Tumanova E.E.

Vincent Van Gogh

Self-portrait in front of the Easel 1888

Great Dutch artist

Vincent van Gogh, like Rembrandt, was a Dutchman. Here is the first external fact, the accidental biography, which, however, immediately acquires a non-random significance and gives us the key to the doors of his life. Even Hippolyte Taine, and after him other sociologists, pointed to the causal dependence of art on the surrounding material environment. But one amendment must be made to their somewhat mechanical explanation of art: the causal relationship between the human spirit and the external environment is not always direct - sometimes it is reverse. There are brilliant artists who embody the dictates of their time and their people - such were the masters of Greece and the Renaissance; but there are other geniuses who can only be understood as deniers of this milieu. Their life and work flow from this environment in the sense that they are a reaction against it. Such a protest against the common sense of his time was the appearance of Rembrandt, especially the second half of his work, starting with The Night Watch, when the gap grew between him and his burgher customers. The same personified protest against the philistine spirit of Holland is the life and work of Van Gogh.

For the Impressionists, one of the main objects of display was a person. His image was interpreted in such a way that he asserted himself in the struggle with his environment and himself painfully, hard, straining his inner strength to the limit. This aspect of post-impressionist art is best seen in the work of Vincent van Gogh.

Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890) is considered a great Dutch painter who had a very strong influence on impressionism in art. His works, created in a ten-year period, amaze with their color, negligence and roughness of the brushstroke, images of a mentally ill man, exhausted by suffering, who committed suicide.

Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 in Holland. He was named after his deceased brother, who was born a year before him on the same day. Therefore, it always seemed to him that he was replacing someone else. Shyness, shyness, too sensitive nature alienated him from his classmates, and his only friend was his older brother Theo, with whom they vowed not to part as a child. Vincent was 27 when he finally realized that he wanted to be an artist. "I can't express how happy I am that I started painting again. I often thought about it, but I thought that drawing was beyond my abilities." So Vincent wrote to his brother.

In practice, Van Gogh was self-taught, although he used the advice of A. Mauve. But to an even greater extent than the recommendations of a modern Dutch painter, acquaintance with the works and reproductions of Rembrandt, Delacour, Daumier and Millet played in the formation of Van Gogh. The painting itself, which he turned to after trying various professions (a salesman in a salon, a teacher, a preacher), he understood as something that no longer carries the word of a sermon to the people, but an artistic image.

One of Van Gogh's famous paintings is The Potato Eaters.

"Potato Eaters", 1885

In a dark, gloomy room, five people are sitting at a table: two men, two women, and a girl visible from the back. A kerosene lamp hanging from above illuminates thin, tired faces and large, overworked hands. A meager meal of the peasants - a plate of boiled potatoes and liquid coffee. The images of people combine monumental grandeur and compassion, which lives in wide-open eyes, tightly upturned triangles of eyebrows, wrinkles that are clearly readable even on young faces.

Life and work in France

In 1886, Vincent came to Paris and from now on he never returns to his homeland... Van Gogh, a Dutchman by nationality, came to France as an established artist who depicted the people and nature of his homeland.

Arriving in Paris makes significant adjustments to Van Gogh's work, without changing its main essence. The artist is still filled with sympathy and love for the little man, but this man is already different - a resident of the French capital, an artist himself.

The change in Van Gogh's style was to a certain extent dictated by a change in his ideological position. In its most general form, his view of the world at that time can be considered more joyful, brighter than in Holland. This side of his work is especially well revealed in landscapes and still lifes. Having become a passionate supporter of the open air, he wanders around Paris, depicts the corners of Montmartre, the banks and bridges of the Seine, folk theaters and feels like a real Frenchman. “We are working, all together, on the French Renaissance - here I am, as it were, at home,” Van Gogh writes. Indeed, from now on his work belongs to France and mankind; he becomes an ally of the Impressionists, shares their hardships, contributes to their success...

But the fiery nature of Van Gogh was alien to the middle; in everything he undertook, he went to the end. The search for light and air, the passion for Seurat's technique (divisionism) could not but ignite in him the desire to leave gray Paris and go south. It became cramped for him in the capital, and the south is drawn to him as that promised land, where only it is possible “from now on to organize an atelier of the future”, where only the artist’s talent can unfold. And in 1888 he moved to Arles, a town in Provence.

A new period of creativity - the town of Provence.

Here begins a new period of Van Gogh's work. The first impression did not deceive him. Provence seemed to him “by its joyful measure of colors a country as beautiful as Japan”, and he only regrets that he did not get here in his youth ... “Joyful play of colors” - how unexpected are these words in the language of Van Gogh, a recent ascetic, - they poured out all his new attitude to the world, the attitude of the painter. New and at the same time old, because he loved nature since childhood. But in Holland he loved only her quiet sadness, but here, among the southern splendor, he first admired the brightness of colors, the brilliance of the sun. Here for the first time he felt that there could not be a difference between him and his great teacher, Rembrandt. “Rembrandt painted with chiaroscuro, we paint with colors,” he says in one letter, formulating this revolution that happened to him in the south. Rembrandt saw in the world, first of all, the contrast of light and shadow, for Van Gogh the world is first of all a celebration of color, a play of colors.

The technique of painting in general plays a much greater role in our era than before. When we look at a painting by an old master, we, in essence, forget about the technique, about the manner of the stroke - form and content, feeling and intellect, objective and subjective are balanced in it to such an extent. But - alas! - modern man is far from this classical balance of spirit, and that is why in a modern picture we, first of all, notice the subjective approach of the artist to this or that object. And technique, as Puvis de Chavannes rightly remarks, is nothing but the artist's temperament, the degree of intensity of his worldview. There are realist artists who perceive the world with such submissive passivity that we forget about their human personality and only say: “How vividly this samovar or red chest of drawers is written - it is just like a real one.” But there are other artists, with an irrepressible and rebellious soul, who cannot hide behind the matter of the depicted object the very pace of their experience. Looking at their picture, we see, first of all, not what is depicted, but how it is depicted, we, as it were, participate in the very process of their creation, we are excited and in a hurry with them. For such individualist artists, technique occupies a huge place, but at the same time it ceases to be technique in the usual sense of the word, that is, something external and handicraft.

That's what Van Gogh is. "Ordered stroke" seems to him "as impossible as fencing during an assault." He is truly an impressionist, in the deepest sense of the word, an impressionist more than all the others whom we are accustomed to call that, for he changes his technique several times even within the same picture, according to each given impression. Each object impresses him differently, and each time the strings of his soul vibrate differently, and the hand hurries to record these inner notes. He works now with a brush, then with a knife, liquidly prescribing that, thickly sculpting with paints, throwing strokes now along and across. He always works at once, at first impression, in some kind of instant ecstasy, and it seems that the picture escapes from under his brush, like a cry of admiration for nature or pity for man. In the very pace of his strokes, you always feel the rhythmic rise or fall of this cry, you feel the burning of his soul.

