Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. He was not commercially successful and, struggling with severe depression and poverty, committed suicide at the age of 37.
The Potato Eaters is an oil painting by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh painted in April 1885 in Nuenen, Netherlands. It is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The original oil sketch of the painting is at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, and he also made lithographs of the image, which are held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The painting is considered to be one of Van Gogh's masterpieces.
Vincent van Gogh lived during the Impressionist era. With the development of photography, painters and artists turned to conveying the feeling and ideas behind people, places, and things rather than trying to imitate their physical forms. Impressionist artists did this by emphasizing certain hues, using vigorous brushstrokes, and paying attention to highlighting. Vincent van Gogh implemented this ideology to pursue his goal of depicting his own feelings toward and involvement with his subjects. Van Gogh's portraiture focuses on color and brushstrokes to demonstrate their inner qualities and van Gogh's own relationship with them.
Sorrowing Old Man is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh that he made in 1890 in Saint-Rémy de Provence based on an early lithograph. The painting was completed in early May at a time when he was convalescing from a severe relapse in his health some two months before his death, which is generally accepted as a suicide.
Vincent van Gogh made many copies of other people's work between 1887 and early 1890, which can be considered appropriation art. While at Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, where Van Gogh admitted himself, he strived to have subjects during the cold winter months. Seeking to be reinvigorated artistically, Van Gogh did more than 30 copies of works by some of his favorite artists. About twenty-one of the works were copies after, or inspired by, Jean-François Millet. Rather than replicate, Van Gogh sought to translate the subjects and composition through his perspective, color, and technique. Spiritual meaning and emotional comfort were expressed through symbolism and color. His brother Theo van Gogh would call the pieces in the series some of his best work.
Flowering Orchards is a series of paintings which Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh executed in Arles, in southern France in the spring of 1888. Van Gogh arrived in Arles in February 1888 in a snowstorm; within two weeks the weather changed and the fruit trees were in blossom. Appreciating the symbolism of rebirth, Van Gogh worked with optimism and zeal on about fourteen paintings of flowering trees in the early spring. He also made paintings of flowering trees in Saint-Rémy the following year, in 1889.
Lying Cow is the name of two oil paintings created by Vincent van Gogh around 1882 when he was living at The Hague.
A Girl in the Street, Two Coaches in the Background is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh. It is one of his very early works, painted in The Hague in August 1882, at a time when his brother Theo was encouraging him to paint landscapes in colour, rather than drawing figures. It is an early work to bear his "Vincent" signature, suggesting he was happy with the effect.
Girl in White was painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, during the last months of his life. Girl in White has been part of the Chester Dale Collection in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. since 1963.
Vincent van Gogh enjoyed making Paintings of Children. He once said that it's the only thing that "excites me to the depths of my soul, and which makes me feel the infinite more than anything else." Painting children, in particular represented rebirth and the infinite. Over his career Van Gogh did not make many paintings of children, but those he completed were special to him. During the ten years of Van Gogh's career as a painter, from 1881 to 1890, his work changed and grew richer, particularly in how he used color and techniques symbolically or evocatively.
Butterflies is a series paintings made by Vincent van Gogh in 1889 and 1890. Van Gogh made at least four paintings of butterflies and one of a moth. The metamorphosis of the caterpillar into a butterfly was symbolic to Van Gogh of men and women's capability for transformation.
Saint-Paul Asylum, Saint-Rémy is a collection of paintings that Vincent van Gogh made when he was a self-admitted patient at the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, since renamed the Clinique Van Gogh, from May 1889 until May 1890. During much of his stay there he was confined to the grounds of the asylum, and he made paintings of the garden, the enclosed wheat field that he could see outside his room and a few portraits of individuals at the asylum. During his stay at Saint-Paul asylum, Van Gogh experienced periods of illness when he could not paint. When he was able to resume, painting provided solace and meaning for him. Nature seemed especially meaningful to him, trees, the landscape, even caterpillars as representative of the opportunity for transformation and budding flowers symbolizing the cycle of life. One of the more recognizable works of this period is The Irises. Works of the interior of the hospital convey the isolation and sadness that he felt. From the window of his cell he saw an enclosed wheat field, the subject of many paintings made from his room. He was able to make but a few portraits while at Saint-Paul.
The early works of Vincent van Gogh comprise a group of paintings and drawings that Vincent van Gogh made when he was 27 and 28, in 1881 and 1882, his first two years of serious artistic exploration. Over the course of the two-year period Van Gogh lived in several places. He left Brussels, where he had studied for about a year in 1881, to return to his parents’ home in Etten, where he made studies of some of the residents of the town. In January 1882 Van Gogh went to The Hague where he studied with his cousin-in-law Anton Mauve and set up a studio, funded by Mauve. During the ten years of Van Gogh's artistic career from 1881 to 1890 Vincent's brother Theo would be a continuing source of inspiration and financial support; his first financial support began in 1880 funding Vincent while he lived in Brussels.
Old Church Tower at Nuenen are names given to several oil paintings and drawings created in 1884 and 1885 by Vincent van Gogh. Most reflect the way the 12th-century church looked in its better days when its spire was intact and its foundation formidable. The spire was demolished in 1792 and the church tower was in the process of being torn down and sold for scrap as Van Gogh made the paintings.
Peasant Character Studies is a series of works that Vincent van Gogh made between 1881 and 1885.
Vincent van Gogh drew and painted a series of works of his mistress Sien during their time together in the Netherlands. In particular, his drawing Sorrow is widely acknowledged as a masterwork of draftsmanship, the culmination of a long and sometimes uncertain apprenticeship in learning his craft.
Trees and Undergrowth is the subject of paintings that Vincent van Gogh made in Paris, Saint-Rémy and Auvers, from 1887 through 1890. Van Gogh made several paintings of undergrowth, a genre called "sous-bois" brought into prominence by artists of the Barbizon School and Impressionists. The works from this series successfully use shades of color and light in the forest or garden interior paintings. Van Gogh selected one of his Saint-Rémy paintings, Ivy (F609) for the Brussels Les XX exhibition in 1890.
The events that befell the early paintings and drawings by Vincent van Gogh in the period prior to the posthumous recognition of Vincent van Gogh as an innovative artist show how the appreciation of his legacy changed his reputation in a relatively short time.
Tree Roots is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh that he painted in July 1890 when he lived in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. The painting is an example of the double-square canvases that he employed in his last landscapes.
Meadows near Rijswijk and the Schenkweg is a watercolor by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh that he made in January 1882, shortly after taking up residence in The Hague.
