A boy from Zundert

Anna Carbentus gave birth to Vincent van Gogh on March 30, 1853, in Zundert, a village in the Dutch province of North Brabant. His father, Theodorus van Gogh, served as a Protestant minister. Exactly one year earlier, to the day, the couple had lost a stillborn son, also named Vincent [1].

Three sisters and two brothers followed, including Theo, the brother who would shape Vincent's life. The family took long walks around Zundert, and those walks gave Vincent a lasting love of nature [1]. He drew now and then as a boy, but he showed little sign of special talent. He left secondary school in Tilburg midway through his second year, for reasons no one knows, and never went back [1].

Searching for a calling

At 16, he started as a trainee at Goupil & Cie, an international art dealer, at the branch in The Hague that his uncle Vincent, "Uncle Cent," had set up. In September 1872 he began writing to Theo, a correspondence that lasted the rest of his life [1]. Goupil moved him to London in 1873 and to Paris in 1875. In London he admired the peasant painters Jean-François Millet and Jules Breton. In Paris he turned increasingly religious and lost interest in selling art, and in 1876 Goupil dismissed him [2].

He tried teaching at schools in Ramsgate and Isleworth, England, then worked in a bookshop in Dordrecht. He spent a year in Amsterdam preparing for the entrance exam to study theology, but he lacked the discipline for it and gave it up [2].

SI illustration of a gaunt young Van Gogh seated with an open book, reading to a close circle of coal miners, men and women in dark caps and shawls, in a dim cottage beside an iron stove. Sepia.
Among the miners of the Borinage, 1879. (Image: SI illustration)

Next, he went to the Borinage, a coal-mining region of Belgium, as a lay preacher. He taught, visited the sick and read the Bible to miners. He slept on the floor and gave away his belongings, and people called him "The Christ of the Coal Mine." "It's a sombre place," he wrote to Theo in April 1879 [2]. He failed to build a close community of worshippers, and his contract ran out without renewal. Theo, who had seen the little sketches in Vincent's letters, urged him to focus on drawing. In October 1880, at 27, Vincent moved to Brussels to train as an artist, with Theo sending him money [2].

The peasant painter

His parents saw an artist's life as social failure [3]. In 1881, after a row with his father, he left their home on Christmas Day and settled in The Hague. There he took lessons from his cousin-in-law, the celebrated painter Anton Mauve, who taught him the basics of watercolor and oil [3]. Theo, by then a manager at Goupil in Paris, supported him so he could work full time [3].

In December 1883, Vincent moved back in with his parents, now in the village of Nuenen. He drew and painted the farmers, laborers and weavers around him [4]. He offered Theo his work in return for his allowance, but his dark, earthy pictures did not suit buyers in Paris, who wanted color [4].

SI illustration of Van Gogh in a cap and dark jacket sketching on a board at the end of a farmhouse table, where a peasant family shares a dish of potatoes under a hanging lamp. Sepia.
Sketching a peasant family's evening meal, Nuenen, 1885. (Image: SI illustration)
Painting by Vincent van Gogh: five peasants in dark clothes gather around a small table under a hanging oil lamp, sharing a dish of potatoes and pouring coffee, in dark earthy greens and browns.
"The Potato Eaters" (Painting: Vincent van Gogh, 1885, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

His father died in late March 1885. Afterward Vincent began "The Potato Eaters," a peasant family sharing potatoes by lamplight, which he prepared with many studies [4]. Later that year he enrolled at the art academy in Antwerp, Belgium. He left the Netherlands and never returned [4].

Paris and color, 1886–1888

The Antwerp classes struck him as too traditional. At the end of February 1886 he turned up in Paris without warning and scribbled Theo a note on a page torn from his sketchbook: "My dear Theo, Don't be cross with me that I've come all of a sudden" [4].

SI illustration of Van Gogh in a gray felt hat and dark coat leaning over a table to study a large Japanese woodblock print of a bridge, with framed prints and sketches on the wall behind him and a window at left. Muted color.
Studying a Japanese woodblock print, Paris, 1887. (Image: SI illustration)
Painting by Vincent van Gogh after a Japanese print: small figures cross a wooden bridge in slanting rain over blue-green water, inside a painted red and green border with copied Japanese characters.
"Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige)" (Painting: Vincent van Gogh, 1887, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

Paris changed his painting. Theo showed him the colorful work of Claude Monet and other modern artists, and at the studio of Fernand Cormon he met Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Émile Bernard [5]. His palette brightened, and he developed his own style of short brushstrokes. Models cost too much, so he painted himself again and again. He and Theo also collected Japanese woodblock prints, and their bold outlines, cropping and color contrasts soon showed in his work [5].

After two years, the city wore him out. He wanted sun and the color of "Japanese" landscapes, and he went south [5].

The Yellow House, 1888

He arrived in Arles, a small town on the Rhône River in southern France, on Feb. 20, 1888 [5]. The light thrilled him. He painted blossoming orchards and harvesters, and his style grew looser and more expressive [6]. He dreamed of a "Studio of the South," a home for a group of artists. "You always lose when you're isolated," he wrote to Theo [6].

He rented four rooms in the Yellow House on Place Lamartine. In August he painted four canvases of sunflowers in a vase to decorate the house for his friend Paul Gauguin [14]. Gauguin moved in late in October, the first artist to join him and the last [6].

