( Zundert , March 30, 1853 – Auvers-sur-Oise , July 29, 1890 ) was a Dutch painter . His work falls under post-impressionism , an art movement that succeeded nineteenth-century impressionism .
Van Gogh's influence on Expressionism , Fauvism and early abstraction was enormous and can be seen in many other aspects of twentieth-century art.
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is dedicated to the work of Van Gogh and his contemporaries. The Kröller-Müller Museum houses the second largest Van Gogh collection in the world.
Van Gogh is seen as one of the greatest painters of the 19th century. However, this recognition came late: although he already had some fame within select art circles in the last years of his life, his work was only noticed by the general public after his death, after which Van Gogh and his work became world famous.
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Van Gogh was born in Zundert in Brabant, a village near the Belgian border, as the son of the preacher Theodorus van Gogh (1822-1885) and Anna Cornelia Carbentus (1819-1907), daughter of a bookbinder from The Hague. Exactly a year before his birth, they had also had a son whom they named Vincent, although he was stillborn. After Vincent, three more sisters and two brothers followed: Anna, Theo , Willemien (Wil) , Elisabeth (Lies) and Cor . The whole family regularly walked in the Zundert area, which laid the foundation for Vincent's love for nature.
Vincent had a romantic character from an early age. He was the only child of the family who took refuge in nature. Vincent often left the parsonage of Zundert alone. He could spend hours in the green nature, wandering along a bank in search of peace and comfort. Here he was constantly collecting insects for his collection and trying to identify plants. He did this to keep himself busy, as he missed human company in his family. [1]
As a child, Vincent was a silent, somewhat introverted boy. From January to October 1861 he attended the village school, but the following year he was taken out of school again and given home education. According to his parents, interacting with the village children at the village school would make him too clumsy. Within the confines of the parsonage he was taught by his father and governess Anna Birnie for the next three years. On October 1, 1864, Vincent went to the boarding school of master Jan Provily in Zevenbergen , where he stayed for two years, until August 1866. He did not like it there, but he did finish primary school. He learned French, English and German there. He drew there occasionally, but there was no evidence of any artistic talent.
On September 15, 1866 he was enrolled at the Rijks HBS Koning Willem II in Tilburg, located in the former palace of King Willem II and the current Palace-Council Hall of Tilburg, where he received drawing lessons from the painter Constant Cornelis Huijsmans (1810-1886). Huijsmans was known as an excellent drawing teacher, yet Vincent later did not say a word about his drawing lessons. Vincent found a boarding house with the Hannik family at Korvel 57. Vincent had a feeling for languages and performed well. In the second year he was taken out of school again; the reason is unknown, possibly his father could not afford school. He returned to the parental home in Zundert. What he did in the following period is not known.
At the age of sixteen, Vincent became the youngest clerk at the Hague branch of the international art dealership Goupil & Cie op de Plaats . This was originally the art dealership of his uncle Vincent van Gogh (often referred to as 'Uncle Cent'), who had subsequently become a partner in the Goupil art dealership in Paris . In September 1872 Vincent began corresponding with his younger brother Theo. He would continue this correspondence throughout his life and it is a source of information about Van Gogh's life and his artistic development. At the intercession of his uncle, Theo also joined Goupil & Cie on January 1, 1873, in the branch in Brussels . In June of that year, Vincent was transferred to the London branch. He lived in London with the landlady Ursula Loyer at 87 Hackford Road. At the beginning of 2019, hidden documents and a prayer book from the period of Van Gogh's stay were found during a renovation of this home. [2]
In London, Vincent visited famous museums in his spare time, such as the British Museum and The National Gallery. There he admired the work of peasant painters such as François Millet and Jules Breton. He also read everything from museum guides and magazines to literature and poetry. He fell in love with Eugénie Loyer, his landlady's daughter, but she was already engaged to another boarder. Vincent went through a depressive period.
In 1873 he worked for a short time at the head office in Paris, and then again at the branch in London. In 1874, Vincent worked again for a short time at the head office. He visited museums and art galleries in Paris and became acquainted with the poetic peasant scenes of Jean-François Millet and the realistic rural scenes of Jules Breton . His depression persisted, his interest in the art trade waned and he was fired on April 1, 1876. His uncle Vincent was deeply disappointed in his cousin and withdrew his hands from him. Vincent became a teacher in Ramsgate and then a boarding school teacher and assistant minister to a Methodist minister in Isleworth . On November 4 he preached his first sermon. Faith became increasingly important to Vincent; he actually aspired to a job as a preacher and was hired as an assistant at the Congregational Church of Turnham Green, where he started teaching a Sunday school. Although his attention to religious and spiritual issues dominates during this period, he also remains interested in painting. He visits Hampton Court to admire the paintings of Hans Holbein , Rembrandt and the Italians from the Renaissance in the royal collections.
During a Christmas holiday in Etten, it was decided that this work in England offered too little future prospects. In January 1877 he started as a salesman in a bookstore in Dordrecht . This only lasted a short time, and in May he moved to Amsterdam to prepare for the state examination , which would give him access to the study of theology . Between May 1877 and July 1878 he stayed in the Poortgebouw on theMarineterrein with his uncle Johannes van Gogh , who was commander of the Amsterdam naval yard there. [3] Vincent dropped out in 1878 without taking the state exam, partly due to his disinterest in the Latin and Greek languages. In addition, the purely theoretical dimension to which such a study forced him was not satisfactory. He followed a short training at the Flemish Training School for Protestant Evangelists in Laeken near Brussels.
SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA
