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Van Gogh
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“Real painters do not paint things as they are...They paint them as they themselves feel them to be.”
Vincent Willem van Gogh was born to a family of ministers and art dealers in Groot-Zundert, a village in the South of the Netherlands, on March 30, 1853. Van Gogh started his education in 1861, at a school in Zundert, and then attended two boarding schools until 1868, when he decided to discontinue his studies and return to his...
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“Real painters do not paint things as they are...They paint them as they themselves feel them to be.”
Vincent Willem van Gogh was born to a family of ministers and art dealers in Groot-Zundert, a village in the South of the Netherlands, on March 30, 1853. Van Gogh started his education in 1861, at a school in Zundert, and then attended two boarding schools until 1868, when he decided to discontinue his studies and return to his hometown.
In 1869, Van Gogh moved to The Hague where he worked as an apprentice at Goupil and Cie, the international art dealers on a recommendation from his uncle, an art dealer. It was in The Hague, in 1872, that the artist began his extensive correspondence with his younger brother Theodorus or Theo, which is today the most comprehensive source about his life and work.
In 1873, Van Gogh moved to the Goupil branch in London, where he visited the city’s many museums and galleries, especially appreciating the art of Jean Francoise Millet and Jules Breton he encountered there. During this period he dedicated most of his time to the study of the Bible, which eventually led him to leave his job for a position in the clergy in 1876.
Although he failed the entrance exam for a theology school in Amsterdam and another course at a missionary school near Brussels, Van Gogh decided to work as a missionary in a mine community in the south of Belgium. Unfortunately, due his extreme dedication to the impoverished community, he was dismissed from the Church for ‘undermining its dignity’.
It was only in 1880 that Van Gogh decided to undertake a career as an artist, believing it was an alternative way to be in the service of God. He moved to Brussels where he began to independently study art, sometimes under the guidance of the artist Anthon van Rappard. A year later, in 1881, as his extreme religiosity started to become dilute, he began taking painting lessons from his cousin in The Hague, learning watercolour and oil techniques. In 1882, the artist completed his first independent watercolour, and received his first art commission.
During the years 1883-84, Van Gogh’s oeuvre was characterized by depictions of peasant life, relying largely on dark tones. In 1885, the artist’s first masterpiece, ‘The Potato Eaters’, was completed. The same year, Van Gogh moved to Antwerp, where the vibrant artistic life of the city offered him several different sources of inspiration.
In 1886, the artist travelled to Paris, where he lived in Montmartre with his brother Theo, an art dealer and arguably the most important figure in the development of Van Gogh’s career. It was Theo who introduced the artist to the work of Claude Monet and the impressionists, after which Van Gogh changed his subject matter, adopted brighter colours, and experimented with new pictorial styles including broken brushwork and pointillism. 1886 is also the year in which Van Gogh experimented with portraiture, and being unable to afford models, produced several self-portraits. Flowers and landscapes were other favorite themes for the artist, and were used by him to test styles and colour combinations.
In 1887, Van Gogh organized a group exhibition in a restaurant in Paris with some of his artist friends who belonged to the group, ‘Artists of the Petit Boulevard’. The group featured Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Émile Bernard and Louis Anquetin. It was also in 1887 that Van Gogh met Paul Gauguin, who had just moved to Paris, and that he became very interested in the woodblock prints of Japanese artists like Utamaro and Hokusai, attempting to reproduce their effect in his work.
In 1888, after spending two years in Paris and painting approximately 200 works, Van Gogh moved to Provence, feeling that it was impossible for him to continue working in the city with its tempting excesses. Wanting to establish an artists’ cooperative, he rented a studio in Arles and asked Gauguin to join him. Inspired by the sun and landscape of Provence, Van Gogh painted several works featuring sunflowers and bright landscapes. However, towards the end of the year, tensions developed between him and Gauguin, leading Van Gogh to suffer a psychotic break, threaten Gauguin and then cut off his own left ear.
