Vincent Van Gogh
(March 30, 1853 - July 29, 1890)
Ds. Theodorus van Gogh, since 1849 pastor in Groot-Zundert, marries Anna Cornelia Carbentus. March 30, 1852 their 1st son Vincent Van Gogh is born (but is stillborn). Anna is severely depressed but one year later gives birth to a 2nd son March 30, 1853 Vincent Willem van Gogh in the small village of Groot-Zundert, Holland. With Anna still suffering from depression, Vincent and his mother never developed a close bond. Vincent never lived up to the perfect angel image of his older brother whom he was named after. Anna did give birth to 5 more children (3 sisters – Anna, Elisabeth & Willemina & 2 brothers – Theodorus & Cornelis) all of whom felt a connection with their mother. 
(The Van Gogh's - Father Theo & Mother Anna, Children: Vincent, Anna, Theo, Elisabeth, Willemina & Cornelis)
Vincent’s family began suffering from financial difficulties and at 16 years old, in 1869, Vincent started an apprenticeship with his “Uncle Cent” at the art dealership Goupil & Cie at The Hague. Vincent was exposed to all forms, styles and qualities of art and learned to distinguish good art from bad art. His work required travel and exposed him to art in Holland, Belgium, Paris and London. 1873 Vincent’s brother Theo begins an apprenticeship with the art dealer and Vincent begins working for the Goupil branch in London. While in London, Vincent moves into the house of Ursula Loyer and her daughter Eugenie in Brixton. Vincent falls in love with Eugenine, and requests her hand in marriage. She declines but Vincent continues to pursue her. The rejection of another woman causes turmoil for Vincent and he begins to become hostile with the people he comes into contact with. After behaving abrasively toward his colleagues and clients and showing little interest in his work, in March 1876, Vincent is asked to resign from Groupil’s. 
Vincent is a very learned man, he knows 4 languages and is very well read and decides to follow his fathers’ footsteps and become a clergyman. Vincent moves to England to study and prepare for entrance to the Evangelical College in Laeken, near Brussels. In December 1878 Vincent fails the entrance exams, he refused to learn the required Latin Language as he said it was a dead language and the poor did not speak it. Still with a desire to preach he asks the evangelical committee to be considered for service in the Borniage, a coal-mining district in Belgum. He was accepted for a 6 month trial period. The conditions in the Borniage were extremely bad, Vincent read the bible to the miners and he lived in complete poverty. In his zeal he gave away his own worldly goods to the poor and was dismissed for his literal interpretation of Christ's teaching. In August 1879. Vincent’s service contract was not renewed.
After a long period of soul searching in the Borinage, Vincent had been etching, and sketching in his free time. Van Gogh resolved to become an artist. His parents could not go along with this latest change of course, and Vincent turned to his brother Theo for financial support. In October 1880 Vincent enrolls in a beginners art course at an academy in Brussels; he undertakes some formal studies of anatomy and perspective.
(widowed cousin Kee)
Then, Vincent goes back to live with his parents in Etten where he falls in love with his widowed cousin, Kee Vos-Stricker. She rejects him and goes home to her family, but Vincent follows. The rejection from Kee, as well as with his own father, Vincents mental state begins to deteriorate. 
(Sketch of Sien)
Vincent meets a woman of the streets, Clasina Maria Hoornik, known as Sien. She has a 5 yr old daughter, infected with gonorrhea and is pregnant with another mans child. Vincent and Sien move in together, and Vincent finally finds someone to love. Sien and her child model for Vincent as he experiments with oils. Vincent ends up in the hospital with gonorrhea. Theo and Vincent’s family disapprove of the relationship with Sien and Theo threatens to cut off his financial support unless their relationship ends. Sien ends up back working the streets, and Vincent finally ends the relationship. 
After the death of Vincent’s Father and In keeping with his humanitarian outlook Vincent painted peasants and workers, the most famous picture from this period being The Potato Eaters (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; 1885). Of this he wrote to Theo: `I have tried to emphasize that those people, eating their potatoes in the lamp-light have dug the earth with those very hands they put in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labor, and how they have honestly earned their food'.
