Vincent van Gogh [antikvár]

Vincent van Gogh 1853-1890 'We cannot always say what it is that surrounds us, imprisons us, ancl seems to bury us; and yet we do feel these indefinable barriers, these railings, even walls. Throughout his life Vincent van Gogh tried to escape from this sense of imprisonment through his lőve for the world and mankind. Yet his work as a missionary, his efforts to help people, and his devotion to painting made overwhelming demands on him, which caused him much suffering and eventually led to his death. Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, at Groot-Zundert, a village in Dutch Brabant. His father, a Lutheran minister, wanted him to be an art dealer, so at the age of sixteen he started work at the Goupil Galleries, which had been founded by an uncle. He was employed at their branch office in The Hague for three years between 1870 and 1873, then at the more important London branch for two years, finally graduating to their main office in Paris in 1875. Although he spent many hours in museums and art galleries studying the works of the great painters, he was totally uninterested in his job as an art dealer. Acting on a sudden impulse, and even though he did not know what else he wanted to do, he left the gallery and returned home early in 1876. There he read a great deal, made a number of sketches, and went through periods of intense religious fervour. He then began to wander restlessly from place to place, going first to Ramsgate to teach languages, then to a curacy at Isleworth, to Dordrecht, where he worked in a bookshop; to Amsterdam, where he studied theology; and on to Brussels, where he followed a course on preaching. In january, 1879, he was appointed as a missionary to the Borinage, a mining district in Belgium. During his stay there he found out, as he said himself what it was to be wretched. He insisted on sharing the hardships and poverty of the miners, ancl often gave them all he had. It was a period in which he wore himself out, mentally and physically, and he never entirely recovered his health. Du ring the summer ofl880, while he was still working in the Borinage, Van Gogh decid ed that the best thing he could do with his life would be to devote it to painting. He explainecl how he felt to his brother, Theo, who from then on helped him unstintingly in every way he could. Van Gogh's training as an artist was as erratic as his earlier efforts to be a missionary. After leaving the Borinage, where he had filled his notebooks with drawings of the miners and their way of life, he went first to Brussels, in 1880, to study anatomy and perspective, and then to Etten, where his family had recently gone to live. Not only did he have to put up with their disapproval of his artistic ambitions, but he alsó experienced his second unhappy love affair, this time with a widowed cousin who was staying there. (The first had taken place during his stay in London in 1874.) He spent the winter of 1881 at The Hague, where he began to paint for the first time, under the supervision of his cousin, Anton Mauve. He was then sharing what little he had to live on with Christine, a prostitute whom he left only when forced by his lack of money tojoin his family, who were then at Nuenen. He stayecl for about two years at Nuenen, working extremely hard; during this time he was deeply affected by the attempt of Margót Begemann, a neighbour, to commit suicide after her family had refused to allow her to marry him. After the sudden death of his father, Van Gogh again needed money and went first to Antwerp in the winter of 1885 and then, inevitably, to Theo in Paris, where he spent the next two years. During this time he further developed his technique and laid the founclations for the great paintings which were to follow. He attencled the art school run by Cormon, where he became acquainted with ToulouseLautrec, Bemard, and other young painters. He took part in the lively arguments about the further development of the Impressionist style, and met such artists as Pissarro, Seurat, Signac, ancl Gauguin, to the last of whom he grew very attachecl. After Van Gogh had gone to Arles to rest, he invited Gauguin to jóin him there. Gauguin came in October, 1888, and for the next two months the two painters worked extremely well together. They were, however, utterly different in character, and their endless arguments eventually took a terrible toll on Van Gogh. On December24, seized by a violent fit of madness, he tried at least twice to attack Gauguin with a razor blade; this episode ended in his cutting off a piece of his own ear in order to punish himself. It was the first of the attacks of insanity that eventually caused his death. In May, 1889, he entered the mentái asylum at Saint-Remy-de-Provence in order to be under closer supervision, but his health became increasingly unstable. After a year there he went to Auvers-sur-Oise,whereDoctorGachet (Plate XVI), a supporter and pioneer collector of the Impressionists works, had agreed to look after him. On his way there he was able to stay for a short time with Theo in Paris. Although things seemed to be going better for him, only two months after his arrival at Auvers, he succumbed to a particularly severe attack of madness and shot himself. He died two days later on July 29, 1890, with Theo and his friend Gachet by his side.