Van Gogh, Vincent Willem

Born Mar. 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, Holland; died July, 29, 1890, at Auvers-sur-Oise, France. Dutch painter. Son of a pastor.

From 1869 to 1876, Van Gogh was employed as a salesman for a firm of art dealers in The Hague, Brussels, London, and Paris, and in 1876 he taught in England. After taking up the study of theology, in 1878-79 he became a missionary in the Borinage, Belgium, where he learned of the hardships endured by the miners. Espousal of their interests brought Van Gogh into conflict with the church authorities. In the 1880’s Van Gogh took up art. He attended the Art Academy in Brussels (1880-81) and in Antwerp (1885-86) and studied with A. Mauve in The Hague. Van Gogh threw himself passionately into depicting the disinherited, first the Borinage miners, and later peasants, tradesmen, and fishermen whom he observed in Holland in the years 1881-85. At the age of 30, Van Gogh began to paint, creating a large body of pictures and studies, executed in dark, gloomy tones, imbued with ardent sympathy for the common people. (Peasant Woman, 1885, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterloo; Potato Eaters, 1885, Vincent van Gogh Collection, Amsterdam). While developing the traditions of the 19th-century critical realism as embodied mainly in the works of J. F. Millet, Van Gogh infused them with emotional and psychological intensity and a painful sensitivity for the sufferings of the downtrodden.

In the years 1886-88, while living in Paris, Van Gogh attended a private art workshop. At the same time he studied the plein air style of the impressionists as well as Japanese prints and associated himself with the aims and efforts of H. Toulouse-Lautrec and P. Gauguin. During this period, the dark palette was gradually replaced by sparkling pure blue, golden-yellow, and red tones, while the brushstrokes grew freer and more dynamic (Bridge Across the Seine, 1887, Van Gogh Collection, Amsterdam; Portrait of Père Tanguy, 1887, Rodin Museum, Paris). In 1888, Van Gogh moved to Aries, where the period of his creative maturity began. There the individual painting style of the artist became fully realized. It reflected both his attitude toward the world and his emotional state, with the use of contrasting color harmonies and free, luscious brushstrokes. Fiery feelings; a tormented longing for harmony, beauty, and happiness; and fear inspired by forces hostile to man are embodied either in landscapes radiant with joyful, sunny colors of the South (Harvest: The Plain of La Crau, Fishing Boats in Sainte Marie, both 1888, Vincent van Gogh Collection, Amsterdam) or ominous images of a terrifying world in which man is oppressed by loneliness and helplessness (The Night Café, 1888, private collection, New York). The dynamics of color and the long tortuous brushstrokes invest with spiritual life and movement not only nature and the people inhabiting it (Red Vineyards at Aries, 1888, A. S. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow) but also every inanimate object (Van Gogh’s Bedroom at Aries, 1888, Vincent van Gogh Collection, Amsterdam). Van Gogh’s intense work during the last years of his life was complicated by attacks of mental illness that brought the artist into tragic conflict with Gauguin, who was also living in Aries. Van Gogh was hospitalized in Aries, then in Saint-Rémy (1889-90), and finally in Auvers-sur-Oise (1890), where he committed suicide. Van Gogh’s work during the last two years of his life was that of a man possessed and in a state of ecstasy; it is characterized by stridently expressive color, rhythm, and texture and sharp changes of mood from frenzied despair (At the Gates of Eternity, 1890, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterloo) and mad visions (Road With Cypresses and Stars, 1890, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterloo) to a pervasive sense of joy and peace (Landscape in Auvers After the Rain, 1890).

Van Gogh’s work reflects a complicated, transitional moment in the history of European culture. It is suffused with an ardent love of life and the common working man. At the same time it expresses with immense sincerity the crisis of 19th-century bourgeois humanism and realism, accompanied by a painfully tormented search for spiritual and moral values. Hence the creative madness of Van Gogh, the impetuosity and the tragic fervor; they set aside a special place for Van Gogh in postimpressionist art, one of whose main exponents he was.