Artist van gogh paintings biography. Van Gogh's paintings: names and descriptions

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 ended up in, where he spent 2 years, which 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fell madly in love with the daughter of his landlady, but upon learning that she was already engaged, he became very withdrawn and became indifferent to his work.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 he was fired.

In 1877, Van Gogh began to live again, and increasingly found solace in religion. After moving to Moscow, he began studying to become a priest, but soon dropped out of school, 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, 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 in this life was, 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. At first he thought of becoming an illustrator, but then, when he took lessons from his relative-artist Anton Mouwe, 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 girl lung behavior. 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. became a second home for Van Gogh. 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 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.

Vincent Willem Van Gogh van Gogh; 30 March 1853, Grot-Zundert, near Breda, Netherlands - 29 July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, France) was a 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.

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 pictorial 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 presents good example 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."

"Drew brilliant paintings Van Gogh in 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 there are minor and major scales in music, 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. Emotional and psychological possibilities of color - subject constant thoughts 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 the 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 known that younger sister suffered from schizophrenia and spent 32 years in a psychiatric hospital.”

The human soul... not cathedrals

Let's turn to Van Gogh:

“I prefer to paint people’s eyes rather than cathedrals... human soul, even if 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 a stimulus 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 " TVNZ- Ukraine", 2010. - 48 p.

Vincent Van Gogh, who gave the world his "Sunflowers" and "Starry Night", was one of greatest creators of all times. Small grave in rural areas France became his resting place. He fell asleep forever among those landscapes that Van Gogh, an artist who will never be forgotten, left on his own. For the sake of art he sacrificed everything...

A unique talent gifted by nature

"There is something of a delightful symphony in color." There was a creative genius behind these words. Moreover, he was smart and sensitive. The depth and style of this person's life is often misinterpreted. Van Gogh, whose biography has been carefully studied for many generations, is the most incomprehensible creator in the history of art.

First of all, the reader must understand that Vincent is not only the one who went crazy and shot himself. Many people know that Van Gogh cut off his own ear, and others know that he painted a whole series of paintings about sunflowers. But there are very few who really understand what talent Vincent had, what a unique gift nature awarded him.

The sad birth of a great creator

On March 30, 1853, the cry of a newborn child cut through the silence. The long-awaited baby was born into the family of Anna Cornelia and Pastor Theodore Van Gogh. This happened a year after tragic death their first child, who died within hours of being born. When registering this baby, identical information was provided, and the long-awaited son was given the name of the lost child - Vincent William.

Thus began the saga of one of the famous artists peace. His birth was fraught with sad events. It was a child conceived after a bitter loss, born to people who were still mourning their dead firstborn.

Vincent's childhood

Every Sunday this red-haired, freckled boy went to church, where he listened to his parent's sermons. His father was a minister of the Dutch Protestant Church, and Vincent Van Gogh grew up in accordance with the norms of education accepted in religious families.

In Vincent's time there was an unspoken rule. The eldest son must follow in his father's footsteps. This is how it should have happened. This placed a heavy burden on the shoulders of the young Van Gogh. As the boy sat in the church pew listening to his father preach, he fully understood what was expected of him. And, of course, then Vincent Van Gogh, whose biography was not yet in any way connected with art, did not know that in the future he would decorate his father’s Bible with illustrations.

Between art and religious desires

The church occupied an important place in Vincent's life and had a huge influence on him. Being a sensitive and impressionable person, throughout his troubled life he was torn between religious zeal and a craving for art.

In 1857 his brother Theo was born. None of the boys knew then that Theo would play big role in Vincent's life. They spent a lot happy days. We walked for a long time among the surrounding fields and knew all the paths around.

Young Vincent's talent

Nature in the rural hinterland where Vincent van Gogh was born and raised would later become a red thread running through all of his art. Hard labour peasants left a deep impression on his soul. He developed a romantic perception rural life, respected the inhabitants of this area and was proud to be neighbors with them. After all, they earned their living by honest and hard work.

Vincent Van Gogh was a man who loved everything related to nature. He saw beauty in everything. The boy often drew and did it with such feeling and attention to detail, which is often characteristic of a more mature age. He demonstrated skill and prowess experienced artist. Vincent was truly gifted.

Communication with my mother and her love for art

Vincent's mother, Anna Cornelia, was a good artist and strongly supported her son's love of nature. He often took walks alone, enjoying the peace and tranquility of the endless fields and canals. When dusk deepened and the fog fell, Van Gogh returned to his cozy home, where the fire crackled pleasantly and his mother’s knitting needles knocked in time.

She loved art and maintained an extensive correspondence. Vincent adopted this habit of hers. He wrote letters until the end of his days. Thanks to this, Van Gogh, whose biography began to be studied by specialists after his death, could not only reveal his feelings, but also recreate many events related to his life.

