Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July
1890) was a
Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had
a far-reaching influence on
20th century
art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. He suffered from
anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness
throughout his life, and died largely unknown, at the age of 37,
from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Little appreciated during his
lifetime, his fame grew in the years after his death. Today, he is
widely regarded as one of history's greatest painters and an
important contributor to the foundations of
modern art. Van Gogh did not begin painting until
his late twenties, and most of his best-known works were produced
during his final two years. He produced more than 2,000 artworks,
consisting of around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches.
He was little known during his lifetime, however his work was a
strong influence on the
Modernist art that
followed, and today many of his pieces—including his numerous
self portraits,
landscapes,
portraits
and
sunflowers—are
among the world's most recognizable and expensive works of
art.
Van Gogh
spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers and
traveled between The
Hague
, London and Paris, after which he taught in
England. An early vocational aspiration was to become a
pastor and preach the gospel, and from 1879 he worked as a
missionary in a mining region in Belgium. During this time he began
to sketch people from the local community, and in 1885 painted his
first major work
The Potato
Eaters. His
palette at the time
consisted mainly of sombre earth tones and showed no sign of the
vivid coloration that distinguished his later work. In March 1886,
he moved to Paris and discovered the
French Impressionists. Later he moved to the
south of France and was taken by the strong sunlight he found
there.
His
work grew brighter in color and he developed the unique and highly
recognizable style which became fully realized during his stay in
Arles
in 1888.
The extent to which his mental illness affected his painting has
been a subject of speculation since his death. Despite a widespread
tendency to romanticise his ill health, modern critics see an
artist deeply frustrated by the inactivity and incoherence brought
about by his bouts of sickness. According to
art critic Robert Hughes, Van Gogh's late works
show an artist at the height of his ability, completely in control
and "longing for concision and grace".
Letters
The most comprehensive primary source for the understanding of Van
Gogh as a major artist is the collection of letters which were
passed between him and his younger brother, the art dealer
Theo van Gogh. They lay the
foundation for most of what is known about the thoughts and beliefs
of the artist. Theo continually provided his brother with both
financial and emotional support.
Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Van Gogh's
thoughts and theories of art, is recorded in the hundreds of
letters they exchanged from August 1872 until 1890. Most were
written by Vincent to Theo beginning in the summer of 1872. More
than 600 letters from Vincent to Theo and 40 from Theo to Vincent
survive today and although many are undated, art historians have
been able to largely arrange the correspondences chronologically.
Problems remain—mainly from dating those from the Arles period. Yet
during that period alone, it is known that Van Gogh wrote 200
letters to friends in Dutch, French and English. The period when
Vincent lived in Paris is the most difficult for art historians to
examine because he and Theo shared accommodation and thus had no
need to correspond, leaving little or no historical record of the
time.
In addition to letters to and from Theo, other surviving documents
include those to
Van Rappard,
Émile Bernard, Van Gogh's sister
Wil and her friend Line Kruysse. The
letters were first annotated in 1913 by Theo's widow
Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. In her
preface, she stated that she published with 'trepidation' because
she did not want the drama in the artist's life to overshadow his
work. Van Gogh himself was an avid reader of other artists
biographies and expected their lives to be in keeping with the
character of their art.
Biography
Early life
Vincent
Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Groot-Zundert
, a village close to Breda
in the
province of North
Brabant
in the southern Netherlands
. He was the son of Anna Cornelia Carbentus
and Theodorus van Gogh, a minister of the
Dutch Reformed Church. Vincent was
given the same name as his grandfather—and a first brother
stillborn exactly one year before. The practice of reusing a name
in this way was not uncommon. Vincent was a common name in the Van
Gogh family; his grandfather (1789–1874) had received his degree of
theology at the
University of
Leiden in 1811. Grandfather Vincent had six sons, three of whom
became art dealers, including another Vincent who was referred to
in Van Gogh's letters as "Uncle Cent." Grandfather Vincent had
perhaps been named in turn after his own father's uncle, the
successful sculptor Vincent van Gogh (1729–1802). Art and religion
were the two occupations to which the Van Gogh family gravitated.
His brother
Theodorus
(Theo) was born on 1 May 1857. He had another brother, Cor, and
three sisters: Elisabeth, Anna and
Willemina.

Vincent van Gogh , approx. age
13
As a child, Vincent was serious, silent and thoughtful. He attended
the Zundert village school from 1860, where the single
Catholic teacher taught around 200
pupils.
From 1861, he and his sister Anna were taught
at home by a governess, until 1 October 1864, when he went away to
the elementary boarding school of
Jan Provily in Zevenbergen
, the Netherlands, about away. He was
distressed to leave his family home, and recalled this even in
adulthood.
On 15 September 1866, he went to the new
middle school, Willem II College
in Tilburg
, the
Netherlands. Constantijn C. Huysmans, a successful artist in
Paris, taught Van Gogh to draw at the school and advocated a
systematic approach to the subject. In March 1868, Van Gogh
abruptly left school and returned home. A later comment on his
early years was, "My youth was gloomy and cold and
sterile..."
In July
1869, his uncle helped him to obtain a position with the art dealer
Goupil & Cie in The Hague
. After his training, in June 1873, Goupil
transferred him to London, where he lodged at 87 Hackford Road,
Brixton
, and worked at Messrs. Goupil & Co., 17
Southampton Street. This was a happy time for Van Gogh; he was
successful at work and was already, at the age of 20, earning more
than his father. Theo's wife later remarked that this was the
happiest year of Van Gogh's life. He fell in love with his
landlady's daughter, Eugénie Loyer, but when he finally confessed
his feeling to her, she rejected him, saying that she was already
secretly engaged to a former lodger. He was increasingly isolated
and fervent about religion. His father and uncle sent him to Paris
to work in a dealership. However, he became resentful at how art
was treated as a commodity, a fact apparent to customers. On 1
April 1876, his employment was terminated.
He returned to England for unpaid work.
He took a position as
a supply teacher in a small boarding school overlooking the harbor
in Ramsgate
, where he made sketches of the view.
The
proprietor of the school relocated to Isleworth
, Middlesex
and Van Gogh decided to make the daily commute to
the new location on foot. However the arrangement did not
work out and Van Gogh left to became a
Methodist minister's assistant, to follow his wish
to "preach the gospel everywhere."
At Christmas that year, he returned home
and worked in a bookshop in Dordrecht
for six months. However, he was not happy in
this new position and spent most of his time in the back of the
shop either doodling or translating passages from the Bible into
English, French and German. His roommate at the time, a young
teacher called Görlitz, later recalled that Van Gogh ate frugally,
and preferred not to eat meat.
Van Gogh's religious emotion grew until he felt he had found his
true vocation.
In an effort to support his effort to become
a pastor, in May 1877, his family sent him to Amsterdam
to study theology. He stayed with his uncle
Jan van Gogh, a naval
Vice Admiral.
Vincent prepared for the entrance exam with his uncle
Johannes Stricker; a respected theologian
who published the first "Life of Jesus" available in the
Netherlands. Van Gogh failed, and left his uncle Jan's house in
July 1878.
He then undertook, but failed, a three-month
course at the Vlaamsche Opleidingsschool Protestant missionary
school in Laeken, near Brussels
.
In
January 1879, he took a temporary post as a missionary in the village of Petit Wasmes
in the coal-mining district of
Borinage
in Belgium, bringing his father's profession to
people many felt to be the most wretched and hopeless in
Europe. Taking Christianity to what he saw as its logical
conclusion, Van Gogh opted to live like those he preached
to—sharing their hardships to the extent of sleeping on straw in a
small hut at the back of the baker's house where he was billeted.
