Van Gogh’s painting career was one of the shortest but most intense in the history of art. He died...
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Van Gogh’s painting career was one of the shortest but most intense in the history of art. He died at 37 years of age, only four years after he discovered
Van Goghs painting career was one of the shortest but most
intense in the history of art. He died at 37 years of age, only
four years after he discovered his style and eight years after he
even began painting. He was brought up in rural Holland as the son
of a Dutch minister and took up painting only after various
failures in his life had driven him to despair. He was deeply
affected by all the poverty around him and wanted to be a preacher.
His personality was not suited to this, but it was a sever blow to
him when his licence to preach was withdrawn.
Slide 3
Art became his mission. First paintings were of peasants and
they show a deep concern and respect for the working life and its
hardships. These early pictures are coarsely rendered and painted
with rugged brushstrokes in dark, earthy tones. He came to Paris in
1885 and saw the final Impressionist show. He met Pissarro, who
explained the Impressionist techniques to him. Later he met
Gauguin, whom he admired intensely and with whom he shared a love
of strong colour and the linear strength of Japanese prints. Under
Gauguin's influence, van Gogh's painting lost its heaviness and
sentimentality. His colours were transformed and his brushstrokes
broken into fragments.
Slide 4
His intense and highly-charged, nervous personality became
restless. We can see this from his self-portraits of the time.
These early portraits were quite Impressionist, in technique, but
in mood they point way to more Expressionist work.
Slide 5
Van Gogh wrote that the best way to improve as a painter was to
study the human figure. He was unable to afford a model, so he
frequently painted self-portraits. There are thirty-five self-
portraits in existence. The artists tortured personality can
clearly be charted in these intensely honest
self-examinations.
Slide 6
Van Gogh moved to the south of France and settled in Arles. He
loved the people, architecture and landscape. Worked at a frenzied
pace, his brushstrokes got bigger, drawings became more confident
and his colours became stronger and brighter. Was supported by his
brother who encouraged him to share his rented house. He encouraged
Gauguin to join him. In this Yellow House he created a series of
paintings of his room, hoping to impress Gaugin. However, Gauguin's
stay was a disaster and the artists fought badly. In one of these
fights, van Gogh attached Gauguin and later that evening cut off a
piece of his own ear. Gauguin left and van Gogh suffered an
increasing amount of breakdowns.
Slide 7
Slide 8
This is painted in the simplest manner, with pure colour and
strongly outlined shapes. He painted two of everything: two
pictures on the wall, two pillows, and two chairs to celebrate the
arrival of a friend at the end of his months of solitude. The
colours are a harmony of yellows, browns and pale blue.
Slide 9
The people around him regarded him as a dangerous lunatic and
he signed himself into a mental asylum at St-Remy, a town near
Arles, in April 1889. He spent one year there but it proved to be
one of the most creative times in his life as an artist. He painted
the garden of the hospital and its flowers: irises and lilacs. He
also painted the nearby landscape, producing some of his most
enduring images, such as Starry Night.
Slide 10
Painted at the St-Remy asylum in June 1889 it shows his private
world of symbols. The sun appears as a friendly element but the
moon and the stars represent the turbulent forces of the night that
threaten the peaceful life of the village. The stars grow ever
larger in the swirling sky and seem destined to crash into the
earth. He includes a cypress tree, characteristic of Provence and
the rocky landscape of the countryside of St-Remy.
Slide 11
Van Gogh later moved back to Paris, where he settled in a caf
at Auvers under the watchful eye of Dr Gachet, a friend and patron
of the arts. He worked as intensely as ever. While his colours were
less brilliant, his canvases were filled with wild swirling lines.
In spite of a black despair that overcame him, his paintings
remained full of vigour, control and careful composition. In his
paintings, yellow cornfields wave and swell under a cloud of crows
and trees weaving dramatically into whirling skies of intense sun,
moon and stars. Eventually van Gogh lost the battle with depression
and on 27 th July 1890 he shot himself in a cornfield while working
at his easel. He died two days later, attended by his brother Theo
and Dr Gachet.
Slide 12
Slide 13
Slide 14
Van Gogh became one of the most admired of all modern masters
but he sold only one painting in his lifetime. His expressionist
technique strongly influenced Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and his
circle of Fauvist painters, as well as the German
Expressionists.