Post about vincent van gogh. Biography of Vincent van Gogh

According to sociologists, three artists are best known in the world: Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. Leonardo is "responsible" for the art of the old masters, Van Gogh - for the impressionists and post-impressionists of the 19th century, and Picasso - for the abstractionists and modernists of the 20th century. Moreover, if Leonardo appears in the eyes of the public not so much as a painter, but as a universal genius, and as Picasso as a fashionable "secular lion" and a public figure - a fighter for peace, then Van Gogh personifies exactly the artist. He is considered a crazy lone genius and a martyr who did not think about fame and money. However, this image, to which everyone is accustomed, is nothing more than a myth that was used to "spin" Van Gogh and sell his paintings at a profit.

The legend about the artist is based on a true fact - he took up painting when he was already a mature person, and in just ten years he "ran" the path from a novice artist to a master who turned the idea of ​​fine art upside down. All this, even during Van Gogh's lifetime, was perceived as a "miracle" with no real explanation. The artist's biography was not full of adventures, such as the fate of Paul Gauguin, who managed to be both a broker on the stock exchange and a sailor, and died of leprosy, exotic for a European man in the street, on the no less exotic Khiva Oa, one of the Marquesas Islands. Van Gogh was a "boring hard worker", and, apart from the strange mental seizures that appeared in him shortly before his death, and this very death as a result of a suicide attempt, the myth-makers had nothing to get hold of. But these few "trump cards" were played by true masters of their craft.

The main creator of the Legend of the Master was the German gallery owner and art critic Julius Meyer-Graefe. He quickly realized the scale of the great Dutchman's genius, and most importantly, the market potential of his paintings. In 1893, a twenty-six-year-old gallery owner bought the painting "Couple in Love" and thought about "advertising" a promising product. Possessing a lively pen, Meyer-Graefe decided to write a biography of the artist attractive to collectors and art lovers. He did not find him alive and therefore was "free" from personal impressions that burdened the master's contemporaries. In addition, Van Gogh was born and raised in Holland, and as a painter he finally took shape in France. In Germany, where Meyer-Graefe began to introduce the legend, no one knew anything about the artist, and the art gallery owner started with a blank slate. He did not immediately "groped" for the image of that crazy lone genius, which everyone now knows. At first, Meyer's Van Gogh was “a healthy man of the people”, and his work was “the harmony between art and life” and the herald of the new Grand style, which Meyer-Graefe considered modern. But modernity fizzled out in a matter of years, and Van Gogh, under the pen of an enterprising German, "retrained" into a rebel avant-garde who led the fight against mossy academic realists. Van Gogh the anarchist was popular in artistic bohemian circles, but frightened off the layman. And only the "third edition" of the legend satisfied everyone. In a 1921 "scientific monograph" called "Vincent", with a subtitle unusual for this kind of literature, "The Novel of the Seeker of God," Meyer-Graef introduced to the public the holy madman, whose hand was led by God. The highlight of this "biography" was the story of a severed ear and creative madness that lifted a small, lonely person like Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin to the heights of genius.

Vincent Van Gogh. 1873 year

The real Vincent Van Gogh had little in common with Meyer-Graefe's Vincent. To begin with, he graduated from a prestigious private gymnasium, spoke and wrote fluently in three languages, read a lot, which earned him the nickname Spinoza in Parisian artistic circles. Behind Van Gogh was a large family who never left him without support, although they were not thrilled with his experiments. His grandfather was a famous bookbinder of ancient manuscripts who worked for several European courts, three of his uncles were successful art traders, and one was an admiral and harbor master in Antwerp, in his house he lived when he studied in this city. The real Van Gogh was a rather sober and pragmatic person.

For example, one of the central “God-seeking” episodes of the legend with “going to the people” was the fact that in 1879 Van Gogh was a preacher in the Belgian mining region Borinage. So many things have not been invented by Meyer-Graefe and his followers! Here and "break with the environment" and "the desire to suffer along with the poor and the poor." The explanation is simple. Vincent decided to follow in his father's footsteps and become a priest. In order to be ordained, it was necessary to study at the seminary for five years. Or - take a crash course in three years at an evangelical school using a simplified curriculum, and even free of charge. All this was preceded by the obligatory six-month "experience" of missionary work in the provinces. Here Van Gogh went to the miners. Of course, he was a humanist, he tried to help these people, but he did not think to get closer to them, always remaining a representative of the middle class. After serving his due time in Borinage, Van Gogh decided to enter an evangelical school, and then it turned out that the rules had changed and the Dutch like him, unlike the Flemings, had to pay tuition fees. After that, the offended "missionary" left religion and decided to become an artist.

And this choice is also not accidental. Van Gogh was a professional art dealer - an art dealer in the largest firm "Gupil". The partner in it was his uncle Vincent, after whom the young Dutchman was named. He patronized him. "Gupil" played a leading role in Europe in the trade of old masters and solid modern academic painting, but was not afraid to sell "moderate innovators" like the Barbizonians. For 7 years, Van Gogh made a career in a difficult, family-based antique business. From the Amsterdam branch, he moved first to The Hague, then to London and, finally, to the firm's headquarters in Paris. Over the years, the nephew of the co-owner of Goupil has gone through a serious school, studied the main European museums and many closed private collections, became a real expert in painting not only by Rembrandt and the small Dutch, but also by the French - from Ingres to Delacroix. "Surrounded by pictures," he wrote, "I was inflamed with them with a fierce love, reaching to the point of frenzy." His idol was the French artist Jean Francois Millet, who became famous at that time for his "peasant" canvases, which Goupil sold at prices of tens of thousands of francs.

