Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in the town of Groot Zundert in the Netherlands. He was the first of six children of district pastor Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Cornelia. He was named after his stillborn brother who died one year before Van Gogh was born. Therefore, throughout his childhood, he felt like he was replacing someone else in a lost state. As for the reading age, Groot Zundert was enrolled in the village school and then at the boarding school in Zevenbergen. He moved to Tilburg as a boarding student for the secondary school. In 1868, he dropped out of his studies and returned to Groot Zundert.

In 1869 he began working, through his uncle Cent, at the Paris-based art dealer Goupil company's branch in The Hague. Here he was selling the reproductions of artworks and, in his free time, visiting the museums of the city. In 1873, his firm transferred him to Brussels and London galleries of the company. By working in London for a year made his first drawings. He fell in love with Ursula Layer, the daughter of landlady. Ursula's failure to respond caused him to suffer from sorrow. His life in London had introverted, spent irrelevant to his work and by reading many religious topics. In 1875, he was appointed to the Paris branch of Goupil. Continuing his indifference to the work opened the gap with the employer and left Goupil in 1876.

He worked as a substitute teacher at Ramsgate, near London, and at Isleworth, a neighborhood of Londoner workers. Because of his inclination towards religion, he resigned from teaching and worked as a volunteer preacher and teacher alongside a methodist priest. He was determined to devote himself to recovery from the poor people. Rain, mud, snow for months of continuous work, both mentally and physically caused the disease. In 1876 in Noel, he went to his family in Etten. He worked at a bookstore in Dordrecht for a few months. As he wanted a religion-related profession, he went to Amsterdam to study theology. He stayed with his uncle Johannes and began preparing for the university entrance exams but gave up and returned to his family.

In 1878 he spent three months at the Flemish Christian School in Brussels. He went to Borinage, a mining region near Belgium's France border to make a priesthood. He started to work as a preacher among the coal mine workers. He was living in poverty, visiting patients and reading the Bible chapters to the miners. In 1879, he continued to work as a preacher in Wasmes in the same area, and to pursue the same life. When he was dismissed on the grounds that he was not suitable for the profession of preaching, he passed to Cuesmes, a mining region, and started to volunteer as a preacher. Although he lived in poverty, he was trying to help the poor and the patients. He was reading a lot and his interest in painting increased day by day. But this intense tempo caused his illness. He had to leave the mission and go back to his family.

In 1880 he made many paintings of miners and the environment in which they lived. He decided to move on as a painter. His brother Theo, working in Goupil, and Anton Mauve, his cousin in The Hague with support moved to Brussels to take courses in anatomy and perspective at the Academy of Arts. Here he met the Dutch painter Anton van Rappard and formed a friendship. First studies detail sketches and the drawings were inspired by he found himself close to Jean François Millet.

The Netherlands

In 1881, he returned to his family. He fell in love with his cousin Kee Vos-Stricker, who was a widow. This unrequited love would be the beginning of deep pain. He had burned his hand in a lamp-of-flames to prove his passion for Kee to his family. Refusing to give up Kee, the perseverance intensified dispute with his family and caused him to leave his family once more.

Moved to The Hague in November 1881. In the early months of 1882, he began living in the same neighborhood as his painter cousin Mauve. He was studying painting techniques from Mauve. After a few months of working together, they broke down. During this period, he met with Clasina Maria “Sien” Hoornik. Sien was living with her five-year-old daughter and was pregnant. He took her home and started living together. Van Gogh also took care of the newborn son of Sien. His family and friends opposed this relationship and were constantly pressuring to leave. He left Sien, where he lived together for a year with Theo's suggestions.

After leaving The Hague for a few months in Drente in the north of the Netherlands, in December 1883 he returned to the family in Nuenen, where he would be spent two years. His parents had kept a workshop close to their home in order to support him. He became involved in a relationship with his neighbor Margot Begemann. This love adventure ended because of the opposition of the two families and the attempted suicide of the girl. During this period, he made up to 200 paintings, which were often dominated by dark colors. He had worked on peasants, weavers, and landscapes.

In May of 1885, Van Gogh made his painting "The Potato Eaters", which represented his early works and was considered the masterpiece of the Dutch period. The same year, He was shocked by his father Theodorus van Gogh's death. He moved to Antwerp in November due to the difficulty of living conditions in Nuenen. He kept a small attic with the help of his brother Theo. During this period he visited museums and impressed by the works of Peter Paul Rubens, the great master of baroque art. He discovered the Japanese woodcuts which paved the way for the ornamental, multi-colored style that would be seen in his later paintings. Although he was enrolled in the Fine Arts School, he left in a short period of time because he could not comply with academic teaching methods.

-Paris-

In February 1886 went to Paris. For two years until 1888, he lived with his brother Theo. Painter Fernand Cormon's workshop began to receive training. He walked away during the training he saw here from a worker, peasant subjects in the early period paintings. His friendship with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Emile Bernard began in this workshop. During this period in Paris, the first steps of new impressionism had taken while impressionism was the last period. Van Gogh, through the Theo, Paul Gauguin, master of Impressionism, Camille Pissarro and other Impressionists; He met with Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, the masters of the Puantilist style. He had become close friends with Signac and had made paintings influenced by the Puantilist style. During this period, he generally worked on the flower subjects in the vase and concentrated on the portrait. Portrait of ”Père Tanguy, inspired by the Japanese woodcutters, was a work that could be considered a symbol of the Paris period. The colors in his palette have started to revive, the use of colors and brush domination were now indicative of his original identity.

