Between 1860 and 1880, when he finally decided to become an artist,
van Gogh had had two unsuitable and unhappy romances and had worked
unsuccessfully as a clerk in a bookstore, an art salesman, and a preacher
in the Borinage (a dreary mining district in Belgium), where he was
dismissed for overzealousness.
He remained in Belgium to study art,
determined to give happiness by creating beauty. The works of his
early Dutch period are somber-toned, sharply lit, genre paintings
of which the most famous is "The Potato Eaters" (1885). In
that year van Gogh went to Antwerp where he discovered the works of
Rubens and purchased many Japanese prints.
In 1886 he went to Paris to join his brother Théo, the manager of
Goupil's gallery. In Paris, van Gogh studied with Cormon, inevitably
met Camille Pissarro,
Claude Monet, and Paul
Gauguin, and began to lighten his very dark palette and to paint
in the short brushstrokes of the Impressionists. His nervous temperament
made him a difficult companion and night-long discussions combined
with painting all day undermined his health. He decided to go south
to Arles where he hoped his friends would join him and help found
a school of art. Gauguin did join him but with disastrous results.
In a fit of epilepsy, van Gogh pursued his friend with an open razor,
was stopped by Gauguin, but ended up cutting his own ear off. Van
Gogh then began to alternate between fits of madness and lucidity
and was sent to the asylum in Saint-Remy for treatment.
In May of 1890, he seemed much better and went to live in Auvers-sur-Oise
under the watchful eye of Dr. Gachet. Two months later he was dead,
having shot himself "for the good of all." During his brief career
he had sold one painting. Van Gogh's finest works were produced in
less than three years in a technique that grew more and more impassioned
in brushstroke, in symbolic and intense color, in surface tension,
and in the movement and vibration of form and line. Van Gogh's inimitable
fusion of form and content is powerful; dramatic, lyrically rhythmic,
imaginative, and emotional, for the artist was completely absorbed
in the effort to explain either his struggle against madness or his
comprehension of the spiritual essence of man and nature.
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