Brother of the artist Theodore Van Gogh

Van Gogh was also going to become such a successful "everyday life writer of the lower classes" like Millet, using his knowledge of the life of miners and peasants, gleaned in Borinage. Contrary to legend, the art dealer Van Gogh was not a genius amateur like such "Sunday artists" as the customs officer Russo or the conductor Pirosmani. Having under his belt a fundamental acquaintance with the history and theory of art, as well as with the practice of trade in it, the stubborn Dutchman at the age of twenty-seven began a systematic study of the craft of painting. He began by drawing according to the latest special textbooks, which were sent to him from all over Europe by his uncle-artillery dealers. The hand of Van Gogh was put on by his relative, the artist from The Hague Anton Mauve, to whom the grateful student later dedicated one of his paintings. Van Gogh even entered the Brussels Academy of Arts, and then the Antwerp Academy of Arts, where he studied for three months until he went to Paris.

The newly-made artist was persuaded there in 1886 by his younger brother Theodore. This formerly successful art dealer played a key role in the fate of the master. Theo advised Vincent to give up "peasant" painting, explaining that this was already a "plowed field". And, besides, "black paintings" like "The Potato Eaters" at all times sold worse than light and joyful art. Another thing is the "light painting" of the Impressionists, literally created for success: continuous sun and celebration. The audience will surely appreciate it sooner or later.

Theo the seer

So Van Gogh ended up in the capital of the “new art” - Paris and, on the advice of Theo, entered the private studio of Fernand Cormon, which was then the “forge of personnel” for a new generation of experimental artists. There the Dutchman became close to such future pillars of Post-Impressionism as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard and Lucien Pissarro. Van Gogh studied anatomy, painted from plaster casts and literally absorbed all the new ideas that seethed Paris.

Theo introduces him to leading art critics and his artist clients, among whom were not only established Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas, but also the "rising stars" Signac and Gauguin. By the time Vincent arrived in Paris, his brother was the head of the "experimental" branch of "Goupil" in Montmartre. A man with a keen sense of the new and an excellent businessman, Theo was one of the first to see the dawn of a new era in art. He persuaded the conservative leadership of "Gupil" to allow him to take the risk of trading in "light painting". In the gallery, Theo held solo exhibitions of Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet and other impressionists, to whom Paris began to get used a little. One floor above, in his own apartment, he arranged "changing exhibitions" of pictures of daring youth, which "Gupil" was afraid to show officially. It was the prototype of the elite "apartment exhibitions" that came into vogue in the 20th century, and Vincent's works became their highlight.

Back in 1884, the Van Gogh brothers entered into an agreement between themselves. Theo, in exchange for Vincent's paintings, pays him 220 francs a month and provides him with brushes, canvases and paints of the best quality. By the way, thanks to this, the paintings of Van Gogh, in contrast to the works of Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec, who were writing on whatever came to hand, were so well preserved. 220 francs was a quarter of the monthly salary of a doctor or lawyer. The postman Joseph Roulin in Arles, whom legend made something like the patron saint of the "beggar" Van Gogh, received half as much and, unlike a lone artist, fed a family with three children. Van Gogh had enough money even to create a collection of Japanese prints. In addition, Theo supplied his brother with "overalls": blouses and famous hats, necessary books and reproductions. He also paid for Vincent's treatment.

All this was not a simple charity. The brothers drew up an ambitious plan - to create a market for post-impressionist painting, a generation of artists who followed Monet and his friends. And with Vincent Van Gogh as one of the leaders of this generation. To combine the seemingly incompatible - the risky avant-garde art of the bohemian world and commercial success in the spirit of the respectable "Gupil". Here they were almost a century ahead of their time: only Andy Warhol and other American popartists managed to immediately become rich in avant-garde art.

"Unrecognized"

Overall, Vincent Van Gogh's position was unique. He worked as an artist on a contract with an art dealer who was one of the key figures in the market for "light painting". And that art dealer was his brother. Gauguin, a restless vagabond who considers every franc, for example, could only dream of such a situation. On top of that, Vincent was not just a puppet in the hands of businessman Theo. Nor was he an unmercenary person who did not want to sell his paintings to the profane, which he handed out for free to “kindred spirits,” as Meyer-Graefe wrote. Van Gogh, like any normal person, wanted recognition not from distant descendants, but during his lifetime. Confessions, an important sign of which for him was money. And being himself a former art dealer, he knew how to achieve this.

One of the main themes of his letters to Theo is by no means seeking God, but discussions about what needs to be done in order to sell the paintings profitably, and which painting will quickly find its way to the heart of the buyer. To promote the market, he developed an impeccable formula: "Nothing will help us sell our paintings better than their recognition as good decoration for middle-class homes." In order to clearly show how the post-impressionist paintings will "look" in a bourgeois interior, Van Gogh himself in 1887 organized two exhibitions in the Tambourine cafe and the La Forche restaurant in Paris and even sold several works from them. Later, the legend played up this fact as an act of despair for the artist, whom no one wanted to let in normal exhibitions.

Meanwhile, he is a regular participant in exhibitions at the Salon des Independents and the Free Theater - the most fashionable places of Parisian intellectuals of the time. His paintings are exhibited by art dealers Arsene Porter, George Thomas, Pierre Martin and Tanguy. The great Cezanne got the opportunity to show his work at a personal exhibition only at the age of 56, after almost four decades of hard labor. Whereas the work of Vincent, an artist with six years of experience, could be seen at any time at Theo's "apartment exhibition", where all the artistic elite of the capital of the art world - Paris, stayed.

The real Van Gogh is the least like the hermit from the legend. He is his own among the leading artists of the era, the most convincing evidence of which are several portraits of the Dutchman, painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, Roussel, Bernard. Lucien Pissarro portrayed him talking to the most influential art critic of those years, Fenelon. Camille Pissarro was remembered for the fact that he did not hesitate to stop the person he needed on the street and show his paintings right at the wall of a house. It is simply impossible to imagine a real hermit Cézanne in such a situation.

