By Paul Dunwell, writing for EasyFrame
© Copyright EasyFrame 2021
Born Vincent Willem van Gogh to a father - Theodorus van Gogh - who was a preacher and a mother - Anna Cornelia Carbentus - from a well-to-do family, Van Gogh has come to personify the archetypal misunderstood and underachieving artist. He had several different career-starts and managed to bungle all of them, wrecked his own health, was rarely happy with anything or anybody, was constantly broke and reliant on his little brother even for his art materials, supposedly only ever sold one painting of the thousands of artworks he created (and even then it was to a pal’s sister), and was so psychotic that he cut off his own ear then shot himself at the age of just 37.
Actually he sold 19 cityscapes of The Hague commissioned by his uncle Cor, who was an art-dealer. And he bartered away others for food and drink (and probably more). So don’t believe everything you read. Yet most of the awful stories about Van Gogh (including what he swapped his works for) are, it seems, depressingly true.
But, looking on the bright side, he was the post-Impressionist we all remember, the one who has inspired everything from pop songs - notably Don Mclean’s 1972 ‘Vincent’ (the lyrics, written on a paper bag, are said to be worth US.5 million) - to a 600-drone tribute by the Chinese to Van Gogh in 2021. Meanwhile a portrait that the artist painted in the last year of his life of the quack homeopathist on whom he relied sold for US.5 million back in 1990. And, allowing for inflation, it would be worth around US0 million if it came on the market now. It is rated the 16th most expensive work ever sold. Yet (according to one contemporary assessment of relative values) Van Gogh’s work also currently occupies:
In other words he single-handedly accounts for about a tenth of the hundred most expensive paintings ever sold, these being less than half a percent of those he produced during his lifetime. One, of Felix Rey, was so disliked by the sitter that he used it to repair his chicken-coop. So, in a sense, Van Gogh redefined heroic failure.
Vincent van Gogh was initially raised in Zundert, in the south of The Netherlands, in a family dominated by church ministers and art-dealers. He was not very happy, even though his mum had encouraged him in art, and that wasn’t improved by being sent off to boarding-school when he was seven. When he complained his parents moved him to another. Though by the time he was 10 he was being taught art by Constant Cornelis Huijsmans – who had been a successful artist in Paris and who focused on getting an impression of the subject in hand rather than being too focused on technique. This philosophy of course underpinned Impressionism, which Monet had instigated in 1860 (the year that little Vincent was sent to boarding-school).
Van Gogh went home at 15 but at 16 his uncle got him into a Dutch art-dealership which trained him then packed him off to their London branch. The youngster wasn’t stupid, spoke Dutch and English as well as French and German fluently, and by the time he was 20 he was earning more than his dad (who could afford to employ maids, cooks, a gardener and more). So the world was his oyster, you’d have thought. But he wasn’t happy. This was compounded by an unrequited love and then he griped about his employers being too mercenary and got himself fired. After that he had a spell as an unpaid teacher but that didn’t work out either. And so it went on. Thereafter he went through formal and informal religious training as if he were following in his father’s footsteps but repeatedly failed the exams. Then he upset the church, which accused him of ‘undermining the dignity of the priesthood’, by giving up the nice apartment they’d provided for him as a missionary – and letting homeless people move in whilst he slept on straw in a small hut. Heaven forbid!
Not long afterwards, in 1880, he went to study physiology and perspective at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. Now, as you’ll realise, this was only a decade before his death. So his studies there from the age of 27 mark a discovery, in what was to become the twilight of his life, of his true calling. But his mental health was already being called into question. That might have been rather premature, though the fact that his sanity was being questioned by his father and others may well not have helped it. Vincent did return to study when he seemed more stable but, when he was 33, he had almighty rows with several teachers culminating in one with the director of the academy - who dared to interfere with his work using a crayon that ripped it - and walked off, never to return because the academy insisted he repeat a year.
The aforementioned initial failing in respect of his love-life whilst he was in London may have been because he was rather too serious and becoming something of a religious zealot. The lady in question then seems to have already had a secret engagement. But later objects of his affection, including a cousin, spurned Vincent because he was perceived to be a loser who was unable to support himself. So he ended up having what may have been his best relationship (and possibly a child) with a prostitute who many years later drowned herself. As a consequence of this lifestyle he found himself with gonorrhoea and probably syphilis too, which would have very likely affected his mental health (brain damage is possible but a lack of modern treatments would have, with his morally-upright family, left him exposed to guilt and depression). In any event he was working too hard and not eating properly. He’d given up meat and then lived on bread and coffee, tobacco and alcohol to the point that he may well have had scurvy and hepatitis. He became psychotic and delusional, hearing voices and having hallucinations and seizures. Indeed he was at times threatening, certainly towards Gauguin with whom there was a still-unexplained altercation that ultimately led to Van Gogh supposedly cutting off his own ear (it is not impossible that Gauguin did it and Van Gogh covered it up) and giving it to a young prostitute. At one point locals got up a petition and had him evicted from his home. And, understandably, he started to spend time in mental institutions. But even here he was creative; in one he painted ‘The Starry Night’.
Van Gogh’s brother Theo, also an art-dealer, always stuck with him (they were even buried side-by-side) and their massive exchange of letters is famous. They lived together in Paris for a while after Vincent quit the academy, something that seemed to stabilise him though Theo found cohabiting with his big brother to be hard. He had a sister, Willemina, who was there for him too. There was a cousin, Anon Mauve, who was an artist himself and who also rendered some assistance. And there were friends such as Sien Hoornik with whom he did enjoy something of a family life for a short time. Yet doubtless the poor he gave his accommodation to, the poor he hired as models, also appreciated him.
Van Gogh was influenced by Paul Gauguin, Eugène Delacroix, Jean-François Millet, Rembrandt van Rijn, Gustave Doré, Émile Bernard, Peter Paul Rubens, Louis Anquetin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and John Russell (who both painted him), Paul Cézanne, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet and Japanese prints (especially those by Hiroshige).
He notably influenced Francis Bacon, Franz Marc, Pablo Picasso, Tom Thomson, Maurice de Vlaminck, Pat Steir and Brad Kahlhamer.
Van Gogh preferred to paint portraits, still lifes and landscapes. One can see that he did switch quite abruptly to being far more daring in his use of colour. Delacroix may have been the one to influence that change from a more subdued palette.
It has often been suggested that Van Gogh was colour-blind. The latest medical opinion is that he wasn’t. Yet Monet, Turner, M'ryon, Degas, Cassat, Pugh and Blake were.
The story has always been that Van Gogh shot himself in his chest with a revolver. But there is an alternative possibility, that he was shot by a young man who’d been winding him up. And it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the artist would keep quiet rather than see his assailant on a murder charge. Remember that he may have covered up for Gauguin? Either way he survived the shooting, walked away, sought treatment but surgery was delayed, and an infection set in which killed him a couple of days later.
In summary Vincent van Gogh is a timeless and colourful genius who may not have been appreciated in his time but who, for many, could continue to be unrivalled for eternity.
You can easily and affordably buy unframed prints of his work. The National Gallery site at www.nationalgallery.co.uk/products/vincent-van-gogh is one place to obtain these.
You'll want to frame whatever you buy. Any good framers will be able to show you a vast range of different solutions and advise on what might be the most suitable given the work and its proposed location.
EasyFrame is on 01234 856 501 and / or sales@EasyFrame.co.uk and they'll always chat even if you don't want to buy!
Article Posted: 07/05/2021 13:01:18