Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh (Groot-Zundert, Holland 1853 - Auvers-sur-Oise, France 1890) Dutch Post-Impressionist painter. In Paris he met Camille Pissarro, Monet, and Paul Gauguin, the latter shared living quarters with van Gogh in Arles for a scant nine weeks until the quarrels between the two impetuous painters spelled the end of their close collaboration.

“

I can’t change the fact that my paintings don't sell. But the time will come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture

”

Van Gogh is noted for his thick applications of paint, his "Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers" is quite notable for his use of paint straight from the tube with minor brush work to smooth the edges of the dollops of medium. More brilliant still was the use of this technique to create texture in a supposedly two dimensional medium, so that the paintings were part painting and part sculpture as in "Starry Night".

Van Gogh suffered from depression and paranoia and was thus likely to have been a practicing homosexual, not uncommon in the debauched Paris of the 19th century.

Works

The works of his early Dutch period are somber-toned, genre paintings of which the most famous is "The Potato Eaters". View of Paris from Montmartre, Paris Seen from Vincent's Room in the Rue Lepic, Terrace of the Cafè "La Guinguuette" and others are based on a typical Impressionist interpretation. Vincent van Gogh painted several pictures using the techniques of Pointillism, e. g. The Vase with Daisies and Anemones. Among his last works are religious works after Delacroix, Pietà and Good Samaritan, the masterpiece The Church in Auvers, multiple landscapes and portraits.