The legend firmly established the idea of ​​unrecognized Van Gogh, that during his lifetime only one of his paintings, "Red Vineyards in Arles", was sold, which now hangs in the Moscow A.S. Museum of Fine Arts. Pushkin. In fact, the sale of this painting from an exhibition in Brussels in 1890 for 400 francs was Van Gogh's breakthrough into the world of serious prices. He sold no worse than his contemporaries Seurat or Gauguin. According to the documents, it is known that fourteen works were bought from the artist. The first to do so was a family friend, the Dutch art dealer Terstig, in February 1882, and Vincent wrote to Theo: "The first sheep walked across the bridge." In reality, there were more sales, there was simply no exact evidence about the rest.

As for the lack of recognition, since 1888, famous critics Gustave Kahn and Felix Fénelon, in their reviews of exhibitions of "independent", as the avant-garde artists were then called, highlight the fresh and vibrant works of Van Gogh. The critic Octave Mirbeau advised Rodin to buy his paintings. They were in the collection of such a discerning connoisseur as Edgar Degas. During his lifetime, Vincent read in the newspaper "Mercure de France" that he was a great artist, the heir to Rembrandt and Hals. This was written in an article entirely devoted to the work of the "amazing Dutchman" by the rising star of the "new criticism" Henri Aurier. He intended to create a biography of Van Gogh, but, unfortunately, died of tuberculosis shortly after the death of the artist himself.

But the "biography" was published by Meyer-Graefe, and in it he especially described the "intuitive, free from the shackles of reason" process of Van Gogh's creativity.

“Vincent painted pictures in a blind, unconscious rapture. His temperament spilled out onto the canvas. The trees were screaming, the clouds were hunting each other. The sun was gaping with a blinding hole leading to chaos.

The easiest way is to refute this idea of ​​Van Gogh in the words of the artist himself: “The great is created not only by impulsive action, but also by the complicity of many things that have been brought to a single whole ... With art, as with everything else: the great is not something. it is accidental, but must be created by stubborn volitional tension. "

The overwhelming majority of Van Gogh's letters are devoted to the "kitchen" of painting: setting goals, materials, technique. The case is almost unprecedented in the history of art. The Dutchman was a real workaholic and argued: "In art, you have to work like a few blacks, and peel off your skin." At the end of his life, he really painted very quickly, a picture could be done from beginning to end in two hours. But at the same time he kept repeating the favorite expression of the American artist Whistler: "I did it at two o'clock, but worked for years to do something worthwhile in those two hours."

Van Gogh did not write on a whim - he worked long and hard on the same motive. In the city of Arles, where he set up his workshop after leaving Paris, he began a series of 30 works related to the common creative task "Contrast". Contrast color, thematic, compositional. For example, the pandanus "Cafe in Arles" and "Room in Arles". In the first picture - darkness and tension, in the second - light and harmony. In the same row there are several variants of his famous "Sunflowers". The entire series was conceived as an example of decorating a “middle class dwelling”. We have before us from beginning to end thoughtful creative and marketing strategies. After seeing his paintings at the exhibition of the "independent", Gauguin wrote: "You are the only thinking artist of all."

The cornerstone of the Van Gogh legend is his madness. Allegedly, only it allowed him to look into such depths that are inaccessible to mere mortals. But since his youth, the artist was not half-mad with flashes of genius. The periods of depression, accompanied by seizures similar to epilepsy, for which he was treated in a psychiatric clinic, did not begin until the last year and a half of his life. Doctors saw in this the effect of absinthe - an alcoholic drink infused with wormwood, whose destructive effect on the nervous system became known only in the 20th century. At the same time, it was precisely during the period of exacerbation of the disease that the artist could not write. So psychotic disorder did not "help" the genius of Van Gogh, but hindered.

The famous story with the ear is very doubtful. It turned out that Van Gogh could not cut it off to himself "at the root", he would simply bleed out, because he was given help only 10 hours after the incident. Only his lobe was cut off, as stated in the medical report. And who did it? There is a version that this happened during a quarrel with Gauguin that took place that day. Experienced in sailor fights, Gauguin slashed Van Gogh in the ear, and he suffered a nervous fit from everything he had experienced. Later, in order to justify his behavior, Gauguin composed a story that Van Gogh, in a fit of madness, chased him with a razor in his hands, and then crippled himself.

Even the painting "A Room in Arles", whose curved space was considered a fixation of Van Gogh's mad state, turned out to be surprisingly realistic. Plans were found for the house in which the artist lived in Arles. The walls and ceiling of his home were indeed sloping. Van Gogh never painted pictures by the moon with candles attached to his hat. But the creators of the legend have always been free to handle the facts. The ominous picture "Wheat Field", with the road going into the distance, covered with a flock of ravens, they, for example, announced the last canvas of the master, predicting his death. But it is well known that after her he wrote a whole series of works, where the ill-fated field is depicted compressed.

The know-how of the main author of the myth about Van Gogh, Julius Meyer-Graef, is not just a lie, but a presentation of fictional events mixed with true facts, and even in the form of an impeccable scientific work. For example, the true fact - Van Gogh loved to work in the open air because he did not tolerate the smell of turpentine used to dilute paints - used the "biographer" as the basis for a fantastic version of the reason for the master's suicide. Allegedly, Van Gogh fell in love with the sun - the source of his inspiration and did not allow himself to cover his head with a hat, standing under its burning rays. His hair was burnt, the sun baked his unprotected skull, he went mad and committed suicide. In Van Gogh's later self-portraits and images of the dead artist made by his friends, it is clear that he did not lose the hair on his head until his death.

