Vincent Willem van Gogh van Gogh; March 30, 1853, Grote-Zundert, Netherlands - July 29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, France) - Dutch artist is a post-impressionist whose work had a timeless influence on 20th-century painting. In just over ten years, he created more than 2,100 works, including about 860 oil paintings. Among them are portraits, self-portraits, landscapes and still lifes, depicting olive trees, cypress trees, wheat fields and sunflowers. Van Gogh was overlooked by most critics until his suicide at the age of 37, which was preceded by years of anxiety, poverty and mental disorders.
Born on March 30, 1853 in the village of Groot Zundert (Dutch. Groot Zundert) in the province of North Brabant in the south of the Netherlands, near the Belgian border. Vincent's father was Theodore Van Gogh (born 02/08/1822), a Protestant pastor, and his mother was Anna Cornelia Carbenthus, the daughter of a venerable bookbinder and bookseller from The Hague. Vincent was the second of seven children of Theodore and Anna Cornelia. He received his name in honor of his paternal grandfather, who also devoted his entire life to the Protestant church. This name was intended for Theodore and Anna's first child, who was born a year earlier than Vincent and died on the first day. So Vincent, although born second, became the eldest of the children.
Four years after Vincent's birth, on May 1, 1857, his brother Theodorus van Gogh (Theo) was born. In addition to him, Vincent had a brother Cor (Cornelis Vincent, May 17, 1867) and three sisters - Anna Cornelia (February 17, 1855), Liz (Elizabeth Guberta, May 16, 1859) and Wil (Willemina Jacoba, March 16, 1862). Family members remember Vincent as a willful, difficult and boring child with “strange manners”, which was the reason for his frequent punishments. According to the governess, there was something strange about him that distinguished him from the others: of all the children, Vincent was the least pleasant to her, and she did not believe that anything worthwhile could come of him. Outside the family, on the contrary, Vincent showed reverse side of his character - he was quiet, serious and thoughtful. He hardly played with other children. In the eyes of his fellow villagers, he was a good-natured, friendly, helpful, compassionate, sweet and modest child. When he was 7 years old, he went to a village school, but a year later he was taken away from there, and together with his sister Anna he studied at home, with a governess. On October 1, 1864, he went to boarding school in Zevenbergen, located 20 km from his home. Leaving home caused Vincent a lot of suffering; he could not forget it, even as an adult. On September 15, 1866, he began studying at another boarding school - Willem II College in Tilburg. Vincent is good at languages - French, English, German. There he received drawing lessons. In March 1868, in the middle school year, Vincent unexpectedly dropped out of school and returned to his father's house. This ends his formal education. He recalled his childhood like this: “My childhood was dark, cold and empty...”.
In July 1869, Vincent got a job in the Hague branch of the large art and trading company Goupil & Cie, owned by his uncle Vincent (“Uncle Saint”). There he received the necessary training as a dealer. Initially, the future artist set to work with great zeal, achieved good results, and in June 1873 he was transferred to the London branch of Goupil & Cie. Through daily contact with works of art, Vincent began to understand and appreciate painting. In addition, he visited the city's museums and galleries, admiring the works of Jean-François Millet and Jules Breton. At the end of August, Vincent moved to 87 Hackford Road and rented a room in the house of Ursula Loyer and her daughter Eugenie. There is a version that he was in love with Eugenia, although many early biographers mistakenly call her by the name of her mother, Ursula. In addition to this naming confusion that has been going on for decades, recent research suggests that Vincent was not in love with Eugenie at all, but with a German woman named Caroline Haanebeek. What actually happened remains unknown. The lover's refusal shocked and disappointed the future artist; he gradually lost interest in his work and began to turn to the Bible. In 1874, Vincent was transferred to the Paris branch of the company, but after three months of work he again left for London. Things were getting worse for him, and in May 1875 he was again transferred to Paris, where he attended exhibitions at the Salon and Louvre and eventually began to try his hand at painting. Gradually, this activity began to take up more of his time, and Vincent finally lost interest in work, deciding for himself that “art has no worst enemies than art dealers." As a result, at the end of March 1876 he was fired from Goupil & Cie due to poor performance, despite the patronage of his relatives who were co-owners of the company.
