Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh sold almost nothing in his lifetime, was called a madman and a failure, and died at 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. Yet in just over a decade he made about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them crowded into his final two years. According to his brother Theo, his last words were: "The sadness will last forever." How does a man dismissed as le fou roux, the redheaded madman, become the figure where, as one description puts it, discourses on madness and creativity converge? What turned a failed art dealer, a rejected missionary, and a quarrelsome student into the painter of swirling skies and burning yellows? The answer runs through hundreds of letters, a severed ear, and a single brother who never stopped paying the bills.
More than 600 letters survive from Vincent to his younger brother Theo, against around 40 going the other way. They were exchanged from 1872 until 1890, and they hold most of what is known of Vincent's thoughts and his theories of art. Theo kept everything Vincent sent him. Vincent kept only a few of the letters he received.
Theo van Gogh was an art dealer who supplied his brother with money, emotional support, and access to influential people on the contemporary art scene. After both men had died, Theo's widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, arranged for some letters to be published. A few appeared in 1906 and 1913, and the majority came out in 1914.
The correspondence reaches beyond Theo. There are 22 letters to his sister Wil, 58 to the painter Anthon van Rappard, and 22 to Émile Bernard, along with single letters to Paul Signac, Paul Gauguin, and the critic Albert Aurier. From Arles alone Vincent wrote around 200 letters in Dutch, French, and English. There is a gap in the record from his Paris years, because the brothers lived together and had no reason to write. Translator Arnold Pomerans said the letters add a fresh dimension to understanding Van Gogh, an understanding granted by virtually no other painter.
Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on the 30th of March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, in the heavily Catholic province of North Brabant. He carried the name of his grandfather and of a brother stillborn exactly a year before his birth. His father, Theodorus, was a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and his mother, Anna Cornelia Carbentus, came from a prosperous family in The Hague.
The young Van Gogh was serious, quiet, and thoughtful, and he later called his youth "austere and cold, and sterile." Sent to a boarding school at Zevenbergen in 1864, he felt abandoned and campaigned to come home. In July 1869 his uncle Cent secured him a position at the art dealers Goupil and Cie in The Hague. Transferred to Goupil's London branch, the 20-year-old earned more than his father, and his sister-in-law Jo later called it the best year of his life.
That happiness did not hold. He became infatuated with his landlady's daughter, Eugénie Loyer, who rejected him because she was secretly engaged to a former lodger. He grew isolated and religiously fervent, and after a transfer to Paris he was dismissed in 1876. He turned to teaching, then to faith. In January 1879 he took a missionary post at Petit-Wasmes in the coal-mining Borinage district of Belgium. To show solidarity with his impoverished congregation, he gave up his comfortable lodgings to a homeless person and slept on straw in a hut. Church authorities dismissed him for "undermining the dignity of the priesthood." Only after Theo suggested he take up art in earnest did Van Gogh begin recording the people and scenes around him in drawings.
"No, nay, never," said Kee Vos-Stricker, in Dutch "nooit, neen, nimmer," when Van Gogh declared his love and proposed marriage in 1881. She was his recently widowed cousin, seven years older, with an eight-year-old son. He pursued her to Amsterdam, where her parents called his persistence disgusting. In despair he held his left hand in a lamp flame, saying, "Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the flame."
A second relationship proved even more entangling. In late January 1882 he met Clasina Maria Hoornik, called Sien, an alcoholic prostitute who was pregnant and already had a young daughter. Van Gogh set up a household with her, and when his father discovered the arrangement he pressured his son to leave. By late 1883 Van Gogh abandoned Sien and the children, feeling family life was irreconcilable with his art. Sien drowned herself in the River Scheldt in 1904.
A third woman nearly died for him. From August 1884, in Nuenen, a neighbour's daughter named Margot Begemann, ten years his senior, fell in love with him, and he returned the feeling less enthusiastically. When neither family approved of a marriage, she took an overdose of strychnine and survived only because Van Gogh rushed her to a hospital. On the 26th of March 1885 his father died of a heart attack, and that year Van Gogh produced his first major work, The Potato Eaters, painted in sombre earth tones with no sign of the vivid colour to come.