Mother and son spent long hours together. They drew with pencil and paints, and had long conversations about their uniting love for art and nature. Meanwhile, my father was in the office, preparing for Sunday's sermon in church.

Rural life away from politics

The imposing Zundert administration building was located directly opposite their house. One day Vincent drew buildings while looking out of his bedroom window on the top floor. Later, he repeatedly depicted scenes seen from this window. Looking at his talented drawings of that period, one can hardly believe that he was only nine years old.

Contrary to his father's expectations, a passion for drawing and nature took root in the boy. He collected an impressive collection of insects and knew what they were all called in Latin. Very soon the ivy and moss of the damp, dense forest became his friends. At heart he was a true country boy, he explored the Zundert canals and caught tadpoles with a net.

Van Gogh's life took place far from politics, wars and all other events taking place in the world. His world was formed around beautiful flowers, interesting, and peaceful landscapes.

Communication with peers or home education?

Unfortunately, his special attitude towards nature made him an outcast among other village children. He was not popular. The rest of the boys were mostly the sons of peasants who loved the excitement of rural life. Sensitive and empathetic, Vincent, who was interested in books and nature, did not fit into their society.

Life for young Van Gogh was not easy. His parents were worried that other boys would have a bad influence on his behavior. Then, unfortunately, Pastor Theodore found out that Vincent's teacher was too fond of drinking, and then the parents decided that the child should be freed from such influence. Until the age of eleven, the boy studied at home, and then his father decided that he needed to get a more serious education.

Further education: boarding school

Young Van Gogh, biography, Interesting Facts And personal life which today interests a huge number of people, goes to boarding school in Zevenbergen in 1864. This is a small village located about twenty-five kilometers from my home. But for Vincent it was like the other end of the world. The boy sat in the cart next to his parents, and the closer the walls of the boarding school approached, the heavier his heart became. Soon he will be separated from his family.

Vincent will miss him all his life home. Isolation from his family left a deep imprint on his life. Van Gogh was smart child and was drawn to knowledge. While studying at boarding school, he showed great ability for languages, and this later came in handy in life. Vincent spoke and wrote fluently in French, English, Dutch and German. This is how Van Gogh spent his childhood. short biography youth would not be able to convey all those character traits that were laid down from childhood and later influenced the artist’s fate.

Studying in Tilburg, or the strange story that happened to a boy

In 1866, the boy turned thirteen years old, and his primary education came to an end. Vincent became a very serious young man, in whose gaze one could read boundless melancholy. He is sent even further from home, to Tilburg. He begins his education at a state boarding school. Here Vincent first became acquainted with city life.

Four hours a week were allocated to study art, which was rare at that time. This subject was taught by Mr. Huismans. He was a successful artist and ahead of his time. He used figurines of people and stuffed animals as models for his students' works. The teacher also encouraged the children to paint landscapes and even took the children out into nature.

Everything went well and Vincent passed his first year exams with ease. But within next year Something went wrong. Van Gogh's attitude to study and work changed dramatically. Therefore, in March 1868, he left school right in the middle of the school period and came home. What did Vincent Van Gogh experience at the Tilburg school? A brief biography of this period, unfortunately, does not provide any information about this. And yet, these events left a deep mark on the young man’s soul.

Choosing a life path

There was a long pause in Vincent's life. He spent fifteen long months at home, not daring to choose one or the other. life path. When he turned sixteen, he wanted to find his calling in order to devote his whole life to it. Days passed in vain; he needed to find a goal. The parents understood that something needed to be done and turned to brother father living in The Hague. He headed an art trading company and could have gotten Vincent to work for him. This idea turned out to be brilliant.

If the young man shows hard work, he will become the heir of his rich uncle, who did not have any children of his own. Vincent, tired of the leisurely life of his native place, happily goes to The Hague, the administrative center of Holland. In the summer of 1869, Van Gogh, whose biography will now be directly related to art, begins his career.

Vincent became an employee at the Goupil company. His mentor lived in France and collected works by artists of the Barbizon school. At that time, people in this country were passionate about landscapes. Van Gogh's uncle dreamed of the appearance of such masters in Holland. He becomes the inspiration for the Hague School. Vincent had the opportunity to meet many artists.

Art is the most important thing in life

Having become familiar with the affairs of the company, Van Gogh had to learn how to negotiate with clients. While Vincent was a junior employee, he picked up the clothes of people coming to the gallery and acted as a porter. The young man was inspired by the art world around him. One of the artists of the Barbizon school was His canvas “The Ear Pickers” which found a response in Vincent’s soul. It became a kind of icon for the artist until the very end of his life. Millet depicted peasants at work in a special manner that was close to Van Gogh.

In 1870, Vincent met Anton Mauve, who eventually became his close friend. Van Gogh was a taciturn, reserved man, prone to depression. He sincerely sympathized with people who were less fortunate in life than he was. Vincent took his father's preaching very seriously. After work, he attended private theology classes.

