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 :. | Cluster of Old Houses with the New Church in The Hague (nn04) | Landscape with Snow (nn04) | Field with Poppies (nn04) | Sheaves of Wheat (nn04) | Flowering Garden (nn04) |
Related Artists:
caulery
ball at the valois court.c 1582 rennes, museum
Samuel De Wilde
British 1748-1832,English painter and etcher of Dutch descent. He was the son of a Dutch joiner who had settled in London by 1748. On 19 November 1765 he was apprenticed for seven years to his godfather, Samuel Haworth, a joiner in London. However, he left after five years and enrolled as a student at the Royal Academy Schools in 1769. He exhibited small portraits at the Society of Artists (1776-8) and at the Royal Academy (from 1778), where he also showed fancy pictures of banditti in the style of Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg. But the genre that he made very much his own was theatrical portraiture: he exhibited theatrical portraits at the Royal Academy almost every year from 1792 to 1821.
Lionel Percy Smythe,RA,RWS
1839-1918