Vincent van Gogh

1853 - 1890

Information from The National Gallery

Van Gogh is today one of the most popular of the Post-Impressionist painters, although he was not widely appreciated during his lifetime. He is now famed for the great vitality of his works which are characterised by expressive and emotive use of brilliant colour and energetic application of impastoed paint. The traumas of his life, documented in his letters, have tended to dominate and distort modern perceptions of his art.

Van Gogh was born in Holland, the son of a pastor; he travelled to London in 1873, and first visited Paris in 1874. Over the next decade he was employed in various ways, including as a lay preacher. By 1883 he had started painting, and in 1885-6 he attended the academy in Antwerp where he was impressed by Japanese prints and by the work of Rubens. On his return to Paris in 1886 he met artists such as Degas, Gauguin and Seurat, and as a result lightened the colours he used.

In 1888 Van Gogh settled in Arles in Provence, where he was visited by Gauguin and painted his now famous series of 'Sunflowers'. In the following year a nervous breakdown brought him to a sanatorium at St Remy; it was at this period that he executed 'A Wheatfield, with Cypresses'. In 1890, suffering from a new bout of depression, he shot himself in the chest and died two days later.

A Wheatfield, with Cypresses

1889, Vincent van Gogh

This was painted in September 1889, when Van Gogh was in the St-R�my mental asylum, near Arles, where he was a patient from May 1889 until May 1890. It is one of three almost identical versions of the composition. Another painting of the cypresses (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) was painted earlier in July 1889, and was probably painted directly in front of the subject.

Farms near Auvers

1890, Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh loved the �mossy thatched roofs� which he saw near his last home at Auvers, close to Paris. A row of dilapidated farm buildings dominates this picture, made a month before the artist�s death.

Their shapes are mimicked by the fields and hills behind. The hasty brushwork and blank sky suggest that the painting is unfinished.

Long Grass with Butterflies

1890, Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh was a patient at the asylum at St-R�my, near Arles, from May 1889 to May 1890. During this time he was restricted to working in the asylum's grounds, and shortly after his arrival he described the 'abandoned gardens' in which 'the grass grows tall and unkempt, mixed with all kinds of weeds'. This view of these gardens was painted at the end of the painter's stay at the asylum.

Sunflowers

1888, Vincent van Gogh

This is one of four paintings of sunflowers dating from August and September 1888. Van Gogh intended to decorate Gauguin's room with these paintings in the so-called Yellow House that he rented in Arles in the South of France. He and Gauguin worked there together between October and December 1888.

Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in August 1888, 'I am hard at it, painting with the enthusiasm of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won't surprise you when you know that what I'm at is the painting of some sunflowers. If I carry out this idea there will be a dozen panels. So the whole thing will be a symphony in blue and yellow. I am working at it every morning from sunrise on, for the flowers fade so quickly. I am now on the fourth picture of sunflowers. This fourth one is a bunch of 14 flowers ... it gives a singular effect.'

The dying flowers are built up with thick brushstrokes (impasto). The impasto evokes the texture of the seed-heads. Van Gogh produced a replica of this painting in January 1889, and perhaps another one later in the year. The various versions and replicas remain much debated among Van Gogh scholars.

Van Gogh's Chair

1888, Vincent van Gogh

This work was painted while Van Gogh was working in the company of Gauguin at Arles. It was retouched early in 1889. Van Gogh painted a companion picture of Gauguin's armchair, shown by night, now in the Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh, Amsterdam. The two paintings may have been intended to represent the contrasting temperaments and interests of the two artists.