"Insight of the holy fool"

Van Gogh shot himself on July 27, 1890, after it seemed that his mental crisis had been overcome. Shortly before that, he was discharged from the clinic with the conclusion: "He recovered." The very fact that the owner of the furnished rooms in Auvers, where Van Gogh lived in the last months of his life, entrusted him with a revolver, which the artist needed to scare away crows while working on sketches, suggests that he behaved absolutely normally. Today, doctors agree that the suicide did not occur during a seizure, but was the result of a combination of external circumstances. Theo got married, he had a child, and Vincent was oppressed by the idea that his brother would only deal with his family, and not their plan to conquer the artistic world.

After the fatal shot, Van Gogh lived for two more days, was surprisingly calm and steadfastly endured suffering. He died in the arms of an inconsolable brother, who was never able to recover from this loss and died six months later. Firm "Goupil" sold for a pittance all the works of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, which Theo Van Gogh had accumulated in a gallery in Montmartre, and closed the experiment with "light painting". The paintings of Vincent Van Gogh were taken to Holland by the widow of Theo Johann Van Gogh-Bonger. Only at the beginning of the 20th century did the great Dutchman receive total glory. According to experts, if it were not for the almost simultaneous early death of both brothers, this would have happened in the mid-1890s and Van Gogh would have been a very rich man. But fate decreed otherwise. People like Meyer-Graefe began to reap the fruits of the labors of the great painter Vincent and the great gallery owner Theo.

Who did Vincent possess?

The novel about the God-seeker "Vincent" of an enterprising German came in handy in an atmosphere of the collapse of ideals after the massacre of the First World War. A martyr of art and a madman, whose mystical creativity appeared under the pen of Meyer-Graefe as something like a new religion, such a Van Gogh captured the imagination of both jaded intellectuals and inexperienced ordinary people. The legend pushed into the background not only the biography of a real artist, but also distorted the idea of ​​his paintings. They saw in them some kind of mash of colors, in which the prophetic "insights" of the holy fool are guessed. Meyer-Graefe turned into the main connoisseur of the "mystical Dutchman" and began not only to trade in paintings by Van Gogh, but also for a lot of money to issue certificates of the authenticity of works that appeared under the name of Van Gogh on the art market.

In the mid-1920s, a certain Otto Wacker came to him, performing with erotic dances in Berlin cabarets under the pseudonym Olinto Lovel. He showed several paintings with the signature "Vincent", written in the spirit of the legend. Meyer-Graefe was delighted and immediately confirmed their authenticity. In total, Wacker, who opened his own gallery in the trendy Potsdamerplatz district, threw over 30 Van Goghs onto the market before rumors spread that they were fake. Since it was a very large sum, the police intervened. At the trial, the dancer-gallerist told the “provenance” bike, which he also “fed” his gullible clients. He allegedly acquired the paintings from a Russian aristocrat, who bought them at the beginning of the century, and during the revolution managed to take them from Russia to Switzerland. Wacker did not name his name, claiming that the Bolsheviks, embittered by the loss of the "national treasure", would destroy the aristocrat's family that remained in Soviet Russia.

In a battle of experts that unfolded in April 1932 in the courtroom of Berlin's Moabit district, Meyer-Graefe and his supporters stood up for the authenticity of Waker's Van Goghs. But the police searched the studio of the dancer's brother and father, who were artists, and found 16 fresh Van Goghs. Technological expertise has shown that they are identical to the paintings sold. In addition, chemists found out that when creating "paintings of a Russian aristocrat" paints were used that appeared only after the death of Van Gogh. Upon learning of this, one of the "experts" who supported Meyer-Graefe and Wacker told the stunned judge: "How do you know that Vincent did not enter the congenial body after his death and does not create to this day?"

Wacker received three years in prison, and Meyer-Graefe's reputation was destroyed. Soon he died, but the legend, in spite of everything, continues to live to this day. It was on this basis that the American writer Irving Stone wrote his bestseller Lust for Life in 1934, and Hollywood director Vincent Minnelli directed a film about Van Gogh in 1956. The role of the artist was played by actor Kirk Douglas. The film earned an Oscar and finally established in the minds of millions of people the image of a half-mad genius who took upon himself all the sins of the world. Then the American period in the canonization of Van Gogh gave way to the Japanese.

In the Land of the Rising Sun, the great Dutchman, thanks to legend, began to be considered something in between a Buddhist monk and a samurai who committed hara-kiri. In 1987, the Yasuda company bought Van Gogh's Sunflowers at an auction in London for $ 40 million. Three years later, the eccentric billionaire Ryoto Saito, who associated himself with the legendary Vincent, paid $ 82 million at an auction in New York for Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet. For a whole decade, it was the most expensive painting in the world. According to Saito's will, she was to be burned with him after his death, but the creditors of the Japanese, who had gone bankrupt by that time, did not allow this to be done.

While the world was shaken by scandals around the name of Van Gogh, art historians, restorers, archivists and even doctors, step by step, investigated the true life and work of the artist. A huge role in this was played by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, created in 1972 on the basis of a collection donated to Holland by the son of Theo Van Gogh, who bore the name of his great uncle. The museum began checking all the paintings of Van Gogh in the world, weeding out several dozen forgeries, and did a great job of preparing a scientific publication of the brothers' correspondence.

But, despite the enormous efforts of both the museum staff and such leading figures of Vangology as the Canadian Bogomila Velsh-Ovcharova or the Dutchman Jan Halsker, the legend of Van Gogh does not die. She lives her own life, giving rise to new films, books and performances about the “holy madman Vincent,” who has nothing to do with the great worker and discoverer of new ways in art, Vincent Van Gogh. This is how a person is arranged: a romantic fairy tale is always more attractive to him than the "prose of life", no matter how great it may be.

Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch.Vincent Willem van Gogh; March 30, 1853, Grotto-Zundert, near Breda, Netherlands - July 29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, France) - Dutch post-impressionist painter.