The baker's wife reported hearing Van Gogh sobbing all night in the
little hut.
His choice of squalid living conditions did not endear him to the
appalled church authorities, who dismissed him for "undermining the
dignity of the priesthood."
He then walked to Brussels, returned briefly
to the village of Cuesmes
in the Borinage but gave in to pressure from his
parents to return home to Etten
. He
stayed there until around March the following year, a cause of
increasing concern and frustration for his parents.
There was particular
conflict between Vincent and his father; Theodorus made inquiries
about having his son committed to the lunatic asylum at Geel
.
He returned to Cuesmes where he lodged with a miner named Charles
Decrucq until October. He became increasingly interested in
ordinary people and scenes around him. However, he recorded his
time there in his drawings, and that year followed the suggestion
of Theo and took up art in earnest. He traveled to Brussels that
autumn; intending to follow Theo's recommendation to study with the
prominent Dutch artist
Willem
Roelofs, who persuaded Van Gogh, in spite of his aversion to
formal schools of art, to attend the
Royal Academy of Art. While
in attendance, he not only studied anatomy but also the standard
rules of modeling and perspective, of which he said, "...you have
to know just to be able to draw the least thing." Van Gogh wished
to become an artist while in God's service as he stated, "...to try
to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the
serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God;
one man wrote or told it in a book; another in a picture."
Etten, Drenthe and The Hague
In April 1881, Van Gogh moved to the Etten countryside with his
parents where he continued drawing; often using neighbors as
subjects. Through the summer, he spent much time walking and
talking with his recently widowed cousin, Kee Vos-Stricker, the
daughter of his mother's older sister and Johannes Stricker, who
had shown real warmth towards his nephew. Kee was seven years older
than Van Gogh and had an eight-year-old son. He proposed marriage,
but she refused with the words, "No, never, never" (
niet,
nooit, nimmer).
At the end of November, he wrote a strongly worded letter to his
uncle Stricker, and then hurried to Amsterdam where he again talked
with Stricker on several occasions. Yet Kee refused to see him,
while her parents wrote, "Your persistence is disgusting". In
desperation, he held his left hand in the flame of a lamp, with the
words "Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the
flame." He did not clearly recall what next happened, but later
assumed that his uncle blew out the flame. Kee's father made it
clear that there was no question of marriage, given Van Gogh's
inability to support himself financially. Van Gogh's perceived
hypocrisy of his uncle and former tutor affected him deeply. That
Christmas, he quarreled violently with his father, to the point of
refusing a gift of money, and left for The Hague.
In January 1882, he settled in The Hague where he called on his
cousin-in-law, the painter
Anton Mauve
(1838–1888). Mauve encouraged him towards painting, however the two
soon fell out, possibly over the issue of drawing from
plaster casts. Mauve appears to have suddenly
gone cold towards Van Gogh, and did not return a number of letters
from this time. Van Gogh supposed that Mauve had learned of his new
domestic arrangement with an alcoholic prostitute, Clasina Maria
"Sien" Hoornik (1850-unknown) and her young daughter. He had met
Sien towards the end of January, when she had a five-year-old
daughter and was pregnant. She had already borne two children who
had died, although Van Gogh was unaware of this.
On 2 July, Sien gave birth to a baby boy, Willem. When Van Gogh's
father discovered the details of their relationship, he put
considerable pressure on his son to abandon Sien and her children.
Vincent was at first defiant in the face of opposition.
His uncle Cornelis, an art dealer, commissioned 20 ink drawings of
the city from him. They were completed by the end of May. That
June, he spent three weeks in a hospital suffering
gonorrhea. In the summer, he began to paint in
oil. In autumn 1883, after a year with Sien, he abandoned her and
the two children. Van Gogh had thought of moving the family away
from the city, but in the end he made the break. It is possible
that lack of money had pushed Sien back to prostitution—the home
had become a less happy one, and likely Van Gogh felt family life
was irreconcilable with his artistic development. When he left,
Sien gave her daughter to her mother and baby Willem to her
brother. She then moved to Delft, and later to Antwerp. Willem
remembered being taken to visit his mother in Rotterdam at around
the age of 12, where his uncle tried to persuade Sien to marry in
order to legitimize the child. Willem remembered his mother saying,
"But I know who the father is. He was an artist I lived with nearly
20 years ago in The Hague. His name was Van Gogh." She then turned
to Willem and said "You are called after him." Willem believed
himself to be Van Gogh's son, but the timing of the birth makes
this unlikely.
In 1904, Sien drowned herself in the river
Scheldt
. Van Gogh moved to the Dutch province of
Drenthe in the north of the Netherlands.
That
December, driven by loneliness, he went to stay with his parents
who were by then living in Nuenen
, North Brabant
, also in the Netherlands.
Emerging artist
Nuenen and Antwerp (1883-1886)
In
Nuenen
, he devoted
himself to drawing and would pay boys to bring him birds' nests for
subject matter, and made many sketches of weavers in their
cottages. In autumn 1884, Margot Begemann, a neighbor's
daughter ten years older than him, often accompanied the artist on
his painting forays. She fell in love, and he reciprocated—though
less enthusiastically. They decided to marry, but the idea was
opposed by both families. As a result, Margot took an overdose of
strychnine. She was saved when Van Gogh
rushed her to a nearby hospital. On 26 March 1885, his father died
of a heart attack and artist grieved deeply at the loss.
For the first time there was interest from Paris in his work. That
spring, he completed what is generally considered his first major
work,
The Potato Eaters
(Dutch:
De Aardappeleters). That August, his work was
exhibited for the first time, in the windows of a paint dealer,
Leurs, in The Hague. He was accused of forcing one of his young
peasant sitters pregnant that September. As a result, the Catholic
village priest forbade parishioners from modeling for him. During
1885, he painted several groups of
Still-life paintings.
From this period,
Still-Life with Straw Hat and Pipe and
Still-life with Earthen Pot and Clogs are regarded for
their technical mastery. Both are characterized by smooth,
meticulous brushwork and fine shading of colors. During his
two-year stay in Nuenen, he completed numerous drawings and
watercolors, and nearly 200 oil paintings. However, his palette
consisted mainly of sombre earth tones, particularly dark brown,
and he showed no sign of developing the vivid coloration that
distinguishes his later, best known work. When he complained that
Theo was not making enough effort to sell his paintings in Paris,
Theo replied that they were too dark and not in line with the
current style of bright
Impressionist
paintings.
In
November 1885, he moved to Antwerp
and rented a small room above a paint dealer's shop
in the Rue des Images (Lange Beeldekensstraat). He had
little money and ate poorly, preferring to spend what money his
brother Theo sent on painting materials and models. Bread, coffee
and tobacco were his staple intake. In February 1886, he wrote to
Theo saying that he could only remember eating six hot meals since
May of the previous year. His teeth became loose and caused him
much pain. While in Antwerp he applied himself to the study of
color theory and spent time looking at work in museums,
particularly the work of
Peter Paul
Rubens, gaining encouragement to broaden his palette to
carmine,
cobalt
and
emerald green.
He bought a number of Japanese
Ukiyo-e
woodcuts in the docklands, and incorporated their style into the
background of a number of his paintings. While in Antwerp Van Gogh
began to drink
absinthe heavily. He was
treated by Dr Cavenaile, whose practice was near the docklands,
possibly for
syphilis; the treatment of
alum irrigations and
sitz baths was jotted
down by Van Gogh in one of his notebooks. Despite his rejection of
academic teaching, he took the higher-level admission exams at the
Academy of Fine
Arts in Antwerp, and in January 1886, matriculated in painting
and drawing. For most of February, he was ill and run down by
overwork, a poor diet and excessive smoking.
