Who was Vincent van Gogh? The man who was searching for perhaps the most significant philosophical question – who am I? He spent his entire life trying to get to know himself, ending his life tragically, yet in a grand style – completely VanGoghian. Every atom in his body was dedicated to art. Although a painter susceptible to seeing the world with the eye of aesthetics – he sought for a soul and nobility in everything.
Paintings And The Life Between Ingenuity And Madness
Vincent van Gogh was a post-impressionist painter of Dutch descent. The famed famous painter was one of the three greatest painters of his time and one of the most respected artists in general. However, all these qualities were attributed to him many years after his death. In his lifetime, Van Gogh did not feel the tinge of honor that glory brings with it. He was unknown, unacknowledged, and while alive he managed to sell only one painting.
Due to his difficult childhood and many psychological problems, Van Gogh has been experiencing misery and severe states of depression and mental distress throughout his life. Below, we will try to expose you to the life tragedy of this genius. You will find out what childhood and life one of the most respected artists had. We will also reveal when did he started to paint – as well as details of some of his most prominent paintings.
Childhood – A Difficult Period Of An Artist’s Life
Vincent van Gogh grew up in a family of Calvinist persuasions. This strict Christian doctrine, in which the believer must conform to the very rigid and almost inhumane principles of faith – considers that a child when born takes the sins of Adam and that he is cursed from the day of birth. That is exactly how little Vincent van Gogh felt.
Exactly one year before the birth of the famous artist, his brother, who bore the same name as Van Gogh, died. That’s just one of the reasons why Vincent felt like he was living someone else’s life, like a copy of his brother with a predetermined task – to make up for the void his parents felt by losing their first son.
Living In The Shadow Of The Deceased Brother
What undoubtedly greatly influenced his childhood and later the life of this painter is the fact that his brother was buried near the family house where he grew up, and Van Gogh had to walk every day past the grave on which his name was engraved. All this had devastating consequences for the young Van Gogh. Vincent merely wanted others to see him and notice him. He longed to be like everyone else, and his ambitions were discarded – because they did not allow him the ideals he aspired to. If we talk about him as a painter – all these things probably awakened his desire to create art.
Longing For Love
All his life, Van Gogh has been searching for the person he would love. He has been searching for the person to whom he would devote himself – but he was not lucky to find her. The women he would fall in love with were cruelly rejected and abandoned him, which left a strong mark on the artist’s life. The same thing happened to him with friends whom he lived – he was abandoned and left to live independently from the day he was born. It was a great burden that Van Gogh had carried all his life.
Unfortunately, this is the story of many other famous artists of the past, such as Frida Kahlo – an artist of endless inspiration. In his solitude, he tried to devote himself to God, as his father and grandfather did – but found no comfort in faith. Since he couldn’t find beauty in life anymore – he created his own world of beauty.
Painting – Beginnings And The Fatal Ending
Vincent van Gogh started painting as a young man. He was not academically educated, but this could not be seen in his works. In his seventeen years, he has already painted about two thousand drawings and paintings that gained their popularity only after the artist’s death. Van Gogh was a painter who was also engaged in drawing and painting.
He began his serious drawing activity at the age of 27, while at the age of 28 he started painting. When he was a child, he started painting with watercolors at school, and only a small number of his works have been preserved from that period.
Despite his illness, Van Gogh found the beauty of life in painting the landscapes, the characters of the Arlegians he lived with, the still life and the motives with flowers. Although he left behind an impressive number of paintings – the last years of his life, Van Gogh spent in misery and poverty. He was left broken by the onset of epilepsy, alcohol, and depression.
The Events That Brought Him To A Tragic End
Due to the bite of conscience with which he lived throughout his life, the famous artist was prone to self-punishment. What many people know is the fact that this world-renowned painter cut his own ear, which makes him recognizable today. This breakdown came after a conflict with a friend – the French painter Paul Gauguin, who was Van Gogh’s rule model, and with whom he lived and made him part of his life.
After this self-aggressive act, the painter was taken to the sanatorium for mental treatment. It was believed that his so-called suicidal tendencies depicted his severe mental state. Still, that turned out to be true. This famous painter took his own life at the age of 37, shooting himself in a chest with a borrowed gun, just below the tree he painted. It is thought that the trigger for this fatal event was probably the current discontent with the painting.
Paintings That Hide All The Anguish, But Also The Great Artist
When it comes to Van Gogh, the creativity he left behind does not leave many people indifferent. His paintings are very recognizable around the world. During his creative period, he copied a lot of Gauguin and Lautrec. He painted many self-portraits throughout his life and is considered to be a prolific self-portraitist who painted himself more than 43 times between 1886 and 1889.
During the last weeks of his life, he painted many paintings, but none of them were self-portraits, but only nature. According to Meisterdrucke, many of his paintings today are considered the most expensive pieces ever sold. Below, get acquainted with the details of some of the most prominent works of one of the most recognized authors of the art scene.
True Inspiration
He was a fighter and aspired to his perfection. He painted with great enthusiasm and all his works pervade the love of nature. He was the one who saw the importance and untouchability of nature that gave him eternal inspiration. Besides grain classes, cypresses, irises and golden sunflowers – he also made portraits. He chose the models carefully and the hard-working people occupied his attention. He painted miners, harvesters, labourers, etc. Those were skinny and weak people – but tough at the same time. They had exhausted faces and on their large hands, one could see the decades of hard work. These people had stories of their own.
The Potato Eaters
Particularly interesting is the picture – The Potato Eaters.
With such skill, Vincent was able to capture that intimate, family warmth of a modest peasant home. Families gathered for lunch are the fruits of their daily work. The whole picture is in the color and shades of the soil and the potatoes in tones of warm brown and yellow. Even the peasants’ faces are rough and furrowed like overripe potatoes, but that’s the essence this painting gives. They are modest but happy together.
Starry Night – Van Gogh’s Most Famous Masterpiece
Perhaps the most significant of Vincent’s work – Starry Night, best captures the soul of this artist. He watched nature at all times of the day – but the night was new to him. While most of the inhabitants slept, he would look for a suitable area for his canvas, painting in the complete peace that only night can provide. All his artistic magnificence was accumulated in simplicity. He had nature in front of him and the stars – and he constructed additional lighting himself by hooking candles to his hat.
Although this painting was made in the silence of the night – it seems as if it had its own tune that accompanies the broad strokes of the brush. A starry night is not motionless and not even dark painting. It is filled with the life that Vincent breathed into her. In the foreground, there is a curved cypress, and under these stars that are hypnotically twisting and playing lies a dormant town. It’s all made in the finest color shades of blue and yellow.
Wheatfield With Crows – The Last Of Van Gogh
The last image of our red-bearded loner who slowly but surely drowned in his melancholy is – Wheatfield With Crows. And here we can notice the dark side of this artist. Although he has created such paintings throughout his life that is rich in yellow – a color that awakens happiness and contentment – this picture is different.
There is this golden wheat here too – but the sky here is dark. The sky is trying to alert us to something clearly visible in black color spreads and disturbed crows who are messengers of bad news. They announce a storm that will end fatally.
Gone Long Before He Felt His Glory
Never understood in the eternal storms of his thoughts – this dreamer and, above all, the good man, ends his difficult life by burning his hand, cutting off his ear, and finally with a bullet in his stomach. As Picasso would’ve said – “All art begins with destruction”.
