Christies Impressionist

Vincent Van Gogh – His Life and Times

“As for me, I am rather often uneasy in my mind, because I think that my life has not been calm enough; all those bitter disappointments, adversities, changes keep me from developing fully and naturally in my artistic career.”  – Vincent van Gogh

 Vincent Willem van Gogh ( March 30, 1853 – July 29, 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work had   a far-reaching influence on 20th Century Art as a result of its vivid colors and emotional impact. Suffering from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life, he died largely unknown at the age of 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Van Gogh did not begin painting until his late twenties, most of his best-known works dating from his last two years. In less than a decade, he produced more than 2,000 artworks, consisting of around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches. His work included self portraits, landscapes, portraits, and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.

Van Gogh spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers, traveling between The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught for a time in England. One of his early aspirations was to become a pastor and from 1879 he worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium where he began to sketch people from the local community. In 1885, he painted his first major work The Potato Eaters. His palette at the time consisted mainly of somber earth tones and showed no sign of the vivid coloration that distinguished his later work. In March 1886, he moved to Paris and discovered the French Impressionists. Later he moved to the south of France and was taken by the strong sunlight he found there. His work grew brighter in color, and he developed the unique and highly recognizable style which became fully realized during his stay in Arles in 1888.

The extent to which his mental illness affected his painting has been a subject of speculation since his death. Despite a widespread tendency to romanticize his ill health, modern critics see an artist deeply frustrated by the inactivity and incoherence brought about by his bouts of illness. According to art critic Robert Hughes, Van Gogh’s late works show an artist at the height of his ability, completely in control and “longing for concision and grace”.

His fame grew rapidly after his death especially following a showing of 71 of van Gogh’s paintings in Paris on March 17, 1901 (11 years after his death). Van Gogh’s influence on expressionism, fauvism and early abstraction was enormous, and can be seen in many other aspects of 20th-century art. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is dedicated to Van Gogh’s work and that of his contemporaries.

Several paintings by Van Gogh rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. On March 30, 1987 Van Gogh’s painting Irises was sold for a record $53.9 million at Southeby’s, New York. On May 15, 1990 his Portrait of Doctor Gachet was sold for $82.5 million at Christie’s, thus establishing a new price record.

You can read Vincent van Gogh and His Unforgetable Sunflowers for more.

About the Author

Why not decorate your home with this reproduced oil paintings if it matches your interest and style is easy and within your budget?- www.Gallerymeeting.com

Pablo Picasso’s Mousquetaire à la pipe sells for $14.6 Million at Christie’s

Impressionist and Modern Paintings and Sculpture , Part 1, New York , Tuesday, 15th May, 1990 …

Modern Sculpture Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale 6 May 2008 …

Impressionist and Modern Paintings and Sculpture: Monday 28 November 1988 …

Impressionist Picnics $5.98 Impressionist Picnics

Celebrating Impressionist $24 Celebrating Impressionist

The Impressionist $9.59 In India, at the birth of the last century, an infant is brought howling into the world, his remarkable paleness marking him out from his brown-skinned fellows. Revered at first, he is later cast out from his wealthy home when his true parentage is revealed. So begins Pran Naths odyssey of self-discovery a journey that will take him from the streets of Agra, via the red light disrict of Bombay, to the green lawns of England and beyond as he struggles to understand who he really is.