Paris (1886–1888)
Van Gogh
traveled to Paris in March 1886 to study at Fernand Cormon's studio, where he shared
Theo's Rue Laval apartment on Montmartre
. In June, they took a larger flat further
uphill, at 54 Rue Lepic. Since there was no longer need to
communicate by letters, less is known about Van Gogh's time in
Paris than of earlier or later periods of his life. He painted
several Paris street scenes in Montmartre and elsewhere such as
Bridges across the Seine at Asnieres (1887).
During his stay in Paris, Van Gogh collected Japanese
ukiyo-e woodblock
prints. His interest in such works date to his 1885 stay in
Antwerp when he used them to decorate the walls of his studio. He
collected hundreds of prints, and they can be seen in the
backgrounds of several of his paintings. In his 1887
Portrait
of Père Tanguy several are shown hanging on the wall behind
the main figure. In
The Courtesan or Oiran (after Kesai
Eisen) 91887), Van Gogh traced the figure from a reproduction
on the cover of the magazine
Paris Illustre and then
graphically enlarged it in his painting.
Plum Tree in Blossom
(After Hiroshige) 1888 is another strong example of Van Gogh's
admiration of the Japanese prints that he collected. His version is
slightly bolder than the original.
For months, Van Gogh worked at Cormon's studio where he frequented
the circle of the British-Australian artist
John Peter Russell, and he met fellow
students like
Émile Bernard,
Louis Anquetin, and
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who
created a portrait of Van Gogh with pastel. The group used to meet
at the paint store run by Julien "Père" Tanguy, which was at that
time the only place to view works by
Paul Cézanne.
Van Gogh would have had easy access to Impressionist works in Paris
at the time. In 1886, two large vanguard exhibitions were staged.
In these shows
Neo-Impressionism
made its first appearance—works of
Georges Seurat and
Paul Signac were the talk of the town. Though
Theo, too, kept a stock of
Impressionist paintings in his gallery on
Boulevard Montmarte—by artists including
Claude Monet,
Alfred
Sisley,
Edgar Degas and
Camille Pissarro—Vincent seemingly had
problems acknowledging developments in how artists view and paint
their subject matter.
Conflicts arose, and at the end of 1886 Theo found shared life with
Vincent "almost unbearable". By the spring of 1887 they had made
peace.
He then moved to Asnières where he became acquainted with Signac.
With his friend Emile Bernard, who lived with his parents in
Asnières, he adopted elements of
pointillism, whereby many small dots are applied
to the canvas to give an optical blend of hues when seen from a
distance. The theory behind this style stresses the value of
complementary colors (including
blue and orange) which form vibrant contrasts and enhance each
other when juxtaposed.
In November 1887, Theo and Vincent met and befriended
Paul Gauguin who had just arrived in Paris.
Towards the end of the year, Van Gogh arranged an exhibition of
paintings by himself, Bernard, Anquetin, and probably
Toulouse-Lautrec in the Restaurant du Chalet on Montmartre. There
Bernard and Anquetin sold their first paintings, and Van Gogh
exchanged work with Gauguin who soon departed to
Pont-Aven. Discussions on art, artists and their
social situations that started during this exhibition continued and
expanded to include visitors to the show like Pissarro and his son
Lucien, Signac and Seurat.
Finally in February 1888, feeling worn out from life in Paris, he
left, having painted over 200 paintings during his two years in the
city. Only hours before his departure, accompanied by Theo, he paid
his first and only visit to Seurat in his atelier.
Zenith and final years
Arles
Van Gogh moved to Arles hoping for refuge; at the time he was ill
from drink and suffering from smoker's cough. He arrived on 21
February 1888 and took a room at the Hôtel-Restaurant Carrel,
which, idealistically, he had expected to look like one of
Hokusai (1760-1849) or
Utamaro's (1753-1806) prints. He had moved to the
town with thoughts of founding a
utopian
art colony, and the Danish artist
Christian Mourier-Petersen became his companion for two months.
However Arles appeared exotic and filthy to Van Gogh. In a letter
he described it as a foreign country; "The
Zouaves, the brothels, the adorable little
Arlesiennes going to their
First
Communion, the priest in his
surplice,
who looks like a dangerous rhinocerous, the people drinking
absinthe, all seem to me creatures from
another world".
Yet, he was taken by the local landscape and light. His works from
the period are richly draped in yellow, ultramarine and mauve. His
portrayal's of the Arles landscape are informed by his Dutch
upbringing; the patchwork of fields and avenues appear flat and
lack perspective, but excel in their intensity of colour. The
vibrant light in Arles excited him, and his newfound appreciation
is seen in the range and scope of his work from the period. That
March, he painted local landscapes using a gridded "perspective
frame". Three of these paintings were shown at the annual
exhibition of the
Société des
Artistes Indépendants.
In April, he was visited by the American
artist Dodge MacKnight, who was
living nearby at Fontvieille
.
On 1 May, he signed a lease for 15 francs month in the eastern wing
of the
Yellow House at No. 2
Place Lamartine. The rooms were unfurnished and had been
uninhabited for some time. He had been staying at the Hôtel
Restaurant arrel, but the rate charged by the hotel was 5 francs a
week, which he found excessive. He disputed the price, took the
case to à local arbitrator and was awarded a twelve franc reduction
on his total bill.
He moved from the Hôtel Carrel to the Café de la Gare on 7 May. He
became friends with the proprietors, Joseph and Marie Ginoux.
Although the Yellow House had to be furnished before he could fully
move in, Van Gogh was able to utilise it as a studio. Hoping to
have a gallery to display his work, his major project at this time
was a series of paintings which included:
Van Gogh's Chair
(1888),
Bedroom in Arles
(1888),
The Night Café
(1888),
The
Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night
(September 1888),
Starry
Night Over the Rhone (1888),
Still Life: Vase with Twelve
Sunflowers (1888), all intended to form the
décoration
for the Yellow House. Van Gogh wrote about
The Night
Café: "I have tried to express the idea that the café is a
place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime."
He
visited Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
that June where he gave drawing lessons to a
Zouave second lieutenant, Paul-Eugène
Milliet. MacKnight introduced Van Gogh to
Eugène Boch, a Belgian painter who stayed
at times in Fontvieille, and the two exchanged visits in
July.
Gauguin agreed to join him in Arles, giving Van Gogh much hope for
friendship and his collective of artists. Waiting, in August, he
painted
sunflowers. Boch visited again and
Van Gogh painted his portrait as well as the study
The Poet
Against a Starry Sky. Boch's sister
Anna (1848-1936), also an artist, purchased
The Red Vineyard in 1890.
Upon advice from his friend, the station's postal supervisor
Joseph Roulin, whose portrait he
painted, he bought two beds on 8 September, and he finally spent
the first night in the still sparsely furnished Yellow House on 17
September. When Gauguin consented to work and live in Arles
side-by-side with Van Gogh, he started to work on the
The Décoration for the
Yellow House, probably the most ambitious effort he ever
undertook. Van Gogh did two chair paintings:
Van Gogh's
Chair and
Gauguin's Chair.
After repeated requests, Gauguin finally arrived in Arles on 23
October. During November, the two painted together. Gauguin painted
Van Gogh's portrait
The
Painter of Sunflowers: Portrait of Vincent van Gogh, and
uncharacteristically, Van Gogh painted some pictures from
memory—deferring to Gauguin's ideas in this—as well as his
The Red Vineyard. Their
first joint outdoor painting exercise was conducted at the
picturesque
Alyscamps.
