Vincent van Gogh, for whom color 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 van Gogh was highly emotional and lacked self-confidence. Between 1860 and 1880, when Vincent van Gogh finally decided to become an artist, Vincent 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 Vincent van Gogh was dismissed for overzealousness. Vincent van Gogh remained in Belgium to study art, determined to give happiness by creating beauty. The works of Vincent van Gogh's early Dutch period are somber-toned, sharply lit, genre paintings of which the most famous is "The Potato Eaters" (1885). In that year Vincent van Gogh went to Antwerp where he discovered the works of Rubens and purchased many Japanese prints.
In 1886 Vincent van Gogh went to Paris to join his brother Théo, the manager of Goupil's gallery. In Paris, Vincent 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. Vincent van Gogh's nervous temperament made him a difficult companion and night-long discussions combined with painting all day undermined his health. Vincent van Gogh decided to go south to Arles where Vincent van Gogh 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, Vincent van Gogh pursued his friend with an open razor, was stopped by Gauguin, but ended up cutting a portion of his ear lobe off. Vincent van Gogh then began to alternate between fits of madness and lucidity and Vincent van Gogh was sent to the asylum in Saint-Remy for treatment.
In May of 1890, Vincent van Gogh seemed much better and went to live in Auvers-sur-Oise under the watchful eye of Dr. Gachet. Two months later Vincent van Gogh was dead, having shot himself "for the good of all." During his brief career he had sold one painting. Vincent 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. Vincent 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.