Himself eternally ebullient, indefatigable, he sees in the world, first of all, an eternally active principle. His world is in a relentless cycle, growth, formation. He perceives objects not as bodies, but as phenomena. This does not mean that he depicts any single moment of nature caught on the fly, like Claude Monet. No, he depicts not one moment, but the continuity of moments, the leitmotif of each object is its dynamic being. That is why each of his studies from nature surpasses casual observation, rising to the contemplation of the abstract, to the cosmic spectacle. He is an artist of world rhythms. He paints not this effect of the setting sun, but how the sun sets in general, sending arrows of rays that scatter around the canvas, or how it arises from a golden fog thickening in concentric circles.

He depicted not the effect of a tree accidentally bent by the wind, but the very growth of a tree from the ground, the growth of branches from a tree. Its cypress trees seem like gothic temples, lancet visions rushing to the sky. Crouched from the southern heat, they ascend, wriggling like huge swirling tongues of green flame themselves, and if they are bushes, they burn on the ground like bonfires. Its mountain ranges really bend, as if being formed before our eyes from the initial geological chaos... Its roads, beds and furrows of fields really run away into the distance, and its strokes really spread like a carpet of grass, or go up the hills. All this, sounding only a verbal turnover with you and me, lives, and moves, and leaves with Van Gogh. And his cosmos, his landscapes are engulfed in eternal fire, like himself, and clouds swirl in them like smoke.

Van Gogh is a portrait painter.

Van Gogh's dynamic manner is even more evident in his marvelous reed pen drawings, which he sketched with Japanese virtuosity and generously scattered in his letters, illustrating his thoughts. He wanted to draw as quickly as he wrote, and indeed, these strokes and dots are the signature of his genius. I don't know of any contemporary graphic artist who possesses such confidence in line, such power of suggestion, such laconicism in drawing. His sketches with a pen are some kind of pulsograms of the world, graphic symbols of world life. Here is a tree running up in curls of lines, notes of haystacks formed from spirals, and grass growing vertically, and roofs tiling upwards, or tattered branches growing here and there ...

Here is a portrait of a postman from Arles. How complacently his sideburns are combed with strokes, how happily the wallpaper flowers glow against the background!

"Portrait of a postman from Arly", 1889

In one of his letters, Van Gogh writes about him that this gentleman is very pleased and proud, since he has just become a happy father.

Here is "Berceuse" - a fishing nanny, whom, according to fishing beliefs, you often see in the night in front of the boat, at the hour of bad weather - then she amuses with fairy tales.

"The Fisherman's Nanny", 1888

And indeed, how many strong fairy tales, rough and bright, this woman must know of fairy tales, similar to these blooming popular prints in the background! Van Gogh was going to give this picture to Saint-Marie - a shelter for sailors ...

And here again is something opposite: a self-portrait of Van Gogh himself, strokes of which are like exposed nerves. There is no longer an external resemblance, not a mask of a face, but the very tense and revealed soul ...

"Self-portrait", September 1889

But an even greater fact of Van Gogh's expressiveness than his technique is color. He reveals the characteristic in a person not only by exaggerating the drawing, but also by the symbolism of colors. “I want to make a portrait of my friend, an artist who has wonderful dreams,” he writes in a letter to his brother. “I would like to put all my love for him into this portrait and I choose colors completely arbitrarily. I exaggerate the light tone of his hair to the extent of orange. Then, as a background, instead of depicting the banal wall of a squalid apartment, I will paint infinity, the most intense blue tone that I have on my palette. With this combination, a golden head against a blue background will appear as a star in the deep blue of the sky.

I do exactly the same in the portrait of a peasant, imagining this man in the midday sun, in the midst of the harvest. Hence these orange reflections, sparkling like red-hot iron; hence this tone of old gold, burning in the dark... Ah, my dear, many will see in this exaggeration a caricature, but what do I care! ”

Thus, in contrast to most portrait painters, who think that the likeness is limited to the face, the colors of the background were for Van Gogh not an accidental decoration, but the same expressive factor as the drawing. His "Fisherman's Nanny" is all written in sonorous popular-flowery colors. One of his Arlesian women, probably a malicious provincial gossip, is dressed in black and blue like a crow's wing, and therefore looks even more like a cawing bird. So each color had its own definite laconic meaning in Van Gogh's eyes, was for him a symbol of spiritual experience, evoked analogies in him. He not only loved the colorfulness of the world, but also read in it the words of a whole secret language.

But of all the color-words, he was most fascinated by two: yellow and blue. The yellow major scale, from pale lemon to resounding orange, was for him a symbol of the sun, a rye ear, the good news of Christian love. He loved her.

The human soul...not cathedrals.

Let's turn to Van Gogh: "I prefer to paint people's eyes, not cathedrals ... the human soul, even the soul of an unfortunate beggar or a street girl, in my opinion, is much more interesting." “Those who write peasant life will stand the test of time better than the makers of cardinal devices and harems written in Paris.” “I will remain myself, and even in raw works I will say strict, rude, but truthful things.” “The worker against the bourgeois is not as well founded as the third estate against the other two a hundred years ago.”

Could a person who in these and a thousand similar statements so explained the meaning of life and art count on success with “the powers that be? ". The bourgeois environment uprooted Van Gogh. Against rejection, Van Gogh had the only weapon - confidence in the correctness of the chosen path and work. “Art is a struggle… it is better to do nothing than to express yourself weakly.” "You have to work like a few blacks." Even a half-starved existence is turned into a stimulus for creativity: “In the severe trials of poverty, you learn to look at things with completely different eyes.”

The bourgeois public does not forgive innovation, and Van Gogh was an innovator in the most direct and true sense of the word. His reading of the sublime and beautiful went through an understanding of the inner essence of objects and phenomena: from as insignificant as torn shoes to crushing cosmic hurricanes. The ability to present these seemingly disparate values ​​on an equally huge artistic scale put Van Gogh not only outside the official aesthetic concept of academic artists, but also forced him to go beyond the scope of impressionistic painting.

Van Gogh is a post-impressionist.

At the beginning of the 20th century too straightforward opposition of Van Gogh's art (exactly like Cezanne, Gauguin and Toulus - Lottrek) to impressionistic practice led to the creation of a new term - "post-impressionism". Its premise is obvious. The relationship between the two generations of artists was much more complex and broader than the usual polemics of successive trends. For all the seeming incomparability of works created from the Renaissance to Impressionism inclusive, European painting was based on a system based on the principle of “see-depict”.

In Impressionism, he reached a particularly complete development, expressed in the amazing naturalness and variety of significant impressions recorded by the artist. In the endless change of light and air outfits of nature, the Impressionists saw the beautiful face of its eternal renewal.

But the cult of direct impression also contained something that made the system of visual perception rigid and limited. In the unrestrained pursuit of an elusive and disobedient moment, the object of observation imperceptibly moved into the background, as a result of which the artistic image as a whole turned out to be irreparably impoverished.