In Antwerp, in February 1886, Van Gogh wrote to Theo that he could remember eating only six hot meals since the previous May. Bread, coffee, and tobacco were his diet, and his teeth turned loose and painful, because he spent Theo's money on painting materials and models rather than food. There he studied colour theory, absorbed the work of Peter Paul Rubens, and broadened his palette to include carmine, cobalt blue, and emerald green. He also bought Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts in the docklands.
Moving to Paris in 1886, Van Gogh shared Theo's apartment and studied at Fernand Cormon's studio, where he met Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who painted his portrait in pastel. After seeing a portrait by Adolphe Monticelli, he took up a brighter palette and a bolder attack. In Asnières he came to know Paul Signac and adopted elements of Pointillism, applying small coloured dots that blend at a distance and set complementary colours like blue and orange into vibrant contrast.
The defiance that marked his life surfaced in the classroom too. At the Antwerp academy, asked to draw the Venus de Milo, Van Gogh produced the limbless torso of a Flemish peasant woman. When his teacher Eugène Siberdt corrected the work so vigorously that he tore the paper, Van Gogh shouted that a woman must have hips and a pelvis in which to carry a baby. In February 1888, worn out by city life and having painted more than 200 pictures in two Paris years, he left for the south of France.
On the 1st of May 1888, Van Gogh signed a lease for four rooms at 2 Place Lamartine in Arles, the building he immortalised as The Yellow House. The unfurnished rooms cost 15 francs a month and had stood empty for months. He wanted a gallery to display his work and began a series for its walls, including Bedroom in Arles, The Night Cafe, Cafe Terrace at Night, and Starry Night Over the Rhone. Of The Night Cafe he wrote that he tried to express the idea that a cafe is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime.
Arles appeared exotic to him at first. He described it as a foreign country full of Zouaves, brothels, and an Arlesienne going to her First Communion, people who seemed like creatures from another world. The local countryside and light energised him, and his works there grew rich in yellow, ultramarine, and mauve. The period was one of his most prolific, with 200 paintings and more than 100 drawings and watercolours.
His hopes centred on Paul Gauguin and a dream of an artists' collective. Preparing for Gauguin's arrival, Van Gogh painted four versions of Sunflowers in a single week, writing that he wanted nothing but large sunflowers to decorate the studio. He bought two beds on the advice of the station's postal supervisor, Joseph Roulin, whose portrait he painted. After much pleading, Gauguin arrived on the 23rd of October 1888.
The exact sequence that led to the mutilation of Van Gogh's ear is not known. Gauguin and Van Gogh quarrelled often, with Van Gogh admiring his guest and wanting to be treated as an equal, while Gauguin was arrogant and domineering. Van Gogh described the mood as one of excessive tension and feared Gauguin was preparing to desert him. Heavy rain shut the two men inside the Yellow House.
After an altercation on the evening of the 23rd of December 1888, Van Gogh returned to his room, seemingly heard voices, and severed his left ear with a razor. He wrapped the ear in paper and delivered it to a woman at a brothel he and Gauguin both frequented. The art historian Bernadette Murphy later identified her as Gabrielle Berlatier, known as Gaby, a 17-year-old cleaning girl who died in Arles in 1952 at the age of 80. A policeman found Van Gogh unconscious the next morning and took him to hospital, where the young doctor Felix Rey decided too much time had passed to reattach the ear.
The hospital diagnosis was acute mania with generalised delirium. Gauguin notified Theo, who rushed by night train to Arles and arrived on Christmas Day to comfort his brother. Gauguin fled Arles, never to see Van Gogh again, asking a policeman to tell Van Gogh he had left for Paris because the sight of him might prove fatal. In March, 30 townspeople signed a petition calling Van Gogh le fou roux, and the police closed his house. Two months later he voluntarily entered an asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence.