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(Vincent Willem Van Gogh) was born on March 30, 1853 in the village of Groot Zundert in the province of North Brabant in the south of the Netherlands in the family of a Protestant pastor.
In 1868, Van Gogh dropped out of school, after which he went to work at a branch of the large Parisian art company Goupil & Cie. He successfully worked in the gallery, first in The Hague, then in branches in London and Paris.
By 1876, Vincent had completely lost interest in the painting trade and decided to follow in the footsteps of his father. In Great Britain, he found work as a teacher at a boarding school in a small town in the suburbs of London, where he also served as an assistant pastor. On October 29, 1876, he preached his first sermon. In 1877 he moved to Amsterdam, where he began studying theology at the university.
Van Gogh "Poppies"
In 1879, Van Gogh received a position as a secular preacher in Wham, a mining center in the Borinage, in southern Belgium. He then continued his preaching mission in the nearby village of Kem.
During this same period, Van Gogh developed a desire to paint.
In 1880, in Brussels, he entered the Royal Academy of Arts (Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles). However, due to his unbalanced character, he soon abandoned the course and continued art education yourself, using reproductions.
In 1881, in Holland, under the guidance of his relative, landscape artist Anton Mauwe, Van Gogh created his first paintings: “Still life with cabbage and wooden shoes” and “Still life with a beer glass and fruit.”
In the Dutch period, starting with the painting “Harvesting Potatoes” (1883), the main motif of the artist’s paintings became the theme ordinary people and their work, the emphasis was on the expressiveness of scenes and figures, the palette was dominated by dark, gloomy colors and shades, sharp changes in light and shadow. The canvas “The Potato Eaters” (April-May 1885) is considered a masterpiece of this period.
In 1885, Van Gogh continued his studies in Belgium. In Antwerp he entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. In 1886, Vincent moved to Paris to join his younger brother Theo, who by then had taken over as leading manager of the Goupil gallery in Montmartre. Here Van Gogh took lessons from the French realist artist Fernand Cormon for about four months, met the impressionists Camille Pizarro, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, from whom he adopted their style of painting.
© Public Domain "Portrait of Doctor Gachet" by Van Gogh
© Public Domain
In Paris, Van Gogh developed an interest in creating images human faces. Without the funds to pay for the work of models, he turned to self-portraiture, creating about 20 paintings in this genre in two years.
The Parisian period (1886-1888) became one of the artist's most productive creative periods.
In February 1888, Van Gogh traveled to the south of France to Arles, where he dreamed of creating a creative community of artists.
In December, Vincent's mental health took a turn for the worse. During one of his uncontrollable outbursts of aggression, he threatened Paul Gauguin, who came to see him in the open air, with an open razor, and then cut off a piece of his earlobe, sending it as a gift to one of his female acquaintances. After this incident, Van Gogh was first placed in a psychiatric hospital in Arles, and then voluntarily went for treatment at the specialized clinic of St. Paul of the Mausoleum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The hospital's chief physician, Théophile Peyron, diagnosed his patient with "acute manic disorder." However, the artist was given a certain freedom: he could paint in the open air under the supervision of staff.
In Saint-Rémy, Vincent alternated between periods of vigorous activity and long breaks caused by deep depression. In just one year of his stay at the clinic, Van Gogh painted about 150 paintings. Some of the most outstanding paintings of this period were: " Starlight Night", "Irises", "Road with cypresses and a star", "Olive trees, blue sky and white cloud", "Pieta".
In September 1889, with the active assistance of his brother Theo, Van Gogh's paintings took part in the Salon of Independents, an exhibition contemporary art, organized by the Society of Independent Artists in Paris.
In January 1890, Van Gogh's paintings were exhibited at the eighth Group of Twenty exhibition in Brussels, where they were enthusiastically received by critics.
In May 1890 in mental state Van Gogh improved, he left the hospital and settled in the town of Auvers-sur-Oise in the suburbs of Paris under the supervision of Dr. Paul Gachet.