The post-impressionists and Van Gogh, in particular, proposed a fundamentally different method, a method of synthesizing observations and knowledge, an analysis of the internal structure of things and phenomena, which opened the way to enlarge the scale of images and expanded the cognitive possibilities of art. “I see in all nature, for example in trees, an expression and, so to speak, a soul.” These words are the key to reading Vangogh's interpretation of the artistic image. It is based on the fusion of two principles: the first of which refers to everything related to work on nature, and the second is determined by the creative impulse of the artist himself, which allows him to see reality in a brighter and more transformed form.

Van Gogh once compared academic painting with a ruinous mistress who “... freezes you, sucks your blood, turns you into stone... Fuck this mistress to hell,” he says, “and fall in love with your real lover without memory - Lady Nature or Reality. He touchingly loved this “Lady” all his life, brushing aside any encroachment on his feelings. Gauguin, who called him to work on the imagination, endured time in vain. No force could force Van Gogh to tear art away from life. But the love for the "Lady of Reality" was not at all someone else's, blind. Naturalists were despised by Van Gogh, even more “dreamers”. In Van Gogh's eyes, work from nature is "the taming of the shrew." Once people believed in the earth's firmament, and later it turned out that the earth was round ... Perhaps, however, life is also round and many times exceeds in its length and properties the curve that we now know. In order to know this extent, Van Gogh tore off the tinsel of banal everyday life from it and revealed the truth in all its nakedness. But extracting the truth is not conceivable without the transforming creative impulse of the artist himself, concentrating all his mind and feeling in it. Without this, it is impossible to turn “potato eaters” into witnesses for all “humiliated and insulted”, to make worn, torn shoes scream about the martyrs of poverty. The organic fusion of the “visible world” and the “essential world” is “... something new, ... the highest in art, where art often stands above nature.” Higher in the sense in which Van Gogh's paintings are higher and truer than visible truth.

The most important link in the figurative system of Vangogh art is animation and humanization. Any element of the universe in his eyes is significant and beautiful only when it acquires the ability to feel: in Van Gogh even stones suffer. Human perception is a prism that refracts everything that exists. "I would like to do everything the way ... a railway watchman sees and feels it all." In the mutilated old willows by the road, Van Gogh sees something in common with the procession of old people from the almshouse, and an open book, a burning candle and a shabby chair are transformed into a “portrait” of their owner who left them. (“Armchair of Gauguin”).

Van Gogh forces any component of nature to be a tuning fork of his emotions of intellect. Nature gives him not only motives, but also becomes for him a moral support, a source of moral strength. Even Millet said: "Patience can be learned from a germinating seed." Van Gogh understands this in his own way: “In every healthy and normal person lives the same desire to ripen as in the grain, therefore, life is a process of ripening. What the desire to ripen is for grain, love is for us.” This is the main nerve of Vangogh's understanding of the world and aesthetics: to be in love with humanity! In Van Gogh, this is above family feelings and social prejudices. Without hesitation, he tears his last shirt to lint, because it is necessary to bandage the wounds of the injured miner, shares shelter and bread with the children of a prostitute, from dawn to dawn, in the sun and rain, bends his back over the paper, like a plowman over a plow, drop by drop giving blood his paintings and drawings, never demanding anything for himself.

How tragically his idea of ​​beauty did not converge with the concept of a prosperous tradesman! “There is nothing more artistic than loving children!” This is the slogan of Van Gogh, which has been suffered by the layman of all times, “in the severe trials of poverty”, is able to squeeze out only a wry smile. Aesthetics Van Gogh - the brainchild of another world. His “beautiful” smells of earth, ripe bread, then of a peasant, the wind from the fields stretched under the sky “immense like the sea”, it revolves with human warmth and kindness in the most rude and ugly faces.

The aesthetic idea of ​​Van Gogh does not tolerate abstraction. Beauty is seen by him as a woman: "what are her aspirations." “Love and be loved, live and give life, renew it, nurture it, support it, work, responding with ardor to ardor, and, most importantly, be kind, useful, fit for something, at least, for example, to kindle a fire in the hearth, give a piece of bread to a child and a glass of water to a sick person. But all this is also very beautiful and sublime! Yes, but she doesn't know those words. Her reasoning ... is not too brilliant, not too refined, but the feelings are always genuine. The embodiment of this "authenticity" urgently demanded adequate strength and expressiveness of the pictorial system. For anyone who has something to say, finding the means to do it is a matter of life. The problem of the plein air would never have been solved if the Impressionists had not moved their studio directly to the street, into a field, into a forest or a boat, if they had not thrown out gray, brown and black colors from their painting, if they had not streaked the surface of their canvases with a vibrating grid small colorful strokes, that is, if they had not created a fundamentally new system of visual means. Van Gogh was different: “I want beauty to come not from the material, but from myself.” Any of the Impressionists is, first of all, an observer, sharp-sighted, subtle, sensitive, but always perceiving the object as if from the outside. For Van Gogh, “the struggle of breast against breast, the struggle with things in nature” is an urgent need. Hence the peculiar originality of his vision and manner.

Bright colors of Van Gogh.

Dreaming of a brotherhood of artists and collective creativity, he completely forgot that he himself was an incorrigible individualist, irreconcilable to the point of restraint in matters of life and art. But therein lay his strength. You need to have a sufficiently trained eye to distinguish Monet's paintings from those of Sisley, for example. But only once having seen the “Red Vineyards”, you will never confuse the works of Van Gogh with anyone else. Each line and stroke is the expression of his personality.

"Red Vineyards", 1888

The dominant impressionist system is color. In the pictorial system, Van Gogh's manner, everything is equal and crumpled into one inimitable bright ensemble: rhythm, color, texture, line, form.

At first glance, this is somewhat of a stretch. Do the “red vineyards” command the unheard-of intensity color, is not the ringing chord of blue cobalt in the “Sea in Saint-Marie” active, is it not the dazzlingly pure and sonorous colors of the “Landscape in Auvers after the rain”, next to which, any impressionistic picture looks hopelessly faded?

Exaggeratedly bright, these colors have the ability to sound in any intonation throughout the entire emotional range - from burning pain to the most delicate shades of joy. The sounding colors either intertwine into a softly and subtly harmonized melody, or rear up in an ear-piercing dissonance. Just as in music there is a minor and major system, so the colors of the Vangogh palette are divided in two. For Van Gogh, cold and warm are like life and death. At the head of the opposing camps are yellow and blue, both colors are deeply symbolic. However, this "symbolism" has the same living flesh as Vangogh's ideal of beauty.

Van Gogh saw a certain bright beginning in the yellow paint, from soft lemon to intense orange. The color of the sun and ripened bread in his understanding was the color of joy, solar warmth, human kindness, benevolence, love and happiness - all that in his understanding was included in the concept of "life". Opposite in meaning, blue, from blue to almost black-lead, is the color of sadness, infinity, longing, despair, mental anguish, fatal inevitability and, ultimately, death. Van Gogh's late paintings are the arena of the clash of these two colors. They are like a struggle between good and evil, daylight and night twilight, hope and despair. The emotional and psychological possibilities of color are the subject of Van Gogh's constant reflections: “I hope to make a discovery in this area, for example, to express the feelings of two lovers by combining two additional colors, mixing and opposing them, by the mysterious vibration of related tones. Or to express the idea that has arisen in the brain with the radiance of a light tone against a dark background…”.