-Arles-

After two years in Paris, Van Gogh moved to Arles in southern France on February 20, 1888. He rented a room in the Carrel Hotel-Restaurant where he would stay for three months. He was full of new hopes. His interest in the Far East culture increased and he began to paint flowers and trees that resembled Japanese landscapes. He often made two separate paintings of the Langlois Bridge by going to the southernmost channel of Arles.

In May he moved to a room on the top floor of the Café de la Gare. At the same time, he rented the four-roomed Yellow House in the Lamartine Area and started using it as a workshop.

In June, after a week's excursion to the village of Saintes Marie de la Mer, he began working over boats.

During the month of August, the Sunflowers theme appearing in his paintings in Paris made his works matured to reveal his masterpieces.

In September, he moved to Yellow House, where he had long dreamed of being a meeting place for artists. He also started painting outdoors at night.

In October 1888 Paul Gauguin, a painter friend of his, admired for his art, came to Arles through Theo. The two artists merged with the idea of creating a community of painters. From time to time during the time they spent together, they turned to the same issues, at which point the difference in their interpretation of their visual experiences became even more pronounced. It didn't take long for them to start working together. Paul Gauguin and the two-month relationship ended in December when Van Gogh cut his left ear as a result of the crisis. Gauguin left Arles. Van Gogh spent several weeks in the hospital. In January 1889 he returned "Yellow House".

In February, he had to return to the hospital because of insomnia, recurrent delusions, poisoning paranoia. It was decided to close the hospital with the signatures of the people of Arles. At the same time, Van Gogh was concerned that Theo was about to get married in Paris. He continued to paint to be purified from the troubles he had in the hospital. The paintings of Arles, where color and thick paint were used, were almost completely color. He had created new color sequences, he was working with spatula, fingers or paint tube.

-Saint Rémy-

On May 8, 1889, Vincent was 36 years old, and he had voluntarily entered himself at Saint Rémy's Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum, 25 kilometers from Arles. All his hopes for the future, all his plans were broken down. His brother Theo kept two rooms in the hospital, one for the bedroom and one for the studio. He was allowed to paint under the supervision of in charge of the ward, and during this period he mostly made landscape paintings. He discovered real motion in his paintings; it was seen that he gave importance to rhythm and movement rather than color. He was combining the sky and the earth as a whole. He used these features together in his masterpiece "The Starry Night", one of the most important and unusual paintings he made in June. At the end of 1889, when he could not go out into the open air or paint, he was either completing his unfinished paintings or making copies of the works of his own paintings or other painters.

In January and February of 1890, he had been very excited about some events. Theo's son was born and had given him the name of Vincent. In addition, in an art magazine, for the first time, a positive and comprehensive article was published about Van Gogh. In Brussels, he had a severe seizure immediately following the news that the "Red Vineyard" was sold.

-Auvers Sur Oise-

After his health improved slightly, he decided to leave the hospital where he had spent nearly a year. He went to Paris to see his brother and family and stayed there for a short while, in May 1890, he moved to Auvers Sur Oise, near Paris. He rented a room at Ravoux Guesthouse. Here Gachet, a medical doctor and amateur painter, kept an eye on Van Gogh. In a short period of time, a close friendship was established. Meanwhile, he continued to work intensively. Within two months, he painted over eighty paintings, including masterpieces in "The Church at Auvers" and "Dr. Paul Gachet". In these pictures, the starting point was more rhythm than color. The obvious brush strokes in all of his paintings were also present in these studies. Moving line, helices, circles were again attracted attention.

Vincent's happy period didn't last long. Van Gogh needed the financial and moral support of his brother, Theo, in order to survive. But his brother Theo was having big problems. Vincent was very sad about this and went to Paris to visit his brother in July. He was was a bad relationship with Gachet. His relationship with the entire environment was worsening; the hope of working has vanished which had connected him to live so far. Shortly before his death, he painted "Wheatfield with Crows" reflecting the mood of those days.

Van Gogh shot himself in the chest on July 27, and had returned home late and was locked up in his room. Van Gogh died two days later on July 29, 1890, even though his brother Theo came to the news.

Bibliography;

Gombrich, E.H., (2002). Sanatın Öyküsü, Üçüncü Baskı, Remzi Kitabevi, İstanbul.

Farthing, S., (2014). Sanatın Tüm Öyküsü, İkinci Baskı, Hayalperest Yayınevi, İstanbul.

Turani, A., (2010). Dünya Sanat Tarihi, On Dördüncü Baskı, Remzi Kitabevi, İstanbul.

Güvemli, S., (2005). Sanat Tarihi, Dördüncü Baskı, Varlık Yayınları, İstanbul.

Altuna, S., (2013). Ünlü Ressamlar Hayatları ve Eserleri, Birinci Baskı, Hayalperest Yayınevi, İstanbul.

Lunday, E., (2013). Büyük Sanatçıların Gizli Hayatları, Beşinci Baskı, Domingo Yayınevi, İstanbul.

Yetkin, S.K., (2007). Büyük Ressamlar, Birinci Baskı, Palme Yayıncılık, Ankara.

Walther, I.F., (2005). Van Gogh, Birinci Basım, Taschen/Remzi Kitabevi, İstanbul.

Çev: Kür, P., (2006). Theo'ya Mektuplar, Dördüncü Baskı, Yapı Kredi Yayınları, İstanbul.

Spence, D., (2015). Büyük Ressamlar Van Gogh, Üçüncü Baskı, Beta Yayınları, İstanbul. Eroğlu, Ö., (2014). Üç Postempresyonist Ruh Cézanne-Van Gogh-Gauguin, Birinci Baskı, Tekhne Yayınlar, İstanbul.