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 appeared in his palette, light and color began 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 windows, where clear color planes are delimited by lead partitions, as well as from the “amazing clarity” and “confident drawing” of Japanese prints (“Bridge over the Seine”, “Portrait” 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 madness, 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 last years Van Gogh's life was complicated by bouts of 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.
The future artist was born in a small Dutch village called Grot-Zundert. This happy event happened in the family of the Protestant priest Theodore Van Gogh and his wife Anna Cornelius Van Gogh on March 30, 1853. The pastor's family had only six children. Vincent is the oldest. His family considered him difficult and strange child, while his neighbors noted his modesty, compassion and friendliness in his relationships with people. Subsequently, he repeatedly said that his childhood was cold and gloomy.
At the age of seven, Van Gogh was sent to a local school. Exactly a year later he returned home. Having received the initial home education, in 1864 he went to Zevenbergen to a private boarding school. He studied there for a short time - only two years, and moved to another boarding school - in Tilburg. He was noted for his ability to study languages and draw. It is noteworthy that in 1868 he unexpectedly quit his studies and went back to the village. This was the end of his education.
Youth
It has long been the custom that the men in the Van Gogh family were engaged in only two types of activities: trade artistic canvases and parish activities. Young Vincent could not help but try himself in both. He achieved some success both as a pastor and as an art dealer, but his passion for drawing took its toll.
At the age of 15, Vincent’s family helped him get a job at the Hague branch of the art company Goupil and Co. His career It didn’t take long for him to wait: for his diligence and success in his work, he was transferred to the British department. In London, he transformed from a simple country boy, a lover of painting, into a successful businessman, a professional, knowledgeable in the engravings of English masters. It has a metropolitan gloss. A move to Paris and work at the central branch of the Goupil company were just around the corner. However, something unexpected and incomprehensible happened: he fell into a state of “painful loneliness” and refused to do anything. He was soon fired.
Religion
In search of his destiny, he went to Amsterdam and intensively prepared to enter the theological faculty. But he soon realized that he did not belong here, dropped out of school and entered a missionary school. After graduating in 1879, he was offered to preach the Law of God in one of the cities in the south of Belgium. He agreed. During this period he painted a lot, mainly portraits of ordinary people.
Creation
After the disappointments that befell Van Gogh in Belgium, he again fell into depression. Brother Theo came to the rescue. He provided him with moral support and helped him enter the Academy of Fine Arts. There he studied for a short time and returned to his parents, where he continued self-study various techniques. During the same period, he experienced several unsuccessful novels.
The Parisian period (1886-1888) is considered the most fruitful time in Van Gogh's work. He met prominent representatives of impressionism and post-impressionism: Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Renoir, Paul Gauguin. He constantly searched for his own style and at the same time studied various techniques modern painting. His palette also lightened imperceptibly. There is very little left from the light to the real riot of colors characteristic of his paintings of recent years.
Other biography options
- After returning to psychiatric clinic Vincent, as usual, went out to draw from life in the morning. But he returned not with sketches, but with a bullet fired by himself from a pistol. It remains unclear how a serious wound allowed him to reach the shelter on his own and live for two more days. He died on July 29, 1890.
- IN short biography It is impossible not to mention one name of Vincent Van Gogh - Theo Van Gogh, the younger brother who helped and supported the elder all his life. He couldn't forgive himself last quarrel and subsequent suicide famous artist. He died exactly a year after Van Gogh's death from nervous exhaustion.
- Van Gogh cut off his ear after a heated argument with Gauguin. The latter thought they were going to attack him and ran away in fear.
Biography and episodes of life Vincent Van Gogh. When born and died Vincent Van Gogh, memorable places and dates important events his life. Artist Quotes, Photo and video.
Years of life of Vincent van Gogh:
born March 30, 1853, died July 29, 1890
Epitaph
“I’m standing there, and looming over me
Cypress twisted like a flame.
Lemon crown and dark blue, -
Without them I would not have become myself;
I would humiliate my own speech,
If only I could take someone else's burden off my shoulders.