The two artists
visited Montpellier
that December and viewed works in the Alfred Bruyas collection by Courbet and Delacroix in the Musée
Fabre
. However, their relationship was
deteriorating. They quarreled fiercely about art; Van Gogh felt an
increasing fear that Gauguin was going to desert him as a situation
he described as one of "excessive tension" reached crisis
point.
On 23 December 1888, frustrated and ill, Van Gogh confronted
Gauguin with a razor blade. In panic, Van Gogh left their hotel and
fled to a local brothel. While there, he cut off the lower part of
his left ear lobe. He wrapped the severed tissue in newspaper and
gave to a prostitute named Rachel, asking her to "keep this object
carefully."
Gauguin left Arles and never saw Van Gogh again. Days later, Van
Gogh was hospitalized and left in a critical state for several
days. Immediately, Theo—notified by Gauguin —visited, as did both
Madame Ginoux and Roulin.
In January 1889, he returned to the Yellow House, but spent the
following month between hospital and home suffering from
hallucinations and delusions that he was being poisoned. In March,
the police closed his house after a petition by 30 townspeople, who
called him "fou roux" (
the redheaded madman).
Paul Signac visited him in hospital and Van Gogh
was allowed home in his company. In April, he moved into rooms
owned by Dr. Rey, after floods damaged paintings in his own home.
Around this time, he wrote, "Sometimes moods of indescribale
anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and fatailty of
circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant."
Two months later he
had left Arles and entered an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
.
Saint-Rémy (May 1889 – May 1890)
On 8 May 1889, accompanied by a carer, the Reverend Salles, he
committed himself to the hospital at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole. A
former monastery in Saint-Rémy less than from Arles, the monastery
is located in an area of cornfields, vineyards and olive trees at
the time run by a former naval doctor,
Dr.Théophile Peyron. Theo arranged for
two small rooms—adjoining cells with barred windows. The second was
to be used as a studio.
During his stay, the clinic and its garden became the main subjects
of his paintings. He made several studies of the hospital
interiors, such as
Vestibule of the Asylum and Saint-Remy
(September 1889). Some of the work from this time is characterized
by swirls—including one of his best-known paintings
The Starry Night. He was allowed short
supervised walks, which gave rise to images of
cypresses and
olive trees,
like
Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background 1889,
Cypresses 1889, Cornfield with Cypresses (1889),
Country road in Provence by Night (1890). Limited access
to the world outside the clinic resulted in a shortage of subject
matter. He was left to work on interpretations of other artist's
paintings, such as Millet
The Sower and
Noon – Rest
from Work (after Millet), as well as variations on his own
earlier work. Van Gogh was an admirer of Millet and compared his
copies to a musician's interpreting
Beethoven. Many of his most compelling
works date from this period; his
The Round of the
Prisoners, (1890) was painted after an engraving by
Gustave Doré (1832–1883), the face of the
prisoner in the center of the painting and looking toward the
viewer is Van Gogh.
That September, he produced a further two versions of
Bedroom in Arles, and in February 1890
painted four portraits of
L'Arlésienne (Madame
Ginoux), based on a charcoal sketch Gauguin had produced when
Madame Ginoux sat for both artists at the beginning of November
1888.
His work was praised by
Albert Aurier
in the
Mercure de France
in January 1890, when he was described as "a genius". In February
invited by
Les XX, a society of avant-garde
painters in Brussels, he participated in their annual
exhibition. At
the opening dinner, Les XX member Henry de Groux insulted Van
Gogh's works. Toulouse-Lautrec demanded satisfaction, and Signac
declared he would continue to fight for Van Gogh's honor if Lautrec
should be surrendered. Later, when Van Gogh's exhibit was on
display with the Artistes Indépendants in Paris,
Monet said that his work was the best in the
show.
In February 1890, following the birth of his nephew Vincent Willem,
he wrote in a letter to his mother, that with the new addition to
the family, he "started right away to make a picture for him, to
hang in their bedroom, big branches of white almond blossom against
a blue sky."
Auvers-sur-Oise (May–July 1890)
In May
1890, Van Gogh left the clinic to move near the physician Dr. Paul Gachet (1828-1909), in Auvers-sur-Oise
near Paris, where would also be closer to his
Theo. Dr. Gachet was recommended to Van Gogh by
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903); Gachet had
previously treated several artists and was an amateur artist
himself. Van Gogh's first impression was that Gachet was "...sicker
than I am, I think, or shall we say just as much." In June 1890, he
painted
Portrait of Dr.
Gachet and completed two portraits of Gachet in oils, as
well as a third—his only etching. In all three the emphasis is on
Gachet's melancholic disposition.
In his last weeks at Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh's thoughts had been
returning to his "memories of the North", and several of the
approximately 70 oils he painted during his 70 days in
Auvers-sur-Oise, such as
The
Church at Auvers, are reminiscent of northern
scenes.
Wheat Field with
Crows (July 1890) is an example of the unusual
double square canvas which he
developed in the last weeks of his life. In its turbulent
intensity, it is among his most haunting and elemental
works.Pickvance (1986), 270–271 It is often mistakenly stated to be
his last work, but Van Gogh scholar
Jan
Hulsker lists seven paintings which postdate it.
Barbizon painter
Charles Daubigny moved to
Auvers in 1861, and this in turn drew other artists there,
including
Camille Corot,
Honoré Daumier, and in 1890,
Vincent van Gogh. In July 1890, Van Gogh completed two paintings of
Daubigny's
Garden, and one of these is most likely to be his final
work. There are also paintings which show evidence of being
unfinished, such as
Thatched Cottages by a
Hill.
Death
Recently acquitted from hospital, Van Gogh suffered a severe
setback in December 1889. Although had been troubled by mental
health issues throughout his life, the episodes became more
pronounced during the last few years of his life. In some of these
periods he chose to not or was unable to paint, a factor which
added to the mounting frustrations of an artist at the peak of his
ability.
His depression gradually deepened. On 27 July 1890, aged 37, he
walked into a field and shot himself in the chest with a revolver.
He survived the impact, but not realizing that his injuries were to
be fatal, he walked back to the
Ravoux Inn. He died there two
days later. Theo rushed to be at his side. Theo reported his
brother's last words as "La tristesse durera toujours" (
the
sadness will last forever.)
Theo's health deteriorated soon after the death of his brother. He
contracted
syphilis—though this was not
admitted by the family for many years.
He was admitted to
hospital, and weak and unable to come to terms with Vincent's
absence, he died six months later, on 25 January, at Utrecht
. In 1914, Theo's body was exhumed and
re-buried with his brother at Auvers-sur-Oise
.
While most of Vincent's late paintings are somber, they are
essentially optimistic and reflect a desire to return to lucid
mental health. However, the paintings completed in the days before
his suicide are severely dark. His
At Eternity's Gate, a portrayal of
an old man holding his head in his hands, is particularly bleak.
The work serves as a compelling and poignant expression of the
artist's state of mind in his final days.
There has been much debate over the years as to the source of Van
Gogh's illness and its effect on his work. Over 150 psychiatrists
have attempted to label its root, and some 30 different diagnoses
have been suggested. Diagnoses that have been put forward include
schizophrenia,
bipolar disorder, syphilis, poisoning from
swallowed paints,
temporal lobe
epilepsy and
acute
intermittent porphyria. Any of these could have been the
culprit and been aggravated by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia and
a fondness for alcohol, especially
absinthe.