Octave Mirbeau wrote in 1892 that Van Gogh's death was an infinitely sad loss for art, lamenting that poor Vincent had gone to his death as obscure and neglected as he had lived. He had been buried on the 30th of July 1890 in the cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise, the funeral attended by Theo, Émile Bernard, Julien Tanguy, Paul Gachet, and about twenty family members, friends, and locals. Theo, suffering from syphilis, survived his brother by only six months and died on the 25th of January 1891.
The burden of the legacy fell to Theo's widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, a Dutchwoman in her twenties who suddenly held several hundred paintings, letters, and drawings, plus an infant son. Gauguin would not help promote the work, and the critic Aurier, an early supporter, died of typhoid fever in 1892 at the age of 27. Still, the reputation grew. In April 1894 the Durand-Ruel Gallery agreed to take ten paintings on consignment from the estate.
New painters carried him forward. In 1896 the unknown art student Henri Matisse visited John Russell, a close friend of Van Gogh, who gave him a Van Gogh drawing, after which Matisse abandoned earth tones for bright colour. A large retrospective in Paris in 1901 excited Andre Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck and fed the rise of Fauvism, while German Expressionists such as Emil Nolde acknowledged their debt. His fame reached its first peak in Austria and Germany before the First World War, aided by the publication of his letters in three volumes in 1914, the same year Jo had Theo's body moved from Utrecht to rest beside Vincent at Auvers-sur-Oise.
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Who was Vincent van Gogh and why is he famous?
Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who lived from the 30th of March 1853 to the 29th of July 1890. He created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, known for bold colours and dramatic, impulsive brushwork. He was unsuccessful in his lifetime and became famous after his death as the quintessential misunderstood genius.
How did Vincent van Gogh die?
Vincent van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver on the 27th of July 1890, aged 37. The bullet was deflected by a rib, and he walked back to the Auberge Ravoux, where two doctors attended him. He died in the early hours of the 29th of July from an infection resulting from the wound.
Why did Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear?
Vincent van Gogh severed his left ear with a razor on the evening of the 23rd of December 1888, after an altercation linked to mounting tension with Paul Gauguin in the Yellow House in Arles. He wrapped the ear in paper and gave it to a young woman at a brothel he frequented. The hospital diagnosed acute mania with generalised delirium.
What is the relationship between Vincent van Gogh and Theo van Gogh?
Theo van Gogh was Vincent's younger brother, an art dealer who provided him with financial and emotional support and access to the contemporary art scene. The two exchanged hundreds of letters from 1872 until 1890, with more than 600 surviving from Vincent to Theo. Theo died on the 25th of January 1891, only six months after Vincent.
What are Vincent van Gogh's most famous paintings?
Vincent van Gogh's named works include The Potato Eaters, The Night Cafe, Bedroom in Arles, Starry Night Over the Rhone, The Starry Night, multiple versions of Sunflowers, and Wheatfield with Crows. He painted series of olive trees, cypresses, wheat fields, and orchards, along with more than 43 self-portraits between 1885 and 1889.
Where did Vincent van Gogh live and paint?
Vincent van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert in the Netherlands and worked across Europe, including The Hague, Nuenen, Antwerp, and Paris. He moved to Arles in the south of France in February 1888, entered an asylum at Saint-Remy-de-Provence, and spent his final months in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris.
