Vincent van Gogh - Essay Example

May Vincent van Gogh’s Life and Art Style Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853. He was one of the most popular post-Impressionist painters of the Dutch origin. Gogh was the son of a pastor, and was raised in a very conservative and religious environment. He starting drawing at a very early age, and continued it through to his youth, thus becoming an artist in the late twenties. In his early adulthood, Gogh worked for a company of art dealers. In those years, he travelled between several cities including London and Paris.

He also taught for some while in England. Gogh originally wanted to become a pastor. In 1879, he started working in a Belgium-based mining company as a missionary. He sketched the local people in Belgium. Gogh’s produced his first major work in the year 1885, named The Potato Eaters. It primarily contained somber earth tones and lacked the use of vivid coloration which was the distinguishing feature of his later artwork. Gogh discovered the French Impressionists when he moved to Paris in the year 1886.

When he moved to Southern France, Gogh gained inspiration from the strong sunlight in the region. He brightened his work with the use of intense colors, and thus developed a unique style of art that gained him immense recognition and praise in Arles in the year 1888. Gogh made most of the best-known pieces of art in the last two years before death. In almost a decade from the start of paintings till his death, Gogh made above 2100 paintings, which included over 1300 watercolor artworks, prints, drawings, and sketches, and almost 860 oil paintings.

Gogh made a wide range of paintings that included but were not limited to landscapes, self-portraits, paintings of sunflowers and cypresses, and paintings of wheat fields. “Van Goghs finest works were produced in less than three years in a technique that grew more and more impassioned in brushstroke, in symbolic and intense color, in surface tension, and in the movement and vibration of form and line” (“Vincent van Gogh”). Color was the fundamental way of expression for Gogh. He played with colors and came up with such contrasts that lent life to his paintings and emotionally appealed to the audiences.

Vincent van Gogh’s artwork is known for its jagged beauty, boldness of colors, emotional appeal, and several other factors due to which it has had great impact on the 2oth century art. Vincent van Gogh had a tough and very short life. He was a patient of depression and mental illness. It can be attributed to a large extent to his high sentimentalism and lack of self-confidence. Despite his mental illness, Gogh maintained immense control over his ability to produce artwork. In just 37 years of his life, he went through so many troubles that he committed suicide in the year 1890, though there is skepticism about whether it was a suicide or a murder with gun-shot.

Till his death, there were very few people who actually knew his work and understood the gravity of it. Gogh’s skills were globally recognized when his artwork was studied after his death. Works Cited:“Vincent van Gogh: Biography.” 2011. Web. 1 May 2012. .