And this rudeness of an angel, with what
He makes his stroke similar to my line,
Leads you through his pupil
To where Van Gogh breathes the stars.”
From a poem by Arseny Tarkovsky dedicated to Van Gogh
Biography
Without a doubt the greatest artist XIX V. With a recognizable manner, the author of internationally recognized masterpieces, Vincent Van Gogh was and remains one of the most controversial figures in world painting. Mental illness, passionate and uneven character, deep compassion and at the same time unsociability, combined with an amazing sense of nature and beauty, found expression in a huge creative heritage artist. Throughout his life, Van Gogh painted hundreds of canvases and remained unrecognized genius. Only one of his works, “Red Vineyards in Arles,” was sold during the artist’s lifetime. What an irony: after all, a hundred years after Van Gogh’s passing, his tiniest sketches were already worth a fortune.
Vincent Van Gogh was born in a village, into a large family of a Dutch pastor, where he was one of six children. While studying at school, the boy began to draw with a pencil, and even in these very early drawings the teenager is already peeking through extraordinary talent. After school, sixteen-year-old Van Gogh was assigned to work in the Hague branch of the Parisian company Goupil and Company, which sold paintings. This gave the young man and his brother Theo, with whom Vincent had a not simple but very close relationship all his life, the opportunity to get acquainted with real art. And this acquaintance, in turn, cooled Van Gogh’s creative zeal: he strove for something sublime, spiritual, and in the end gave up what he considered a “base” occupation, deciding to become a pastor.
What followed were years of poverty, living from hand to mouth and the spectacle of much human suffering. Van Gogh was passionate about helping poor people, while at the same time experiencing an ever-increasing thirst for creativity. Seeing in art much in common with religious faith, at the age of 27 Vincent finally decides to become an artist. He works a lot, enters the School of Fine Arts in Antwerp, then moves to Paris, where at that time a whole galaxy of impressionists and post-impressionists live and work. With the help of his brother Theo, who is still engaged in the painting trade, and with his financial support, Van Gogh leaves to work in the south of France and invites Paul Gauguin there, with whom he became close friends. This time is the flowering of Van Gogh’s creative genius and at the same time the beginning of his end. The artists work together, but the relationship between them becomes increasingly tense and eventually explodes in the famous quarrel, after which Vincent cuts off his earlobe and ends up in a mental hospital. Doctors find he has epilepsy and schizophrenia.
The last years of Van Gogh's life were tossing between hospitals and attempts to return to normal life. Vincent continues to create while in the hospital, but he is haunted by obsessions, fears and hallucinations. Twice Van Gogh tries to poison himself with paints and, finally, one day he returns from a walk with a gunshot wound in his chest, having shot himself with a revolver. Last words Van Gogh's words to his brother Theo sounded like this: “The sadness will be endless.” A hearse for the suicide's funeral had to be borrowed from a neighboring town. Van Gogh was buried in Auvers, and his coffin was strewn with sunflowers - the artist's favorite flowers.
Self-portrait of Van Gogh, 1887
Life line
March 30, 1853 Date of birth of Vincent van Gogh.
1869 Start of work at the Goupil Gallery.
1877 Work as a teacher and life in England, then work as an assistant pastor, life with miners in Borinage.
1881 Life in The Hague, first paintings, created to order (cityscapes of The Hague).
1882 Meeting with Klozinna Maria Hornik (Sin), the artist’s “vicious muse”.
1883-1885 Living with parents in North Brabant. Creation of a series of works on everyday rural subjects, including famous painting"Potato Eaters"
1885 Study at the Antwerp Academy.
1886 Acquaintance in Paris with Toulouse-Lautrec, Seurat, Pissarro. The beginning of a friendship with Paul Gauguin and creative growth, the creation of 200 paintings in 2 years.
1888 Life and work in Arles. Three paintings by Van Gogh are exhibited at the Independent Salon. Gauguin's arrival collaboration and a quarrel.
