Dutch Post-Impressionist Painter, 1853-1890 Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 ?C 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art. Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880. Initially, Van Gogh worked only with sombre colours, until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. He incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which was fully developed during the time he spent at Arles, France. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide. The central figure in Van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. Van Gogh is a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists.  Related Paintings of Vincent Van Gogh :. | The Bridge of Triquetaille | Hutten | Flowering Garden (nn04) | The Sower | Dockers in Arles |
Related Artists:
Marc Charles Gabriel Gleyre
Charles Gleyre (full name Marc Gabriel Charles Gleyre) (Chevilly, Vaud canton, 2 May 1806 - 5 May 1874), was a Swiss artist. He took over the studio of Paul Delaroche in 1843 and taught a number of younger artists who became prominent, including Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Self portraitHis father and mother died when he was eight or nine years of age; and he was brought up by an uncle in Lyon, France, who sent him to the industrial school of that city. Going to Paris in his late teens, he spent four years in intense artistic study. The following four years Gleyre spent in meditative inactivity in Italy, where he became acquainted with Horace Vernet and Louis Leopold Robert; and six years more were spent wandering in Greece, Egypt, Nubia and Syria. At Cairo he was attacked with ophthalmia, or inflammation of the eye, and in Lebanon he was struck down by fever. He returned to Lyons in shattered health. On his recovery he proceeded to Paris, and, establishing a modest studio in the rue de Universite, began carefully to work out the ideas which had been slowly shaping themselves in his mind. Mention is made of two decorative panels Diana leaving the Bath, and a Young Nubian as almost the first fruits of his genius; but these did not attract public attention until much later, and the painting by which he practically opened his artistic career was the Apocalyptic Vision of St John, sent to the Salon of 1840. This was followed in 1843 by Evening, which at the time received a medal of the second class, and afterwards became widely popular under the title Lost Illusions. It depicts a poet seated on the bank of a river, with his head drooping and a wearied posture, letting his lyre slip from a careless hand, and gazing sadly at a bright company of maidens whose song is slowly dying from his ear as their boat is borne slowly from his sight.
Aleksei Matveev

John O Brien Inman
American, 1828-1896