Vincent van Gogh, colour, letters and a short burst of genius
In barely ten years Vincent van Gogh went from late beginner to one of the most loved painters in history. His letters, and his sister-in-law, explain how.
Vincent van Gogh1853 to 1890 · ZundertPost-Impressionism
Vincent van Gogh painted for only about ten years, and for most of that time almost nobody wanted his pictures. Today his sunflowers, cypresses and swirling night skies are among the most reproduced images in the world. The story of how that happened runs through stubborn hard work, hundreds of surviving letters and one determined woman in Amsterdam. Here is the life, the way he worked and the best places to see the paintings for yourself.
A late start after false starts
Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Zundert, a village in the south of the Netherlands, the son of a Protestant minister. At sixteen he joined an international firm of art dealers and worked for it in The Hague, London and Paris until he was dismissed in 1876. Selling pictures never suited him, but the job gave him a deep knowledge of prints and paintings.
He then tried teaching and preaching. In the Borinage, a coal mining region of Belgium, he worked as a lay evangelist among miners and their families. By 1880 he had decided to become an artist. He was 27, largely self-taught and determined to learn drawing from the ground up, copying from instruction manuals and drawing labourers again and again.
From dark Nuenen to the colour of Paris
Between 1883 and 1885 he lived with his parents in Nuenen, in the Dutch province of North Brabant, painting weavers and farming families in heavy browns and greens. The high point of this period is The Potato Eaters (1885), a dark, deliberately rough picture of a family sharing a meal by lamplight. Many who saw it found the colours murky and the figures clumsy. Van Gogh saw it as honest painting of working life.
In 1886 he moved to Paris to live with his younger brother Theo, who worked for the same firm of art dealers. There he met the Impressionists and the younger painters around them, and his palette changed almost overnight. He began to use bright, unmixed colours, short broken brushstrokes and the flat shapes he admired in Japanese woodblock prints, which he collected in large numbers. His paint grew thicker too, often laid on in raised ridges, a technique known as .
Arles, sunflowers and the Yellow House
In February 1888 he left for Arles in Provence, looking for southern light. He rented rooms in a house on the Place Lamartine, which he painted as The Yellow House, and dreamed of turning it into a studio for a community of artists. In August he painted a series of sunflowers in a vase to decorate a room for his hoped-for guest, the painter Paul Gauguin.
Gauguin arrived on 23 October 1888 and stayed about nine weeks. The two worked side by side but argued often. In late December, during a severe crisis, Van Gogh injured his own ear and was taken to hospital in Arles, and Gauguin returned to Paris. It was the first of several periods of serious illness in the last eighteen months of Van Gogh’s life.
Saint-Rémy, The Starry Night and the last months
In May 1889 he admitted himself voluntarily to the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where he stayed for a year. Doctors and historians have proposed many diagnoses over the years. None can be confirmed, and we do not speculate here. What his letters make clear is that he painted between crises, with full awareness and great discipline.
From his window he could see a walled wheat field and the hills beyond. In June 1889 he turned that view into The Starry Night, adding an imagined village beneath a sky of churning stars. It has belonged to the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1941. At Saint-Rémy he also painted irises, olive groves and cypresses, the dark, flame-like trees of the south.
He painted between crises, with full awareness and great discipline.
In May 1890 he moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris, near Dr Paul Gachet, a physician and amateur painter who had agreed to look after him, and worked at an extraordinary pace. He died there on 29 July 1890, aged 37, from a gunshot wound that is generally understood to have been self-inflicted. Theo died less than six months later. The brothers now lie side by side in the village cemetery.
- 1853Born in Zundert in the south of the Netherlands on 30 March.
- 1869Joins a firm of art dealers in The Hague, later working in London and Paris.
- 1880Decides to become an artist after working as a lay preacher in the Borinage.
- 1885Paints The Potato Eaters in Nuenen.
- 1886Moves to Paris to live with his brother Theo.
- 1888Settles in Arles, paints the Sunflowers and works alongside Gauguin.
- 1889Enters the asylum at Saint-Rémy and paints The Starry Night.
- 1890Dies in Auvers-sur-Oise on 29 July, aged 37.
Letters, Theo and the woman who made him known
Theo supported Vincent for most of his career, sending money and materials from Paris. In return Vincent sent canvases and letters. More than 800 of his letters survive, the great majority written to Theo. They describe colours he had mixed, books he was reading and pictures he was planning, often with small sketches on the page, and they form one of the richest records any artist has left.
After Theo’s death his widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, inherited hundreds of his paintings and drawings. She lent and sold works with great care and organised exhibitions, above all the large of 1905 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1914 she published the letters. Her patient work did more than anything else to turn an almost unknown painter into a household name.
Where to see Van Gogh
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, opened in 1973, holds the world’s largest collection of his work, built on the family collection that Theo and Jo kept together: some 200 paintings, hundreds of drawings and most of the letters. The second largest collection belongs to the Kröller-Müller Museum, set in the Hoge Veluwe National Park near Otterlo, with close to 90 paintings and around 180 works on paper. In Paris, the Musée d’Orsay shows a strong group that includes a self-portrait of 1889 and The Church at Auvers.
The large sunflower paintings are spread across several countries, with versions in London, Amsterdam, Munich, Philadelphia and Tokyo. Loans and rehangs are frequent, so check the museum’s own website before you travel with one particular picture in mind.
Terms in this article
- Post-Impressionism
- Umbrella term for painters after Impressionism, such as Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne, who pushed colour, form and expression in personal directions.
- Impasto
- Paint applied so thickly that brush or knife marks stand up from the surface and catch the light.
- Woodblock print
- A print made by carving an image into a block of wood, inking the raised surface and pressing paper onto it.
- Retrospective
- An exhibition that surveys an artist’s whole career or a large part of it.
Readers ask
How long was Van Gogh’s career as an artist?
Only about ten years. He decided to become an artist in 1880, at the age of 27, after working for art dealers and as a lay preacher, and he died in July 1890. In that decade he is estimated to have made about 850 to 900 paintings and well over 1,000 drawings, an extraordinary pace that his letters to his brother Theo document almost week by week.
Where is the best place to start with Van Gogh?
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam holds the largest collection, with some 200 paintings and most of his letters, so it shows the whole development from Nuenen to Auvers. If you have more time, add the Kröller-Müller Museum near Otterlo, set in a national park. In Paris, the Musée d’Orsay has a strong group of late works. Check each museum’s own website for current displays.
How should we think about Van Gogh’s illness?
Van Gogh went through several periods of severe illness from late 1888 and spent a year in the asylum at Saint-Rémy at his own request. Many diagnoses have been suggested since, but none can be confirmed. His letters show a thoughtful, disciplined artist who worked between crises, and the paintings can be enjoyed and understood without any diagnosis at all.
