Vincent Van Gogh
Perhaps the only way to disentangle, for
yourself, the real Vincent Van Gogh
from the creation of so many others, is
to study the great mass of work he has
left behind. Locally, his art is on
display at museums including the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, and New
York's, Metropolitan Museum, and Museum of Modern
Art. In addition to his
art, some 600 of Van Gogh's letters survive, all
translated into English.
Most are written to Vincent's beloved and devoted
brother, Theo, his sole
supporter all his adult life, both financially and
emotionally. Vincent's
correspondence describes a tortured life. With a passion
for life great as
young man ever had, he failed miserably in love, friendship,
career, and in
the three relationships to which he was most devoted; his
Calvinist
minister father, his church, and his god. In 1880, at the age of 26,
Van
Gogh suffered his first nervous breakdown. After a period of
desperate
wandering, he wrote to his brother, "In spite of everything, I
shall rise
again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my
great
discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing." Vincent would turn
that
which had caused him so much suffering, his overfilled heart, toward
canvas. In
a period of ten years, most of which he was ill, Van Gogh would
produce some 800
paintings and a similar number of drawings. His early work
depicts humble
subjects, peasants mostly, with a gentle hand that at times
rivals his idol,
Jean Francois Millet. His middle years are portraits,
room settings, and
"still lifes" of flowers with such intensity it seems the
artist had
captured a piece of the sun and used in his palate. In his last
years, after
admitting himself into sanitarium in St. Remy, the sun went
inside Vincent, and
he created perhaps his finest work. No artist with so
much belief in himself,
ever endured such failure. Vincent Van Gogh sold only
one painting during his
life time. He suffered from an illness characterized
by numerous attacks of
depression. And he suffered from ill-fated luck. When
lucid, in good health,
Vincent Van Gogh could produce a masterpiece in a
single day. To our loss, those
days were too few. Heartbroken to learn that
his brother was ill, and suffering
in his business, Van Gogh took his own
life at the age of 37. He would be a
burden no more. A hundred years
following the death of Vincent, and his brother
Theo, who was buried
beside him a year later, his painting of Iris's would sell
for a record price
of $75,000,000.