Speaking about Van Gogh, Tugendhold remarked: "... the notes of his experiences are the graphic rhythms of things and the reciprocal heartbeats." The concept of rest is unknown to Vangogh art. His element is movement.

In the eyes of Van Gogh, it is the same life, which means the ability to think, feel, empathize. Take a look at the painting of the "red vineyards". The strokes, thrown onto the canvas by a swift hand, run, rush, collide, scatter again. Similar to dashes, dots, blots, commas, they are a transcript of Vangogh's vision. From their cascades and whirlpools, simplified and expressive forms are born. They are a line that forms into a drawing. Their relief, sometimes barely outlined, sometimes piled up in massive clumps, like plowed earth, forms a delightful, picturesque texture. And out of all this, a huge image arises: in the hot heat of the sun, like sinners on fire, vines wriggle, trying to break away from the fat purple earth, to escape from the hands of the winegrowers, and now the peaceful bustle of harvesting looks like a fight between man and nature.

So, it means that color still dominates? But aren't these colors at the same time rhythm, line, form, and texture? This is the most important feature of the pictorial language of Van Gogh, in which he speaks to us through his paintings.

It is often believed that Vangogh painting is a kind of uncontrollable emotional element, spurred on by unbridled insight. This delusion is “helped” by the originality of Van Gogh’s artistic manner, which really seems to be spontaneous, but in fact it is subtly calculated, thought out: “Work and sober calculation, the mind is extremely tense, like an actor’s when playing a difficult role, when you have to think about a thousand things within one half hour….”

Life for work.

Van Gogh was extremely rich creatively: his "extravagance" broke his personal life, maimed him physically, but not spiritually. He died at thirty-seven, not because he no longer had anything to talk about, but because he did not want to give up his art of illness. "I paid with my life for my work, and it cost me half my sanity."

His latest work is sometimes shaken by despair, sometimes cold and chilling, but more often poured out by a thirst for being, piercing to the point of pain. “Landscape at Auvers after the rain” is outwardly peaceful and blissful, dictated precisely by this state of the artist. Rain-washed greens sparkle brightly. A horse harnessed to a cart rushes along the wet road. A train running along the rails smokes merrily. Among the beds, a peasant works, bending his back. Everything would be almost idyllic if it were not for the frantic rhythm of long and writhing strokes, forcing the rectangles of the vegetable gardens to collide in such a way that the space of the picture becomes, as it were, heaving and tense. Another second, and this whole bright, shining world will be blown up from the inside by a terrible destructive force bubbling somewhere in its depths.

“In a thousand torments - I am, I wander in torture - but there is! ... I see the sun, but I don’t see the sun, then I know that it is. And to know that there is a sun is already the whole life.” These lines of Dostoevsky could have been written by Van Gogh.

Literature:

Perryusho A. "Van Gogh's Life" 1997

Dmitrieva N. A. "Vincent van Gogh: essay on life and work"

Robert Wallace "Van Gogh's World" 1998

Photos taken from the "Internet" http://www.vangoghgallery.com/index.html

The biography of Vincent van Gogh is a vivid example of how a talented person was not recognized during his lifetime. He was only appreciated after his death. This talented post-impressionist artist was born on March 30, 1853 in the Netherlands in a small village, which was located near the border with Belgium. In addition to Vincent, his parents had six children, of which the younger brother Theo can be distinguished. He had a great influence on the fate of the famous artist.

Childhood and early years

As a child, Van Gogh was a difficult and "tedious" child. This is how his family described him. With outsiders, he was quiet, thoughtful, friendly and affable. At the age of seven, the boy was sent to a local village school, where he studied for only a year, then he was transferred to home schooling. After some time, he was sent to a boarding school, where he felt miserable. This greatly affected him. Then the future artist was transferred to college, where he studied foreign languages ​​and drawing.

Attempt at writing. The beginning of an artist's career

At the age of 16, Vincent got a job in a branch of a large company that sold paintings. His uncle owned this company. The future artist worked very well, so he was transferred to . There he learned to understand painting and appreciate it. Vincent attended exhibitions and art galleries. Because of unhappy love, he began to work poorly and was transferred from one office to another. Around the age of 22, Vincent began to try his hand at painting. He was inspired to do this by exhibitions at the Louvre and the Salon (Paris). Because of his new hobby, the artist began to work very poorly and he was fired. He then worked as a teacher and assistant pastor. The choice of the last profession was influenced by his father, who also chose to serve God.

Acquisition of skill and fame

At the age of 27, the artist, with the support of his brother Theo, moved to, where he entered the Academy of Arts. But, a year later, he decided to quit his studies, because he believed that diligence, not study, would help him become an artist. He painted his first known paintings in The Hague. There, for the first time, he mixed several techniques at once in one work:

• watercolor;
• feather;
• sepia.

Vivid examples of such paintings are “Backyards” and “Roofs. View from van Gogh's studio. Then he had another unsuccessful attempt to start a family. Because of this, Vincent leaves the city and settles in a separate hut, where he paints landscapes and working peasants. During that period, he painted such famous paintings as "Peasant Woman" and "Peasant and Peasant Woman Planting Potatoes."

Interestingly, Van Gogh was not able to draw human figures correctly and smoothly, so in his paintings they have somewhat straight and angular lines. After a while, he moved in with Theo. There he again took up the study of painting in a local famous studio. Then he began to gain fame and participate in exhibitions of the Impressionists.

Death of Van Gogh

The great artist died on July 29, 1890 from blood loss. The day before that day, he had been injured. Vincent shot himself in the chest with a revolver he took with him to scare away birds. There is, however, another version of his death. Some historians believe that he was shot by teenagers with whom he sometimes drank in bars.

Van Gogh paintings

The list of Van Gogh's most famous works includes the following paintings: "Starry Night"; "Sunflowers"; "Irises"; "Wheat field with crows"; "Portrait of Dr. Gachet".

• There are several facts in Van Gogh's biography that historians are still arguing about. So, for example, it is believed that during his lifetime only one of his paintings “Red Vineyards in Arles” was bought. But, despite this, it is absolutely undeniable that Van Gogh left behind a great legacy and made an invaluable contribution to art. In the 19th century, he was not appreciated, and in the 20th and 21st centuries, Vincent's paintings are sold for millions of dollars.

Van Gogh Vincent, Dutch painter. In 1869-1876 he served as a commission agent for an art trading company in The Hague, Brussels, London, Paris, and in 1876 he worked as a teacher in England. Van Gogh studied theology, in 1878-1879 he was a preacher in the mining district of Borinage in Belgium. Protecting the interests of the miners brought van Gogh into conflict with church authorities. In the 1880s, van Gogh turned to art, attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels (1880-1881) and Antwerp (1885-1886).

Van Gogh used the advice of the painter A. Mauve in The Hague, enthusiastically painted ordinary people, peasants, artisans, and prisoners. In a series of paintings and studies of the mid-1880s (“Peasant Woman”, 1885, Kröller-Müller State Museum, Otterlo; “Potato Eaters”, 1885, Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam), written in dark pictorial scale, marked by painfully sharp perception of human suffering and feelings of depression, the artist recreates the oppressive atmosphere of psychological tension.