1889 Periodic exits from the hospital and attempts to return to work. Final move to the shelter in Saint-Rémy.
1890 Several of Van Gogh's paintings were accepted for exhibitions of the Society of Twenty in Brussels and the Independent Salon. Moving to Paris.
July 27, 1890 Van Gogh wounds himself in Daubigny's garden.
July 29, 1890 Van Gogh's date of death.
July 30, 1890 Van Gogh's funeral in Auvers-sur-Oise.
Memorable places
1. The village of Zundert (Netherlands), where Van Gogh was born.
2. The house where Van Gogh rented a room while working at the London branch of the Goupil company in 1873.
3. The village of Kuem (Netherlands), where Van Gogh’s house, where he lived in 1880 while studying the life of miners, is still preserved.
4. Rue Lepic in Montmartre, where Van Gogh lived with his brother Theo after moving to Paris in 1886.
5. Forum Square with a cafe-terrace in Arles (France), which in 1888 Van Gogh depicted in one of his most famous paintings “ Night terrace cafe".
6. The hospital at the monastery of Saint-Paul-de-Mousol in the town of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where Van Gogh was placed in 1889.
7. Auvers-sur-Oise, where Van Gogh spent recent months life and where he is buried in the village cemetery.
Episodes of life
Van Gogh was in love with his cousin, but she rejected him, and the persistence of Van Gogh's courtship put him at odds with almost his entire family. The depressed artist left his parents' house, where, as if in defiance of his family and himself, he settled with a corrupt woman, an alcoholic with two children. After a year of nightmare, dirty and miserable “family” life, Van Gogh broke up with Sin and forever forgot about the idea of starting a family.
No one knows exactly what caused Van Gogh's famous quarrel with Paul Gauguin, whom he greatly respected as an artist. Gauguin did not like Van Gogh's chaotic life and disorganization in his work; Vincent, in turn, could not force his friend to sympathize with his ideas of creating a commune of artists and the general direction of painting of the future. As a result, Gauguin decided to leave, and apparently this provoked a quarrel, during which Van Gogh first attacked his friend, although without harming him, and then mutilated himself. Gauguin did not forgive: subsequently he more than once emphasized how much Van Gogh owed him as an artist; and they never saw each other again.
Van Gogh's fame grew gradually but constantly. Since his very first exhibition in 1880, the artist has never been forgotten. Before the First World War, his exhibitions were held in Paris, Amsterdam, Cologne, Berlin, and New York. And already in the middle of the 20th century. Van Gogh's name became one of the most prominent in the history of world painting. And today the artist’s works occupy first place in the list of the most expensive paintings peace.
The grave of Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theodore in the cemetery in Auvers (France).
Testaments
“I am increasingly coming to the conviction that God cannot be judged by the world he created: this is just a failed sketch.”
“Whenever the question arose - to starve or work less, I chose the first, if possible.”
“Real artists don’t paint things as they are... They paint them because they feel like they are them.”
“He who lives honestly, who knows real difficulties and disappointments, but does not bend, is worth more than he who is lucky and knows only comparatively easy success.”
“Yes, sometimes it gets so cold in winter that people say: the frost is too severe, so it doesn’t matter to me whether summer returns or not; evil stronger than good. But, with or without our permission, the frosts sooner or later stop, one fine morning the wind changes and a thaw sets in.”
BBC documentary “Van Gogh. Portrait written in words" (2010)
Condolences
"He was an honest man and a great artist, for him there were only two true values: love for one’s neighbor and art. Painting meant more to him than anything else, and he will always live in it.”
Paul Gachet, Van Gogh's last attending physician and friend
For the Impressionists, one of the main objects of display was man. His image was interpreted in such a way that he asserted himself in the struggle with his environment and himself painfully, heavily, straining his internal forces. This side of Post-Impressionist art is best seen in the work of Vincent Van Gogh.
