Vincent Van Gogh Post Impressionist Painter

Life: Born: Holland Van Gough was the oldest son in a family of 5 children. His father was a preacher. His mother did needlepoint and had a love for nature. She drew flower studies for your needlepoint. Vincent started drawing flower studies around the age of 12. Vincent did not care for school and went to work as an art dealer for his uncles but this did not work. He tried teaching, being a preacher like his father and a book seller. Finally, at age 27, he decided to become an artist.

Van Gogh’s early paintings were dark in mood an d color. He painted pictures of peasants and poor miners. It showed how poor people were and how hard their life could be. But they also showed the strenght and compassion of the people. Although three of Van Gogh’s uncles were art dealers, only one bought a few of his works and sold them for $1 each. Most people wanted pretty pictures or realistic pictures of famous people.

Vencent left Holland in 1885 and went to Belgium. He studied the bright colors of the great artist Rubens. He started using a brighter hue in his paintings. Vincent realized that he needed to make a change to his art so that it was more person. He went to Paris, France. Paris was a city filled with great ideas and art. He saw the works of the Impressionists and Japanese prints.

The Japanese prints created an intense emotional response in Vincent’s work. He started filling his canvases with bold, thick strokes of bright light and color. He wanted his art to be more that a “pretty picture” – he wanted it to express his feelings. “I want to do drawings that touch some people… I want to progress so far that people will say of my work, he feels deeply, he feels tenderly, … I should want my work to show what is in the heart of such an eccentric, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is, in spite of everything, founded less on anger than on love.

Vincent Van Gogh created hundreds of paintings and drawings. He had a very short art career spanning only 10 years. Many of the paintings he did were destroyed during wars. There are about 900 drawings and 800 paintings of Van Gogh left in the world today.

Title: Sunflowers Date: August, 1888 Medium: Oil on Canvas Analogous Colors – a series of three or more colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. Such as Red, Red-Violet, and Violet

Each of us is an artist. We should try to paint a happy story on the canvas of our lives. ---Vincent Van Gogh