Works by this Artist
Terrace in the Luxembourg GardenVincent van Gogh, 1886 Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh, 1889
Background
son of a minister
Studies
mainly self-taught; briefly at Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts (Brussels); with Fernand Cormon (1886, Paris)
Career
1869 – apprenticed to uncle’s art dealership, Goupil & Co.
1873 – transferred to London branch of Goupil & Co.
1875 – transferred to Paris branch of Goupil & Co.
1878 – moves to Borinage region to work as a lay preacher
1879-80 – visits Jules Breton in Courrières, France; van Gogh decides to pursue painting
1886 – moves to Paris; studies with Cormon; begins correspondence with Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin
1888 – moves to Arles; Gauguin joins him in October; van Gogh enters mental hospital in December after cutting off his ear lobe in a fit of anger ear; Gauguin returns to Paris
1889-90 – van Gogh institutionalizes himself in Saint-Remy
1890 – moves to Auvers-sur-Oise and is place in the care of Dr Paul Gachet; Albert Aurier publishes article about van Gogh in Mercure de France; exhibits with Les XX (Brussels); dies as result of self-inflicted gunshot wounds
Important Artworks
Loom with Weaver, 1884 (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo)
The Potato Eaters, 1885 (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo)
Moulin de la Galette, 1886 (Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh)
The Sower, 1888 (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo)
Night Cafe, 1888 (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven)
Sunflowers, 1888-89 (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
Self-Portrait, 1889 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)
Self-Portrait, 1889 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889 (Courtauld Institute Gallery, London)
Paul Gauguin, Portrait of Vincent van Gogh Painting Sunflowers, 1888 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
Dealer/Collector
Theo van Gogh (brother)
Web Resources
smarthistory: van Gogh, Starry Night
Readings
Boime, Albert. “Van Gogh’s Starry Night: A History of Matter and a Matter of History,” Arts, vol. 59 (December 1984): 86-103
Boime, Albert. "Van Gogh's Starry Night. After the Apocalypse a Heavenly Utopia," in Revelation of Modernism. Responses to Cultural Crises in Fin-de-siecle Painting. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2008
Boime, Albert. "Van Gogh's Starry Night. After the Apocalypse a Heavenly Utopia," in Revelation of Modernism. Responses to Cultural Crises in Fin-de-siecle Painting. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2008
Gogh, Vincent van. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. London and New York: Penguin Press, 1996
Orton, Fred and Griselda Pollock. Vincent van Gogh: Artist of His Time. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1978
Esner, Rachael and Margriet Schavemaker. Vincent Everywhere. Van Gogh's (inter)national identities (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011
Shapiro, Meyer. Vincent van Gogh. New York: H.N. Abrams, 2003
Silverman, Debora. Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000
Thomson, Belinda. Van Gogh. Exhibition catalogue. New York: H.N. Abrams, 2001
Thomson, Richard. Vincent van Gogh: The Starry Night. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008
Images
For a while, van Gogh lived in an apartment here, at 54 rue Lepic, Paris (18th arrondissement).
In 1886 Van Gogh and his brother Theo lived here at 25 rue Victor Masse, Paris (9th arrondissement).
van Gogh's grave in Auvers-sur-Oise