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 :. | Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat (nn040 | The Thresher (nn04) | View of Paris from Vincent's Room in t he Rue Lepic (nn04) | The town hall in Auvers on 14 July 1890 | Still Life:Basket with Six Oranges (nn04) |
Related Artists:
Jean Charles Cazin
1841-1901 French Jean Charles Cazin Location Painter and ceramicist. His earliest paintings reveal close affinities with the realist tradition, while his later compositions (mostly landscapes of northern France) demonstrate an awareness of Impressionism and a commitment to recording the changing effects of light and atmosphere. He was sent to England for health reasons but by 1862 or 1863 was living in Paris and active in avant-garde artistic circles. In 1863 he exhibited Recollections of the Dunes of Wissant (untraced), a work based on close observation of the coastline of northern France, at the Salon des Refuses. He enrolled at the Ecole Gratuite de Dessin under Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, where he became friends with Alphonse Legros, Thodule Ribot, Henri Fantin-Latour and Leon Lhermitte, all of whom adopted Boisbaudran method of developing paintings from memory as a way of heightening perceptions. During this period Cazin also met Marie Guillet, whom he married in 1868.
George Cooke
English Engraver, 1781-1849 Born in Maryland, Cooke abandoned a fledgling career in business at an early age in order to become a full time artist. After several years of painting portraits for a living, Cooke left for what would become a five year tour of Europe. His time there was mostly spent learning from and copying the works of the Renaissance master artists, with many of Cooke's copies being sent back to the United States for show or sale. After returning to the U.S., Cooke and his wife spent the next decade traveling and working with no fixed home. His work took him throughout the Southern United States, where he primarily made his living painting portraits of both famous and ordinary people, and, by the 1840s, his portraits had earned him both financial success and regional fame.
Lorenzo Lippi
1606-65 Italian painter and poet. He was trained by Matteo Rosselli, with whom he worked for many years in close partnership. His collaboration was sometimes anonymous but is documented from 1622, when they decorated the ceiling of the Sala della Stufa (Florence, Pitti), to 1631-2, when they worked together on lunettes portraying St Francis Adoring the Child and St Catherine in Prison (Florence, S Gaetano). In 1630 Lippi was enrolled in the Accademia del Disegno but appears not to have had his own workshop until after 1634, although he worked independently before then. The earliest paintings attributable to him are, both in facial types and in the soft, rich folds of the drapery, close in style to the work of Rosselli. Examples include canvases of the Apostles James, John and Matthew, and Christ Blessing (all 1628; Vaglia, S Pietro), and the Virgin Handing the Child to St Francis (1629; Florence, S Salvatore di Camaldoli). In the 1630s Lippi painted decorative and theatrical compositions, mainly on literary and biblical themes, which remained indebted to Rosselli, for example Samson and Delilah (1632; Stockholm, Nmus.) and the Virgin in Glory with Saints (1634; Ronta, nr Barberino di Mugello, S Michele). Shortly afterwards he produced works