Vincent actively took up painting; almost every day he completed a painting. During this period, he painted several outstanding portraits of Dr. Gachet and 13-year-old Adeline Ravou, the daughter of the owner of the hotel where he stayed.
On July 27, 1890, Van Gogh left his house at the usual time and went to paint. Upon his return, after persistent questioning by the couple, Ravu admitted that he had shot himself with a pistol. All attempts by Dr. Gachet to save the wounded were in vain; Vincent fell into a coma and died on the night of July 29 at the age of thirty-seven. He was buried in the Auvers cemetery.
American biographers of the artist Steven Nayfeh and Gregory White Smith in their study “The Life of Van Gogh” (Van Gogh: The Life) of Vincent’s death, according to which he died not from his own bullet, but from an accidental shot committed by two drunken young men.
Over the course of ten years creative activity Van Gogh managed to paint 864 paintings and almost 1200 drawings and engravings. During his lifetime, only one painting by the artist was sold - the landscape "Red Vineyards in Arles". The cost of the painting was 400 francs.
The material was prepared based on information from open sources
“Portrait of Doctor Gachet” is one of the most famous and recognizable works of the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh. But this particular picture is shrouded in mystery and intrigue. In our review, we have collected little-known and entertainingly surprising facts about the creation of this world-famous portrait.
1. There are 2 almost identical portraits
Both are called "Portrait of Doctor Gachet", and the man in them is depicted in the same suit, with the same melancholic expression and in the same pose - resting his head on his hand. However, the paintings contain partially different props. Also the canvases are almost identical in size (67 x 56 cm), and they were both painted in 1890, in Last year Van Gogh's life.
2. Van Gogh hoped to make money from the first Portrait of Dr. Gachet.
Although Van Gogh is considered one of the most iconic artists today, he sold only two paintings during his lifetime. The artist hoped that the painting of a person famous in the art world could bring him money and further orders.
3. Van Gogh also made an etching of the doctor depicted in the painting.
Around the same time he completed the two paintings, Van Gogh also made a similar copper engraving with an acid-etched design. There are 61 known prints of this etching, of which 14 are believed to be by Van Gogh himself. It is believed that the remaining prints were created after his death. The original copper engraving is now in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay.
4. Van Gogh was pleased with his first portrait
In a letter to Theo, he stated: “I made a portrait of Gachet with a melancholic expression on his face, which may well seem like a grimace to someone. The sad, but calm and intelligent expression essentially combines several portraits of one person.”
5. Dr. Gachet was more than just a model for an artist's painting.
He was also his attending physician. An admirer of Impressionism, Paul-Ferdinand Gachet was an amateur artist who was personally acquainted with Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir. He was a doctor by profession who believed in the power of homeopathy and was interested in palmistry.
After Van Gogh left the mental hospital, his brother Theo left Van Gogh under the care of Gachet. Van Gogh moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, a northwestern suburb of Paris, where Gachet looked after him in recent months artist.
6. Some people blame Gachet for Van Gogh's death
It was believed that since Gachet has good reputation and knows many artists, he must "save Van Gogh from his inner demons." But both men lost this battle on July 27, 1890, when the artist committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest with a revolver (he died two days later). Some blamed Gachet for insufficient psychiatric care for Van Gogh, while others believed that the doctor did not talk to the patient regularly.
But it is worth noting that when the gendarmes tried to interrogate the mortally wounded artist, Van Gogh said: “This is my body and I am free to do whatever I want with it. Don’t blame anyone, it was I who wanted to commit suicide.”
7. Dr. Gachet posed for other artists
Ambroise Detre, Norbert Guenette and Emile Bernard also painted portraits of Gachet. Charles Leander made a caricature of him, and Paul Cézanne painted the painting “The House of Doctor Gachet in Auvers.”
8. While working, Van Gogh found inspiration in another painting.
Imagining what the portrait would look like, and being under the supervision of a doctor at that time, Van Gogh asked his brother in a letter to bring him a copy of Eugene Delacroix’s painting “Tasso in the Dungeon.”
9. Van Gogh's relationship with Gachet was quite unstable.
In letters to his brother, Vincent alternately wrote that he "found in the doctor a real friend and even something like a new brother" and "I think that we should not count on Doctor Gachet at all. He is even crazier than I am ".