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. Vincent Van Gogh was born in 1853 in Holland. He was named after his deceased brother, who was born a year before him on the same day. Therefore, it always seemed to him that he was replacing someone else. Timidity, shyness, and an overly sensitive nature alienated him from his classmates, and his only friend was his older brother Theo, with whom they vowed not to separate as children. Vincent was 27 when he finally realized that he wanted to become an artist. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that I started drawing again. I often thought about it, but I thought that drawing was beyond my capabilities.” This is how Vincent wrote to Theo.
Van Gogh, a Dutchman by nationality, came to France as an established artist who depicted the people and nature of his homeland. Van Gogh was practically self-taught, although he used the advice of A. Mauve. But to an even greater extent than the recommendations of the modern Dutch painter, acquaintance with the works and reproductions of Rembrandt, Delacour, Daumier and Millet played a role in the formation of Van Gogh. The painting itself, which he turned to after trying different professions(a salesman in a salon, a teacher, a preacher), he understood it as something that brought to the people no longer the word of a sermon, but an artistic image.
One of famous paintings Van Gogh - “The Potato Eaters” (1885). In a dark, gloomy room, five people are sitting at a table: two men, two women and a girl visible from the back. A kerosene lamp hanging from above illuminates thin, tired faces and large, tired hands. The peasants' meager meal was a plate of boiled potatoes and liquid coffee. The images of people combine monumental grandeur and compassion, living in wide open eyes, intensely raised triangles of eyebrows, wrinkles that are clearly visible even on young faces.
Arrival in Paris in 1886 introduced significant adjustments to Van Gogh’s work, without changing its basic essence. The artist is still full of sympathy and love for little man, but this person is already different - a resident of the French capital, an artist himself.
The change in Van Gogh's style was to a certain extent dictated by a change in his ideological position. In the very general view his view of the world at that time can be considered more joyful and bright than in Holland. This side of his work is especially well revealed in landscapes and still lifes. Ordinary Montmarte restaurants with their restaurants and cafes, thin leafless trees - all of this acquires an impressionistic trepidation from Van Gogh, painted in light soft tones. Some works can be compared in terms of sophistication and precision of colorful combinations with the paintings of Van Gogh's compatriot, Vermeer of Delft.
A new period of Van Gogh’s work begins after moving to Arles in 1888. At first, the artist saw in the nature of Provence, in the people inhabiting this region, the embodiment of his dream of a “promised land,” associated in his imagination with Japan. It was in Provence that Van Gogh hoped to create the “Southern Atelier,” a workshop where brother artists would work together, opposing the power of money and the dictatorship of art dealers.
The feeling of joy that overwhelmed Van Gogh forced him to work tirelessly. The artist depicted blossoming fruit trees, bridges across canals, and a sea covered with ripening plains. He wrote, sometimes remembering his favorite Japanese prints. However, soon all associations with what he had seen became a thing of the past; without looking for the beaten path, he discovered Provence for himself and people. And it is quite natural that the theme of labor, which was organic for Van Gogh, entered this world of nature. Against the backdrop of a plowed field and a huge solar disk, a peasant appeared scattering seeds (“The Sower”, 1888), while women gathering the harvest were lost in the autumn vineyard (“Red Vineyard”, 1888). The artist’s close attention began to be attracted to images of humble workers (“Doctor Ray”, 1889; “Lullaby”, 1889; Portrait of the Postman Roulin, 1889). If we look at the works created in Arles, we can see how the artist gradually leaves the feeling of the harmony of existence.
Perhaps nothing characterizes the artist’s state of mind at this time as clearly as his self-portraits. He sees himself every time new, changed. In the self-portrait dedicated to Gauguin, “The Worshiper of Buddha” (1888), in the almost ascetic appearance of the artist with accentuated slanted eyes and protruding cheekbones, with a shaved head and a chin covered with prickly stubble, there are features of a pariah, a renegade, rejected by society, which Van Gogh and Van Gogh saw in themselves. Gauguin. In “Self-Portrait with a Cut Off Ear,” Van Gogh seems to gain new strength. Physical suffering seemed to remove spiritual suffering. And now the artist, having bandaged his ear, calmly puffs on his pipe. A hat with a piece of fur in front is firmly pulled down over the forehead.