In 1886-1888 van Gogh lived in Paris, visited a private art studio, studied Impressionist painting, Japanese engraving, "synthetic" works of Paul Gauguin. During this period, Van Gogh's palette became light, earthy colors disappeared, pure blue, golden yellow, red tones appeared, his characteristic dynamic, as if flowing brushstroke ("Bridge over the Seine", 1887, "Papa Tanguy", 1881). In 1888, van Gogh moved to Arles, where the originality of his creative manner was finally determined. A fiery artistic temperament, a painful impulse towards harmony, beauty and happiness, and at the same time a fear of forces hostile to man, are embodied either in landscapes shining with sunny colors of the south (“Harvest. La Croux Valley”, 1888), or in sinister, reminiscent of night nightmare images (“Night Cafe”, 1888, private collection, New York). The dynamics of color and stroke in Van Gogh's paintings fills with spiritual life and movement not only nature and the people who inhabit it (“Red Vineyards in Arles”, 1888, Pushkin Museum, Moscow), but also inanimate objects (“Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles”, 1888) .

Van Gogh's strenuous work in recent years was accompanied by bouts of mental illness, which led him to the insane asylum at Arles, then Saint-Remy (1889–1890) and Auvers-sur-Oise (1890), where he committed suicide. The work of the last two years of the artist’s life is marked by ecstatic obsession, extremely heightened expression of color combinations, abrupt mood swings – from frenzied despair and gloomy visionary (“Road with cypresses and stars”, 1890, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo) to a quivering sense of enlightenment and peace (“Landscape at Auvers after the rain”, 1890, Pushkin Museum, Moscow).

Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a timeless influence on 20th-century painting

Vincent Van Gogh

short biography

Vincent Willem van Gogh(Dutch. Vincent Willem van Gogh; March 30, 1853, Grot-Zundert, the Netherlands - July 29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, France) is a Dutch post-impressionist painter whose work had a timeless influence on the painting of the 20th century. In a little over ten years, he created more than 2,100 works, including about 860 oil paintings. Among them - portraits, self-portraits, landscapes and still lifes, depicting olive trees, cypresses, fields of wheat and sunflowers. Most critics did not notice van Gogh until his suicide at the age of 37, which was preceded by years of anxiety, poverty and mental breakdown.

Childhood and youth

Born March 30, 1853 in the village of Grot-Zundert (Dutch. Groot Zundert) in the province of North Brabant in the south of the Netherlands, not far from the Belgian border. Vincent's father was Theodor van Gogh (born February 8, 1822), a Protestant pastor, and his mother was Anna Cornelia Carbentus, the daughter of a venerable bookbinder and bookseller from The Hague. Vincent was the second of seven children of Theodore and Anna Cornelia. He received his name in honor of his paternal grandfather, who also devoted his whole life to the Protestant church. This name was intended for the first child of Theodore and Anna, who was born a year before Vincent and died on the first day. So Vincent, although he was born the second, became the eldest of the children.

Four years after Vincent's birth, on May 1, 1857, his brother Theodorus van Gogh (Theo) was born. In addition to him, Vincent had a brother Cor (Cornelis Vincent, May 17, 1867) and three sisters - Anna Cornelia (February 17, 1855), Liz (Elizabeth Hubert, May 16, 1859) and Wil (Willemina Jacob, March 16, 1862). Vincent is remembered by the family as a wayward, difficult and boring child with "strange manners", which was the reason for his frequent punishments. According to the governess, there was something strange about him that distinguished him from others: of all the children, Vincent was less pleasant to her, and she did not believe that something worthwhile could come out of him. Outside the family, on the contrary, Vincent showed the opposite side of his character - he was quiet, serious and thoughtful. He hardly played with other children. In the eyes of his fellow villagers, he was a good-natured, friendly, helpful, compassionate, sweet and modest child. When he was 7 years old, he went to a village school, but a year later he was taken away from there, and together with his sister Anna, he studied at home, with a governess. On October 1, 1864, he left for a boarding school in Zevenbergen, located 20 km from his home. Departure from home caused much suffering to Vincent, he could not forget this, even as an adult. On September 15, 1866, he began his studies at another boarding school - Willem II College in Tilburg. Vincent is good at languages ​​- French, English, German. There he received drawing lessons. In March 1868, in the middle of the school year, Vincent suddenly left school and returned to his father's house. This concludes his formal education. He recalled his childhood as follows: “My childhood was dark, cold and empty…”.

Work in a trading company and missionary work

In July 1869, Vincent got a job in the Hague branch of a large art and trading company Goupil & Cie, owned by his uncle Vincent ("Uncle Saint"). There he received the necessary training as a dealer. Initially, the future artist set to work with great zeal, achieved good results, and in June 1873 he was transferred to the London branch of Goupil & Cie. Through daily contact with works of art, Vincent began to understand and appreciate painting. In addition, he visited the city's museums and galleries, admiring the work of Jean-Francois Millet and Jules Breton. At the end of August, Vincent moved to 87 Hackford Road and rented a room in the house of Ursula Leuer and her daughter Eugenia. There is a version that he was in love with Eugenia, although many early biographers mistakenly call her the name of her mother, Ursula. Adding to this decades-old naming confusion, recent research suggests that Vincent was not in love with Eugenia at all, but with a German woman named Caroline Haanebiek. What actually happened remains unknown. The refusal of the beloved shocked and disappointed the future artist; gradually he lost interest in his work and began to turn to the Bible. In 1874, Vincent was transferred to the Paris branch of the firm, but after three months of work he again leaves for London. Things were getting worse for him, and in May 1875 he was again transferred to Paris, where he visited exhibitions at the Salon and the Louvre, and eventually he began to try his hand at painting. Gradually, this occupation began to take more time from him, and Vincent finally lost interest in work, deciding for himself that "art has no worse enemies than art dealers." As a result, at the end of March 1876, he was fired from Goupil & Cie due to poor performance, despite the patronage of relatives who co-owned the company.

In 1876 Vincent returned to England, where he found unpaid work as a boarding school teacher at Ramsgate. At the same time, he has a desire to become a priest, like his father. In July, Vincent moved to another school - in Isleworth (near London), where he worked as a teacher and assistant pastor. On November 4, Vincent delivered his first sermon. His interest in the gospel grew and he got the idea to preach to the poor.

Vincent went home for Christmas and was persuaded by his parents not to return to England. Vincent stayed in the Netherlands and worked for half a year in a bookstore in Dordrecht. This work was not to his liking; he spent much of his time sketching or translating passages from the Bible into German, English, and French. Trying to support Vincent's desire to become a pastor, the family sends him in May 1877 to Amsterdam, where he settled with his uncle, Admiral Jan van Gogh. Here he studied diligently under the guidance of his uncle Johannes Stricker, a respected and recognized theologian, in preparation for passing the university entrance examination for the department of theology. In the end, he became disillusioned with his studies, gave up his studies and left Amsterdam in July 1878. The desire to be useful to ordinary people sent him to the Protestant missionary school of pastor Bokma in Laeken near Brussels, where he completed a three-month sermon course (however, there is a version that he did not complete the full course of study and was expelled because of his sloppy appearance, short temper and frequent fits of rage).

