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Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsənt ˈʋɪləm vɑŋ ˈɣɔx] (About this soundlisten);[note 1] 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Not commercially successful, he struggled with severe depression and poverty, eventually leading to his suicide at age thirty-seven.

Vincent van Gogh
A head and shoulders portrait of a thirty something man, with a red beard, facing to the left
Self-Portrait, 1887, Art Institute of Chicago
Born
Vincent Willem van Gogh
30 March 1853
Zundert, Netherlands
Died
29 July 1890 (aged 37)
Auvers-sur-Oise, France
Cause of death
Suicide by gunshot
Resting place
Cimetière d'Auvers-sur-Oise, France
49°04′31″N 2°10′44″E
Nationality
Dutch
Education
Anton Mauve
Known for
Painting, drawing still life, portraits and landscapes
Notable work
The Potato Eaters (1885)
Sunflowers (1887)
Bedroom in Arles (1888)
The Starry Night (1889)
Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1890)
Wheatfield with Crows (1890)
The Siesta (1890)
Church at Auvers (1890)
Movement
Post-Impressionism
Family
Theodorus van Gogh (brother)
A ceramic vase with sunflowers on a yellow surface against a bright yellow background.
Sunflowers (F.458), repetition of the 4th version (yellow background), August 1889.[1] Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
An expansive painting of a wheatfield, with a footpath going through the centre underneath dark and forbidding skies, through which a flock of black crows fly.
Wheatfield with Crows, 1890. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Born into an upper-middle-class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet, and thoughtful. As a young man, he worked as an art dealer, often traveling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881, having moved back home with his parents. His younger brother Theo supported him financially; the two kept a long correspondence by letter. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers, contain few signs of the vivid colour that distinguished his later work. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed he created a new approach to still lifes and local landscapes. His paintings grew brighter as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the South of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include series of olive trees, wheat fields and sunflowers.

Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor when, in a rage, he severed part of his own left ear. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, he came under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. His depression persisted, and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver, dying from his injuries two days later.

Van Gogh was commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime, and he was considered a madman and a failure. As he only became famous after his suicide, he came to be seen as a misunderstood genius in the public imagination.[6] His reputation grew in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists. He attained widespread critical and commercial success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world's largest collection of his paintings and drawings.


Starry Night Over the Rhone, 1888. Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Van Gogh drew, and painted with watercolours while at school, but only a few examples survive and the authorship of some has been challenged.When he took up art as an adult, he began at an elementary level. In early 1882, his uncle, Cornelis Marinus, owner of a well-known gallery of contemporary art in Amsterdam, asked for drawings of The Hague.