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 town hall in Auvers on 14 July 1890 | The Alyscamps,Avenue | The Bush | Self Portrait with Japanese Print | View of Saintes-Maries (nn04) |
Related Artists:
Jean de Beaumetz
Artois,active from 1361-Dijon 1396
Sharp Joseph Henry
American Painter, 1859-1953 was a painter credited with influencing the creation of the Taos, New Mexico Society of Artists. Sharp may have been the first artist to discover Taos when he visited in 1883. He painted American Indian portraits and cultural life, and Western landscapes. As a youth he permanently damaged his hearing in a near-drowning accident, and gradually become totally deaf. His formal art training included Mckmicken School of Design (Cincinnati) and Antwerp (Belgium) Academy. He traveled and worked in Europe also. Harpers Magazine commissioned his illustrations of Taos Indian life. Some portraits were purchased by the Smithsonian Institution. President Theodore Roosevelt took an interest in him and had a cabin built for him at Little Big Horn to paint Indian life there.
Francisco Barrera
Spanish, 1595-1657,Spanish painter. Although he is sometimes thought to have been a Sevillian painter, his career is documented in Madrid. Barrera enjoyed considerable prestige and authority within the artistic community of the Spanish capital and in 1634 and 1639 represented his profession in significant legal battles concerning the status and rights of painters. However, Barrera's known paintings, all of which are still-lifes, are those of a derivative artist of modest abilities. In Still-life with Basket of Grapes, signed and dated 1642 (Florence, Uffizi), his arrangement of objects in a window-frame and on a stone ledge derives from works by Juan van der Hamen y Le?n but without that artist's refined compositional sense or mastery of pictorial space. The rather weak modelling of objects in this painting is consistent with Barrera's other still-lifes, which are further characterized by their light tonality, bland colouring and monotonous brushwork. Comparable stylistic features are found in the more accomplished still-lifes of Antonio Ponce, with whom Barrera is documented in the 1630s. Barrera's best works are those depicting the Four Seasons, signed and dated 1638 (Seville, priv. col., see 1982 exh. cat., pp. 78-85). These are still-lifes of abundant seasonal foodstuffs and, in landscape settings, large symbolic and genre figures drawn from traditional iconography.