February 1886 he moved to Paris and stayed with his brother Theo who was working at an art gallery there. It was in Paris he met some of the Impressionists: Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Georges Surat, Claude Monet and painter Paul Gauguin. His painting underwent a violent metamorphosis under the combined influence of Impressionism and Japanese woodcuts, Van Gogh became obsessed by the symbolic and expressive values of colors and began to use them for this purpose rather than, as did the Impressionists, for the reproduction of visual appearances, atmosphere, and light. `Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes,' he wrote, `I use color more arbitrarily so as to express myself more forcibly'.
In February 1888 van Gogh settled at Arles, where he lived in a “yellow house” and painted more than 200 canvases in 15 months. During this time he sold no pictures, was living in poverty, and suffered recurrent nervous crisis with hallucinations and depression. He became enthusiastic for the idea of founding an artists' co-operative at Arles and towards the end of the year his friend Paul Gauguin joined him as a roommate.
(Photo of artist Paul Gauguin)
Vincent’s brother Theo offered Gauguin a small sum of money to keep watch over Vincent and his mental state. Vincent and Gauguin had a turbulent relationship. After a quarrel on December 23, 1888 Vincent threatens Gauguin’s life with a razor blade, Van Gogh turns the blade on himself and cuts off part of his left ear lobe. The lobe is then wrapped in newspaper and Vincent presents it to a prostitute at the local brothel he frequented. He is dripping in blood and ends up hospitalized until early January. This event is commemorated in his Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (Courtauld Institute, London).
Vincent’s mental state fluctuates wildly at times, and he suffers from hallucinations and delusions. He continued to work from the Yellow House until he made the decision to have himself committed into an asylum at St Rémy, near Arles. During the year he spent there he produced many of his most famous paintings such as Starry Night (Museum of Modern Art, NY). He had a vast collection of drawings, sketches, and paintings (over 150).
(Johanna Van Gogh and Vincent Willhem)
In 1889 Theo married Johanna and the two had a son which was named Vincent Willhem. In May 1890 van Gogh moved to Auvers-sur-Oise to be near Theo, lodging with Dr Paul Gachet. There followed another tremendous burst of strenuous activity, but his spiritual anguish and depression became more acute. Theo and his wife began experiencing financial difficulties and their new son had ill health, Vincent fears he is responsible for his brothers troubles. On July 27, 1890, Vincent went out to the cornfields with a pistol and attempted to end his life. However,
Vincent did not die he was merely wounded from a self-inflicted bullet wound to the chest. Later that evening Vincent stumbled back to the house and Dr. Gachet cleaned his wounds and let him smoke his pipe. The Dr. called Theo, and the two brothers spent the evening of July 28 talking together in the bedroom. Sitting up in bed smoking his pipe with his brother at his side. Near the end, Theo climbed into bed with Vincent and cradles his head in his arms. Vincent says, “I wish I could pass away like this.” And he does just that, Vincent died in his brother Theo’s arms in the morning of July 29 1890. 
He was buried at the cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise, his coffin was covered with dozens of sunflowers, which he loved so much. Theo, unable to come to terms with his brother's death died 6 months later and was buried next to him.
Theo’s widow Johanna, returned to Holland and dedicated herself to getting her brother in law the recognition he deserved. She published the correspondence between Vincent and Theo (over 800 letters) and collected the artwork that had been scattered around Europe. Vincent produced some 900 paintings and 1100 drawings during a period of 10 years. Vincent van Gogh's mother threw away quite a number of his paintings during Vincent's life and even after his death. But she would live long enough to see her son become a world famous painter.
Feeling rejection by his mother, god and having several disastrous attempts to find happiness with a woman over the years. His work, all of it produced during a period of only 10 years, hauntingly conveys through its striking color, coarse brushwork, and contoured forms the anguish of a man suffering from mental illness. Vincent van Gogh is generally considered the greatest Dutch painter after Rembrandt. Though he had little success during his lifetime. It would not take long before his fame grew higher and higher. Large exhibitions were organized soon: Paris 1901, Amsterdam 1905, Cologne 1912, New York 1913 and Berlin 1914.
