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Vincent van Gogh

Born: Zundert, The Netherlands, 30 March 1853
Died: Auvers-sur-Oise, 29 July 1890
Nationality: Dutch

Background:

son of a minister

Studies:

mainly self-taught; briefly at Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts (Brussels); with Fernand Cormon (1886, Paris)

Career:

1869 – apprenticed to uncle’s art dealership, Goupil & Co.

1873 – transferred to London branch of Goupil & Co.

1875 – transferred to Paris branch of Goupil & Co.

1878 – moves to Borinage region to work as a lay preacher

1879-80 – visits Jules Breton in Courrières, France; van Gogh decides to pursue painting

1886 – moves to Paris; studies with Cormon; begins correspondence with Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin

1888 – moves to Arles; Gauguin joins him in October; van Gogh enters mental hospital in December after cutting off his ear lobe in a fit of anger ear; Gauguin returns to Paris

1889-90 – van Gogh institutionalizes himself in Saint-Remy

1890 – moves to Auvers-sur-Oise and is place in the care of Dr Paul Gachet; Albert Aurier publishes article about van Gogh in Mercure de France; exhibits with Les XX (Brussels); dies as result of self-inflicted gunshot wounds

Important Artworks:

Loom with Weaver, 1884 (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo)

The Potato Eaters, 1885 (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo)

Moulin de la Galette, 1886 (Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh)

The Sower, 1888 (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo)

Night Cafe, 1888 (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven)

Sunflowers, 1888-89 (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Self-Portrait, 1889 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)

Self-Portrait, 1889 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889 (Courtauld Institute Gallery, London)

Paul Gauguin, Portrait of Vincent van Gogh Painting Sunflowers, 1888 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)