Vincent Van Gogh: The Consummate Artist
By Melissa Montgomery

The Potato Eaters by Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was born on March 30 1853. He was born to a preacher father and a mother who had given birth to a still born son, also named Vincent exactly one year prior to his birth date. There is not much information about Vincent van Gogh’s early years except that he lived in the town of Groot Zundurt in the Netherlands and that he left school abruptly at the age of 15.

Vincent decided to become a preacher like his after but was soon dismissed from his post for being too evangelical. In 1869, Vincent took at job as an art dealer with Groupil & Cie- both his uncles were art dealers there- as was his brother Theo. In 1873, Vincent was transferred to London England and quickly became fascinated with the breadth of cultural life there- he visited many museums and galleries and read many great works of English Literature.

Vincent spent two years in London and then was transferred to Paris. By this time he was no longer interested in being an art dealer and left his post with Groupil & Cie. Vincent then returned to England and became a teacher at a boys’ school and a serious student of the bible. He was planning on returning to the clergy.

After returning to study in the Netherlands, Vincent failed his qualifying exams and was assigned the job of preaching to the poor in the mining district of the Borinange in Belgium. It was this experience that was to change Vincent and inform what was to become his final brilliant career.

It was in 1880, 10 years before his death, Vincent van Gogh decided to become a painter.
The Dutch period of his work, 1880-85, consisted of dark and impasto (when paint is thick and often mixed directly on the canvas) studies of the disenfranchised people of society. The most famous of these is The Potato Eaters. The poverty and desperation Van Gogh was experiencing as an artist well as the peasants’ horrible living conditions informed his painting.

The dramatic elements of his tragic personal life also informed Vincent’s paintings. Fellow artists and women rejected him- they didn’t like his overwrought emotional communication skills and could not relate to his intensity.

In 1886, after many heartaches and failed romances, Vincent moved to Paris to live with his beloved brother Theo. While living there he met Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec, and Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, known as the neo-impressionists.

Under the influences of the Seurat and Signac- he briefly adopted the new pointillist technique (dots of colour painted closely together to create a big image when viewed far away) manner of painting and used a brighter palette of colour. An example of this technique is depicted in 1887’s Self Portrait.

In 1888, in ill health, Vincent took a house in Arles, France. There, he was joined by his friend Paul Gauguin. They had previously got on well but they began to argue while living together and their friendship deteriorated rapidly. During this period Vincent had his first attack of dementia. He cut off a portion of his ear and presented it to a woman at a local brothel. Gauguin returned to Paris and never saw Vincent again. Vincent was then confined to the Arles hospital, then to the asylum at St. Remy. It was there he painted one of his most famous paintings, Starry Night. During the remaining two years of his life, he was lucid for long intervals and continued to paint pictures of extraordinary beauty and intensity. But in 1890 despairing of his cure from mental illness, he shot himself in the chest. The doctor summoned his brother Theo from Paris to be by his side while Vincent died slowly from a self- inflicted gunshot wound.

Although Vincent never made any money from his paintings, today his work sells for tens of millions of dollars. It is ironic that Vincent knew hardship and heartbreak during his life but became very successful after his death. Such is the reality for many great artists.

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