Van Gogh's other passion was books. He's interested in French history and poetry, and also becomes a fan English writers. In March 1871, Vincent turns eighteen. By this time, he had already realized that art was a very important component of his life. His younger brother Theo was fifteen at that time, and he came to visit Vincent on vacation. This trip left deep impressions on both of them.

They even made a promise that they would take care of each other for the rest of their lives, no matter what happened. From this period, active correspondence began between Theo and Van Gogh. The artist’s biography will subsequently be replenished with important facts thanks to these letters. 670 messages from Vincent have survived to this day.

Trip to London. An important stage of life

Vincent spent four years in The Hague. It's time to move on. Having said goodbye to friends and colleagues, he prepared to leave for London. This stage of life will become very important for him. Soon Vincent settled in the English capital. The Gupil branch was located in the very center of the business district. Chestnut trees with spreading branches grew on the streets. Van Gogh loved these trees and often mentioned this in his letters to his family.

After a month, his knowledge of English expanded. The masters of art intrigued him, he liked Gainsborough and Turner, but he remained faithful to the art he had come to love in The Hague. To save money, Vincent moves out of the apartment rented for him by the Goupil company in the market area and rents a room in a new Victorian house.

He liked staying with Mrs. Ursula. The owner of the house was a widow. She and her nineteen-year-old daughter Evgenia rented out rooms and ran teaching activities, so that at least somehow Over time, Vincent began to experience very deep feelings for Eugenia, but did not show them in any way. He could only write about this to his family.

Severe psychological shock

Dickens was one of Vincent's idols. He was deeply affected by the death of the writer, and he expressed all his pain in a symbolic drawing made shortly after such a sad event. It was a picture of an empty chair. who became very famous, painted a large number of such chairs. For him, this became a symbol of a person’s departure.

Vincent describes his first year in London as one of his happiest. He was in love with absolutely everything and still dreamed of Evgenia. She won his heart. Van Gogh tried in every possible way to please her, offering his help in various matters. After some time, Vincent finally confessed his feelings to the girl and announced that they should get married. But Evgenia refused him, since she was already secretly engaged. Van Gogh was devastated. His dream of love was shattered.

He kept to himself and spoke little at work and at home. I started eating little. The realities of life dealt Vincent a severe psychological blow. He begins to draw again, and this partly helps him find peace and distracts him from the difficult thoughts and shock that Van Gogh experienced. Paintings gradually heal the artist's soul. The mind was absorbed in creativity. He went into another dimension, which is typical of many creative people.

A change of scenery. Paris and homecoming

Vincent became lonely again. He began to pay more attention to the street beggars and ragamuffins inhabiting the slums of London, and this only intensified his depression. He wanted to change something. At work he showed apathy, which began to seriously worry his management.

It was decided to send him to the Paris branch of the company in order to change the situation and, possibly, dispel the depression. But even there, Van Gogh could not recover from loneliness and already in 1877 he returned home to work as a priest in the church, abandoning his ambitions to become an artist.

A year later, Van Gogh receives the position of parish priest in a mining village. It was a thankless job. The life of miners made a great impression on the artist. He decided to share their fate and even began to dress like them. Church officials were concerned about his behavior and he was removed from his position two years later. But the time spent in the village had a beneficial effect. Life among the miners awakened a special talent in Vincent, and he began to draw again. He created a huge number of sketches of men and women carrying sacks of coal. Van Gogh finally decided to become an artist. It was from this moment that a new period began in his life.

More bouts of depression and returning home

The artist Van Gogh, whose biography repeatedly mentions that his parents refused to provide him with money due to instability in his career, was a beggar. His younger brother Theo, who was selling paintings in Paris, began to help him. Over the next five years, Vincent improved his technique. Provided with his brother's money, he sets off on a trip to the Netherlands. Makes sketches, paints in oils and watercolors.

Wanting to find his own pictorial style, Van Gogh went to The Hague in 1881. Here he rents an apartment near the sea. This was the beginning of a long relationship between the artist and his environment. During periods of despair and depression, nature was a part of Vincent's life. She was for him the personification of the struggle for existence. He had no money and often went hungry. His parents, who did not approve of the artist’s lifestyle, completely turned their backs on him.

Theo arrives in The Hague and convinces his brother to return home. At the age of thirty, Van Gogh, a beggar and full of despair, comes to parents' house. There he sets up a small workshop for himself and begins to make sketches. local residents and buildings. During this period, his palette becomes muted. Van Gogh's canvases are all in gray-brown tones. In winter, people have more time, and the artist uses them as his models.

It was at this time that sketches of the hands of farmers and people picking potatoes appeared in Vincent’s work. is Van Gogh's first significant painting, which he painted in 1885, at the age of thirty-two. Most important detail the works are the hands of people. Strong, accustomed to working in the fields, harvesting crops. The artist's talent finally burst out.

