Gogh, Vincent (Willem) van (1853–1890)

Portrait of Dr Gachet, 1890, by Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh painted this portrait of a friend while living in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. Throughout his life, van Gogh wrote letters to his brother, Theo. Of Dr Gachet he wrote, ‘He seems very sensible, but he is as discouraged about his job as a doctor as I am about my painting’.

The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise, painted in 1890 by Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh's work is full of emotion, its colours attempting to express feelings, his brushstrokes full of passion. It was only months after finishing this painting that the artist committed suicide.

Dutch post-Impressionist painter. He began painting in the 1880s, his early works often being sombre depictions of peasant life, such as The Potato Eaters (1885; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). Influenced by the Impressionists and by Japanese prints, he developed a freer style characterized by intense colour and expressive brushwork, as seen in his Sunflowers series (1888). His influence on modern art, particularly on expressionism, has been immense.

His numerous works (over 800 paintings and 700 drawings) include still lifes, portraits (many self-portraits), and landscapes, such as The Starry Night (1889; Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Crows over Wheatfield (1890; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). His most creative time was 1888 in Arles, Provence, in the company of the painter Paul Gauguin, when he produced views of the town and such pictures as Orchard in Blossom and The Chair and Pipe.

Van Gogh did not take up art seriously until he was 27, having by that time failed in various projected careers: in a firm of art dealers in The Hague, in England as a teacher in schools in Ramsgate and Isleworth, and as lay preacher among the miners of the Borinage. The first stage of his career as artist may be dated 1880–86 in Holland and Belgium. Supported by an allowance from his brother Theo, he took drawing lessons in Brussels, was with his uncle Anton Mauve for a while in The Hague, and for a year at the Academy in Antwerp. The Potato Eaters was the product of this period. In Paris 1886–88, he was much influenced by Japanese prints, by Impressionism, and by the division of colour as practised by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Boots was a last effort in van Gogh's early dark, proletarian style.

The Arles paintings show a new sense of colour and design, and vividly testify to his intense emotional involvement in his art. Among them is The Night Café (1888; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven), of which he wrote: ‘I have tried to express with red and green the terrible passions of human nature.’ The Drawbridge, Boats at Saintes-Maries, and The Zouave Officer also date from this period.

After a mental crisis 1888, when, after a quarrel with Gauguin, van Gogh mutilated his ear, he struggled with deep fits of depression. The year 1889 in St-Rémy produced his free copies after the works of various artists and his paintings of cypress trees; 1890, in Auvers-sur-Oise, the last agitated paintings of cornfields before he shot himself.

His letters to his brother Theo are an illuminating commentary on his work and ideas.