Biography of Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent van gogh was born in the Dutch city of Groot-Zundert on March 30, 1853. Van Gogh was the first child in the family (not counting his brother who was born dead). Father's name was Theodore Wang Gog, mother - Carnelia. They had a large family: 2 sons and three daughters. In the family of Van Gogh, all men, one way or another, dealt with paintings, or served the church. By 1869, without even finishing school, he began working in a company that sold paintings. In truth, Van Gogh did not manage to sell paintings well, but he had an endless love of painting, and he was also given good languages. In 1873, at the age of 20, he came to London, where he spent 2 years that changed his whole life.

In London, Van Gogh lived happily ever after. 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 do without in London. Everything went to the point that Van Gogh could become a successful merchant, but ... as often happens, love became on the way of his career, yes, it was love. Van Gogh fell unconsciously in love with the daughter of his landlady, but upon learning that she was already engaged, he became very withdrawn into himself, became indifferent to his work. When he returned to Paris he was fired.

In 1877, Van Gogh began to live again in Holland, and increasingly found solace in religion. After moving to Amsterdam, he began to study as a priest, but soon dropped out, 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 took painting lessons from Fernand Cormon, and met 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. Draws clearly, brightly in the style of impressionism and post-impressionism.

Vincent Wang Gogh After spending 3 months in an evangelistic school in Brussels, he became a preacher. He distributed money and clothing to the needy poor, although he himself was not sufficiently wealthy. 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, Wang Gog understood what his vocation was in this life, and decided that he had to become an artist by all means. Although Van Gogh took drawing lessons, he can be confidently considered self-taught, because he himself studied many books, self-instruction manuals, 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 improve, but again Van Gogh began to be haunted by failures, moreover love ones.

His cousin Kea Vos became a widow. He really liked her, but he received a refusal, which he worried for a long time. In addition, because of Kei, he quarreled very seriously 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 venereal diseases. He wanted to save this poor woman, and even thought to marry her. But then his family intervened, and thoughts of marriage were simply dispelled.

Returning to his homeland to his parents, who by that time had already moved to Nyonen, his skills began to improve.

He spent 2 years at home. 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 helped him throughout his life, both morally and financially. France became the second home for Van Gogh. It was in it that he lived the rest of his life. He did not feel like a stranger here. Van Gogh drank a lot and had a very explosive character. He could be called a person with whom it is difficult to deal.

In 1888 he moved to Arles. The locals were not happy to see him in their town, which was located in the south of France. They thought he was an abnormal sleepwalker. Despite this, Vincent found friends here, and felt quite well. Over time, he got the idea to create a settlement for artists here, which he shared with his friend Gauguin. Everything was going well, but there was a falling out between the artists. Van Gogh rushed at Gauguin, who had already become an enemy, with a razor. Gauguin barely carried off his feet, miraculously survived. Out of the anger of 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.

In May 1890, he finally left the asylum for the mentally ill and went to Paris to his brother Theo and his wife, who had just given birth to a boy, who was named Vincent after 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. After half a year, Theo also died. The brothers are buried in Auvers Cemetery nearby.

Van Gogh's work

Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890) is considered a great Dutch painter who had a very strong influence on Impressionism in art. His works, created in a ten-year period, amaze with their color, carelessness and roughness of the brushstroke, images of a mentally ill person tormented by suffering, who committed suicide.

Van Gogh became one of the greatest post-impressionist painters.

He can be considered self-taught, because studied painting by copying pictures of old masters. During his life in the Netherlands, Van G. painted pictures about the nature, labor and life of peasants and workers, which he observed around ("The Potato Eaters").

In 1886 he moved to Paris, entered the studio of F. Cormon, where he met A. Toulouse-Lautrec and E. Bernard. Under the impression of Impressionist painting and Japanese engraving, the artist's manner changed: an intense color scheme and a wide energetic stroke characteristic of the late Wang G. appeared (Boulevard Clichy, Portrait of Tanguy's father).

In 1888 he moved to the south of Frania, 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 various genres, but his talent manifested itself most clearly in the landscape: it was in him that his choleric explosive temperament found a way out. In the mobile, nervous pictorial texture of his paintings, the artist's state of mind was reflected: he suffered from a mental illness, which eventually led him to commit suicide.

Features of creativity

“Much remains unclear and controversial to this day in the pathography of this severe, bio-negative personality. Syphilitic provocation of schizo-epileptic psychosis can be assumed. His feverish creativity is quite comparable with the increased productivity of the brain before the onset of syphilitic brain disease, as was the case with Nietzsche, Maupassant, Schumann. Van Gogh is a good example of 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 wonderful patient, is also expressed in parallel in his artistic work. In essence, 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 striving upward and the inevitability of destruction, fall, destruction are clearly emphasized. These two movements - the upward movement and the downward movement - form the structural basis of epileptic manifestations, just as the two poles form the basis of an epileptoid constitution.

“Van Gogh painted brilliant pictures in between attacks. And the main secret of his genius was the extraordinary purity of consciousness and a special creativity that arose as a result of his illness between attacks. F.M. wrote about this special state of consciousness. Dostoevsky, who at one time suffered from similar attacks of a mysterious mental disorder ”.

Van Gogh's bright colors

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 that was also his strength. You need to have a sufficiently trained eye to distinguish Monet's paintings from paintings, for example, by Sisley. But only once having seen the "Red Vineyards", you will never confuse the works of Van Gogh with anyone and never. Each line and brushstroke is the expression of his personality.

The dominant feature of the impressionistic system is color. In the pictorial system, in the manner of Van Gogh, everything is equal and crumpled into one inimitable bright ensemble: rhythm, color, texture, line, form.