10. Gachet's portraits were created during a very fruitful period for Van Gogh
In the last 70 days of his life, Van Gogh is believed to have created 70 paintings, including the portraits of Dr. Gachet, The Church at Auvers and The Cornfield. The exact number of paintings is in doubt.
11. Some critics believe that "Portrait of Doctor Gachet" is a fake
In the late 1990s, a theory arose among art critics and historians that some of Van Gogh's paintings in last days lives were actually written by Gachet. The authenticity of both portraits of Dr. Gachet has been questioned, with some people suggesting that they are in fact self-portraits.
12. One of the portraits broke records at auction
In just three minutes Christie auction The original "Portrait of Doctor Gachet" with Van Gogh's signature was sold for $82.5 million. At the same time, a new record was set for the amount paid for the painting.
13. The threat of destruction of the original painting outraged the art world
When 74-year-old Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito purchased "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" at auction, he said: "It is my principle to get what I want, no matter how much it costs." But later the whole world was outraged by the fact that the Japanese wrote in his will that the painting be cremated with him after his death. After the outbreak international scandal, Saito admitted that his statement was a bad joke.
14. Alleged counterfeit exhibited in Paris
10 latest paintings artists who committed suicide.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 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 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 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. 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. Locals 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.
Van Gogh's work
Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890) is considered a great Dutch artist, which 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. Inspired by the paintings of the Impressionists and Japanese prints The artist’s style changed: an intense color scheme and a broad, energetic brush stroke characteristic of the late Van G. appeared (“Boulevard of Clichy”, “Portrait of Father Tanguy”).
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 the most different genres, however, his talent manifested itself most clearly in the landscape: it was in it that his choleric explosive temperament found an outlet. The moving, nervous pictorial texture of his paintings reflected state of mind artist: he suffered 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 sinuous 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 destruction 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.
IN yellow paint from gently lemon to intense orange, Van Gogh saw some kind of bright beginning. 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. Late paintings Van Gogh is the arena of the collision 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 artistic manner Van Gogh, indeed, seemingly spontaneous, but in fact subtly calculated, 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 in 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 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.
Vincent Van Gogh Quotes
(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
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- 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.
- great Dutch artist, post-impressionist. Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853 in Grotto-Zundert. Died July 29, 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. For my creative life created a large number of paintings that are today considered masterpieces of world painting. The work of Vincent Van Gogh cannot be overestimated, since his art had a huge influence on the development of painting in the 20th century.
During his life, Van Gogh created more than 2,100 works! During the artist’s lifetime, his work was not as widely known as it is today. He lived in need and poverty. At the age of 37, he attempted suicide by shooting himself with a pistol, after which he died. After the death of Vincent van Gogh, connoisseurs and critics of painting paid close attention to his art; Exhibitions of the artist’s paintings began to open in different cities around the world, and he was soon recognized as one of the greatest and most influential artists of all time. Vincent Van Gogh is one of the most recognizable artists in the world today. Some of his paintings are considered among the most expensive works art of the world. The painting "Portrait of Doctor Gachet" was sold for $82.5 million. The cost of the painting “Self-Portrait with a Cut Off Ear and Pipe” in 1990 was between 80 and 90 million dollars. The painting "Irises" was sold in 1987 for $53.9 million.
Vincent Van Gogh's collection of paintings contains a large number of paintings that are considered incredibly expensive, very famous, and from a cultural point of view, priceless. However, among all Van Gogh’s paintings there are also the most famous ones, which are not just fabulously expensive, but also real “ business cards" by this artist. Next you can see the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh with the titles that are considered the most famous.
The most famous paintings of Vincent Van Gogh
Self-portrait with cut off ear and pipe
Self-portrait
Memories of the garden in Etten
Potato eaters
Starry night over the Rhone
Starlight Night
Red vineyards in Arles
Bulb fields
Night terrace in a cafe
Night cafe
Sunflowers
Portrait of Doctor Gachet
Prisoners Walk
Wheat field with cypress trees
Bedroom in Arles
Four fading sunflowers
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