biography
| name: |
van Gogh, Vincent (Willem)
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pronunciation:
[hokh], Br Eng [gof], US Eng [go
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1853–90)
|
| biography:
| Painter, born in Groot-Zundert, The Netherlands. At 16 he worked in an art dealer's, then as a teacher, and became an evangelist at Le Borinage (1878–80). In 1881 he went to Brussels to study art, and settled at The Hague, where he produced his early drawings and watercolours. At Nuenen he painted his first masterpiece, a domestic scene of peasant poverty, ‘The Potato Eaters’ (1885, Amsterdam). He studied in Paris (1886–8), where he developed his individual style of brushwork and a more colourful palette. At Arles, the Provençal landscape gave him many of his best subjects, such as ‘Sunflowers’ (1888, Tate, London) and ‘The Bridge’ (1888, Cologne). He showed increasing signs of mental disturbance (after a quarrel with Gauguin, he cut off part of his own ear), and was placed in an asylum at St Rémy (1889–90). He then stayed at Auvers-sur Oise, where at the scene of his last painting ‘Cornfields with Flight of Birds’ (1890, Amsterdam) he shot himself, and died two days later. One of the pioneers of Expressionism, he used colour primarily for its emotive appeal, and profoundly influenced the Fauves and other experimenters of 20th-c art. |
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