh spends a lot of time in neighborhoods inhabited by the poor. The works of this period are sketches of courtyards, roofs, alleys:

• "Backyards" (De achtertuin) (1882);
• “Roofs. View from Van Gogh's studio" (Dak. Het uitzicht vanuit de Studio van Gogh) (1882).

An interesting technique is that combines watercolors, sepia, ink, chalk, etc.

In The Hague, he chooses a woman of easy virtue named Christine as his wife.(Van Christina), which he picked up right on the panel. Christine moved to Van Gogh with her children and became a model for the artist, but her character was terrible, and they had to separate. This episode leads to a final break with parents and loved ones.

After breaking up with Christine, Vincent moves to Drenth, in the countryside. During this period, landscape works by the artist appeared, as well as paintings depicting the life of the peasantry.

Early works

The period of creativity representing the first works executed in Drenthe is distinguished by its realism, but they express the key characteristics of the individual style of the artist. Many critics believe that these features are explained by the lack of basic art education: Van Gogh did not know the laws of human representation, therefore, the characters in paintings and sketches seem angular, ungraceful, as if emerging from the bosom of nature, like rocks on which the vault of heaven presses:

• "Red Vineyards" (Rode wijngaard) (1888);
• "Peasant Woman" (Boerin) (1885);
• "The Potato Eaters" (De Aardappeleters) (1885);
• “The Old Church Tower in Nuenen” (De Oude Begraafplaats Toren in Nuenen) (1885), etc.

These works are distinguished by a dark palette of shades that convey the painful atmosphere of the surrounding life, the painful situation of ordinary people, the sympathy, pain and drama of the author.

In 1885, he was forced to leave Drenthe, as he displeased the priest, who considered painting debauchery and forbade local residents to pose for paintings.

Parisian period

Van Gogh travels to Antwerp, takes lessons at the Academy of Arts and additionally at a private educational institution, where he works hard on depicting nudes.

In 1886, Vincent moved to Paris to join Theo, who worked in a dealership that specialized in transactions for the sale of art objects.

In Paris in 1887/88, Van Gogh took lessons at a private school, learned the basics of Japanese art, the basics of the impressionistic style of painting, and the work of Paul Gauguin. This stage in Vag Gogh’s creative biography is called light; the leitmotif in his works are soft blue, bright yellow, fiery shades, his brushwork is light, betraying movement, the “flow” of life:

• Agostina Segatori in het Café Tamboerijn;
• “Bridge over the Seine” (Brug over de Seine);
• "Papa Tanguy" and others.

Van Gogh admired the Impressionists and met celebrities thanks to his brother Theo:

• Edgar Degas;
• Camille Pissarro;
• Henri Touluz-Lautrec;
• Paul Gauguin;
• Emile Bernard and others.

Van Gogh found himself among good friends and like-minded people, and was involved in the process of preparing exhibitions that were organized in restaurants, bars, and theater halls. The audience did not appreciate Van Gogh, they recognized them as terrible, but he immersed himself in learning and self-improvement, comprehending the theoretical basis of color technology.

In Paris, Van Gogh created about 230 works: still lifes, portrait and landscape paintings, painting cycles (for example, the “Shoes” series of 1887) (Schoenen).

It is interesting that the person on the canvas takes on a secondary role, and the main thing is the bright world of nature, its airiness, the richness of colors, and their subtle transitions. Van Gogh opens a new direction - post-impressionism.

Blooming and finding your own style

In 1888, Van Gogh, worried about the lack of understanding of the audience, left for the southern French city of Arles. Arles became the city in which Vincent understood the purpose of his work: not to strive to reflect the real visible world, but to express your inner “I” with the help of color and simple technical techniques.

He decides to break with the Impressionists, but the peculiarities of their style have been manifested in his works for many years, in the ways of depicting light and air, in the manner of arranging color accents. Typical of impressionistic works are a series of canvases depicting the same landscape, but at different times of the day and under different lighting.

The attractiveness of the style of Van Gogh’s works in his heyday lies in the contradiction between the desire for a harmonious worldview and the awareness of one’s own helplessness in the face of a disharmonious world. Full of light and festive nature, the works of 1888 coexist with gloomy phantasmagoric images:

• "Yellow House" (Gele huis);
• "Gauguin's Chair" (De stoel van Gauguin);
• “Cafe terrace at night” (Cafe terras bij nacht).

The dynamism, movement of color, and energy of the master’s brush are a reflection of the artist’s soul, his tragic quest, and impulses to understand the surrounding world of living and nonliving things:

• "Red Vineyards in Arles";
• "The Sower" (Zaaier);
• "Night cafe" (Nachtkoffie).

The artist plans to establish a society uniting budding geniuses who will reflect the future of humanity. To open society, Vincent is helped by Theo. Van Gogh assigned the leading role to Paul Gauguin. When Gauguin arrived, they quarreled so much that Van Gogh almost cut his throat on December 23, 1888. Gauguin managed to escape, and Van Gogh, repentant, cut off part of his own earlobe.

Biographers have different assessments of this episode; many believe that this act was a sign of madness provoked by excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages. Van Gogh was sent to a mental hospital, where he was kept in strict conditions in the department for the violently insane. Gauguin leaves, Theo takes care of Vincent. After treatment, Vincent dreams of returning to Arles. But city residents protested, and the artist was offered to settle next to the Saint-Paul hospital in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, near Arles.