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106 references cited across the entry
- 1BBC – Magazine Monitor: How to Say: Van GoghBBC — 22 January 2010
- 6Vincent van Gogh in Borinage, BelgiumVan Gogh Route
- 7NewsJules Breton's Eternal Harvest: 4 1877–1889hoakley — 6 April 2017
- 14How One Art History Teacher Solved Two of the Biggest Mysteries about Van GoghAbigail Cain — 26 July 2016
- 15BookLiving with Vincent van Gogh: The Homes & Landscapes That Shaped the ArtistMartin Bailey — Quarto Publishing Group — 2020
- 17BBC The Mystery of Van Goghs Ear2 January 2017
- 18NewsHistorian Bernadette Murphy on digging into the Van Gogh ear mysteryJames Adams — 14 July 2016
- 19NewsGun used by Vincent van Gogh to kill himself goes on displayPeter Cluskey — 12 July 2016
- 21Essay The Madman and the Dwarf: Van Gogh and Lautrec by Jeffrey MeyersThe London Magazine — 7 June 2021
- 25"La tristesse durera toujours", François-Bernard Michel, La face humaine de Vincent Van Gogh, Grasset, 3 November 1999,
- 26Letter from Theo van Gogh to Elisabeth van Gogh Paris, 5 August 1890Theodorus van Gogh — Webexhibits.org
- 27BookTotalitarian Art and ModernityJacob Wamberg — Aarhus University Press — 2010
- 29Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)October 2004
- 30Vincent van Gogh; Sunflowers; NG3863National Gallery, London
- 31The Olive Garden, 1889National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC — 2011
- 32NewsVan Gogh was not unappreciated in his lifetime, myth-busting letter showsHannah Furness — 27 August 2018
- 33The Unknown Matisse ... – Book Talkinterview with Hilary Spurling — 8 June 2005
- 35Irving Stone interviewJames Day — 23 April 1974
- 37NewsMysterious Asian Buyer Causes Sensation at Sotheby's $368 Million Impressionist SaleBrian Boucher — 5 May 2015
- 38NewsVan Gogh's Sunflowers back on display after oil protesters threw soup on it14 October 2022
- 39UK: Climate protesters throw soup on van Gogh's 'Sunflowers'14 October 2022
- 40Van Gogh's Van Goghs: The Van Gogh MuseumNational Gallery of Art — 4 October 1998
- 41NewsBezoekersrecords voor Van Gogh Museum en NEMO15 December 2015
- 42NewsVan Gogh Museum chief: it's critical to diversify our income streamsMatthew Caines — 1 September 2015
- 43NewsWhen the World Saw van Gogh as ‘a Madman,’ She Saw His GeniusNina Siegal — 2026-09-24
- 46NewsVan Gogh painting looted by the Nazis embarrasses Japan20 January 2024
- 49BookVincent van Gogh: Chemicals, Crises, and CreativityWilfred Niels Arnold — Birkhäuser — 1992
- 50JournalThe illness of Vincent van GoghWilfred Niels Arnold — 2004
- 51JournalThe Illness of Vincent van GoghDietrich Blumer — 2002
- 52BookVincent van Gogh: A LifePhilip Callow — Ivan R. Dee — 1990
- 53BookMonet to Dalí: Impressionist and Modern Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of ArtLaurence Channing et al. — Cleveland Museum of Art — 2007
- 54JournalA Tale of Two EarsBen Cohen — 2003
- 55Faille, J-B de laEmily Crockett et al. — n.d.
- 56BookDivided by a Common Language: A Guide to British and American EnglishChristopher Davies — Houghton Mifflin Harcourt — 2007
- 57BookLa Folie de Vincent Van GoghVictor Doiteau et al. — Éditions Aesculape — 1928
- 58BookDécoration: Vincent van Gogh's Werkreihe für das Gelbe Haus in ArlesRoland Dorn — Olms Verlag — 1990
- 59Vincent van Gogh and the Modern Movement, 1890–1914Roland Dorn et al. — Luca-Verlag — 1990
- 60Van Gogh Face to Face: The PortraitsRoland Dorn et al. — Thames & Hudson — 2000
- 61BookVan Gogh und die Haager SchuleBank Austria Kunstforum — 1996
- 62Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the SouthDouglas Druick et al. — Thames & Hudson — 2001
- 63BookVan Gogh and God: A Creative Spiritual QuestCliff Edwards — Loyola University Press — 1989
