Art Appreciation

VAN  GOGH

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), was one of the great Dutch masters of painting. Although his painting career lasted only ten years, he made about 800 oil paintings and 700 drawings. Everything in Van Gogh's pictures seems to be moving and alive. His paintings and drawings include some of the world's best known, most popular and most expensive pieces.

Van Gogh was born at Groot Zundert, in the Netherlands. His father was a Protestant minister1 and when Van Gogh was a young man he felt he too should enter the religious life. After studying theology2 he did missionary work among the miners3at Wasmes, Belgium

But his free time he spent in drawing and he finally went to Brussels, Belgium, to study art. After this he spent several years on his father's farm painting simple peasant4scenes, the moorlands5, and still life. "The Potato Eaters" is the chief work of this period. It is a study of a group of laborers seated at the table beneath a lamp. Under the lamplight their faces show all the misery6 and dullness of their lives. Van Gogh explained: "I have tried to make it clear how these people, eating their potatoes under the lamplight, have dug the earth with those very hands they put in the dish … and honestly earned their food."

Later in Paris he became interested in the Impressionist school of painting. He stopped painting with dull7 browns and umbers and began to use the clear, bright colors that are found in his later work. After two years in Paris he settled in Arles in Provence. There he painted the fruit trees all aglow with sunlight; the great sunflowers; the plain room in which he lived, and a portrait of himself with his strange, restless blue eyes.

He always looked for color and more color. He even tried to show shape, weight, and the feeling of a landscape through his use of color. During the last three years of his life he suffered from terrible fits of depression8, and in 1890 he committed suicide9. In between his depressions, however, he went on painting, and his very last picture was one full of sunlight. During his lifetime his brother Theo was the only one who believed in his art and helped him.  Vincent’s mental instability is legend.  He attempted to take Paul Gauguin’s life and later committed himself to several asylums in hopes of an unrealized cure.

(Sources: http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/overview.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh; http://www.mezzo-mondo.com/arts/mm/vangogh/van_gogh.html)