In December 1878, Vincent went for six months as a missionary to the village of Paturazh in Borinage, a poor mining area in southern Belgium, where he launched an indefatigable activity: visiting the sick, reading Scripture to the illiterate, preaching, teaching children, and drawing maps of Palestine at night to earn money. Such selflessness endeared him to the local population and members of the Evangelical Society, which resulted in the appointment of a salary of fifty francs to him. After completing a six-month period, van Gogh intended to enter the Gospel School to continue his education, but considered the introduced tuition fees to be a manifestation of discrimination and refused to study. At the same time, Vincent turned to the management of the mines with a petition on behalf of the workers to improve their working conditions. The petition was rejected, and van Gogh himself was removed from his position as a preacher by the Synodal Committee of the Protestant Church of Belgium. This was a serious blow to the emotional and mental state of the artist.

Becoming an artist

Fleeing the depression caused by the events in Paturazh, Van Gogh again turned to painting, seriously thought about his studies, and in 1880, with the support of his brother Theo, he left for Brussels, where he began attending classes at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. However, a year later, Vincent dropped out and returned to his parents. During this period of his life, he believed that it was not at all necessary for an artist to have talent, the main thing was to work hard and hard, so he continued his studies on his own.

At the same time, van Gogh experienced a new love interest, falling in love with his cousin, the widow Kay Vos-Stricker, who was staying with her son in their house. The woman rejected his feelings, but Vincent continued courtship, which set all his relatives against him. As a result, he was asked to leave. Van Gogh, having experienced a new shock and having decided to forever abandon attempts to arrange his personal life, left for The Hague, where he plunged into painting with renewed vigor and began to take lessons from his distant relative, a representative of the Hague school of painting Anton Mauve. Vincent worked hard, studied the life of the city, especially the poor neighborhoods. Achieving an interesting and surprising color in his works, he sometimes resorted to mixing different writing techniques on one canvas - chalk, pen, sepia, watercolor ("Backyards", 1882, pen, chalk and brush on paper, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; "Roofs. View from van Gogh's workshop", 1882, paper, watercolor, chalk, private collection of J. Renan, Paris). The artist was greatly influenced by Charles Bargue's "Drawing Course". He copied all the lithographs of the manual in 1880/1881, and then again in 1890, but only part of it.

In The Hague, the artist tried to start a family. This time, his chosen one was the pregnant street woman Christine, whom Vincent met right on the street and, driven by sympathy for her situation, offered to move in with him with the children. This act finally quarreled the artist with his friends and relatives, but Vincent himself was happy: he had a model. However, Christine turned out to be a difficult character, and soon van Gogh's family life turned into a nightmare. They separated very soon. The artist could no longer stay in The Hague and headed to the north of the Netherlands, to the province of Drenthe, where he settled in a separate hut, equipped as a workshop, and spent whole days in nature, depicting landscapes. However, he was not very fond of them, not considering himself a landscape painter - many paintings of this period are dedicated to peasants, their daily work and life.

According to their subject matter, van Gogh's early works can be classified as realism, although the manner of execution and technique can only be called realistic with certain significant reservations. One of the many problems caused by the lack of art education that the artist faced was the inability to portray the human figure. In the end, this led to one of the fundamental features of his style - the interpretation of the human figure, devoid of smooth or measured graceful movements, as an integral part of nature, in some ways even becoming like it. This is very clearly seen, for example, in the painting “A Peasant and a Peasant Woman Planting Potatoes” (1885, Kunsthaus, Zurich), where the figures of the peasants are likened to rocks, and the high horizon line seems to press on them, not allowing them to straighten up or even raise their heads. A similar approach to the topic can be seen in the later painting "Red Vineyards" (1888, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow). In a series of paintings and studies of the mid-1880s. (“Exit from the Protestant Church in Nuenen” (1884-1885), “Peasant Woman” (1885, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo), “Potato Eaters” (1885, Vincent van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), “Old Church Tower in Nuenen "(1885), written in a dark pictorial range, marked by a painfully acute perception of human suffering and feelings of depression, the artist recreated the oppressive atmosphere of psychological tension. At the same time, the artist also formed his own understanding of the landscape: an expression of his inner perception of nature through the analogy with man His artistic credo was his own words: "When you draw a tree, interpret it as a figure."

In the autumn of 1885, van Gogh unexpectedly left Drenthe, because a local pastor took up arms against him, forbidding the peasants to pose for the artist and accusing him of immorality. Vincent left for Antwerp, where he again began attending painting classes - this time in a painting class at the Academy of Arts. In the evenings, the artist attended a private school, where he painted nude models. However, already in February 1886, van Gogh left Antwerp for Paris to his brother Theo, who was engaged in the art trade.

The Parisian period of Vincent's life began, which turned out to be very fruitful and rich in events. The artist visited the prestigious private art studio of Fernand Cormon, a teacher famous throughout Europe, studied impressionist painting, Japanese engraving, and synthetic works by Paul Gauguin. During this period, van Gogh's palette became light, the earthy tint of paint disappeared, pure blue, golden yellow, red tones appeared, his characteristic dynamic, as if flowing brushstroke ("Agostina Segatori in the Tambourine Cafe" (1887-1888, Vincent Museum van Gogh, Amsterdam), "Bridge over the Seine" (1887, Vincent van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), "Papa Tanguy" (1887, Rodin Museum, Paris), "View of Paris from Theo's apartment on Rue Lepic" (1887, Museum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam). In the work there were notes of calm and tranquility, caused by the influence of the Impressionists. With some of them - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Emile Bernard - the artist met shortly after his arrival in Paris thanks to These acquaintances had the most beneficial effect on the artist: he found a kindred environment that appreciated him, enthusiastically took part in exhibitions of the Impressionists - in the La Fourche restaurant, the Tambourine cafe, then in the lobby of the Free Theater. However, the public was horrified by van Gogh's paintings, which made him again engage in self-education - to study the theory of color by Eugene Delacroix, the textured painting of Adolphe Monticelli, Japanese color prints and planar oriental art in general. The Parisian period of his life accounts for the largest number of paintings created by the artist - about two hundred and thirty. Among them stand out a series of still lifes and self-portraits, a series of six canvases under the general title "Shoes" (1887, Art Museum, Baltimore), landscapes. The role of a person in Van Gogh's paintings is changing - he is not at all, or he is a staffage. Air, atmosphere and rich color appear in the works, however, the artist conveyed the light-air environment and atmospheric nuances in his own way, dividing the whole without merging the forms and showing the “face” or “figure” of each element of the whole. A striking example of this approach is the painting "The Sea in St. Mary" (1888, State Museum of Fine Arts named after A. S. Pushkin, Moscow). The creative search of the artist led him to the origins of a new artistic style - post-impressionism.

