Creative Suite

Van Gogh: Biography As Artist

May 22nd, 2008

By 1880, Van Gogh started taking an earnest interest in art upon the suggestion of his brother Theo. This led him to attend the Royal Academy of Art where he learned the basics of anatomy as well as the standard rules of modeling and perspective. By 1881, Van Gogh went back living with his parents in Etten while continuing on his new craft in drawing. He initially used neighbors as his frequent drawing subjects.But the year did not go by without the tension also coming between Van Gogh and his father. A quarrel that Van Gogh had with an uncle caused by his insistent but futile pursuit of marrying an older widowed cousin led to renewed tensions with his father. It became so serious and violent that Van Gogh immediately left for The Hague.

While at The Hague during 1882, Van Gogh was encouraged by his cousin in law Anton Mauve to pursue painting. An art dealer uncle commissioned Van Gogh to do 20 ink drawings of the city after which he began to dabble in oil painting. Out of loneliness, Van Gogh went back to living with his parents who were by then situated in Nuenen, North Brabant in 1883.

While in Nuenen, Van Gogh devoted himself to drawing. In March of 1885, Van Gogh’s father died of a stroke and the artist grieved deeply. It was also during this time that his works began to be noticed in Paris. This led him to do what is considered his first major work, The Potato Eaters. His artwork during his stay at Nuenen did not yet display the vivid coloration that is distinct of his best known works later on. His stay at Nuenen produced 200 oil paintings as well as numerous drawings and watercolors.

From 1885 to 1886, Van Gogh found himself in Antwerp where he continued to develop and improve his painting technique. Van Gogh lived poorly and spent what money he had on painting materials. This led him to suffer from poor health. During his stay at Antwerp, Van Gogh was able to look at the works of Peter Paul Rubens, influencing him to broaden his use of color from earthly tones to incorporating carmine, cobalt and emerald green.

Sometime in 1886, Van Gogh moved to Paris where he studied at Fernand Cormon’s studio. It was during this time that Van Gogh was able to study more about the Impressionist works of artists such as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. In 1887, Van Gogh began to paint using some elements of pointillism. Over the course of his stay in Paris, which lasted until 1887, Van Gogh was able to create over 200 paintings and staged an exhibition of his work along with other artist friends at the Restaurant du Chalet in Montmarte.

Tired of the fast paced life in Paris, Van Gogh decided to move to Arles, France on February of 1888 where he stayed ad a nearby hotel and then transferred to the Yellow House Which became his studio. It was here that Van Gogh painted sunflowers as subjects. It was here that Van Gogh also increasingly displayed serious mental problems that led him to cut his own left ear lobe over the growing tension he had with fellow artist and friend Paul Gauguin. This event led Gauguin to separate himself from Van Gogh and never saw him again. Van Gogh was hospitalized due to his critical mental state during this time. It was also during this time that Van Gogh began having hallucinations and become paranoid that he was being poisoned.

His mental state became all the more serious that the townspeople in Arles began to call him the “Redheaded Madman” (fou roux). In 1889, due to his deteriorating mental state, Van Gogh was accompanied by a carer to Saint Remy where he committed himself to a mental institution. Saint Remy was over a mile away from the town and is an area covered by cornfield, vineyards and trees. The garden and the clinic became Van Gogh’s subjects for his subsequent painting. It was also in Saint Remy that Van Gogh did one of his best known paintings, The Starry Night, which was characterized by swirls. Limited access to the outside world led Van Gogh to remake works from the memory of his past.

In May 1990, Van Gogh left the clinic and went instead to make visits to Dr. Paul Gatchet, a physician who treated other artists previously. Van Gogh was able to do two oil paintings of the doctor and an etching. But during this time, Van Gogh’s bout with depression severely deepened. On July 27, 1890, Van Gogh walked into the fields and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. Not knowing that he was fatally wounded, he still made it back into his rented room at the Ravoux inn where he died in his bed two days later due to complications of the self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Entry Filed under: Artists