The Dutch tradition is felt by Van Gogh in his commitment to the interior, but he interprets it in a completely new way. Painted one after the other in 1888, “The Night Cafe” and “Room in Arles” are equally humanized by the artist. It does not obey the logic of arranged objects and flowing artificial or natural light. He forces them to serve himself, to express his inner state. The space that actively draws in, as if sucking the viewer into the composition, the unreality of the flickering light, the distant, small figures isolated from each other - in all this there is Van Gogh’s “trappedness”, his tragedy, the utmost tension of strength.
A stay in a hospital for the mentally ill in Saint-Rémy in the south of France and two months in Auvers near Paris - this is how the last year of Van Gogh’s life passed, cut short by a tragic shot. He is still at work all the time: flowers, figures of guards appear on the canvases, speaking of an undying love for life and at the same time of a growing internal tragedy.
Sometimes everyday life and enlightenment burst into this wavering world, but in the same Auvers such tragic compositions as “Portrait of Doctor Gachet” or “Church in Auvers” are born, in which everything speaks of the artist’s near end.
The “Portrait of Doctor Gachet” depicts homeopathic physician Paul Ferdinand Gachet, a specialist in mental illness and author of a study on melancholia. On behalf of the artist's brother, Theo, he treated Van Gogh during his life in Antwerp. Gradually, a relationship was established between them not as a patient and a doctor, but as friends who deeply respect each other.
One of the characteristic documents of the era, rich in all kinds of diaries, memoirs, letters, are Van Gogh's letters, primarily to his brother Theo. The greatness of the handwritten legacy left by Van Gogh is given by the humanity and compassion of his soul, which spilled out onto the pages of paper with the same honesty as in his canvases.
Bibliography
Kalitina N.N. French fine art of the late XVIII-XX centuries: Textbook. - L.: Leningrad University Publishing House, 1990. - 280 p.
Andreev L.G. Impressionism. - M., Publishing house Moscow. Univ., 1980, 250 p.
Vincent Van Gogh is one of the greatest artists world, whose creativity has a great influence on the development modern trends in painting and gives impetus to the development of impressionism. Today, countries such as the Netherlands, France and England are proud to have such great creator once lived and worked on their territory, and the value of his paintings, located in different parts of the world, cannot be calculated in any monetary unit, just like the cost of irobot. However, no matter how sad it may sound, during Vincent Van Gogh’s life his paintings were of no value to the society of that time, and this genius died in a state of madness and complete loneliness.
Van Gogh's work was influenced by many factors, so, undoubtedly, he was influenced by his childhood, character, and the time in which he was born. However, despite the fact that for its short life the creator survived many illnesses, depressions, poverty, loneliness, he was never afraid and never stopped experimenting. And he experimented with everything that was possible. So for my short time creative path Van Gogh experimented with light and shadow, with colors, with form, with models and with various artistic techniques. His work also changed as his worldview changed.
Thus, being born at the end of the nineteenth century into a low-income Dutch working-class family, Van Gogh was accustomed to observing and empathizing with the lives of ordinary people. At that time, the poor barely had enough money for food, and therefore it was not possible to imagine that in a couple of centuries people would be able, sitting at home in an armchair, to purchase equipment for themselves by asking in the search bar of the browser: “irobot roomba 790 buy.”
Hard times and the impressionability of the young Van Gogh served as the main impetus for the development of his work, in which the main characters were working-class people. In the paintings of that time, the creator conveyed the severity of the situation of poor people. Performing canvases in dark colors, the artist clearly and accurately conveyed the oppressive and oppressive atmosphere of that time.
However, having moved to sunny France, the artist begins to paint life-filled landscapes and still lifes. The paintings of that period of Van Gogh's work seemed to flow with light, thanks to the use of blue, golden yellow, red colors, as well as writing them using the technique of small strokes.
The end of a short, but so intense artistic activity the life of Vincent van Gogh, is considered the dawn of his creativity. It is in the last years of his life that the creator determines his style and technique of painting.