Work
Van Gogh drew and painted with
watercolors while at school; few of
these works survive and authorship is challenged on some of those
that do. When he committed to art as an adult, he began at an
elementary level by copying the
Cours de dessin, edited by
Charles Bargue and published by
Goupil & Cie. Within his first
two years he had began to seek commissions. In spring 1882, his
uncle, Cornelis Marinus (owner of a renowned gallery of
contemporary art in Amsterdam) asked him for drawings of the Hague.
Van Gogh's work did not prove equal to his uncle's expectations.
Marinus offered a second commission, this time specifying the
subject matter in detail, but was once again disappointed with the
result. Nevertheless, Van Gogh persevered. He improved the lighting
of his atelier (studio) by installing variable shutters and
experimented with a variety of drawing materials. For more than a
year he worked on single figures—highly elaborated studies in
"Black and White", which at the time gained him only criticism.
Today, they are recogonised as his first masterpieces.
Early in 1883, he undertook work on multi-figure compositions,
which he based on the drawings. He had some of them photographed,
but when his brother remarked that they lacked liveliness and
freshness, Van Gogh destroyed them and turned to oil painting. By
autumn 1882, Theo had enabled him to do his first paintings, but
the amount Theo could supply was soon spent. Then, in spring 1883,
Van Gogh turned to renowned
Hague
School artists like
Weissenbruch and
Blommers, and received technical support
from them, as well as from painters like
De Bock and
Van der Weele, both Hague
School artists of the second generation.
When he moved to Nuenen after the intermezzo in Drenthe, he began a
number of large size paintings, but destroyed most.
The Potato Eaters and its companion
pieces—
The Old Tower on the Nuenen cemetery and
The
Cottage—are the only to have survived. Following a visit to
the
Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh was aware that
many of his faults were due to lack of technical experience. So he
went to Antwerp and later to Paris to improve his skill.
More or less acquainted with Impressionist and Neo-impressionist
techniques and theories, Van Gogh went to Arles to develop these
new possibilities. But within a short time, older ideas on art and
work reappeared: ideas like doing
series on related or contrasting subject
matter, which would reflect the purpose of art. As his work
progressed, he painted a great many
Self-portraits.
Already in 1884 in Nuenen he had worked on a series that was to
decorate the dining room of a friend in Eindhoven. Similarly in
Arles, in spring 1888 he arranged his
Flowering Orchards into triptychs,
began a series of figures that found its end in
The Roulin Family, and finally, when
Gauguin had consented to work and live in Arles side-by-side with
Van Gogh, he started to work on the
The Décoration for the
Yellow House, which was by some accounts the most
ambitious effort he ever undertook. Most of his later work is
elaborating or revising its fundamental settings. In the spring of
1889, he painted another smaller group of orchards. In an April
letter to Theo, he said, "I have 6 studies of spring, two of them
large orchards. There is little time because these effects are so
short-lived."
The art historian
Albert Boime was the
first to show that Van Gogh—even in seemingly phantastical
compositions like
Starry Night—relied on reality.
The
White House at Night, shows a house at twilight with a
prominent star with a yellow halo in the sky. Astronomers at
Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos calculated that the
star is Venus, which was bright in the evening sky in June 1890
when Van Gogh is believed to have painted the picture.
The paintings from the Saint-Rémy period are often characterized by
swirls and spirals. The patterns of luminosity in these images have
been shown to conform to
Kolmogorov's statistical model of
turbulence.
Working procedures
A self-taught artist with little training, Van Gogh's painting and
drawing techniques are all but academic. Recent research has shown
that works commonly known as "oil paintings" or "drawings" would
better be called executed in "mixed-media". For example,
The
Langlois Bridge at Arles still shows the highly elaborate
under-drawing in pen and ink, and several works from Saint-Rémy and
Auvers, hitherto considered to be drawings or watercolors, such as
Vestibule of the Asylum, Saint-Remy (September 1889),
turned out to be painted in diluted oil and with a brush.
Radiographical examination has shown that Van Gogh re-used older
canvases more extensively than previously assumed—whether he really
overpainted more than a third of his output, as presumed recently,
must be verified by further investigations. In 2008, a team from
Delft University of Technology and the University of Antwerp used
advanced X-ray techniques to create a clear image of a woman's face
previously painted, underneath the work
Patch of
Grass.
Cypresses
One of the most popular and widely known series of Van Gogh's
paintings are his
Cypresses. During the
summer of 1889, at sister
Wil's
request, he made several smaller versions of
Wheat Field with
Cypresses. The works are characterised by swirls and densely
painted
impasto—and produced one of his
best-known paintings -
The Starry
Night. Others works from the series have similar stylistic
elements including
Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the
Background (1889)
Cypresses (1889),
Wheat Field
with Cypresses (1889), (Van Gogh made several versions of this
painting that year),
Road with Cypress and Star (1890) and
Starry Night Over the
Rhone (1888). These have become synonymous with Van Gogh's
work through their stylistic uniqueness. According to art historian
Ronald Pickvance,
Road with Cypress and Star (1890), is a
painting compositionally as unreal and artificial as the
Starry Night.
Pickvance goes on to say the painting Road with
Cypress and Star represents an exalted experience of reality,
a conflation of North and South, what both van Gogh and Gauguin
referred to as an "abstraction".
Referring to Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the
Background, on or around June 18, 1889, in a letter to Theo,
he wrote, "At last I have a landscape with olives and also a new
study of a Starry Night."
Hoping to also have a gallery for his work, his major project at
this time was a series of paintings including
Still Life: Vase with Twelve
Sunflowers (1888), and
Starry Night Over the Rhone
(1888) that all intended to form the
décoration of
the Yellow House.
Flowering Orchards
The
series of Flowering Orchards, sometimes referred to as the
Orchards in Blossom paintings, were among the first group
of work that Van Gogh completed after his arrival in Arles
, Provence in February 1888. The 14 paintings
in this group are optimistic, joyous and visually expressive of the
burgeoning springtime. They are delicately sensitive, silent, quiet
and unpopulated. About
The Cherry Tree Vincent wrote to
Theo on April 21, 1888 and said he had 10 orchards and:
one big
(painting) of a cherry tree, which I've spoiled. The following
spring he painted another smaller group of orchards, including
View of Arles,
Flowering Orchards.
Van Gogh was taken by the landscape and vegetation of the south of
France, and often visited the farm gardens near Arles. Because of
the vivid light supplied by the
Mediterranean climate his palette
significantly brightened. From his arrival, he was interested it
capturing the effect of the seasons on the surrounding landscape
and plant life.
Flowers
Van Gogh painted several versions of landscapes with flowers, as
seen in
View of Arles with Irises, and paintings of
flowers, such as
Irises,
Sunflowers, lilacs,
roses, oleanders and other flowers. Some of the paintings of
flowers reflect his interests in the language of color and also in
Japanese
ukiyo-e woodblock prints.
He completed two series of sunflowers: the first while he was in
Paris in 1887 and the later during his stay in Arles the following
year. The first set show the flowers set in ground. In the second
set, they are dying in vases. However, the 1888 paintings were
created during a rare period of optimism for the artist. He
intended them to decorate a bedroom where Paul Gauguin was supposed
to stay in Arles that August, when the two would create the
community of artists Van Gogh had long hoped for. The flowers are
rendered with thick brushstrokes (impasto) and heavy layers of
paint.
In an August 1888 letter to Theo, he wrote,
- "I am hard at it, painting with the enthusiasm of a Marseillais
eating bouillabaisse, which won't surprise you when you know that
what I'm at is the painting of some sunflowers. If I carry out this
idea there will be a dozen panels. So the whole thing will be a
symphony in blue and yellow. I am working at it every morning from
sunrise on, for the flowers fade so quickly. I am now on the fourth
picture of sunflowers. This fourth one is a bunch of 14 flowers ...
it gives a singular effect."