Impressionism and Van Gogh. Self-portrait photo

In 1886, Vincent arrived in Paris. Financially, he also continues to depend on his brother. Here, in the capital of world art, Van Gogh is amazed by a new movement - the Impressionists. Is born new artist. He creates a huge number of self-portraits, landscapes and sketches of everyday life. His palette also changes, but the main changes affected his writing technique. Now he draws with fragmentary lines, short strokes and dots.

The cold and gloomy winter of 1887 took its toll on the artist, and he fell into depression again. His time in Paris had a huge impact on Vincent, but he felt it was time to get back on the road. He went to the south of France, to the provinces. Here Vincent begins to write like a man possessed. His palette is full bright colors. Sky blue, bright yellow and orange. As a result, juicy color scheme canvases thanks to which the artist became famous.

Van Gogh suffered from severe hallucinations. He felt like he was going crazy. The illness increasingly influenced his work. In 1888, Theo convinced Gauguin, with whom Van Gogh was on very friendly terms, to go visit his brother. Paul lived with Vincent for two exhausting months. They often quarreled, and once Van Gogh even attacked Paul with a blade in his hand. Vincent soon self-mutilated himself by cutting off his own ear. He was sent to the hospital. It was one of the most severe attacks of madness.

Soon, on July 29, 1890, Vincent Van Gogh died by committing suicide. He lived his life in poverty, obscurity and isolation, and remained unrecognized artist. But now he is revered all over the world. Vincent became a legend, and his work influenced subsequent generations of artists.

Name: Vincent Gogh

Age: 37 years

Place of Birth: Groot Zundert, Netherlands

A place of death: Auvers-sur-Oise, France

Activity: Dutch post-impressionist artist

Family status: wasn't married

Vincent Van Gogh - biography

Vincent Van Gogh did not seek to prove to others that he was a real artist; he was not vain. The only person, to whom he wanted to prove this was himself.

For a long time, Vincent Van Gogh did not have any formulated goal in life or profession. According to tradition, generations of Van Goghs either chose a church career or became art dealers. Vincent's father, Theodorus Van Gogh, was a Protestant minister who served in the small town of Groot Zundert in South Holland, on the border with Belgium.

Vincent's uncles, Cornelius and Wiene, traded paintings in Amsterdam and The Hague. Mother, Anna Cornelia Carbendus, a wise woman who lived for almost a hundred years, suspected that her son was not an ordinary Van Gogh, as soon as he was born on March 30, 1853. A year earlier, to the same day, she gave birth to a boy named by the same name. He didn't live even a few days. So, according to fate, the mother believed, her Vincent was destined to live for two.

At the age of 15, having studied for two years at school in the town of Zevenbergen, and then another two in high school, which bore the name of King William II, Vincent left his studies and in 1868, with the help of his uncle Vince, he entered the branch of the Parisian art company Goupil and Co. that had opened in The Hague. He worked well, the young man was appreciated for his curiosity - he studied books on the history of painting and visited museums. Vincent was promoted and sent to the London branch of Goupil.

Van Gogh stayed in London for two years, became a deep connoisseur of engravings by English masters and acquired the gloss befitting a businessman, quoted the fashionable Dickens and Eliot, and shaved his red cheeks smoothly. In general, as his younger brother Theo, who later also went into trading, testified, he lived in those years with almost blissful delight in everything that surrounded him. Heart overflow wrested passionate words from him: “There is nothing more artistic than loving people!” - wrote Vincent. Actually, the brothers' correspondence is the main document of the life of Vincent Van Gogh. Theo was the person Vincent turned to as his confessor. Other documents are sketchy and fragmentary.

Vincent Van Gogh had a brilliant future as a commission agent. He was soon to move to Paris, to the central branch of Goupil.

What happened to him in 1875 in London is not known. He wrote to his brother Theo that he suddenly fell into “painful loneliness.” It is believed that in London, Vincent, having truly fallen in love for the first time, was rejected. But his chosen one is called either the owner of the boarding house at 87 Hackford Road, where he lived, Ursula Loyer, or her daughter Eugenia, and even a certain German woman named Caroline Haanebeek. Since in his letters to his brother, from whom he did not hide anything, Vincent kept silent about this love of his, it is possible to assume that his “painful loneliness” had other reasons.

Even in Holland, according to contemporaries, Vincent at times caused bewilderment with his demeanor. The expression on his face suddenly became somewhat absent, alien; there was something thoughtful, deeply serious, melancholy in him. True, then he laughed heartily and cheerfully, and his whole face then brightened. But more often than not he seemed very lonely. Yes, in fact, he was. He lost interest in working at Gupil. The transfer to the Paris branch in May 1875 did not help either. In early March 1876, Van Gogh was fired.

