Vincent Willem van Gogh

Dutch artist

She loves to paint landscapes, inanimate things and portraits

studied at the Academy of Arts in Brussels

born in 1853 30 march

In just over ten years, he created more than 2,100 works, including about 870 oil paintings. Among them are portraits, self-portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and panels depicting olive trees, cypresses, wheat fields, and sunflowers.

Born in the south of the Netherlands, near the Belgian border, Vincent's father was Theodorus van Gogh, born on 8 February 1822, a pastor of the Reformed Church, and his mother was Anna Cornelia Carbentus, the daughter of a bookbinder and bookseller from The Hague.

Vincent was remembered by his family as a wayward, difficult and boring child with "strange manners", for which he was often punished. According to the governess, there was something unusual about him that distinguished him from the others: of all the children, Vincent was the least pleasant to her, and she did not believe that anything worthwhile could come of him. Outside the family, on the contrary, Vincent was quiet, serious, thoughtful and almost never played with other children. In the eyes of his fellow villagers, he was a good-natured, friendly, considerate, compassionate, sweet and modest child.

Through daily contact with works of art, Vincent began to understand and appreciate painting. In addition, he visited the city's museums and galleries, admiring the works of Jean-François Millet and Jules Breton

Vincent was not in love with Eugenia at all, but with a German woman named Caroline Haanebieck. What really happened remains unknown. The rejection of his beloved shocked and disappointed the future artist; gradually he lost interest in his work and began to turn to the Bible.

Things were going worse and worse for him, and in May 1875 he was transferred back to Paris, where he attended exhibitions at the Salon and the Louvre and eventually began to try his hand at painting. Gradually, this occupation began to take up more of his time, and Vincent finally cooled off from work, deciding for himself that “art has no worse enemies than art dealers.”

Escaping from the depression and melancholy caused by the events in Paturage, Van Gogh turned to painting again, seriously thought about studying and in 1880, with the support of his brother Theo, he left for Brussels, where he began attending classes at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. However, a year later, Vincent dropped out of school and returned to his parents. During this period of his life, he believed that it was not necessary for an artist to have talent, the main thing was to work hard and long, so he continued his studies on his own.

As a result, he was asked to leave. Van Gogh, having experienced a new shock and deciding to give up forever on attempts to arrange his personal life, went to The Hague, where he immersed himself in painting and took lessons from a distant relative, a representative of the Hague school of painting, Anton Mauve. Vincent worked a lot, observed city life, especially in poor neighborhoods. Experimenting with color, he mixed different techniques on one canvas - chalk, pen, sepia, watercolor

In The Hague, the artist tried to start a family. This time, his chosen one was a pregnant street woman named Christine, whom Vincent met right on the street and, moved by sympathy for her situation, offered to move in with him and her children. This act finally quarreled the artist with his friends and relatives, but Vincent himself was happy: he had a model. However, Christine turned out to have a difficult character, and soon Van Gogh's family life turned into a nightmare. Very soon they broke up.

Vincent speaks English!