The series is perhaps his best known and most widely reproduced. In
recent years, there has been debate regarding the authenticity of
one of the paintings, and it has been suggested that this version
may have been the work of
Émile
Schuffenecker or of
Paul Gauguin.
Most experts, however, conclude that the work is genuine.
Wheat fields
Van Gogh made several painting excursions during visits to the
landscape around Arles. He drew a number of paintings featuring
harvests, wheat fields and other rural landmarks of the area,
including
The Old Mill (1888); a good example of a
picturesque structure bordering the wheat fields beyond. It was one
of seven canvases sent to Pont-Aven on October 4, 1888 as exchange
of work with Paul Gauguin,
Emile
Bernard,
Charles Laval, and
others. At various times in his life, Van Gogh painted the view
from his window—at The Hague, Antwerp, Paris. These works
culminated in
The Wheat Field
series, which depicted the view he could see from his adjoining
cells in the asylum at Saint-Rémy.
Writing in July 1890, Van Gogh said that he had become absorbed "in
the immense plain against the hills, boundless as the sea, delicate
yellow". He had become captivated by the fields in May when the
wheat was young and green. The weather worsened in July, and he
wrote to Theo of "vast fields of wheat under troubled skies",
adding that he did not "need to go out of my way to try and express
sadness and extreme loneliness". By August, he had painted the
crops both young and mature and during both dark and bright
weather. A depiction of the golden wheat in bright sunlight was to
be his final painting, along with his usual easel and paints he had
carried a pistol with him that day.
Legacy
Posthumous fame
Since his first exhibits in the late 1880s, Van Gogh's fame grew
steadily, among his colleagues and among art critics, dealers and
collectors. After his death, memorial exhibitions were mounted in
Brussels, Paris, The Hague and Antwerp.
In the early 20th
century, the exhibitions were followed by vast retrospectives in
Paris (1901 and 1905), Amsterdam (1905), Cologne
(1912), New York
City
(1913) and Berlin (1914). These prompted a
noticeable impact over later generations of artists.
Influence
In his final letter to Theo, Vincent admitted that as he did not
have any children, he viewed his paintings as his progeny.
Reflecting on this, the historian
Simon
Schama concluded that he "did have a child of course,
Expressionism, and many, many heirs." Schama
mentioned a wide number of artists who have adapted elements of Van
Gogh's style, including
Willem de
Kooning,
Howard Hodgkin and
Jackson Pollock. The French
Fauves, including
Henri
Matisse, extended both his use of color and freedom in applying
it, as did German Expressionists in the
Die Brücke group.
Abstract Expressionism of the 1940s
and 1950s' is seen as in part inspired from Van Gogh's broad,
gestural brush strokes.
In 1957,
Francis Bacon
(1909-1992) based a series of several paintings on reproductions of
Van Gogh's
The Painter on the Road to Tarascon; the
original of which was destroyed during
World War II. Bacon was inspired by not only an
image he described as "haunting", but also Van Gogh himself, whom
Bacon regarded as an alienated outsider, a position with resonated
with Bacon. The Irish artist further identified with Van Gogh's
theories of art and quoted lines written in a letter to Theo,
"[R]eal painters do not paint things as they are...They paint them
as
they themselves feel them to be"."
The Van Gogh
Museum
in Amsterdam
will have a special exhibition devoted to Vincent
van Gogh's letters opening in October 2009.
References
- Hughes (1990), 144
- Pomerans, ix
- Van
Gogh Museumretrieved October 7, 2009
- Van
Gogh's letters, Unabridged and Annotated retrieved June 25,
2009
- Hughes, 143
- Pomerans, i–xxvi
- Pomerans, vii
- Vincent Van Gogh Biography, Quotes &
Paintings. The Art History Archive. Retrieved 14 June
2007.
- It has been suggested that being given the same name as his
dead elder brother might have had a deep psychological impact on
the young artist, and that elements of his art, such as the
portrayal of pairs of male figures, can be traced back to this.
See: Lubin (1972), 82–84
- Erickson (1998), 9
- Tralbaut (1981), 24
- Letter 347. Vincent to Theo, 18 December
1883
- Hackford Road. vauxhallsociety.org.uk.
Retrieved 27 June 2009.
- Letter 7. Vincent to Theo, 5 May 1873.
- Tralbaut (1981), 35–47
- Tralbaut (1981), 47–56
- Callow (1990), 54
- See the recollections gathered in Dordrecht by M. J. Brusse, Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, May 26 and
2 June 1914.
- "...he would not eat meat, only a little morsel on Sundays, and
then only after being urged by our landlady for a long time. Four
potatoes with a suspicion of gravy and a mouthful of vegetables
constituted his whole dinner"—from a letter to Frederik van Eeden,
to help him with preparation for his article on Van Gogh in
De Nieuwe
Gids, Issue 1, December 1890. Quoted in Van Gogh: A
Self-Portrait; Letters Revealing His Life as a Painter,
selected by W. H.
Auden, New York Graphic Society, Greenwich, CT. 1961.
37–39
- Erickson (1998), 23
- Letter 129, April 1879, and Letter 132. Van Gogh lodged in Wasmes at 22 rue de
Wilson with Jean-Baptiste Denis a breeder or grower ('cultivateur',
in the French original) according to Letter 553b. In the recollections of his nephew Jean Richez,
gathered by Wilkie (in the 1970s!), 72–78. Denis and his wife
Esther were running a bakery, and Richez admits that the only
source of his knowledge is Aunt Esther.
- Letter from mother to Theo, 7 August 1879 and Callow, work cited, 72
- There are different views as to this period; Jan Hulsker (1990)
opts for a return to the Borinage and then back to Etten in this
period; Dorn, in: Ges7kó (2006), 48 & note 12 supports the line
taken in this article
- Letter 158. Vincent to Theo, 18 November
1881
- see Jan Hulsker's speech The Borinage Episode and the
Misrepresentation of Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh Symposium,
10–11 May 1990. In Erickson (1998), 67–68
- Letter 134, 20 August 1880 from Cuesmes
- Tralbaut (1981) 67–71
- Erickson (1998), 5
- Letter 153. Vincent to Theo, 3 November
1881
- Letter 161. Vincent to Theo, 23 November
1881
- Letter 164 Vincent to Theo, from Etten c.21
December 1881, describing the visit in more detail
- Letter 193 from Vincent to Theo, The Hague, 14 May 1882
- "Uncle Stricker", as Van Gogh refers to him in letters to
Theo
- Gayford (2006), 130–131
- Letter 166, Vincent to Theo, 29 December
1881
- Tralbaut (1981), 96–103
- Callow (1990), 116; cites the work of Hulsker
- Callow (1990), 123–124
- Callow (1990), 117
- Callow (1990), 116; citing the research of Jan Hulsker; the two dead
children were born in 1874 and 1879.
- Tralbaut (1981), 107
- Callow (1990), 132
- Tralbaut (1981),102-104,112
- Letter 203. Vincent to Theo, 30 May 1882
(postcard written in English)
- Letter 206, Vincent to Theo, 8 or 9th June
1882
- Tralbaut (1981),110
- Arnold, 38
- Tralbaut (1981), 113
- Wilkie, 185
- Tralbaut (1981),101-107
- Tralbaut (1981), 111–122
- Johannes de Looyer, Karel van Engeland, Hendricus Dekkers, and
Piet van Hoorn all as old men recalled being paid 5, 10 or 50 cents
per nest, depending on the type of bird. See Theos' son's note
- Vincent's nephew noted some reminiscences of local residents in 1949,
including the description of the speed of his drawing
- Tralbaut (1981), 107
- Tralbaut (1981), 154
- The Potato Eaters by Vincent van Gogh
Retrieved June 25, 2009
- the girl was Gordina de Groot, who died in 1927; she claimed
the father was not Van Gogh, but a relative.