At first glance, there is some stretch in this. Are “red vineyards” pushed around with an unheard-of color intensity, is not the ringing chord of blue cobalt in “Sea at Saint-Marie” active, aren’t the colors of “Landscape at Auvers after the rain” dazzlingly clear and sonorous, next to which, any impressionistic picture 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. The sounding colors are sometimes intertwined in a softly and subtly harmonized melody, then they rise in dissonance that is cutting the ear. Just as in music there is a minor and a major scale, so the colors of the Vangogov palette are divided in two. For Van Gogh, cold and warm is like life and death. At the head of the opposing camps - yellow and blue, both colors - are deeply symbolic. However, this “symbolism” has the same living flesh as Vangogov's ideal of the beautiful.

Van Gogh saw a certain bright beginning in the yellow paint from gentle lemon to intense orange. The color of the sun and ripe bread in his understanding was the color of joy, solar warmth, human kindness, benevolence, love and happiness - everything that in his mind was included in the concept of “life”. The opposite blue in meaning, from blue to almost black-lead, is the color of sadness, infinity, longing, despair, mental anguish, fatal inevitability and, ultimately, death. Van Gogh's later paintings are the arena of the collision of these two colors. They are like a struggle between good and evil, daylight and night gloom, hope and despair. The emotional and psychological possibilities of color are the subject of constant reflections of Van Gogh: “I hope to make a discovery in this area, for example, to express the feelings of two lovers by combining two complementary colors, mixing and contrasting them, with a mysterious vibration of related tones. Or to express a thought that has arisen in the brain with a radiance of a light tone against a dark background ... ”.

Speaking about Van Gogh, Tugendhold noted: “… the notes of his experiences are the graphic rhythms of things and the reciprocal heartbeats”. The concept of peace is unknown to Vangogov art. His element is movement.

In the eyes of Van Gogh, it is the same life, which means the ability to think, feel, empathize. Look at the painting of the "red vineyards". The strokes thrown onto the canvas by a swift hand run, rush, collide, scatter again. Similar to dashes, periods, blots, commas, they are a transcript of Vangogov's vision. From their cascades and whirlpools, simplified and expressive forms are born. They are a line drawn into a drawing. Their relief - now barely outlined, now piled up in massive clots - like plowed earth, forms a delightful, picturesque texture. And from all this a huge image emerges: in the red-hot heat of the sun, like sinners on fire, vines twist, trying to break away from the thick purple earth, to escape from the hands of winegrowers, and now the peaceful vanity of harvesting looks like a fight between man and nature.

So, color still dominates? But aren't these colors at the same time the rhythm, and the line, and the form, and the texture? This is the most important feature of the pictorial language of Van Gogh, in which he speaks to us through his paintings.

It is often believed that Vangogov painting is a kind of uncontrollable emotional element, whipped up by unbridled insight. This delusion is “helped” by the originality of the artistic manner of Van Gogh, indeed, seemingly spontaneous, in fact, it is subtly calculated, thoughtful: “Work and sober calculation, the mind is extremely tense, like an actor performing a difficult role, when you have to think about a thousand things within one half hour…. "

Van Gogh's heritage and innovation

Van Gogh's heredity

• [Mother's sister] “... Seizures of epilepsy, which testifies to a severe nervous inheritance, affecting 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, at 33 years of age."
• "None of Van Gogh's brothers and sisters had epilepsy, while it is absolutely certain that the younger sister suffered from schizophrenia and spent 32 years in a psychiatric hospital."

Human soul ... not cathedrals

Let's turn to Van Gogh:

"I prefer to paint the eyes of people, not cathedrals ... the human soul, even the soul of an unfortunate beggar or a street girl, is, in my opinion, much more interesting."

"Those who write peasant life will stand the test of time better than the makers of cardinal techniques and harems written in Paris." "I will remain myself, and even in raw works I will say strict, rough, but truthful things." "The worker against the bourgeois - this is not as well founded as a hundred years ago the third estate against the other two."

Could a person who, in these and in a thousand similar statements, so explained the meaning of life and art, count on success with “the mighty of this world? ”. The bourgeois environment plucked out Van Gogh.

Van Gogh had only one weapon against rejection - confidence in the correctness of the chosen path and work.

"Art is a struggle ... it's better to do nothing than to express yourself weakly." "We have to work like a few blacks." Even his half-starved existence is turned into a stimulus for creativity: "In the severe tests 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 true sense of the word. His reading of the sublime and beautiful went through understanding the inner essence of objects and phenomena: from insignificant as torn shoes to crushing cosmic hurricanes. The ability to present these seemingly incomparable values ​​on an equally huge artistic scale put Van Gogh not only outside the official aesthetic concept of artists of the academic direction, but also forced him to go beyond the framework 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 force this inner voice to silence. The one who, having heard him, runs to his friends and complains about his misfortune, loses part of his courage, part of the best that is in him.
• And do not take your shortcomings too close to heart, for the one who does not have them still suffers from one thing - the absence of shortcomings; but he who thinks he has attained perfect wisdom will do well if he becomes foolish again.
• A man carries a bright flame in his soul, but no one wants to bask in his presence; passers-by notice only the smoke leaving through the chimney and go their own way.
• Reading books, as well as looking at pictures, one can neither doubt nor hesitate: one must be self-confident and find beautiful what is beautiful.
• What is drawing? How is it possessed? It is the ability to break through the iron wall that stands between what you feel and what you can do. How can you get through such a wall? In my opinion, banging your head against it is useless, you need to slowly and patiently dig in and grind it.
• Blessed is he who has found his own 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 invariably love what is worthy of love, and not waste his feeling on things that are insignificant, unworthy and insignificant.
• It is impossible for melancholy to stagnate in our souls, like water in a swamp.
• When I see the weak being trampled on, I begin to doubt the value of what is called progress and civilization.

