Vincent van Gogh          

Vincent van Gogh is today one of the most popular of the post-impressionist painters, although he was not widely appreciated during his lifetime.

Vincent van Gogh was born in Groot Zundert, The Netherlands on 30 March 1853.

Vincent van Gogh was the son of Theodorus van Gogh (1822-85), a pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church, and Anna Cornelia Carbentus (1819-1907), daughter of a bookseller.

Vincent lived in Groot Zundert until he was 16 years old.

Vincent  had a big family. Vincent was the second of the six children.Vincent was supposed to have three sisters and two brothers. Their names were Anna, Elizabeth,Wilhelmein, Corneilous and Theo. Vincent liked Theodorus(Theo) a lot. He was his favourite brother and they were very close all their lives.

Vincent started his education at the village school in 1861, and subsequently attended two boarding schools. He exceled in languages, studying French, English, and German. In March 1868, in the middle of the academic year, he abruptly left school and returned to Zundert. He did not resume his formal education thereafter.

In 1869 Vincent van Gogh joined the firm Goupil & Cie., a firm of art dealers as an apprentice.

In 1872 Vincent wrote his first letter to brother Theo and continued to write a total of 800 letters over the next 18 years.

In 1873, Vincent was promoted and sent to the London branch of Goupil & Cie. He was transferred in 1874 to Goupil's Paris branch, where he remained for three months before returning to London. Vincents’ performance at Goupil’s started to deteriorate and in 1875 he was once again sent to Paris. Finally, in May 1875 Vincent was dismissed from Goupil’s .

In 1876, Vincent returned to England and started teaching at a boarding school. At this time in life Vincent decided to become a preacher.

In 1877, Vincent returned to the Netherlands and worked as a book-keeper.

In 1880, Vincent decided that he wanted to be an artist. So he moved to Brussels and decided on enrolling at the art academy, but instead took lessons from a painter named Anton van Rappard.

In 1881 he moved to Etten and stayed with his parents, where he fell in love with his cousin Kee Vos-Stricker, who rejected his advances. His dogged pursuit of Kee caused a rift with his parents.

Towards the end of 1881 he moved to Hague and took art lessons from a painter named Anton Mauve, a leading member of the Hague School. Mauve was a cousin of Van Gogh. Mauve introduced Vincent to watrecolour and oil techniques

In the summer of 1882 Vincent painted his first independent watercolour. In the same year he received his first commission from his uncle Cornelis van Gogh who asked him to produce 12 pen and ink drawings of The Hague.

In September 1883 Vincent traveled to the province of Drenthe in the northeastern region of Netherlands. He painted the bleak landscape and peasant workers, but lonely and lacking proper materials, he soon left for Nuenen, in Brabant, to live with his parents.

Following the footsteps of Millet and Breton, by 1884 Vincent resolved to be a painter of peasant life. He sketched and painted the weavers of Nuenen and completed 40 painted studies of peasant heads.

In March, 1885, Vincent's father died suddenly from a stroke. Shortly afterward, Vincent completed the Potato Eaters, his first large-scale composition and first masterpiece. Later that year Vincent left for the Belgian city of Antwerp where he attended the Academy of Fine Art but lasted only three months

In February , 1886, Vincent arrived in Paris and lived with Theo in Montmartre, an artists' quarter. Theo, who managed the Montmartre branch of Goupil's (now called Boussod, Valadon & Cie), acquainted Vincent with the works of Claude Monet and other Impressionists.

In 1888, Vincent moved to Arles, south of France. Here he painted Sunflowers, Bedroom at Arles, Vincents Chair. He painted nearly 200 pictures while at Arles.

In 1889, Vincent admited himself to the psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy, 15 miles from Arles. He painted the Cyprus Trees time and time again as it was the only view from the room he was locked in.

In 1890, Vincent moved to Auvers, a village north of Paris.

On July 27, 1890, Vincent walked to a wheatfield and shot himself in the chest. He stumbled back to his lodging, where he died two days later. He was buried in Auvers. Among the mourners were Lucien Pissarro, Emile Bernard, and Père Tanguy.

Vincent's paintings were left to Theo, but his true legacy would be realized in his powerful influence on artists of the twentieth century.

Theo held a memorial exhibition of Vincent's paintings in September 1890 in his Paris apartment. His own health suffered a precipitous decline, and in January, 1891, Theo died. His widow returned to the Netherlands with their infant son and her husband's legacy, the collection of Vincent's paintings. After Johanna's death in 1925 the collection was inherited by her son, Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890-1978). On the initiative of the Dutch state, which pledged to build a museum devoted to Van Gogh, Vincent Willem van Gogh, in 1962, transfered the works he owned to the newly formed Vincent van Gogh Foundation. Construction of the museum building, designed by the modernist Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld, began in 1969. The museum officially opened its doors in 1973. Since then, the building houses the largest collection of works by Vincent van Gogh, on loan from the Vincent van Gogh Foundation.