In April 1876, he returned to England a completely different person - without any gloss or ambition. He took a job as a teacher at the Rev. William P. Stoke's School in Ramsgate, where he received a class of 24 boys aged 10 to 14 years. He read the Bible to them, and then turned to the Reverend Father with a request to allow him to serve prayer services for the parishioners of Turnham Green Church. Soon he was allowed to lead the Sunday sermon. True, he did it extremely boringly. It is known that his father also lacked emotionality and the ability to capture an audience.

At the end of 1876, Vincent wrote to his brother that he understood his true destiny - he would be a preacher. He returned to Holland and entered the theological faculty of the University of Amsterdam. Ironically, he, who spoke four languages fluently: Dutch, English, French and German, failed to master the Latin course. Based on the test results, he was assigned in January 1879 as a parish priest to the mining village of Vasmes in the poorest Borinage region in Europe in Belgium.

The missionary delegation, which visited Father Vincent in Wasmes a year later, was quite alarmed by the changes in Van Gogh. Thus, the delegation discovered that Father Vincent had moved from a comfortable room to a shack, sleeping on the floor. He distributed his clothes to the poor and wore a worn military uniform, under which he wore a homemade burlap shirt. I didn’t wash my face so as not to stand out among the miners stained with coal dust. They tried to convince him that Scripture should not be understood literally, and the New Testament is not a direct guide to action, but Father Vincent denounced the missionaries, which, naturally, ended in his removal from office.

Van Gogh did not leave Borinage: he moved to the tiny mining village of Kuzmes, and, living on donations from the community, and essentially for a piece of bread, continued the mission of the preacher. He even interrupted correspondence with his brother Theo for a while, not wanting to accept help from him.

When the correspondence resumed, Theo was once again surprised by the changes that had occurred in his brother. In letters from the impoverished Kuzmes, he talked about art: “You need to understand the defining word contained in the masterpieces of great masters, and there will be God!” And he said that he draws a lot. Miners, miners' wives, their children. And everyone likes it.

This change surprised Vincent himself. For advice on whether he should continue painting, he went to the French artist Jules Breton. He did not know Breton, but in his past life as a commission agent he respected the artist to such an extent that he walked 70 kilometers to Courrières, where Breton lived. I found Breton's house, but was too shy to knock on the door. And, depressed, he set off on foot back to Kuzmes.

Theo believed that after this incident his brother would return to old life. But Vincent continued to draw like a man possessed. In 1880, he came to Brussels with the firm intention of studying at the Academy of Arts, but his application was not even accepted. Vincent wasn't upset at all. He bought drawing manuals by Jean-François Millet and Charles Bagh, popular in those years, and went to his parents, intending to engage in self-education.

Only his mother approved of Vincent's decision to become an artist, which surprised the whole family. The father was very wary of the changes in his son, although the pursuit of art fit well into the canons of Protestant ethics. The uncles, who had been selling paintings for decades, looked at Vincent’s drawings and decided that his nephew was crazy.

The incident with cousin Cornelia only strengthened their suspicions. Cornelia, who was recently widowed and raising her son alone, took a liking to Vincent. To woo her, he burst into his uncle's house, stretched out his hand over an oil lamp, and vowed to hold it over the fire until he was allowed to see his cousin. Cornelia's father resolved the situation by blowing out the lamp, and Vincent, humiliated, left the house.

His mother was very worried about Vincent. She persuaded her distant relative Anton Mauve, a successful artist, to support her son. Mauve sent Vincent a box of watercolors and then met with him. After looking at Van Gogh's works, the artist gave some advice. But having learned that the model depicted in one of the sketches with a child - lung woman behavior with which Vincent now lived, refused to maintain further relations with him.

Van Gogh met Klasina at the end of February 1882 in The Hague. She had two young children and had nowhere to live. Taking pity on her, he invited Klasina and her children to live with him. They were together for a year and a half. Vincent wrote to his brother that in this way he atones for the sin of Klasina’s fall, taking on someone else’s guilt. In gratitude, she and her children patiently posed for Vincent's oil studies.

It was then that he admitted to Theo that the main thing in his life was art. “Everything else is a consequence of art. If something has nothing to do with art, it doesn’t exist.” Klasina and her children, whom he loved very much, became a burden to him. In September 1883 he left them and left The Hague.

For two months, Vincent, half-starved, wandered around North Holland with an easel. During this time he painted dozens of portraits and hundreds of sketches. Returning to his parents' house, where he was received as coolly as ever, he announced that everything he had done before was “studies.” And now he is ready to paint a real picture.

Van Gogh worked on “The Potato Eaters” for a long time. I made a lot of sketches and sketches. He had to prove to everyone and to himself, first of all, to himself that he was a real artist. Margo Begeman, who lived next door, was the first to believe it. A forty-five-year-old woman fell in love with Van Gogh, but he, engrossed in working on the painting, did not notice her. Desperate, Margo tried to poison herself. She was saved with difficulty. Upon learning of this, Van Gogh was very upset, and many times in letters to Theo he returned to this accident.