Last years. The heyday of creativity

Despite the creative growth of van Gogh, the public still did not perceive and did not buy his paintings, which was very painfully perceived by Vincent. By mid-February 1888, the artist decided to leave Paris and move to the south of France - to Arles, where he intended to create the "Workshop of the South" - a kind of brotherhood of like-minded artists working for future generations. Van Gogh gave the most important role in the future workshop to Paul Gauguin. Theo supported the undertaking with money, and in the same year Vincent moved to Arles. There, the originality of his creative manner and artistic program were finally determined: “Instead of trying to accurately depict what is before my eyes, I use color more arbitrarily, so as to express myself most fully.” The result of this program was an attempt to develop "a simple technique that, apparently, will not be impressionistic." In addition, Vincent began to synthesize pattern and color in order to more fully convey the very essence of local nature.

Although van Gogh declared a departure from impressionistic methods of depiction, the influence of this style was still very strongly felt in his paintings, especially in the transfer of light and air (“Peach Tree in Blossom”, 1888, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo) or in the use of large coloristic spots (“Anglois Bridge in Arles”, 1888, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne). At this time, like the Impressionists, van Gogh created a series of works depicting the same species, however, achieving not the exact transmission of changing lighting effects and conditions, but the maximum intensity of the expression of the life of nature. His brush of this period also includes a number of portraits in which the artist tried out a new art form.

A fiery artistic temperament, a painful impulse towards harmony, beauty and happiness, and, at the same time, fear of forces hostile to man are embodied in landscapes shining with sunny colors of the south (“The Yellow House” (1888), “Gauguin's Armchair” (1888), “Harvest. Valley of La Crau "(1888, Vincent van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), then in ominous, reminiscent of a nightmare images ("Cafe Terrace at Night" (1888, Kröller-Muller Museum, Otterlo); the dynamics of color and stroke fills with spiritual life and movement not only nature and the people who inhabit it (“Red Vineyards in Arles” (1888, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow)), but also inanimate objects (“Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles” (1888, Museum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam)). The artist’s paintings become more dynamic and intense in color (“The Sower”, 1888, E. Buerle Foundation, Zurich), tragic in sound (“Night Cafe”, 1888, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven ; "Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles" (1888, Vincent van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).

On October 25, 1888, Paul Gauguin arrived in Arles to discuss the idea of ​​creating a southern painting workshop. However, a peaceful discussion very quickly turned into conflicts and quarrels: Gauguin was dissatisfied with the carelessness of van Gogh, while van Gogh himself was perplexed that Gauguin did not want to understand the very idea of ​​​​a single collective direction of painting in the name of the future. In the end, Gauguin, who was looking for peace in Arles for his work and did not find it, decided to leave. On the evening of December 23, after another quarrel, van Gogh attacked a friend with a razor in his hands. Gauguin accidentally managed to stop Vincent. The whole truth about this quarrel and the circumstances of the attack is still unknown (in particular, there is a version that van Gogh attacked the sleeping Gauguin, and the latter was saved from death only by the fact that he woke up on time), but on the same night Van Gogh cut himself ear lobe. According to the generally accepted version, this was done in a fit of remorse; at the same time, some researchers believe that this was not repentance, but a manifestation of insanity caused by the frequent use of absinthe. The next day, December 24, Vincent was taken to a psychiatric hospital, where the attack recurred with such force that the doctors placed him in the ward for violent patients with a diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy. Gauguin hurriedly left Arles without visiting van Gogh in the hospital, having previously informed Theo about what had happened.

During periods of remission, Vincent asked to be released back to the studio in order to continue working, but the inhabitants of Arles wrote a statement to the mayor of the city with a request to isolate the artist from the rest of the inhabitants. Van Gogh was asked to go to the Saint-Paul mental hospital in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, near Arles, where Vincent arrived on May 3, 1889. There he lived for a year, tirelessly working on new paintings. During this time, he created more than one hundred and fifty paintings and about a hundred drawings and watercolors. The main types of canvases during this period of life are still lifes and landscapes, the main differences of which are incredible nervous tension and dynamism (“Starry Night”, 1889, Museum of Modern Art, New York), contrasting contrasting colors and - in some cases - the use of halftones ( Landscape with Olives, 1889, J. G. Whitney Collection, New York; Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

At the end of 1889, he was invited to participate in the Brussels exhibition of the "Group of Twenty", where the artist's work immediately aroused the interest of colleagues and art lovers. However, this no longer pleased van Gogh, just as the first enthusiastic article about the painting "Red Vineyards in Arles" signed by Albert Aurier, which appeared in the January issue of the magazine Mercure de France in 1890, did not please either.

In the spring of 1890, the artist moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, a place near Paris, where he saw his brother and his family for the first time in two years. He still continued to write, but the style of his latest work has changed completely, becoming even more nervous and depressing. The main place in the work was occupied by a whimsically curved contour, as if squeezing this or that object (“Country road with cypresses”, 1890, Kröller-Muller Museum, Otterlo; “Street and stairs in Auvers”, 1890, City Art Museum, St. Louis ; "Landscape at Auvers after the rain", 1890, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow). The last bright event in Vincent's personal life was an acquaintance with an amateur artist, Dr. Paul Gachet.

On the 20th of July 1890, van Gogh painted his famous painting “Wheatfield with Crows” (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), and a week later, on July 27, a tragedy occurred. Going out for a walk with drawing materials, the artist shot himself in the heart area with a revolver bought to scare away flocks of birds while working in the open air, but the bullet went lower. Thanks to this, he independently got to the hotel room where he lived. The innkeeper called a doctor, who examined the wound and informed Theo. The latter arrived the next day and spent all the time with Vincent, until his death 29 hours after being wounded from blood loss (at 1:30 am on July 29, 1890). In October 2011, an alternative version of the artist's death appeared. American art historians Stephen Naifeh and Gregory White Smith have suggested that van Gogh was shot by one of the teenagers who regularly accompanied him in drinking establishments.

According to Theo, the artist's last words were: La tristesse durera toujours("The sadness will last forever") Vincent van Gogh was buried in Auvers-sur-Oise on 30 July. On his last journey, the artist was seen off by his brother and a few friends. After the funeral, Theo set about organizing a posthumous exhibition of Vincent's works, but fell ill with a nervous breakdown and exactly six months later, on January 25, 1891, he died in Holland. After 25 years in 1914, his remains were reburied by a widow next to Vincent's grave.

Heritage

Recognition and sales of paintings

Artist on the way to Tarascon, August 1888, Vincent van Gogh on the road near Montmajour, oil on canvas, 48×44 cm, former museum of Magdeburg; the painting is believed to have perished in a fire during World War II

It is a common misconception that only one of his paintings, The Red Vineyards at Arles, was sold during van Gogh's lifetime. This painting was only the first to be sold for a significant amount (at the Brussels exhibition of the Group of Twenty at the end of 1889; the price for the painting was 400 francs). Documents have been preserved on the lifetime sale of 14 works by the artist, starting in 1882 (about which van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo: “The first sheep passed through the bridge”), and in reality there should have been more transactions.