Bibliography

• Van Gogh Letters. Per. with goll. - L.-M., 1966.
• Rewald J. Post-Impressionism. Per. from English T. 1. - L.-M, 1962.
• Perrushot 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. Lust for Life (book). The Story of Vincent Van Gogh. Per. from English - M., Pravda, 1988.
• Constantino PorcuVan Gogh. Zijn leven en de kunst. (from the series Kunstklassiekers) The Netherlands, 2004.
• Wolf Stadler Vincent van Gogh. (from the De Grote Meesters series) Amsterdam Boek, 1974.
• Frank Kools Vincent 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 / Per. with fr. P. Melkova. - SPb .: Azbuka, Azbuka-Atticus, 2012 .-- 224 p. - Series "Alphabet-Classics" - 5,000 copies, ISBN 978-5-389-03122-7
• Gordeeva M., Perova D. Vincent Van Gogh / In the book: Great Artists - T.18 - Kiev, JSC "Komsomolskaya Pravda - Ukraine", 2010. - 48 p.

Biography and episodes of life Vincent Van Gogh. When born and died Vincent Van Gogh, memorable places and dates of important events in his life. Artist quotes, Photo and video.

Vincent Van Gogh's life years:

born March 30, 1853, died July 29, 1890

Epitaph

"I stand for myself, and looming over me
Cypress swirling like a flame.
Lemon krone and deep blue
Without them I would not have become myself;
I would humiliate my own speech
When I would throw someone else's burden off my shoulders.
And this rudeness of an angel, with what
He makes his smear akin to my line,
Leads you through his pupil too
Where Van Gogh breathes stars. "
From a poem by Arseny Tarkovsky dedicated to Van Gogh

Biography

Without doubt the greatest artist of the 19th century. with a recognizable manner, the author of world-renowned 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 the artist's vast creative heritage. Throughout his life, Van Gogh painted hundreds of canvases and at the same time remained an unrecognized genius until his death. Only one of his works, "Red Vineyards in Arles", was sold during the artist's lifetime. What an irony: after a hundred years after Van Gogh passed away, his tiniest sketches were already worth a fortune.

Vincent Van Gogh was born in the 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 earliest drawings of a teenager, an extraordinary talent is already visible. After school, sixteen-year-old Van Gogh was given a job in the Hague branch of the Parisian firm "Goupil and Company", which sold paintings. This made it possible for the young man and his brother Theo, with whom Vincent had a not simple, but very close relationship, to get acquainted with real art. And this acquaintance, in turn, cooled the creative zeal of Van Gogh: he strove for something sublime, spiritual and in the end gave up the "base" in his opinion occupation, deciding to become a pastor.

This was followed by years of poverty, life from hand to mouth and the spectacle of many human suffering. Van Gogh was passionately eager to help poor people, at the same time experiencing an ever-increasing thirst for creativity. Seeing in art a lot 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 a whole galaxy of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists lived and worked at that time. With the help of his brother Theo, who is still involved in the painting trade, and with his financial support, Van Gogh leaves for work in the south of France and invites Paul Gauguin there, with whom he became close friends. This time is the heyday of the creative genius of Van Gogh and at the same time the beginning of its end. The artists work together, but the relationship between them becomes more and more tense and eventually explodes with 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 are thrashing 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 returns from a walk with a gunshot wound in his chest, having shot himself from a revolver. The last words of Van Gogh, addressed to his brother Theo, sounded like this: "The sadness will be endless." The hearse for the funeral of the suicide had to be borrowed from a nearby town. Van Gogh was buried in Auvers, and his coffin was strewn with sunflowers - the artist's favorite flowers.

Self-portrait by Van Gogh, 1887

Life line

March 30, 1853 Vincent Van Gogh's date of birth.
1869 g. Beginning of work in the Gupil gallery.
1877 g. Working as an educator and living in England, then working as an assistant pastor, living with the miners in Borinage.
1881 g. Life in The Hague, the first custom-made paintings (cityscapes of The Hague).
1882 g. Meeting with Maria Klozinna Hornik (Sin), the artist's "vicious muse".
1883-1885 Living with parents in North Brabant. Creation of a cycle of works on everyday rural subjects, including the famous painting "The Potato Eaters".
1885 g. Studying at the Antwerp Academy.
1886 g. Acquaintance in Paris with Toulouse-Lautrec, Seurat, Pissarro. The beginning of friendship with Paul Gauguin and creativity, the creation of 200 paintings in 2 years.
1888 g. Life and work in Arles. Three paintings by Van Gogh are exhibited at the Independent Salon. Gauguin's arrival, teamwork and quarrel.
1889 g. Periodic exits from the hospital and attempts to return to work. Final transfer to the shelter in Saint-Remy.
1890 g. Several paintings by Van Gogh have been 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 the Daubigny garden.
July 29, 1890 Date of Van Gogh's death.
July 30, 1890 Funeral of Van Gogh 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 in the London branch of the Gupil company in 1873.
3. The village of Kuem (Netherlands), where the house of Van Gogh is still preserved, where he lived in 1880, studying the life of miners.
4. Rue Lepic in Montmartre, where Van Gogh lived with his brother Theo after moving to Paris in 1886.
5. Place Forum with a café-terrace in Arles (France), which in 1888 Van Gogh depicted on one of his most famous paintings "Cafe Terrace at Night".
6. Asylum at the Monastery of Saint-Paul-de-Musol in the town of Saint-Remy-de-Provence, where Van Gogh was placed in 1889.
7. Auvers-sur-Oise, where Van Gogh spent the last months of his 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 quarreled him with almost the whole family. The depressed artist left his parents' home, 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 nightmarish, dirty and beggarly "family" life, Van Gogh broke up with Xing and forever forgot about the idea of ​​starting a family.

No one knows exactly what caused the famous quarrel between Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, whom he greatly respected as an artist. Gauguin did not like the chaotic life and disorganization of Van Gogh at work; Vincent, in turn, could not make his friend 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 spat, during which Van Gogh first attacked a friend, however, without harming him, and then disfigured himself. Gauguin did not forgive: subsequently he repeatedly 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 the 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, New York. And already in the middle of the XX century. the name of Van Gogh has become one of the most high-profile in the history of world painting. And today the artist's works occupy the first places in the list of the most expensive paintings in the world.