Having finished "Eaters", he was satisfied with the picture and at the beginning of 1886 he left for Paris - he was suddenly fascinated by the works of the great French artist Delacroix on color theory.

Even before leaving for Paris, I tried to connect color and music, for which I took several piano lessons. "Prussian blue!" "Yellow chrome!" - he exclaimed, hitting the keys, stunning the teacher. He specifically studied Rubens' violent colors. Lighter tones had already appeared in his own paintings, and yellow became his favorite color. True, when Vincent wrote to his brother about his desire to come to him in Paris and meet the Impressionists, he tried to dissuade him. Theo feared that the atmosphere of Paris would be disastrous for Vincent. But his persuasion had no effect...

Unfortunately, Van Gogh's Parisian period is the least documented. For two years in Paris, Vincent lived with Theo in Montmartre, and the brothers, of course, did not correspond.

It is known that Vincent immediately plunged into artistic life capital of France. He visited exhibitions, got acquainted with " the last word» Impressionism - works by Seurat and Signac. These pointillist artists, taking the principles of impressionism to the extreme, marked its final stage. He became friends with Toulouse-Lautrec, with whom he attended drawing classes.

Toulouse-Lautrec, having seen Van Gogh's works and heard from Vincent that he was “just an amateur,” ambiguously noted that he was mistaken: amateurs are those who paint bad pictures. Vincent persuaded his brother, who was well-known in artistic circles, to introduce him to the masters - Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir. And Camille Pissarro felt sympathy for Van Gogh to such an extent that he took Vincent to “Père Tanguy’s Shop.”

The owner of this store of paints and other art materials was an old communard and a generous philanthropist. He allowed Vincent to organize the first exhibition of works in the store, in which his closest friends also participated: Bernard, Toulouse-Lautrec and Anquetin. Van Gogh persuaded them to unite into the “Group of the Small Boulevards” - as opposed to the famous artists of the Grand Boulevards.

He had long been struck by the idea of creating, on the model of medieval fraternities, a community of artists. However, his impulsive nature and uncompromising judgments prevented him from building relationships with friends. He became not himself again.

It began to seem to him that he was too susceptible to other people's influence. And Paris, the city he so longed for, instantly became disgusting to him. “I want to hide somewhere to the south so as not to see so many artists who, as people, disgust me,” he wrote to his brother from the small town of Arles in Provence, where he went in February 1888.

In Arles, Vincent felt like himself. “I find that what I learned in Paris disappears, and I return to those thoughts that came to me in nature, before meeting the Impressionists,” Gauguin’s harsh disposition, he told Theo in August 1888. How and before, Van Gogh's brother was constantly working. He painted in the open air, not paying attention to the wind, which often overturned his easel and covered his palette with sand. He also worked at night - using Goya's system, placing burning candles on his hat and on the easel. This is how “Night Cafe” and “Starry Night over the Rhone” were written.

But then the abandoned idea of creating a community of artists took possession of him again. For fifteen francs a month, he rented four rooms in the “Yellow House,” which became famous thanks to his paintings, on Place Lamartine, at the entrance to Arles. And on September 22, after repeated persuasion, Paul Gauguin came to him. This was a tragic mistake. Vincent, idealistically confident in Gauguin's friendly disposition, told him everything he thought. He also did not hide his opinion. On Christmas Eve 1888, after a heated argument with Gauguin, Vincent grabbed a razor to attack his friend.

Gauguin escaped and moved to a hotel at night. Flowing into a frenzy, Vincent cut off his left earlobe. The next morning he was found bleeding in the Yellow House and sent to the hospital. A few days later he was released. Vincent seemed to have recovered, but after the first attack of mental confusion, others followed. His inappropriate behavior frightened the residents so much that a deputation of townspeople wrote a petition to the mayor and demanded to rid them of the “red-haired madman.”

Despite many attempts by researchers to declare Vincent crazy, it is still impossible not to recognize his general sanity, or, as psychiatrists say, “criticality of his condition.” On May 8, 1889, he voluntarily entered the specialized hospital of St. Paul of Mausoleum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. He was observed by Dr. Théophile Peyron, who came to the conclusion that the patient was suffering from something resembling a split personality. And he prescribed treatment by periodic immersion in a bath of water.

Hydrotherapy did not bring any particular benefit to anyone in curing mental disorders, but there was no harm from it either. Van Gogh was much more depressed by the fact that the patients of the hospital were not allowed to do anything. He begged Doctor Peyron to allow him to go to sketches, accompanied by an orderly. So, under supervision, he painted many works, including “Road with Cypress Trees and a Star” and the landscape “Olive Trees, Blue Sky and White Cloud.”