After the first exhibition of paintings in the late 1880s, van Gogh's fame steadily grew among colleagues, art historians, dealers and collectors. After his death memorial exhibitions were organized in Brussels, Paris, The Hague and Antwerp. At the beginning of the 20th century there were retrospectives in Paris (1901 and 1905) and Amsterdam (1905) and significant group exhibitions in Cologne (1912), New York (1913) and Berlin (1914). This had a noticeable impact on subsequent generations of artists. By the middle of the 20th century, Vincent van Gogh is regarded as one of the greatest and most recognizable artists in history. In 2007, a group of Dutch historians compiled " The Canon of Dutch History" for teaching in schools, in which van Gogh was placed as one of the fifty themes, along with other national symbols such as Rembrandt and the art group Style.

Along with the creations of Pablo Picasso, van Gogh's works are among the first on the list of the most expensive paintings ever sold in the world, according to estimates from auctions and private sales. Sold for more than 100 million (2011 equivalent) include: "Portrait of Dr. Gachet", "Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin" and "Irises". Wheat Field with Cypresses was sold in 1993 for $57 million, an unbelievably high price at the time, and his Self-Portrait with Ear and Pipe Cut Off was sold privately in the late 1990s. The sale price was estimated at $80-90 million. Van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" was sold at auction for $82.5 million. Plowed Field and Ploughman went on sale at Christie's New York auction house for $81.3 million.

Influence

In his last letter to Theo, Vincent admitted that since he had no children, he viewed his paintings as offspring. Reflecting on this, the historian Simon Schama concluded that he "did have a child - expressionism, and many, many heirs." Schama mentions a wide range of artists who adapted elements of van Gogh's style, including Willem de Kooning, Howard Hodgkin and Jackson Pollock. The Fauvists expanded the scope and freedom of color, as did the German Expressionists of the Die Brücke group and other early modernists. The abstract expressionism of the 1940s and 1950s is seen as partly inspired by van Gogh's broad, gestural brushstrokes. Here's what art historian Sue Hubbard has to say about the exhibition "Vincent van Gogh and Expressionism":

At the beginning of the twentieth century, van Gogh gave the expressionists a new pictorial language that allowed them to go beyond superficial vision and penetrate deeper into the essence of truth. It is no coincidence that at that very moment Freud was also discovering the depths of an essentially modern concept - the subconscious. This beautiful intellectual exhibition gives Van Gogh his rightful place as a pioneer of Art Nouveau.

original text(English)
At the beginning of the twentieth century Van Gogh gave the Expressionists a new painterly language which enabled them to go beyond surface appearance and penetrate deeper essential truths. It is no coincidence that at this very moment Freud was also mining the depths of that essentially modern domain -the subconscious. This beautiful and intelligent exhibition places Van Gogh where he firmly belongs; as the trailblazer of modern art.

Hubbard, Sue. Vincent Van Gogh and Expressionism. Independent, 2007

In 1957, the Irish artist Francis Bacon (1909-1992) based on a reproduction of a painting by van Gogh "The Artist on the Way to Tarascon", the original of which was destroyed during the Second World War, wrote a series of his works. Bacon was inspired not only by the image itself, which he described as "obtrusive", but also by Van Gogh himself, whom Bacon regarded as an "alienated superfluous man" - a position that resonated with Bacon's mood.

Subsequently, the Irish artist identified himself with Van Gogh's theories in art and quoted lines from van Gogh's letter to his brother Theo: "real artists do not paint things as they are ... They paint them because they themselves feel they are."

From October 2009 to January 2010, the Vincent van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam hosted an exhibition dedicated to the artist's letters, then, from the end of January to April 2010, the exhibition moved to the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Gallery

self-portraits

Like an artist

Dedicated to Gauguin

Van Gogh Vincent (Vincent Willem) (1853-1890), Dutch painter.

In 1869-1876. served as a commissioner for art and trading firms in The Hague, Brussels, London and Paris; in 1876 he worked as a teacher in England.

In 1878-1879. was a preacher in the Borinage (Belgium), where he learned the hard life of miners; protecting their interests brought Van Gogh into conflict with church authorities.

In the 80s. 19th century he turns to art, attends the art academy in Brussels (1880-1881) and Antwerp (1885-1886). Van Gogh enthusiastically draws destitute working people - miners of the Borinage, later - peasants, artisans, fishermen, whose life he observed in Holland in 1881-1885.

Already at the age of thirty, Van Gogh decided to devote himself to painting. He created a series of paintings depicting ordinary people and made in dark, gloomy colors ("Peasant Woman", "Potato Eaters", both 1885). In the initial period of creativity, the artist also made a lot of drawings, in which human figures appear, and landscapes (swamps, ponds, trees, winter roads, etc.). They are influenced by the French painter and graphic artist J. F. Millet.

Since 1886, Van Gogh has been living in Paris, where he joins the searches of A. de Toulouse-Lautrec, P. Gauguin, C. Pizarro. Thanks to these first contacts, light colors appear in his palette, light and color begin to play a more important role in the paintings.

Under the influence of painting by J. Seurat, the artist paints for some time with separate strokes of additional colors, but soon moves on to a simple and vivid expression of color. In this, Van Gogh follows the example of E. Bernard and L. Anquetin, drawing inspiration from stained-glass windows, where clear color planes are delimited by lead partitions, as well as from the “surprising clarity” and “confident drawing” of Japanese prints (“Bridge over the Seine”, “Portrait papa Tanga", both 1887).

In February 1888, Van Gogh left for the south of France, for Arles. Here he creates landscapes shining with the joyful, sunny colors of the south (“Harvest”, “Valley of La Crot”, “Fishing Boats in Sainte-Marie”, “Red Vineyards in Arles”, all. 1888, etc.), spiritualizes ordinary objects with his temperament (“Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles”, 1888), sometimes succumbing to bouts of loneliness and melancholy (“Night Cafe in Arles”, 1888).

In October, Gauguin comes to the artist. Under his short-lived influence, Van Gogh wrote "Dance Hall". The two artists often and violently argue; one such scene ends with Van Gogh mutilating himself in madness by cutting off his ear. Friends disperse.

The color in Van Gogh's works becomes even brighter, the impressionistic flickering gives way to almost monochrome paintings, in which either endless beaches or wide furrows of fields appear - both color and object form. Van Gogh turns to light that cannot be called simply daylight - it has an undoubted shade of the supernatural, the artist is looking for an ever more truthful expression of the mystery of the human being and stands out from the general flow of impressionism with a painful thirst for spirituality.

The strain of forces and long studies under the sizzling Arlesian sun led to the fact that the last years of Van Gogh's life were complicated by bouts of mental illness. 1889-1890 he spends in a hospital in Arles, then in Saint-Remy and Auvers-sur-Oise, where on July 29, 1890, he commits suicide.

The works of the last two years breathe a dark, heavy mood ("At the gates of eternity", "Road with cypresses and stars", "Landscape at Auvers after the rain", all 1890).

The creative life of the artist did not last long - about ten years, but during this time about 2200 works were created.