Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh; 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. In just over a decade he created approximately 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by symbolic colourisation and dramatic, impulsive and highly expressive paintwork. He sold only one painting during his lifetime and...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth30 March 1853
CityZundert, Netherlands
It's better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide.
We have very beautiful bad weather here at present - rain, wind, thunder - but with splendid effects; that's why I like it.
Van Gogh was so under appreciated in his time, he sold only one of his 900 paintings while alive. Posthumously, he became one of the most famous artists of all time and his work is now considered priceless. Oh the irony.
The sight of stars makes me dream.
Surely the true path is to dive deep into nature.
My brushwork is quite unsystematic. I slam the paint on in all sorts of ways and leave each result to take care of itself.
But you people do not understand me, and I am afraid you never will.
What molting time is to birds, so adversity or misfortune is ... for us humans.
What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came.
I believe more and more that God must not be judged on this earth. It is one of His sketches that has turned out badly.
Art is jealous, and demands our whole strength ... .
It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one's youth.
I was certainly going the right way for a stroke when I left Paris. I paid for it nicely afterwards! When I stopped drinking, when I stopped smoking so much, when I began to think again instead of trying not to think - Good Lord, the depression and the prostration of it! Work in these magnificent natural surroundings (Arles) has restored my morale, but even now some efforts are too much for me: my strength fails me...
For loneliness, worries, difficulties, the unsatisfied need for kindness and sympathy - that is what is hard to bear...