1. BORN March 30, 1853, Zundert, Neth.DIED July 29, 1890,
Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris France)Dutch painter. At 16 he was
apprenticed to art dealers in The Hague, and he worked in
theirLondon and Paris branches (1873 76).After brief attempts at
missionary work and theology, he studied drawing at the Brussels
Academy;late in 1881 he settled at The Hague to work with a Dutch
landscape painter, Anton Mauve.During his early years he painted
three types of subjects still life
2. landscape,and figure all interrelated by their reference to
the daily life of peasants (e.g., The Potato Eaters, 1885)
3. . After briefly studying at the Antwerp Academy, in 1886 he
left to join his brother Theo, an artdealer, in Paris. There he met
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, and others involved
inImpressionism and Post-Impressionism.By the summer of 1887 he was
painting in pure colours and using broken brushwork that was
attimes pointillistic, and by the beginning of 1888 his
Post-Impressionist style had crystallized. He left Paris in
February 1888 for Arles, in southeastern France. The pictures he
created over thefollowing 12 months depicting blossoming fruit
trees,views of the town and surroundings
4. , self-portraits, portraits of Roulin the postman and other
friends,interiors and exteriors of the house
5. ,sunflowers and landscapesmarked his first great period.
Gauguin arrived in October 1888, and for two months he and van Gogh
worked together; but,while each influenced the other to some
extent, their relations rapidly deteriorated.On Christmas Eve 1888,
physically and emotionally exhausted, van Gogh snapped under
thestrain; after arguing with Gauguin, he cut off the lower half of
his own left ear. At the end of April 1889, van Gogh entered an
asylum but continued to paint; during his 12-month stay he
completed 150 paintings and drawings. A move to Auvers-sur-Oise in
1890 wasfollowed by another burst of activity, but he soon suffered
a relapse and died that July of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His
10-year artistic career produced more than 800 paintings and
700drawings, of which he sold only one in his lifetime. His work
had a powerful influence on thedevelopment of modern painting, and
he is considered the greatest Dutch painter sinceRembrandt.