In January 1890, after the Group of Twenty exhibition in Brussels, in which Theo Van Gogh participated, the first and only painting by Vincent during the artist’s lifetime was sold: “Red Vineyards at Arles.” For four hundred francs, which is approximately equal to the current eighty US dollars. To somehow cheer Theo up, he wrote to him: “The practice in the art trade, when prices rise after the death of the author, has survived to this day - it’s something like the tulip trade, when a living artist has more minuses than pluses.”

Van Gogh himself was immensely happy with the success. Even though the prices for the works of the Impressionists, who by that time had become classics, were incomparably higher. But he had his own method, his own path, found with such difficulty and torment. And he was finally recognized. Vincent drew non-stop. By that time, he had already painted more than 800 paintings and almost 900 drawings—no other artist had created so many works in just ten years of creativity.

Theo, inspired by the success of the Vineyards, sent his brother more and more paints, but Vincent began to eat them. Dr. Neuron had to hide the easel and palette under lock and key, and when they were returned to Van Gogh, he said that he would no longer go to sketches. Why, he explained in a letter to his sister - Theo, he was afraid to admit this: “... when I am in the fields, I am so overwhelmed by a feeling of loneliness that I’m even scared to go out somewhere...”

In May 1890, Theo agreed with Dr. Gachet, a homeopathic physician at a clinic in Auvers-sur-Oise outside Paris, that Vincent would continue his treatment. Gachet, who appreciates painting and is himself fond of drawing, gladly welcomed the artist to his clinic.

Vincent also liked Dr. Gachet, whom he considered warm-hearted and optimistic. On June 8, Theo and his wife and child came to visit his brother, and Vincent spent a wonderful day with his family, talking about the future: “We all need fun and happiness, hope and love. The scarier, the older, the angrier, the sicker I become, the more I want to fight back by creating a great color, impeccably constructed, brilliant.”

A month later, Gachet already allowed Van Gogh to go to his brother in Paris. Theo, whose daughter was then very ill and his financial affairs were shaken, did not greet Vincent very kindly. A quarrel broke out between them. Its details are unknown. But Vincent felt that he had become a burden to his brother. And probably always was like this. Shocked to the core, Vincent returned to Auvers-sur-Oise that same day.

On July 27, after lunch, Van Gogh went out with an easel to sketch. Stopping in the middle of the field, he shot himself in the chest with a pistol (how he got the weapon remained unknown, and the pistol itself was never found.). The bullet, as it turned out later, hit the rib bone, deflected and missed the heart. Pressing his hand over the wound, the artist returned to the shelter and went to bed. The owner of the shelter called doctor Mazri from the nearest village and the police.

It seemed that the wound did not cause Van Gogh much suffering. When the police arrived, he was calmly smoking a pipe while lying in bed. Gachet sent a telegram to the artist’s brother, and Theo Van Gogh arrived the next morning. Vincent before last minute was conscious. To his brother’s words that they would definitely help him recover, that he just needed to get rid of despair, he answered in French: “La tristesse “durera toujours” (“The sadness will last forever”) and died at half past two in the morning on July 29, 1890.

The priest in Auvers forbade Van Gogh to be buried in the church cemetery. It was decided to bury the artist in a small cemetery in the nearby town of Mary. On July 30, Vincent Van Gogh's body was interred. Vincent's longtime friend, the artist Emile Bernard, described the funeral in detail:

"On the walls of the room where his coffin stood, his last works were hung, forming a kind of halo, and the brightness of the genius they radiated made this death even more painful for us artists who were there. The coffin was covered an ordinary white blanket and surrounded by a mass of flowers. There were sunflowers, which he loved so much, and yellow dahlias - everywhere. yellow flowers. This was, as you remember, his favorite color, a symbol of light with which he dreamed of filling the hearts of people and which filled works of art.

Next to him on the floor lay his easel, his folding chair and his brushes. There were a lot of people, mostly artists, among whom I recognized Lucien Pissarro and Lauzet. I looked at the sketches; one is very beautiful and sad. Prisoners walking in a circle, surrounded by a high prison wall, a canvas painted under the impression of Doré's painting, its horrific cruelty and symbolizing his imminent end.

Wasn't life like this for him: a high prison with such high walls, with such high... and these people endlessly walking around the pit, aren't they poor artists - damned poor souls who pass by, driven by the whip of Fate? At three o'clock his friends carried his body to the hearse, many of those present were crying. Theodore Van Gogh, who loved his brother very much and always supported him in the struggle for his art, never stopped crying...

It was terribly hot outside. We walked up the hill outside Auvers, talking about him, about the bold impulse he gave to art, about the great projects he was always thinking about, and about the good he brought to us all. We reached the cemetery: a small new cemetery, full of new tombstones. It was located on a small hill among fields that were ready for harvest, under clear blue sky, which he still loved at that time... probably. Then he was lowered into the grave...

