A
Biographical Note on Vincent Van Gogh

incent-Willem Van Gogh
was born on March 30, 1853, in the parsonage at Groot Zundert in North
Brabant. His father, Theodorus Van Gogh, was pastor of the parish; his
mother, Anna Cornelia Carbentus, wrote, drew, and painted. A year earlier,
to the day, the couple had delivered another son, also named Vincent-Willem,
who died at birth. They had four subsequent children, Anna (1855), Theo
(1857), Elizabeth (1859), and Cornelius (1867). Essentially a loner, Vincent
spent much of his boyhood wandering the countryside around the parsonage.
Perhaps encouraged by his mother, he also practiced drawing and, on the
evidence of a few surviving pieces from this time, became a fair copyist
and draftsman. In 1864 Vincent attended boarding school in nearby Zevenbergen;
two years later he moved to a boarding school in Tilburg which he attended
for another two years.
At sixteen, he had
to decide upon a career; for the Van Goghs, that meant either the ministry
or art. He chose art and went to The Hague where he commenced an apprenticeship
in a branch office of Goupil & Co., an art house which his uncle had founded.
In 1873 Vincent was transferred to the London branch of the firm, and
Theo began work in the Brussels branch. While in London, Vincent's love
for Ursula Loyer, his landlady's daughter, was spurned. Following his
rejection, he sought consolation in religion. In October 1874 Vincent
was transferred to the Paris office, then back to London in December.
The following May he returned to Paris where he argued with his employers,
a period of conflict leading to his dismissal from the firm in April 1875.
Vincent returned to
London and assumed the post of assistant teacher at Ramsgate until June
when he took the same post at a school in Isleworth. In November, he delivered
his first sermon in a local Methodist church. He left England to visit
his parents for Christmas in Etten, near Zundert, where they had moved.
He remained in Holland, taking a position in a bookstore in Dordrecht
where he worked until May 1877, when he moved to Amsterdam to begin studying
for the entrance examinations to attend Theological School. After fifteen
months, he abandoned his studies and entered an Evangelical school in
Brussels, which he left after three months.
In December 1878 Vincent
moved to the Borinage, a poor mining district in South Belgium, where
he preached and worked, at his own expense. The next January, he received
a six-month nomination to work as a lay preacher in Wasmes. The Church
Council dismissed him in July for his immoderate dedication to his calling;
following a damp-fire explosion in one of the mines, Vincent devoted himself
to the striking miners, giving them the little money he had and even tearing
the shirt off his back to make bandages for those wounded in the explosion.
He stayed in the Borinage, moving to nearby Cuesmes. At this time he discovered
his vocation as an artist and began drawing the miners among whom he had
worked and who continued to house and feed him.
In October 1880, Vincent
moved to Brussels where he studied anatomy and perspective at the Royal
Academy of fine arts; Theo sent the first of the support payments, which
continued until the end of Vincent's life. The following April Vincent
returned to Etten and lived with his parents. His widowed cousin, Kee
Vos-Stricher, rejected his courtship. At the end of the year, after a
quarrel with his father on Christmas day, he moved to The Hague and took
lessons from his cousin Anton Mauve, a successful painter of The Hague
School. After only a few weeks, he took in Clasina Maria Hoornik-Sien,
as he called her-a pregnant prostitute, and her daughter. His attachment
to Sien aggravated his relations with both his family and Mauve, and Mauve
soon refused to work with him. In June Vincent entered the hospital with
gonorrhea, probably contracted from Sien. Vincent remained in The Hague
until September 1883 when, voicing the family's concerns, Theo pressured
him to leave Sien. Vincent yielded to Theo, although Sien was pregnant
again, because she had resumed her old routines, and he was unsure the
child was his. After three months in Drenthe, an isolated region in Northern
Holland, he returned to live with his parents, now settled at a parsonage
in Neunen, still in Brabant.
During the almost
two years Vincent stayed at Neunen, he pursued his art, producing drawings
and paintings of local life, among them the renowned "Potato Eaters."
Early in his stay, he nursed his mother through a broken leg. His brief
affair with a neighbor, Margot Begemann, provoked his family's disapproval
and ended with her attempted suicide. During March of his second year,
his father died. In November 1885 he left Neunen for Antwerp, where, the
next January, he entered the Academy of Art; several weeks later, after
collapsing from physical strain and mental exhaustion, he preemptorily
quit Antwerp and moved to Paris, lodging with Theo.
Vincent spent another
two years in Paris, from February 1886 until February 1888. He joined
the Atelier Cormon in March of his first spring and soon met many of the
painters working in Paris, including Toulouse-Lautrec, Bernard, Guillamin,
Gauguin, Pissaro, Signac, and Degas, with whom he worked and exhibited.
While in Paris, he also discovered Japanese art, which exerted a strong
influence on his work. His stay with Theo was often turbulent, but, since
we owe much of our knowledge of Vincent's biography to his packed and
frequent letters to Theo, few details from this germinal period survive.
By February 1888 he felt a need to leave Paris; he could learn little
more, and he was lured by the dream of light that had brought him south
from Neunen.
The last two and a
half years of Vincent's life are his most productive and certainly rank
among the most productive periods of any painter's career; between February
1888, when he arrived in Arles, and his death in July 1890 in Auvers,
he painted some 400 canvases and made more than 200 drawings and watercolors.
While in Arles, he nursed a vision of a colony of painters living and
working together in the Midi-the Mediterranean region around Arles. The
closest he came to realizing his dream was Gauguin's brief and disastrous
stay with him in Vincent's "Yellow House" from October to December of
his first year, which culminated in Vincent severing his earlobe and his
subsequent hospitalization. During this time, Vincent made several close
friendships among the residents of Arles, including Lt. Milliet, a soldier
stationed in the garrison, and Joseph Roulin, a postman; also Theo announced
his engagement to and married Johanna Bonger. After his first episode,
Vincent's second spring in Arles found him confined twice more, the second
time forcibly at the request of the citizens. Following his third internment,
Vincent left Arles and voluntarily committed himself to the asylum in
the Cloisters of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in nearby Saint-Remy.
Vincent remained a
year in Saint-Remy. While his illness--perhaps epilepsy complicated by
syphilis, glaucoma, digitalis poisoning, or absinthe, or a form of schizophrenia--forced
Vincent into periods of confinement, he also spent much of his time wandering
the asylum grounds and even beyond, in the care of an attendant. In January
1890 Theo and Johanna delivered a son, christened Vincent-Willem. Vincent
suffered his seventh crisis from mid-February until mid-April. Also in
February, his paintings were exhibited in Brussels, and in March he sold
"The Red Vineyard" for 400 francs, the only painting sold during his life.
Dissatisfied and increasingly
depressed by the asylum, Vincent and Theo determined to move him to Auvers,
a small village north of Paris, where Dr. Gachet, an amateur painter recommended
by Pissaro, would care for him. Vincent left Saint-Remy in May and spent
three days in Paris with Theo, Johanna, and his nephew before continuing
to Auvers. His condition showed no improvement; he found himself at odds
with Dr. Gachet and alienated from the villagers. On July 27, 1890, he
shot himself and died two days later. Theo died on January 25, 1891.
Allen
Hoey

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