About Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh's works are perhaps better known generally than those of any other painter. His brief, turbulent, and tragic life is thought to epitomize the mad genius legend.

During his lifetime, Van Gogh's work was represented in two very small exhibitions and two larger ones. Only one of Van Gogh's paintings was sold while he lived. The great majority of the works by which he is remembered were produced in 29 months of frenzied activity and intermittent bouts with epileptoid seizures and profound despair that finally ended in suicide. In his grim struggle Vincent had one constant ally and support, his younger brother Théo, to whom he wrote revealing and extraordinarily beautiful letters detailing his conflicts and aspirations. As a youth Van Gogh worked for a picture dealer, antagonizing customers until he was dismissed. Compulsively humanitarian, he tried to preach to oppressed mining families and was jeered at. His difficult, contradictory personality was rejected by the women he fell in love with, and his few friendships usually ended in bitter arguments.

Ten years before his death Van Gogh decided to be a painter, fully conscious of the sacrifices this decision would require of him. When he decides to become an artist, nobody could have guessed his immense talent. With surprising speed, the clumsy but enthousiastic apprentice develops a strong artistic personality with his color effects and simple but unforgettable compositions. At his parents' house in Etten, he refines his drawing techniques. Vincent leaves at the end of 1881 to rent a studio in La Hague.Vincent makes his first independent watercolor and painted studies in the summer of 1882. His uncle Cornelis van Gogh commissions him to produce 12 views of The Hague .

Van Gogh's fame grew shortly after his death. Large exhibitions were organised in Paris (1901), Amsterdam (1905), Cologne (1912), New York City (1913) and Berlin (1914).

Van Gogh's life forms the basis for Irving Stone's biographical novel Lust for Life (later turned into a film). In 1972, singer Don McLean wrote the ballad "Vincent", also known as "Starry Starry Night" (after his most known work), in honour of Van Gogh. In 1986-87, the composer Einojuhani Rautavaara wrote an opera, Vincent, based on several events in Van Gogh's life, and also later used some of the same themes in his 6th symphony, Vincentiana.