This day seemed to be created for him, until you imagine that he is no longer alive and he cannot admire this day. Dr. Gachet wanted to say a few words in honor of Vincent and his life, but he was crying so hard that he could only stutter and shyly say a few goodbye words (maybe that was the best thing). He gave short description Vincent's torment and achievements, mentioning how lofty his goal was and how much he loved him (even though he knew Vincent for a very short time).

He was, said Gachet, an honest man and a great artist, he had only two goals: humanity and art. He put art above all else, and it will repay him in kind, perpetuating his name. Then we returned. Theodore Van Gogh was heartbroken; those present began to disperse: some were secluded, simply going into the fields, others were already walking back to the station..."

Theo Van Gogh died six months later. All this time he could not forgive himself for the quarrel with his brother. The extent of his despair becomes clear from a letter he wrote to his mother shortly after Vincent's death: “It is impossible to describe my grief, just as it is impossible to find consolation. This is a grief that will last and from which I will certainly never be freed as long as I live. The only thing that can be said is that he himself found the peace he was striving for... Life was such a heavy burden for him, but now, as often happens, everyone praises his talents... Oh, mom! He was so my, my own brother.”

After Theo’s death, Vincent’s last letter was found in his archive, which he wrote after a quarrel with his brother: “It seems to me that since everyone is a little nervous and also too busy, it is not worthwhile to fully clarify all the relationships. I was a little surprised that you seemed to want to rush things. How can I help, or rather, what can I do to make you happy with this? One way or another, I mentally shake your hands tightly again and, in spite of everything, I was glad to see you all. Don't doubt it."

Van Gogh Vincent (Vincent Willem) (1853-1890), Dutch painter.

In 1869-1876. served as a commission agent for an art and trading company in The Hague, Brussels, London and Paris, and in 1876 worked as a teacher in England.

In 1878-1879 was a preacher in Borinage (Belgium), where he learned hard life miners; protecting their interests brought Van Gogh into conflict with church authorities.

In the 80s XIX century he turned to art, visiting the art academy in Brussels (1880-1881) and Antwerp (1885-1886). Van Gogh enthusiastically paints disadvantaged working people - miners of the Borinage, and later - peasants, artisans, fishermen, whose life he observed in Holland in 1881-1885.

Already at the age of thirty, Van Gogh decided to devote himself to painting. He created a series of paintings depicting ordinary people and executed in dark, gloomy colors (“Peasant Woman”, “Potato Eaters”, both 1885). In the initial period of creativity, the artist also made many drawings in which human figures appear and landscapes (swamps, ponds, trees, winter roads, etc.). They are influenced French painter and graphics by J. F. Millet.

Since 1886, Van Gogh has lived in Paris, where he joined the quests of A. de Toulouse-Lautrec, P. Gauguin, and C. Pizarro. Thanks to these first contacts, light colors appear in his palette, light and color begin to play a more important role in his paintings.

Under the influence of the painting of J. Seurat, the artist paints for some time in separate strokes of complementary colors, but soon moves on to a simple and bright expression of color. In this, Van Gogh follows the example of E. Bernard and L. Anquetin, who draw inspiration from stained glass, where clear planes of color are delimited by lead partitions, as well as in “amazing clarity” and “confident drawing” Japanese prints(“Bridge over the Seine”, “Portrait of Father Tanguy”, both 1887).

In February 1888, Van Gogh left for the south of France, to Arles. Here he creates landscapes shining with the joyful, sunny colors of the south (“The Harvest”, “La Croe Valley”, “Fishing Boats in Sainte-Marie”, “Red Vineyards in Arles”, all. 1888, etc.), spiritualizes ordinary objects with his temperament (“Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles,” 1888), sometimes succumbing to attacks of loneliness and melancholy (“Night Cafe in Arles,” 1888).

In October, Gauguin comes to the artist. Under his short-lived influence, Van Gogh wrote "The Dance Hall". The two artists argue frequently and furiously; one such scene ends with Van Gogh, in a frenzy, mutilating himself by cutting off his ear. Friends disperse.

The color in Van Gogh’s works becomes even brighter, the impressionistic shimmer gives way to almost monochrome paintings, which show either endless beaches or wide furrows of fields - both color and object form. Van Gogh turns to light, which cannot be called simply daylight - it has an undoubted shade of the supernatural, the artist seeks an ever more truthful expression of the mystery of the human being and stands out from the general trend of impressionism with a painful thirst for spirituality.

The strain of strength and long studies under the scorching Arlesian sun led to the fact that the last years of Van Gogh’s life were complicated by attacks mental illness. 1889-1890 he spends time in a hospital in Arles, then in Saint-Rémy and Auvers-sur-Oise, where on July 29, 1890 he commits suicide.

The works of the last two years breathe a dark, heavy mood (“At the Gates of Eternity”, “Road with Cypresses and Stars”, “Landscape at Auvers after the Rain”, all 1890).

The artist's creative life did not last long - about ten years, but during this time approximately 2,200 works were created.