SI illustration of Van Gogh in a paint-stained blue smock, palette in hand, painting a canvas of sunflowers at a wooden easel beside a vase of real sunflowers on a small table, in a bright whitewashed room with sunlight from an open shuttered window.
Painting sunflowers in the Yellow House, Arles, 1888. (Image: SI illustration)
Painting by Vincent van Gogh: a bunch of sunflowers, some full and some wilting, in a yellow earthenware vase on a yellow table against a pale yellow wall.
"Sunflowers" (Painting: Vincent van Gogh, 1888, National Gallery, London)

The two men worked hard side by side, but they argued constantly. Gauguin painted from memory and imagination, while Van Gogh painted what he saw. "The discussion is excessively electric," Vincent wrote [6]. Just before Christmas, when Gauguin threatened to leave, Van Gogh threatened him with a razor. Later that evening, he cut off all or almost all of his left ear, wrapped it in paper and gave it to a young woman at a nearby brothel [6][11][20][21]. The police found him at home the next morning and took him to the hospital [11]. He remembered little of it afterward [6].

Saint-Rémy and the night sky, 1889

The attacks returned, and no one has settled what caused them [11]. In May 1889, fearing another one, he checked himself into Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence [6]. He kept working. On good days he painted in the walled garden, and he made about 150 paintings there in a year [7].

SI illustration of Van Gogh seen from behind in a dark room, looking out a window at a deep blue sky before sunrise, with one bright star low over the hills, a tall cypress and a field below.
Before sunrise at the asylum window, Saint-Rémy, 1889. (Image: SI illustration)
SI illustration of Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night, a swirling blue night sky with glowing stars and a crescent moon over a small village with a church steeple, with a dark flamelike cypress rising in the foreground.
"The Starry Night" (Image: SI illustration of Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night, 1889, Museum of Modern Art, New York)

In July 1888 he had written that "the sight of the stars always makes me dream" [16]. Now, he told Theo, "This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big" [17]. In mid-June he painted "The Starry Night," inspired by that view. He based the village on other views, moved the cypress closer, reshaped the stars and added a glow [15].

Theo married Johanna "Jo" Bonger in April 1889. When their son arrived in January 1890, they named him Vincent Willem, and Vincent painted "Almond Blossom" for their bedroom [7]. Recognition began to arrive, too. Les Vingt, an artists' group, showed six of his paintings in Brussels, and Anna Boch bought "The Red Vineyard" there [7][10]. In March 1890, Theo reported that Gauguin called Vincent's paintings "the key to the exhibition" at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris [7].

The last summer, 1890

In May 1890 he moved north to Auvers-sur-Oise, a village of artists near Paris, where Dr. Paul Gachet, an amateur painter, kept an eye on him. He painted the gardens and wheat fields at a feverish pace, almost a picture a day [8].

SI illustration of a lone figure in a hat walking a narrow path through a vast wheat field under heavy storm clouds, with crows low over the field. Black and white.
Wheat fields under a stormy sky, Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890. (Image: SI illustration)
SI illustration of Vincent van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows, a wide golden wheat field split by a red-brown path under a dark blue stormy sky, with black crows flying low over the field.
"Wheatfield with Crows" (Image: SI illustration of Vincent van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows, 1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

In early July he visited Theo in Paris and learned that his brother was thinking of leaving his job to start his own business. The news frightened him. "My life, too, is attacked at the very root," he wrote [8]. On July 27, 1890, he walked into a wheat field and shot himself in the chest. He died at the Auberge Ravoux, the inn where he lodged, on July 29, with Theo at his side. He was 37 [8]. In his years as an artist, he had made more than 850 paintings and almost 1,300 works on paper [8].

How his work still echoes

Theo died about six months later, at the end of January 1891. His widow, Jo, took charge of the collection and worked to make Vincent known, lending his paintings to museums around the world. In 1914 she published his letters to Theo [9]. Scholars count 903 surviving letters written by or to Vincent [18].

In 1973 Queen Juliana opened the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which the Dutch state built to keep the family collection open to everyone. About 2 million people visit it each year [9].

The Museum of Modern Art in New York says "The Starry Night" heralded modern painting's new embrace of mood and expression [15]. Five of his sunflower paintings hang in museums in Amsterdam, London, Munich, Philadelphia and Tokyo [12][14]. In 1990, his "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" sold at Christie's in New York for $82.5 million, then the highest price ever paid for an artwork at auction [19].

Back in Arles in 1888, with his paintings still not selling, he had told Theo, "The day will come, though, when people will see that they're worth more than the cost of the paint" [9].

4 things you didn't know about Van Gogh

  1. He sold more than one painting. The Van Gogh Museum says nobody knows exactly how many he sold, but it was more than a couple. His uncle Cor ordered city views of The Hague, the Paris paint dealer Julien Tanguy bought one, and Anna Boch bought "The Red Vineyard" [10].
  2. He signed his paintings "Vincent." He felt little like "a Van Gogh" in character, and he knew from his years in the art trade that people struggled to pronounce his Dutch surname [13].
  3. He painted seven "Sunflowers." He made four in August 1888 and three copies in January 1889. One belongs to a private collection, and another, bought by a Japanese collector in 1921, did not survive World War II [14].
  4. He couldn't see the village in "The Starry Night" from his window. He based it on other views and gave the church a steeple that looks Dutch rather than French. The bright point at center left is Venus [15][17].