In 1889, Van Gogh left the hospital in Arles where he was admitted after the crisis, but later voluntarily committed himself to a psychiatric facility in Saint Remy as he continued to experience hallucinations. There, he continued painting and drawing the surroundings and nature, trying to learn different styles, sometimes copying the work of other artists, then adding something of his own to them.
Despite his time in the hospital, the artist produced some excellent canvases and continued to send these to Theo to sell. In 1890, some of Van Gogh’s works were included in an exhibition organized by the avant-garde Belgian group, Les Vingt. The artist also showcased two of his works at the Salon des Independants in Paris.
Later that year, Van Gogh left the hospital and moved to Auvers sur Oise, closer to his physician Dr. Paul Gachet and to Theo in Paris. He continued to paint as a way of finding mental health and stability, producing as many as one canvas a day, inspired by the countryside.
It is widely believed that Vincent van Gogh shot himself on 27 July, 1890. Two days later, he succumbed to his injury and passed away.
Following his death, several memorial exhibitions of Van Gogh’s work were held in Europe, including two retrospectives in Paris in 1901 and 1905, and one in Amsterdam in 1905. In 1973, the Van Gogh Museum was established in Amsterdam, to display the artist’s personal collection, originally loaned to the Stedelijk Museum by Theo’s son, along with several other works.
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Born
March 30, 1853
Groot-Zundert, Netherlands
Died
July 29, 1890
Auvers-sur-Oise, France
Exhibitions
Selected Exhibitions
2012 'Collecting Matisse and Modern...
Selected Exhibitions
2012 'Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore', Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver
2012 'Vincent van Gogh: Up Close', National Gallery of Canada, Canada; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
2011 'Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces From the National Gallery of Art', Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto, Japan
2011 'Devorar Paris. Picasso 1900-1907', Museu Picasso, Barcelona
2011 'Dulwich 200th Anniversary Exhibition Series', Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
2011 'Art in Revolution: Liverpool 1911', Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
2011 'Van Gogh, Bonnard, Vallotton: The Arthur and Hedy Hahnloser Collection', Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne, Switzerland
2011 'New Perspectives: Van Gogh in Antwerp and Paris', Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
2011 'Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces From the National Gallery of Art', National Art Centre, Tokyo
2011 'Dream and Reality: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay in Seoul', Seoul Arts Center, Seoul
2011 'Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore', Jewish Museum, New York
2011 'The Collection Enriched', Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
2011 '100 Masterpieces from the Städel Museum of Frankfurt: Impressionism, Expressionism, Avant-garde', Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome
2011 'L'Example de Cézanne: Collection Planque', Granet Museum, Aix-en-Provence, France
2010-11 'From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection', National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
2006 'Fellow Artists through the Eyes of Van Gogh', The Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
2006 'Great Masters Series: Vincent van Gogh', The Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
2006 'Van Gogh and Britain: Pioneer Collectors', Compton Verney, Warwickshire; Dean Gallery, Edinburgh
2006 'Gauguin-Van Gogh: The Adventure of the New Color', Museo di Santa Giulia, Brescia, Italy
2005 'Van Gogh Draftsman: The Masterpieces', Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
2005 'Van Gogh Draftsman', Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
2005 'Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings', Metropolitan Museum, New York
2005 'Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre', National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
2005 'The Hague School and Young Van Gogh', Gemeentemuseum, Hague
2005 'Van Gogh in Context', National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; National Museum of Modern Art, Osaka; Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya
2004-05 'The Splendid Palette: Painting in France from Monet to Bonnard', Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal
2004-05 'From Van Gogh to Mondrian: Modern Art from the Kröller-Müller Museum', High Museum, Atlanta
2004-05 'The School of The Hague and the Young Van Gogh', Stadhuis van Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
