THESIS STATEMENT
Although he died at a young age, Vincent van Gogh was able to create art which impacts many people still today through using bright colors and interesting subjects.
PURPOSE STATEMENT
Through researching the life of Vincent van Gogh and analyzing his works and letters, it is evident that van Gogh’s experiences defined him as a post-impressionistic painter, and ultimately one of the most famous today and of his time.
Introduction
Almost everybody knows who Vincent van Gogh is; he is the man who painted The Starry Night. But many people do not know the real Vincent van Gogh. The real van Gogh was a poor and struggling artist who suffered from depression his whole life. Through researching van Gogh’s life, it is evident that he was a tragic artist, but despite his depression, he was able to create many pieces of beautiful art. His many skills allowed to him to make connections with other artists and helped develop his style of art. “Van Gogh attributed symbolic values to various colors and used them to describe or arouse specific emotions” (Grolier 8).
While van Gogh was extremely talented, he only sold one painting during his lifetime: The Red Vineyard at Arles. He never focused on one specific area of art; he drew, sketched, and painted using several medians. Most people aren’t aware of the variety of his work. However, his most famous pieces were his post-impressionist paintings.
Vincent van Gogh is specifically categorized as part of the post-impressionism era. According to Merriam Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, post-impressionism is “a theory or practice of art originating in France in the last quarter of the 19th century that in revolt against Impressionism stresses variously volume, picture structure, or expressionism” (892). This is different from Impressionism, which is defined as “a theory or practice in painting especially among French painters of about 1870 of depicting the natural appearances of objects by means of dabs or strokes of primary unmixed colors in order to stimulate actual reflective light” (572). The difference between these two is that “Post-Impressionists rejected Impressionism’s concern with the spontaneous and naturalistic rendering of light and color. Instead they favored an emphasis on more symbolic content, formal order and structure” (Impressionism and Post-Impressionism). Ultimately, van Gogh’s specific style was of the post-impressionistic category, and it is easily identifiable as his. Two of his well-known paintings are The Potato Eaters, and The Starry Night.
EARLY LIFE
On March 30, 1853, Vincent Willem van Gogh was born to parents Theodorus and Anna Carbentus van Gogh. He was born one year after his stillborn older brother of the exact same name. He had several siblings, and lived in Groot Zundert, Holland. He inherited a love of nature and art from his artist mother, and often drew landscapes of the Netherlands. While his parents were pleased with his work, young Vincent was not, thus destroying his work. He attended the village school, but eventually his parents hired him a private governess. After a short period, he was sent to a boarding school, and then transferred again. He was very unsociable at school, but very intelligent; he had learned Dutch, German, French, English, arithmetic, history, geography, botany, zoology, gymnastics, and drawing. These skills would later prove useful in his art.
ADULT LIFE AND WORK
After leaving school at age 15, van Gogh spent a year at home, and then left to earn money. His uncle Vincent helped him get a job as an apprentice to an international art firm in the “governmental seat of the Netherlands” (Bodden 10). He was well-liked by customers and coworkers. Because he was doing well, he was transferred to the Brussels branch, and promoted to the London branch from there. After a failed love attempt, van Gogh became moody and irritated, leading people to call him eccentric. From London, he transferred to the Paris branch of the art firm. Through this job, van Gogh grew more interested in art, rather than his actual work. He even criticized and questioned customers on their taste in art. Consequently, he was fired in 1876.
Before he left Paris, van Gogh attended Jean-François Millet’s art exhibition, and was very impressed. He returned to England and had several jobs. He worked as a boarding school teacher, an employee in a bookshop, and then decided he wanted to be a minister. This idea ended up to be a failure as he quit his theology course after he grew bored with it. Next, he intended to be a lay preacher, and in an attempt to be humbler, sold all his belongings. He was still viewed as abnormal, and so he moved again.
INTRODUCTION TO ART
As Vincent did not know what to do with himself, he turned to art. He devoted himself to learning everything about drawing and painting. He even applied to the School of Fine Arts, but unfortunately, was rejected. At this point, his younger brother Theo began sending him a monthly allowance, as to pay for Vincent’s art interest. Nonetheless, Vincent still ran out of money, and moved back to his parents’ home in Etten, Netherlands, in 1881 at age 28. During this time, he still continued to pursue art.
Yet again, van Gogh moved. This time he moved to a city on the western coast of the Netherlands known as The Hague (meaning ‘the Hedge’). It provided Vincent with a lot of new places to explore out in the forest. Here, he sought art instruction from Anton Mauve, a cousin by marriage and one of the foremost members of The Hague School. Mauve helped van Gogh make his art more modern. This is the first time van Gogh put his art in paint, rather than his previous drawings.
Van Gogh moved again to Drenthe, a poor region in Northern Netherlands, wanting to be alone. But he ended up too lonely, and moved home with his parents, now living in Nuenen. There, he focused on painting the town’s farmers, weavers, and dark landscapes. He even took on three art students who paid in tubes of paint. A short time later, van Gogh’s father died, and Vincent painted the cemetery his father was buried in. Then he moved out of his mother’s house. He wrote to his brother Theo: “Mother is unable to grasp the idea that painting is a faith, and that it imposes the duty to disregard the public opinion” (Bodden 23).
ART CAREER
After Vincent moved away from his mother, he began his first “masterpiece”, which he called The Potato Eaters (1885). It was an immediate success. Theo told him that the popular painters in Paris didn’t use such dark colors, and so Vincent stopped using them as much.