- 64BookAt Eternity's Gate: The Spiritual Vision of Vincent van GoghKathleen Powers Erickson — Eerdmans — 1998
- 65BookFrancis Bacon: A RetrospectiveDennis Farr et al. — Harry N. Abrams — 1999
- 66BookVincent Van Gogh: The Years in France: Complete Paintings 1886–1890Walter Feilchenfeldt — Philip Wilson — 2013
- 67BookThe Impressionist GardenDerek Fell — Frances Lincoln — 1997
- 68BookVan Gogh's Women: His Love Affairs and Journey into MadnessDerek Fell — Pavilion Books — 2015
- 69BookThe Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in ArlesMartin Gayford — Penguin — 2006
- 70BookVan Gogh in BudapestVince Books — 2006
- 71BookThe Letters of Vincent van Gogh: A Critical StudyPatrick Grant — Athabasca University Press — 2014
- 72BookVincent van Gogh: Genius and DisasterAbraham M. Hammacher — Harry N. Abrams — 1985
- 73BookPox: Genius, Madness and the Mysteries of SyphilisDeborah Hayden — Basic Books — 2003
- 74JournalThe illness of Vincent van GoghR. E. Hemphill — 1961
- 75BookNothing If Not CriticalRobert Hughes — The Harvill Press — 1990
- 76BookThe Portable Van GoghRobert Hughes — Universe — 2002
- 77BookThe Complete Van Gogh, paintings, drawings, sketchesJan Hulsker — Phaidon — 1980
- 78BookVincent and Theo Van Gogh: A Dual BiographyJan Hulsker — Fuller Publications — 1990
- 79BookStranger on the Earth: A Psychological Biography of Vincent van GoghAlbert J. Lubin — Holt, Rinehart and Winston — 1972
- 80BookVan GoghMelissa McQuillan — Thames and Hudson — 1989
- 81BookVan Gogh: The LifeSteven W. Naifeh et al. — Random House — 2011
- 82BookVan Gogh in ArlesAlfred Nemeczek — Prestel Verlag — 1999
- 83JournalVincent van Gogh's illness: a case recordIsabella H. Perry — 1947
- 84English Influences on Vincent van Gogh, an exhibition organised by the Fine Art Department, University of Nottingham and the Arts Council of Great Britain, 1974-5Ronald Pickvance — Arts Council — 1974
- 85Van Gogh in ArlesRonald Pickvance — Abrams — 1984
- 86Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and AuversRonald Pickvance — Abrams — 1986
- 87BookThe Letters of Vincent van GoghArnold Pomerans — Penguin Classics — 1997
- 88BookPost-Impressionism: From van Gogh to GauguinJohn Rewald — Secker & Warburg — 1978
- 89BookStudies in Post-ImpressionismJohn Rewald — Abrams — 1986
- 90BookModern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to RothkoRobert Rosenblum — Harper & Row — 1975
- 91Journal'He Is the Key and the Antithesis of so Much': Helene Kröller-Müller's Fascination with Vincent van GoghEva Rovers — 2007
- 92BookGerman Expressionist PaintingPeter Howard Selz — University of California Press — 1968
- 93JournalThe Sower and the Sheaf: Biblical Metaphor in the Art of Vincent van GoghJudy Sund — 1988
- 94BookThe Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse, Vol. 1, 1869–1908Hilary Spurling — Hamish Hamilton — 1998
- 95BookVan GoghJudy Sund — Phaidon — 2002
- 96BookVan Gogh: His Life and His ArtDavid Sweetman — Touchstone — 1990
- 97BookVincent van Gogh, le mal aiméMarc Edo Tralbaut — Alpine Fine Arts — 1981
- 98BookVan Gogh in Auvers: His Last DaysWouter Van der Veen et al. — Monacelli Press — 2010
- 99BookDe schetsboeken van Vincent van GoghJohannes Van der Wolk — Meulenhoff/Landshoff — 1987
- 100BookVincent van Gogh – The LettersVincent Van Gogh — Van Gogh Museum & Huygens ING — 2009
- 101BookVincent van Gogh: tekeningen 1: Vroege jaren 1880–1883Sjraar Van Heugten — V+K — 1996
- 102JournalVan Gogh's Concept of His OeuvreEvert Van Uitert — 1981
- 103BookVincent van GoghArnoldo Mondadori Arte de Luca — 1990
- 104BookVan Gogh: the Complete PaintingsIngo Walther et al. — Taschen — 1994
- 105JournalExhibition Reviews: Van Gogh and Expressionism. Amsterdam and New YorkChristian Weikop — 2007
- 106BookThe van Gogh File: The Myth and the ManKenneth Wilkie — Souvenir Press — 2004