- Tralbaut (1981), 176
- Hulsker (1980) 196–205
- Tralbaut (1981),123–160
- Callow (1990), 181
- Callow (1990), 184
- Hammacher (1985), 84
- Callow (1990), 253
- Vincent's doctor was Hubertus Amadeus Cavenaile. Wilkie, pages
143-146.
- Arnold, 77. The evidence for syphilis is thin, coming solely
from interviews with the grandson of the doctor; see Tralbaut
(1981), 177–178
- Van der Wolk (1987), 104–105
- Tralbaut (1981), 173
- His 1885 painting Skull of a Skeleton with Burning
Cigarette, is an apt commentary on his smoking
- Tralbaut (1981) 187–192
- Pickvance (1984), 38–39
- Tralbaut (1981), 216
- Pickvance (1986), 62–63
- Tralbaut (1981), 212–213
- "Glossary term: Pointillism", National Gallery London. Retrieved
13 September 2007.
- "Glossary term: Complimentary colours",
National Gallery, London.
Retrieved 13 September 2007.
- D. Druick & P. Zegers, Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio
of the South, Thames & Hudson, 2001. 81; Gayford, (2006),
50
- Letter 510. Vincent to Theo, 15 July 1888.
Letter 544a. Vincent to Paul Gauguin, 3 October
1888
- Pickvance (1984), 41–42: Chronology
- Hughes, 144
- "Letters of Vincent van Gogh". Penguin, 1998. 348. ISBN
0-1404-4674-5
- Nemeczek, Alfred. Van Gogh in Arles. Prestel Verlag,
1999. 59–61. ISBN 3-7913-2230-3
- Gayford (2006), 16
- Callow (1990), 219
- Pickvance (1984), 175–176 and Dorn (1990), passim
- Tralbaut (1981), 266
- Letters of Vincent van Gogh, Penguin edition, 1998 page
348
- Hulsker (1980), 356
- Pickvance (1984), 168–169;206
- Letter 534; Gayford (2006), 18
- Letter 537; Nemeczek, 61
- Pickvance (1984), 234–235
- Gayford (2006), 61
- Pickvance (1984), 195
- According to Doiteau & Leroy, the diagonal cut removed the
lobe and probably a little more.
- However, they continued to correspond and in 1890 Gauguin
proposed they form an artist studio in Antwerp. See Pickvance
(1986), 62
- Pickvance (1986). Chronology, 239–242
- Tralbaut (1981), 265–273
- Hughes (1990), 145
- Callow (1990), 246
- Pickvance (1984), 102–103
- Pickvance (1986), 154–157
- Tralbaut (1981), 286
- Pickvance (1986) 175–177
- Aurier, G. Albert. " The Isolated Ones: Vincent van Gogh", January, 1890.
Reproduced on vggallery.com. Retrieved June 25, 2009
- Rewald (1978), 346–347; 348–350
- Tralbaut (1981), 293
- Pickvance (1986), 272-273
- Letter 648. Vincent to Theo, 10 July 1890
- Letter 629. Vincent to Theo, 30 April 1890
- Wheatfield with Crows, 1890. Van Gogh Museum.
Retrieved on March 28, 2009.
- Hulsker (1980), 480–483. Wheat Field with Crows is
work number 2117 of 2125
- Pickvance (1986), 272–273
- Hulsker (1980), 480–483
- Hayden, Deborah . POX, Genius, Madness and the Mysteries of
Syphilis. Basic Books, 2003. 152. ISBN 0-4650-2881-0
- " La tombe de Vincent Van Gogh - Auvers-sur-Oise,
France". Groundspeak. Retrieved June 23, 2009
- Hulsker (1980)
- Blumer, Dietrich. " "The Illness of Vincent van Gogh". American
Journal of Psychiatry, 2002
- see Life with Absinthe, 1887
- Famous Absinthe Drinkers. Retrieved on August
13, 2009
- Van Heugten (1996), 246–251: Appendix 2—Rejected works
- Artists working in Black & White, i. e. for
illustrated papers like The Graphic or Illustrated
London News were among Van Gogh's favorites. See Pickvance
(1974/75)
- See Dorn, Keyes & alt. (2000)
- See Dorn, Schröder & Sillevis, ed. (1996)
- See Welsh-Ovcharov & Cachin (1988)
- See Dorn (1990)
- Hulsker (1980), 385
- Boime (1989)
- At around 8:00 pm on 16 June 1890, as astronomers determined by
Venus's position in the
painting. Star dates Van Gogh canvas 8 March 2001
- J. L. Aragón, Gerardo G. Naumis, M. Bai, M. Torres, P.K. Maini.
'Kolmogorov scaling in impassioned van Gogh
paintings'. 28 June 2006
- Ives, Stein & alt. (2005), 326–327: cat. no. 115
- Schaefer, von Saint-George & Lewerentz (2008), 105–110
- See Ives, Stein & alt. (2005)
- See Van Heugten (1995)
- Struik, Tineke van der, ed. Casciato Paul. " Hidden Van Gogh revealed in color by
scientists". Reuters, 30 July 2008. Retrieved 3 August
2008.
- " 'Hidden' Van Gogh painting revealed". Delft
University of Technology, 30 July 2008. Retrieved 3 August 2008. A
photograph reproduced here shows the revealed older image under the
new painting.
- Ronald Pickvance, Van Gogh In Saint-Remy and Auvers.
Exhibition catalog. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986.
132–133. ISBN 0-87099-477-8
- Pickvance (1986), 101; 189–191
- Pickvance (1984), 175–176
- Letter 595. Vincent to Theo, 17 or 18 June
1889
- Pickvance (1984), 45–53
- Fell, Derek. "The Impressionist Garden". London: Frances
Lincoln, 1997. 32. ISBN 0-7112-1148-5
- " Letter 573". Vincent to Theo. 22 or 23 January
1889
- Pickvance (1986), 80–81; 184–187
- " Sunflowers 1888". National Gallery,
London. Retrieved September 12, 2009.
- Johnston, Bruce. " Van Gogh's £25m Sunflowers is 'a copy by
Gauguin'". The Daily Telegraph, 26 September
2001. Retrieved on 3 October 2009.
- " Van Gogh 'fake' declared genuine". BBC, 27 March 2002. Retrieved on 3 October
2009.
- Pickvance (1984), 177
- Seeing Feelings. Buffalo Fine Arts Academy.
Retrieved June 26, 2009
- Hulsker (1980), 390–394
- Edwards, Cliff. "Van Gogh and God: a creative spiritual quest".
Loyola University Press, 1989. 115. ISBN 0-8294-0621-2
- Letter 649
- See Dorn, Leeman & alt. (1990)
- Rewald, John. "The posthumous fate of Vincent van Gogh
1890–1970". Museumjournaal, August–September 1970.
Republished in Rewald (1986), 248
- Schama,
Simon. "Wheatfield with Crows". Simon Schama's Power of Art,
2006. Documentary, from 59:20
- "Glossary: Fauvism, Tate. Retrieved June 23, 2009
- Farr, Dennis; Peppiatt, Michael; Yard, Sally. Francis
Bacon: A Retrospective. Harry N Abrams, 1999. 112. ISBN
0-8109-2925-2
- The Art NewspaperRetrieved October 7, 2009
Notes
Bibliography
General and biographical
- Beaujean, Dieter. Vincent van Gogh: Life and Work.
