I was born on 30th March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, Netherlands, to Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Cornelia Carbentus. My father was a country minister and my mother was an artist.
Theodorus
van Gogh
I was the eldest of six children. My three younger sisters were Anna, Elisabeth and Willemina, and my two younger brothers were Theodorus and Cornelius.
In June of 1873, I was transferred to the Goupil Gallery in London. It was there that I fell in love with English culture, and spent my spare time visiting art galleries and reading the works of Charles Dickens and George Eliot.
ART GALLERY
I was transferred again in 1874, temporarily but against my wishes, to Goupil in Paris. I wasn’t happy there, and was thankful to return to London by the end of the year.
After studying religion for some time, in 1878 I moved to the Borinage, an extremely deprived coal mining community in the south of Belgium. The conditions for the miners and myself were terrible. I preached and ministered to the sick, and I also drew pictures of the miners and their families. They began to call me the “Christ of the Coal Mines”.
Unfortunately, I eventually attracted the attention of religious superiors, who felt that my lifestyle had begun to look like martyrdom. To my great sadness, they relieved me of my position in the Borinage.
In April 1881, my financial situation forced me to move back to my parents’ home in Etten. It was a difficult time and I argued frequently with my mother and father.
During that year I often visited The Hague to ask advice of my cousin, the painter Anton Mauve. Thankfully he saw my potential and encouraged me to paint with oils. I decided to move to The Hague permanently in 1882. Under Mauve’s direction, I began to find my own style and even got a small commission.
After arguing with Mauve, in 1884 I was forced to move to my parents’ new home in Nuenen. Luckily, I soon came to an agreement with my Theo that for a monthly fee I would send him my paintings, and he would then try to sell it for a profit. This allowed me to get my own studio to live and work in. It was there that in 1885, I began work on what is considered to be my first masterpiece, an oil painting titled “The Potato Eaters”.
Theo was living in Paris, and he felt my rather ‘dark’ painting style would not be well-received in the French capital. The trend there at that time was Impressionism. Nevertheless, I decided to move to Paris in March 1886 and showed up at Theo’s house uninvited. My brother welcome me into his small apartment.
While in Paris, I was inspired by the colour and light of Impressionist art and my style changed significantly under its influence. I painted a large number of self-portraits during this period, including “Self Portrait with Straw Hat” in the summer of 1887.
Through Theo’s work as an art dealer, I was able to meet many great Impressionist artists including Monet, Degas and Renoir. In 1887, Theo and I became friends with an artist called Paul Gauguin, who had just arrived in Paris.
I also organised for an exhibition of my work along with that of rising stars like Gauguin, Toulouse- Lautrec and Bernard. The show was a success and got good reviews.
By February 1888, I was exhausted and not feeling in the best of health, physically or mentally. So I took a train to Arles in the south of France, with the intention of creating a school of art or an artists’ community. I moved into the Yellow House and spent my money on paint, not food. That same year I painted my famous “Sunflowers” series, as well as “Starry Night Over the Rhone” and “Bedroom in Arles”.
In the months that followed, I would paint at the Yellow House during the day and return to the hospital at night. In 1889 I decided to move to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole hospital in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, as my health was still bad.
It was at this time I became focused again on self-portraits, and created some of my most famous and revealing paintings, including “Self-Portrait” and “Self-Portrait with Clean-Shaven Face”.
After my death, over seventy of my paintings were displayed at an exhibition in Paris in 1901 and suddenly I was famous. My father had died in 1885, but my mother was still alive when I was first called an artist and a genius.
The Van Gogh Museum was opened in Amsterdam in 1973. More than 200 of my paintings, 500 drawings and 750 written documents are on display there.
Art can be a great source of joy. It can help to lift you up when you’re down, bring happiness when you’re feeling sad.
Today, my paintings are some of the most famous in the world. But this wasn’t always the case and despite my talent not being recognised at the time, I never gave up. It is important to have confidence, believe in yourself, and do what you love.