The grave of Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theodore at the Auvers cemetery (France).

Covenants

"I am increasingly coming to the conviction that God cannot be judged by the world he created: this is just an unsuccessful sketch."

"Whenever the question arose - to starve or work less, I chose the former whenever possible."

"Real artists do not paint things as they are ... They paint them because they themselves feel like them."

"The one who lives honestly, who knows the real difficulties and disappointments, but does not bend, is worth more than the one who is lucky and who knows only comparatively easy success."

“Yes, in winter it is sometimes so cold that people say: the frost is too severe, so I don't care if summer returns or not; evil is 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 genuine values: love of one's neighbor and art. Painting meant more to him than anything else, and he will always live in it. "
Paul Gachet, last physician and friend of Van Gogh

The future artist was born in a small Dutch village called Grot-Zundert. This joyous event in the family of the Protestant priest Theodor Van Gogh and his wife Anna Cornelius Van Gogh happened on March 30, 1853. The pastor's family had only six children. Vincent is the oldest. Relatives considered him a difficult and strange child, while neighbors noted in him modesty, compassion and friendliness in relations with people. Subsequently, he repeatedly said that his childhood was cold and gloomy.

At the age of seven, Van Gogh was assigned to a local school. Exactly one year later, he returned home. After receiving his primary education at home, 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 house - in Tilburg. He was noted for his ability to learn languages ​​and draw. It is noteworthy that in 1868 he unexpectedly dropped out of school and went back to the village. This was the end of his education.

Youth

It has long been so customary that the men in the Van Gogh family were engaged in only two types of activities: the trade in art canvases and the parish activity. 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 in the Hague branch of the art company "Gupil & Co". His career growth was not long in coming: for diligence and success in work, he was transferred to the British branch. In London, he from a simple country boy, a lover of painting, turned into a successful businessman, a professional, versed in engravings by English masters. A metropolitan gloss appeared in it. Not far off, and moving to Paris, and work in the central office of the company "Goupil". 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 soon he realized that he did not belong here, dropped out and entered a missionary school. After graduation 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 gave him 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 to study various techniques on his own. In the same period, he experienced several unsuccessful novels.

The most fruitful time in the work of Van Gogh is considered the Parisian period (1886-1888). He met with 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 of modern painting. His palette also imperceptibly brightened. From the light to the real riot of colors characteristic of his paintings of recent years, very little remains.

Other biography options

• After returning to the psychiatric clinic, Vincent, as usual, went to draw from life in the morning. But he did not return with sketches, but with a bullet he himself fired from a pistol. It remains unclear how a serious wound allowed him to walk to the shelter on his own and live for two more days. He died on July 29, 1890.
• In a short biography of Vincent Van Gogh, it is impossible not to mention one name - Theo Van Gogh, the younger brother, who helped and supported his elder brother all his life. He could not forgive himself the last quarrel and the subsequent suicide of the famous artist. He died exactly one year after Van Gogh's death from nervous exhaustion.
• Van Gogh cut off his ear after a violent quarrel with Gauguin. The latter thought that they were going to attack him, and fled in fear.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890) is one of the most brilliant and talented craftsmen. Fate did not spare the artist, measuring out only ten years of active creativity to him. In this short time, Van Gogh was able to become a master, with his own unique style of painting.

Vincent van Gogh: a short biography

Vincent van Gogh: 1889

Vincent van gogh was born in the south of the Netherlands. Vincent received his first education in a village school, and in 1864 he studied at a boarding school.

Without graduating from school, Vincent Van Gogh in 1869 began selling paintings. While working for the firm, he gained a great deal of knowledge in the field of painting. By the way, Van Gogh loved and appreciated painting very much.

Four years later, Vincent was transferred to England, where his trading affairs skyrocketed. But, the road to a successful career was blocked by love.

Vincent Van Gogh lost his head from love for the daughter of the owner of the apartment in which he lived. When Van Gogh found out that she was engaged, he became indifferent to everything.

Van Gogh finds temporary consolation in religion. Arriving in Holland, he went to study to be a pastor, but after a while he dropped out.

In the spring of 1886, Vincent travels to France to visit his brother. In Paris, he meets many artists, among whom were such names as Gauguin and Camille Pissarro... All the hopelessness of life in Holland is forgotten. Van Gogh paints expressively, brightly and quickly. He is respected as an artist.

At about 27 years old, Vincent Van Gogh made the final decision to become an artist. He can be safely called self-taught, but Vincent worked a lot on himself, studied books, copied paintings.

Van Gogh's affairs were rapidly going up, but failures again stood in his way ... and again because of love. Van Gogh's cousin, Kea Vos, did not reciprocate to the artist. On top of that, because of her, the artist had a big fight with his father. A quarrel with his father caused Van Gogh to move to The Hague, where he began a relationship with a woman of easy virtue By Klazina Maria Hoornik... Vincent lived with a woman for one year and even wanted to marry her. The marriage was prevented by a family that intervened in Van Gogh's personal affairs.

The artist returned to his homeland, where he lived for two years, and in 1886 again went to France to visit his brother. His brother who was called Theo, supported Van Gogh morally and helped with money. It is worth saying that France was the second home for Vincent. He lived in this country for the last 4 years of his life.

In 1888, there was a quarrel with Gauguin, as a result of which, on the basis of a mental disorder, Van Gogh cut off part of his ear. Although there are a lot of versions of this story and no one knows for sure what exactly happened between Van Gogh and Gauguin. Perhaps it was alcohol that did its job, because the artist drank a lot. The next day, Van Gogh was admitted to a psychiatric clinic.