Könemann, 1999. ISBN 3-8290-2938-1.
- Bernard, Bruce (ed.). Vincent by Himself. London:
Time Warner, 2004.
- †Callow, Philip. Vincent van Gogh: A Life,
Ivan R. Dee, 1990. ISBN 1-56663-134-3.
- Erickson, Kathleen Powers. At Eternity's Gate: The
Spiritual Vision of Vincent van Gogh, 1998. ISBN
0-8028-4978-4.
- †Gayford, Martin. "The Yellow House: Van Gogh,
Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles". Penguin, 2006. ISBN
0-6709-1497-5.
- Grossvogel, David I. Behind the Van Gogh Forgeries: A
Memoir by David I. Grossvogel. Authors Choice Press,
2001. ISBN 0-5951-7717-4.
- Hammacher, A.M. Vincent van Gogh: Genius and Disaster.
New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1985. ISBN 0-8109-8067-3.
- Hughes, Robert
Nothing If Not Critical. London: The Harvill Press, 1990.
ISBN 8-8604-6859-4
- Hulsker, Jan. Vincent and Theo
van Gogh; A dual biography. Ann Arbor: Fuller Publications,
1990. ISBN 0-940537-05-2
- Hulsker, Jan. The Complete Van Gogh. Oxford: Phaidon,
1980. ISBN 0-7148-2028-8.
- Lubin, Albert J. Stranger on the earth: A psychological
biography of Vincent van Gogh. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston,
1972. ISBN 0-03-091352-7.
- Pomerans, Arnold. The letters of Vincent van Gogh.
Penguin Classics, 2003. vii. ISBN 0-1404-4674-5
- Rewald, John.
Post-Impressionism: From van Gogh to Gauguin. Secker &
Warburg, 1978. ISBN 0-436-41151-2.
- Rewald, John. Studies in Post-Impressionism, Abrams,
New York 1986. ISBN 0-8109-1632-0.
- Tralbaut, Marc Edo. Vincent van Gogh, le mal aimé.
Edita, Lausanne (French) & Macmillan, London 1969 (English);
reissued by Macmillan, 1974 and by Alpine Fine Art Collections,
1981. ISBN 0-9335-1631-2.
- van Heugten, Sjraar. Van Gogh The Master Draughtsman.
Thames and Hudson, 2005. ISBN 978-0-500-23825-7.
- Walther, Ingo F. & Metzger, Rainer. Van Gogh: the
Complete Paintings. Benedikt Taschen 1997. ISBN
3-8228-8265-8.
Art historical
- Boime, Albert. Vincent van
Gogh: Die Sternennacht - Die Geschichte des Stoffes und der Stoff
der Geschichte, Fischer, Frankfurt/Main 1989 ISBN
3-596-23953-2 (in German) ISBN 3-6342-3015-0 (CD-ROM 1995).
- Cachin, Françoise & Welsh-Ovcharov, Bogomila. Van Gogh
à Paris (exh. cat. Musée d'Orsay, Paris 1988), RMN, Paris 1988
ISBN 2-7118-2159-5.
- Dorn, Roland: Décoration - Vincent van Goghs Werkreihe für
das Gelbe Haus in Arles, Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, Zürich &
New York 1990 ISBN 3-4870-9098-8.
- Dorn, Roland, Leeman, Fred & alt. Vincent van Gogh and
Early Modern Art, 1890–1914 (exh. cat. Essen & Amsterdam
1990) ISBN 3-923641-31-8 (in English) ISBN 3-923641-31-1 (in
German) ISBN 90-6630-247-X (in Dutch)
- Dorn, Roland, Keyes, George S. & alt. Van Gogh Face to
Face — The Portraits (exh. cat. Detroit, Boston &
Philadelphia 2000/01), Thames & Hudson, London & New York
2000. ISBN 0-89558-153-1
- Druick, Douglas, Zegers, Pieter Kort & alt. Van Gogh
and Gauguin — The Studio of the South (exh. cat. Chicago &
Amsterdam 2001/02), Thames & Hudson, London & New York
2001. ISBN 0-5005-1054-7
- Geskó, Judit, ed. Van Gogh in Budapest (exh. cat.
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest 2006/07), Vince Books, Budapest 2006
ISBN 9789637063343 (English edition).ISBN 9-6370-6333-1 (Hungarian
edition).
- Ives, Colta, Stein, Susan Alyson & alt. Vincent van
Gogh — The Drawings (exh. cat. New York 2005), Yale University
Press, New Haven & London 2005 ISBN 0-300-10720-X
- Kōdera, Tsukasa. Vincent van Gogh — Christianity versus
Nature, (European edition). John Benjamins, Amsterdam &
Philadelphia, 1990. ISBN 9-0272-5333-1
- Pickvance, Ronald. English Influences on Vincent van
Gogh (exh. catalogue University of Nottingham & alt.
1974/75). London: Arts Council, 1974.
- Pickvance, Ronald. Van Gogh in Arles (exh. cat.
Metropolitan
Museum of Art
, New York), Abrams, New York 1984. ISBN
0-8709-9375-5
- Pickvance, Ronald. Van Gogh In Saint-Rémy and Auvers
(exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art
, New York), Abrams, New York 1986. ISBN
0-8709-9477-8
- Schaefer, Iris, von Saint-George, Caroline & Lewerentz,
Katja: Painting Light. The hidden techniques of the
Impressionists (exh. cat. Cologne & Florence, 2008),
Skira, Milan 2008. ISBN 8-8613-0609-7
- Van der Wolk, Johannes: De schetsboeken van Vincent van
Gogh, Meulenhoff/Landshoff, Amsterdam 1986 ISBN 9-0290-8154-6;
translated to English: The Seven Sketchbooks of Vincent van
Gogh: a facsimile edition, Harry Abrams Inc, New York,
1987.
- Van Heugten, Sjraar. Radiographic images of Vincent van
Gogh's paintings in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Van
Gogh Museum Journal 1995. 63–85. ISBN 9-0400-9796-8
- Van Heugten, Sjraar. Vincent van Gogh — Drawings, vol.
1, V+K Publishing / Inmerc, Bussum 1996. ISBN
9-0661-1501-7 (Dutch edition).
- Van Uitert, Evert, & alt. Van Gogh in Brabant —
Paintings and drawings from Etten and Nuenen. Exhibition.
catalog 's-Hertogenbosch 1987/78, (English edition). Waanders,
Zwolle 1987. ISBN 9-0-6630-104-X
External links
- Van Gogh at the National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C., United States.
- Photographs of locations in Auvers-sur-Oise
painted by Van Gogh.
- 'Drama at Arles new light on Van Gogh's
self-mutilation' from Apollo, September 2005 by Martin
Bailey.
- Painted with Words: Vincent van Gogh's Letters to Emile
Bernard, New York Times, 9 September 2007
- Painted with Words: Vincent van Gogh's Letters to
Emile Bernard — Facsimiles at The Morgan
Library & Museum

- Art Historians Claim Van Gogh's ear 'Cut Off by
Gauguin' by Angelique Chrisafis, The Guardian, May 4,
2009
- "Treading toward sanctity" by Admiel Kosman,
"Haaretz", November 19, 2009
- Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies.
ULAN Full Record Display for Vincent Van Gogh. Getty Vocabulary
Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.