Vincent Van Gogh: Post-Impressionist Artist, Dutch Expressionist

Vincent Van Gogh
Biography And Paintings Of Dutch Post-Impressionist, Early Expressionist Artist
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Van Gogh: Self-Portrait (1888) After
severing his left ear.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)

The Post-Impressionist artist, Vincent Van Gogh is the most famous of all modern Dutch painters. Although he didn't start painting until the final 10 years of his life and failed to sell a single one of his 900 paintings during his lifetime, his oil paintings and drawings are now some of the world's best known and most expensive works of art. His Portrait of Dr. Gachet sold for $82.5 million in 1990, while his Portrait of The Artist Without A Beard sold for $71.5 million in 1998. Many of his pictures are easily recognizable from the broad brushstrokes of thick impasto paint, which Van Gogh applied like a sculptor slapping clay on to a relief. One of the most influential exponents of Expressionism, his masterpieces include: The Potato Eaters, Starry Night and various Sunflowers, as well as a number of self-portraits. He left a vast collection of some 900 paintings and 1100 drawings and sketches, the majority painted in his final years.

The Potato Eaters (1885)

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Van Gogh did not fully blossom as an artist until he went to Paris in 1886. Until then, his chosen colours were gloomy browns, and his paintings were characterized by heavy forms. There was no sign of the vivid colour painting and lighter compositions of his later, more famous pictures. He was strongly influenced by the realism of Millet, whose idealization of the rural poor he admired.

The Potato Eaters (De Aardappeleters), now in the Van Gogh Museum of Amsterdam, is one of the artist's early works, and illustrates his early choice of subjects, colours and overall style before moving to Impressionist Paris. Gloomy, and featuring rough ugly faces, the picture aims to present the reality of rural life.

Vase With Twelve Sunflowers (1888)

During his 2-year stay in Paris (March 1886 to Feb 1888) Impressionism was still high fashion within artistic circles, although Neo-Impressionism - as in the works of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac - was the cutting edge variant. While not agreeing completely with the Impressionist doctrine, Vincent absorbed much of their methods and began to develop his distinctive style of art. His brushwork changed, his palette became colourful, his vision less traditional and his tonalities lighter. This 'post-impressionist' style crystallized by January 1888 in masterpieces like Portrait Of Pere Tanguy and Self-Portrait in Front Of An Easel, as well as in some Impressionist landscapes of the Parisian suburbs. Also during this time he became acquainted with Paul Signac who had begun to adopt the "pointillé" (pointillism) style in which a great many small dots are applied to the canvas, resulting in a mixture of hues, when viewed from a distance. Vincent developed further contacts with other French painters like Gauguin, Bernard, Anquetin, Pissarro and Seurat. In February 1888, after completing more than 200 paintings, Van Gogh left Paris for Arles.

Cafe Terrace at Night (1888)

In his pictures of the next 12 months, his first great period, he tried to convey by emphatic contours and heightened effects of colour the reality of his feelings about the subject. His artistic conception was thus part Expressionist, part Symbolist. Above all it was spontaneous since he worked at great speed and with great intensity - determined to catch a mood while it possessed him.

In Arles he painted numerous pictures including Vase with Twelve Sunflowers, Bridge at Arles, View of Arles with Irises and The Red Vineyard. Sadly, following an argument with the visiting Paul Gauguin, Vincent cut off part of his left ear.

Further symptoms of mental disturbance followed and fearing for his sanity (painting was, he believed his only way of keeping sane) he asked to be temporarily admitted to the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in order to be under medical supervision. He remained there for twelve months.

Portrait of Dr. Gachet
(1st version) (1890)

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During this time he painted Garden Of The Asylum, Cypresses, Olive Trees, Les Alpilles, portraits of doctors and interpretations of paintings by Rembrandt, Delacroix and Millet. Meantime, art critics were at last beginning to praise his work. In May 1890, homesickness drove him to stay with Dr. Paul Gachet, a doctor-artist living in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, who had been recommended to him by Pissarro. Later Van Gogh executed two versions of Portrait Of Dr Gachet both of which highlight the physician's melancholic disposition. Both show Doctor Gachet seated at a table, supporting his head with his right arm, but the colours and the rest of the composition make them easy to distinguish. Both works were completed by Van Gogh during his short stay with Doctor Gachet in Auvers-sur-Oise close to Paris, while undergoing treatment for his mental condition. Gachet was a keen painter himself and Van Gogh was delighted to be able to paint someone who understood his work. Both portraits were executed in June 1890 shortly before Van Gogh's suicide. The first version became famous in May 1990, when it was bought at a Christie's auction in New York for $82.5 million - a world record for a fine art painting at the time. According to subsequent accounts, the picture was resold to a private collector. The second version of the portrait is in the possession of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France.

The Starry Night (1888)

The Starry Night is another of Van Gogh's most famous oil paintings, of a typical moonlit scene in the neighbourhood of the asylum in Saint-Rémy where he stayed for a year during the final period of his life. The Starry Night has been compared to a photograph of a star named V838 Monocerotis, taken by the Hubble telescope in 2004. The clouds of gas surrounding the star resemble the swirling patterns van Gogh used in this painting.

In all, Van Gogh completed 70 oil paintings during his 70 days in Auvers-sur-Oise, including Wheat Field With Crows, with its ominous black birds. Tragically, Dr Gachet's treatment proved unsuccessful. His patient's depression deepened, and on 27 July 1890, at the age of 37, Vincent Van Gogh walked into a field and shot himself in the chest with a revolver.

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Reputation

Art critics regard Vincent Van Gogh as a pioneer of Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on modern art, especially on Fauvism and German Expressionism, and on individual artists like the Norwegian Edvard Munch, among many others.

His intense expressionist figure painting is among the most easily recognizable styles in the history of art. His unique paintings can be seen in the best art museums across the world, notably in the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands and the Musee d'Orsay Paris.

• For more biographies of great painters, see Famous Artists.
• For information about famous sculptors and painters in Ireland, see: Irish Art Encyclopedia.