Vincent’s Technique:
o Vincent would squirt paint directly onto the canvas. So his paintings were very textured.
o Every brush stroke made was not merely a deposit of color, but an incisive graphic gesture.
o To Van Gogh it was the color, not the form, that determined the expressive content of his pictures. In the letters he wrote to his brother there are many eloquent descriptions of his choice of hues and the emotional meanings he attached to them.
o He used so much paint he would often go without eating so he could pay for more paint.
o It is believed that Vincent suffered from lead poisoning from nibbling at paint chips, one of the symptoms is swelling of the retinas causing one to see light in circles like halos aro
und objects (Starry Night)
o he also was noted that he would swallow paint and drink kerosene
o Some consider his paintings as the beginning of Expressionism – painting for an emotional effect.
ThePainting:
‘Portrait de l'artiste’ Self-Portrait (1889)
Type: Painting, Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: H. 65; W. 54.5 cm
Date: September 1889
In this head-and-shoulders view, the artist is wearing a suit and not the pea jacket he usually worked in. Attention is focused on the face. His features are hard and emaciated, his green-rimmed eyes seem intransigent and anxious. The dominant color, a mix of absinth green and pale turquoise finds a counterpoint in its complementary color, the fiery orange of the beard and hair. The model's immobility contrasts with the undulating hair and beard, echoed and amplified in the hallucinatory arabesques of the background. This portrait expresses a man haunted with inner anguish. A mass of writhing, curling brushstrokes, remind us of the sea in color and movement. Restless and tormented lines carry into the artist’s jacket and shirt but there are straighter, more controlled strokes in the head, as if he were hanging onto some shred of sanity in a world gone completely mad.
Vincent van Gogh often used himself as a model; he produced over forty-three self-portraits, paintings or drawings in ten years. Van Gogh used portrait painting as a method of introspection, a method to make money and a method of developing his skills as an artist. Van Gogh did not have money to pay models to pose for portraits nor did he have many people commissioning him to do portraits, so Van Gogh painted his own portrait.
Van Gogh did not see portrait painting as merely a means to an end; he also believed that portrait painting would help him develop his skills as an artist. Like the old masters, he observed himself critically in a mirror. Painting oneself is not an innocuous act: it is a questioning which often leads to an identity crisis. In a letter to his brother Theo dated September 16, 1888, Van Gogh writes about a self-portrait he painted and dedicated to his friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin, “I purposely bought a mirror good enough to enable me to work from my image in default of a model, because if I can manage to paint the coloring of my own head, which is not to be done without some difficulty, I shall likewise be able to paint the heads of other good souls, men and women.”
He wrote to his sister: "I am looking for a deeper likeness than that obtained by a photographer." And later to his brother: "People say, and I am willing to believe it, that it is hard to know yourself. But it is not easy to paint yourself, either. The portraits painted by Rembrandt are more than a view of nature, they are more like a revelation".
This self portrait is one of over 150 paintings Van Gogh painted in the year (May 1889 - May 1890) he was staying at Saint-Paul de Mausole, the asylum near Saint Rémy, Southern France:
Van Goghs Room at the asylum
Current Location:
Musée d’Orsay
Paris, France, Europe
History of Ownership
Gifted by Vincent to Doctor Paul Gachet, Auvers-sur-Oise
jusqu'en 1949, dans la collection Paul et Marguerite Gachet, les enfants du docteur Gachet
1949, accepté par l'Etat à titre de don de Paul et Marguerite Gachet pour le Museum of Jeu de Paume, Paris, France(comité du 28/04/1949, arrêté du 05/05/1949)
1949, attribué au Museum du Louvre, Paris
de 1949 à 1986, Musée du Louvre, galerie du Jeu de Paume, Paris
1986, affecté au Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Portrait of Doctor Gachet
Date: June 1890
Type: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 67.0 x 56.0 cm
Location: Unknown, Private Collection
Van Gogh's sister-in-law originally sold the work in 1897 for 300 francs (around $58). After several changes of hand, it found its way to Germany, acquired in 1911 by Frankfurt's Städtische Galerie. The painting hung there until the spring of 1933–and the rise of Hitler–when the prescient museum director removed Gachet and several German Expressionist paintings and locked them in a hidden room. Not long after, the Nazis condemned such modern works as "degenerate art" and set about confiscating them; they finally tracked down Gachet in 1937. Within a year, party higher-up Hermann Goering–whom writer Saltzman calls "one of history's most rapacious art thieves"–sold the work for some $53,000 to buy politically acceptable hunting tapestries. The painting soon changed hands again, ending up with the Kramarsky family in Amsterdam, who brought it along when they fled the Nazis and came to New York. They often lent the work to the Metropolitan Museum, and in 1990 put it up for auction.