Since May 1889, Van Gogh has lived in Saint-Rémy, painting more than 150 large works and about 100 drawings and watercolors per year, demonstrating mastery of halftones and contrast. Among them, the landscape genre predominates, still lifes that convey the mood and contradictions in the author’s soul:

• "Starry Night" (Nightlights);
• “Landscape with olive trees” (Landschap met olijfbomen), etc.

In 1889, the fruits of Van Gogh's creativity were exhibited in Brussels and were met with rave reviews from colleagues and critics. But Van Gogh does not feel joy from the recognition that has finally come; he moves to Auvers-sur-Oise, where his brother and his family live. There he constantly creates, but the author’s depressed mood and nervous excitement are transmitted to the canvases of 1890; they are distinguished by broken lines, distorted silhouettes of objects and faces:

• “Village road with cypress trees” (Landelijke weg met cipressen);
• “Landscape in Auvers after the rain” (Landschap in Auvers na de regen);
• “Wheat field with crows” (Korenveld met kraaien), etc.

On July 27, 1890, Van Gogh was fatally wounded by a pistol. It is unknown whether the shot was planned or accidental, but the artist died a day later. He was buried in the same town, and 6 months later his brother Theo, whose grave is located next to Vincent, also died of nervous exhaustion.

Over 10 years of creativity, over 2,100 works appeared, of which about 860 were done in oils. Van Gogh became the founder of expressionism, post-impressionism, his principles formed the basis of Fauvism and modernism.

Posthumously, a series of triumphant exhibition events took place in Paris, Brussels, The Hague, and Antwerp. At the beginning of the 20th century, another wave of shows of works by the famous Dutchman took place in Paris, Cologne (Keulen), New York (New York), Berlin (Berlijn).

Paintings

It is not known exactly how many paintings Van Gogh painted, but art historians and researchers of his work are inclined to figure about 800. In the last 70 days of his life alone, he painted 70 paintings - one per day! Let's remember the most famous paintings with names and descriptions:

The Potato Eaters appeared in 1885 in Nuenen. The author described the task in a message to Theo: he sought to show people of hard work who received little reward for their work. The hands cultivating the field accept his gifts.

Red vineyards in Arles

The famous painting dates back to 1888. The plot of the film is not fictional; Vincent talks about it in one of his messages to Theo. On the canvas, the artist conveys the rich colors that amazed him: deep red grape leaves, a piercing green sky, a bright purple rain-washed road with golden highlights from the rays of the setting sun. The colors seem to flow into one another, conveying the author’s anxious mood, his tension, and the depth of his philosophical thoughts about the world. Such a plot will be repeated in Van Gogh’s work, symbolizing life eternally renewed through work.

Night cafe

“Night Cafe” appeared in Arles and presented the author’s thoughts about a man who independently destroys his own life. The idea of ​​self-destruction and steady movement towards madness is expressed by the contrast of bloody burgundy and green colors. To try to penetrate the secrets of twilight life, the author worked on the painting at night. The expressionistic style of writing conveys the fullness of passions, anxiety, and painfulness of life.

Van Gogh's legacy includes two series of works depicting sunflowers. In the first cycle there are flowers laid out on a table; they were painted during the Parisian period in 1887 and were soon acquired by Gauguin. The second series appeared in 1888/89 in Arles, on each canvas - sunflower flowers in a vase.

This flower symbolizes love and loyalty, friendship and warmth of human relationships, beneficence and gratitude. The artist expresses the depths of his worldview in sunflowers, associating himself with this sunny flower.

“Starry Night” was created in 1889 in Saint-Rémy; it depicts the stars and the moon in dynamics, framed by the boundless sky, the Universe eternally existing and rushing into infinity. The cypress trees located in the foreground strive to reach the stars, and the village in the valley is static, motionless and devoid of aspirations for the new and infinite. The expression of color approaches and the use of different types of strokes conveys the multidimensionality of space, its variability and depth.

This famous self-portrait was created in Arles in January 1889. An interesting feature is the dialogue of red-orange and blue-violet colors, against the background of which there is a immersion into the abyss of a person’s distorted consciousness. Attention is drawn to the face and eyes, as if looking deep into the personality. Self-portraits are a conversation between the painter and himself and the universe.

"Almond Blossoms" (Amandelbloesem) created in Saint-Rémy in 1890. The spring blossoming of almond trees is a symbol of renewal, the birth and strengthening of life. The unusual thing about the canvas is that the branches float without a foundation; they are self-sufficient and beautiful.

This portrait was painted in 1890. Bright colors convey the significance of every moment; brush work creates a dynamic image of man and nature, which are inextricably linked. The image of the hero of the picture is painful and nervous: we peer into the image of a sad old man, immersed in his thoughts, as if he had absorbed the painful experience of years.

“Wheat Field with Crows” was created in July 1890 and expresses the feeling of approaching death, the hopeless tragedy of existence. The picture is filled with symbolism: the sky before a thunderstorm, approaching black birds, roads leading to the unknown, but inaccessible.

Museum

(Van Gogh Museum) opened in Amsterdam in 1973 and presents not only the most fundamental collection of his creations, but also the works of the Impressionists. This is the first most popular exhibition center in the Netherlands.

Quotes

1. Among the clergy, as well as among the masters of the brush, a despotic academicism reigns, dull and full of prejudices;
2. Thinking about future hardships and adversities, I would not be able to create;
3. Painting is my joy and tranquility, giving me the opportunity to escape from life’s troubles;
4. I want to express in my paintings everything that hides in the heart of an insignificant person.