Vincent van Gogh, for whom colour was the chief symbol of expression, was born in Groot-
Zundert, Holland. The son of a pastor, brought up in a religious and cultured atmosphere,
Vincent was highly emotional and lacked self-confidence. 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 Pissarro, Monet, and 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 a portion of his ear lobe 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.