On May 15, 1990 his Portrait of Doctor Gachet (June 1890) debuted in front of a packed salesroom at Christie's auction house in New York. The bidding started at a respectable $20 million and rose swiftly in increments of $1
million, as if would-be buyers were proffering Monopoly money. 48 million, 49 million, 50 million . . . . The room erupted in shouts and applause; bidding was furious. The gavel finally came down, making art-world history. The painting was sold for $82.5 million in a matter of 3 minutes to Ryoei Saito, Japan's second-largest paper manufacturer. This sale established a new price record.
Japanese industrialist Ryoei Saito, spent a few hours with his purchase, then locked it in a climate-controlled vault. And there it stayed, untouched and unseen, for seven years–a symbol of the once highflying art market and the commoditization of such works.
While the painting rested in its hiding place, Saito struggled, financially and otherwise. In 1993, he was charged with trying to bribe officials to allow the development of a golf course, which, ironically, was to be named Vincent. Wheel-chair bound and broke, Saito pleaded guilty and received a three-year suspended sentence. During this time, he scandalized the art world by stating that he wanted van Gogh's masterpiece cremated and buried with him upon his death–though he later said he was joking.
No one was laughing, however, after his death in 1996. It wasn't clear who owned Gachet–Saito's heirs, his company, or his creditors–or even where it was. Museum curators and auction houses tried to locate it. But while representatives of Saito's company assured the world that it was still around, a veil of secrecy shrouded all future transactions. Gachet simply seemed to vanish into the murky waters of the international art market.
he sad, swirling Gachet, who wears what van Gogh called "the heartbroken expression of our time," has almost certainly left Japan for a private collection. The person who owns it is just not interested in advertising the fact, most likely because of all the notoriety. But where is it? Some say New York, some France, some Switzerland.
The Red Vineyard
Date: November 4, 1888
Type: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 75 cm × 93 cm (29.5 in × 36.6 in)
Location: Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
Van Gogh painted this work completely from memory after an evening stroll past a vineyard. The dominant colors of red and yellow exemplify how he disregarded the established laws of contrasting color theory with magnificent results.
The only painting Vincent van Gogh is known to have sold during his lifetime. The Red Vineyard was exhibited for the first time at the annual exhibition of Les XX in 1890 in Brussels, and sold for 400 Francs (equal to about $$1,000-1,050 today) to impressionist painter Anna Boch. It was acquired by the famous Russian collector Sergei Shchukin, then nationalized with the rest of his works and moved to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.
The Starry Night
Date: 1889
Type: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 73.7 cm × 92.1 cm (29 in × 36¼ in)
Location: Museum of Modern Art, New York City (acquired in 1941)
The painting depicts the view outside his sanatorium room window at night, although it was painted from memory during the day. The center part shows the village of St Remy under a swirling sky, in a view from the asylum towards north.
Starry Night is one of the most well known images in modern culture as well as being one of the most replicated and sought after prints. There are actually several main aspects that intrigue those who view this image, and each factor affects each individual differently. The aspects will be described below:
1. There is the night sky filled with swirling clouds, stars ablaze with their own luminescence, and a bright crescent moon. Although the features are exaggerated, this is a scene we can all relate to, and also one that most individuals feel comfortable and at ease with. This sky keeps the viewer's eyes moving about the painting, following the curves and creating a visual dot to dot with the stars. This movement keeps the onlooker involved in the painting while the other factors take hold.
2. Below the rolling hills of the horizon lies a small town. There is a peaceful essence flowing from the structures. Perhaps the cool dark colors and the fiery windows spark memories of our own warm childhood years filled with imagination of what exists in the night and dark starry skies. The center point of the town is the tall steeple of the church, reigning largely over the smaller buildings. This steeple casts down a sense of stability onto the town, and also creates a sense of size and seclusion.
3. To the left of the painting there is a massive dark structure that develops an even greater sense of size and isolation. This structure is magnificent when compared to the scale of other objects in the painting. The curving lines mirror that of the sky and create the sensation of depth in the painting. This structure also allows the viewer to interpret what it is. From a mountain to a leafy bush, the analysis of this formation is wide and full of variety.