2004 'Van Gogh, Millet and the Barbizon Artists', Nagoya City Art Museum, Nagoya; Iwate Museum of Art, Morioka; Hiroshima Museum of Art, Hiroshima
2004 'From Van Gogh to Mondrian: Modern Art from the Kröller-Müller Museum', Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; High Museum of Art, Atlanta
2004 'Van Gogh and the Sea', Van Gogh Museum
2004 'Van Gogh and Gauguin: An Artistic Dialogue in the South of France', Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
2004 'From El Greco to Picasso: European Masterworks from The Phillips Collection', The Frist Center for Visual Arts, Nashville
2004 'Vincent's Bookcase', Van Gogh Museum as part of the National Book Week celebrations
2003-04 'From Van Gogh to Picasso', Palazzo Crepadona, Belluno
2003-04 'The Gold and the Blue: The Colours of the South', Casa dei Carraresi, Treviso
2003-04 'Vincent van Gogh: Lost and Found', Breda's Museum, Netherlands
2003-04 'Vincent and Helene: The Significance of Van Gogh in the Kröller-Müller Collection', Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
2003 'Vincent's Choice', Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
2003 'Gogh Modern', Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
2003 'Vincent van Gogh on Amsterdam', Museum Amstelkring, Amsterdam
2003 'Old Masters, Impressionists, and Moderns: French Masterworks from the State Pushkin Museum', Los Angeles County Museum of Art
2003 'The Hague School and Van Gogh', Retretti Art Centre, Punkaharju, Finland
2003 'Van Gogh: Fields', Toledo Museum of Art
2002-03 'From Van Gogh to Corot: French Landscape', Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
2002-03 'L'Impressionismo e l'età di van Gogh', Casa dei Carraresi, Treviso
2002-03 'The Sower: Vincent van Gogh', Villa Flora in Winterthur, Switzerland
2002-03 'The Poppy Field and the Artist's Debate', Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany
2002-03 'Van Gogh Down to the Micrometer: A Presentation of Technical Research into Paintings by Van Gogh', The Van Gogh Museum
2002 'The Necessity of Writing: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh', The Van Gogh Museum
2002 'Vincent & Theo van Gogh', Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe; Japan
2002 'Van Gogh and the Labors of the Field', Indianapolis Museum of Art
2002 'Impressionist Still Life', Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
2002 'Van Gogh: The Drawings from Paris', Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg
2002 'Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South', Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
2002 'Monet, Renoir, and the Impressionist Landscape', National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
2001-02 'Vincent van Gogh Drawings: Antwerp and Paris, 1885-1888', Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
2001 'Homage to Van Gogh: International Artists Pay Tribute to a Legend', Appleton Museum of Art, Ocala, Florida
2001 'Impressionism: Painting Quickly in France', Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
2001 'Vincent van Gogh in Paris: Masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum', Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia
2001 'Vincent van Gogh and the Painters of the Petit Boulevard', St. Louis Art Museum
2001 'Van Gogh's Postman: The Portraits of Joseph Roulin', Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York
2000-01 'Van Gogh: Face to Face', Detroit Institute of Arts; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Philadelphia Museum of Art
2000 'Van Gogh's 'Starry Night': Three Masterpieces from The Museum of Modern Art, New York', High Museum of Art, Atlanta
2000 'Van Gogh retrospective', The Pierre Gianadda Foundation of Martigny, Switzerland
1999-2000 'Theo Van Gogh: Art Dealer, Collector, Vincent's Brother', Musée d'Orsay, Paris
1999-2000 'Post-Impressionist Prints: Paris in the 1890s', Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh
1999 'Impressionism: Paintings Collected by European Museums', The High Museum of Art, Atlanta; The Seattle Art Museum; The Denver Art Museum
1999 'From Cézanne to Van Gogh: The Collection of Dr. Gachet', Metropolitan Museum of Art (MOMA), New York
1999 'Van Gogh's Irises', The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
1999 'Van Gogh's Van Goghs: Masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum', Los Angeles County Museum of Art
1999 'From Van Os to Van Gogh: 19th-Century Dutch Drawings and Watercolors from the Museum of Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam', Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina
1947-48 'Vincent Van Gogh: an Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings', Tate, London
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