Birth of Dutch Artist & Painter Vincent Van Gogh

For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you, Vincent
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you….

Vincent van Gogh was born into an upper-middle-class family, on 30th March 1853.
Van Gogh loved to draw as a child and was serious, quiet and thoughtful.
However, from an early age, he already showed signs of mental instability.
As a young man, he worked as an art dealer, often travelling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London.
He turned to religion and spent time as a missionary in southern Belgium.

In 1888, Van Gogh rented a house in Arles in the south of France, where he hoped to found an artists’ colony.
In Arles, Van Gogh painted vivid scenes from the countryside, including his famous sunflower series.
Famous artist Paul Gauguin came to stay with Van Gogh in Arles, and the two men worked together for almost two months.
However, tensions developed and on 23rd December 1888 in a fit of dementia, Van Gogh threatened his friend with a knife.
He then turned it on himself, mutilating his ear lobe.
Afterward, he allegedly wrapped up the ear and gave it to a prostitute at a nearby brothel.

Following that incident, Van Gogh was hospitalised in Arles and then checked himself into a mental institution in Saint-Remy for a year.
During his stay in Saint-Remy, he fluctuated between periods of madness and intense creativity, in which he produced some of his best and most well-known works, including Starry Night and Irises.

By1890, Vincent was totally mentally unstable, by this point, he was exhausted from working hard, and the high standards he set for himself.
He was uncertain about the future, and felt that he had failed, as a man, and as an artist.

He found a certain peace living in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, where he soon began to paint prolifically once more.
Sadly, it would not last.
Two months after his arrival, Vincent shot himself in the chest.
Vincent had rented a small attic room at the Auberge Ravoux for three and a half francs a night.
He used the ‘Painter’s Room’ downstairs to paint, and to store his canvases.
The Ravoux family grew accustomed to him setting off each day to work in the surrounding countryside.

On 27th July 1890, he failed to return for his evening meal.
Knowing Vincent’s punctuality when it came to dinner, they immediately began to worry.
A badly wounded Vincent entered the inn around nine o’clock. When Ravoux asked what he had done, he replied:
“I tried to kill myself”

Vincent’s brother Theo was notified the following morning, and rushed from Paris to Vincent’s bedside, which he never left.
Vincent was conscious and the brothers were able to talk.
Theo later wrote to their mother:
‘Vincent said: I would so like to go, and an hour later he had his wish. Life weighed so heavily on him.’
Vincent died the following night, on 29th July 1890.

Vincent’s letters indicate that his mental health had been deteriorating since the beginning of July.
The sense of failure and fear that his life would never get better, intensified.
Increasing loneliness, considerable uncertainty about the future and the idea that he was nothing but a burden to his brother Theo, might have contributed to his suicide.

On Wednesday 30th July, led by a grief-stricken Theo, the funeral cortège made its way from Auberge Ravoux to the churchyard.
He was followed by friends from Paris, the Ravoux family, neighbours and other villagers who had known Vincent in Auvers.

Van Gogh’s grave was close to the entrance of Auvers cemetery, in a sunny spot among the wheatfields.
Theo van Gogh, who died less than a year after Vincent, was buried in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
In 1914, his widow, Jo, decide to have his body moved to Auvers and buried next to his beloved brother, Vincent.
Van Gogh’s grave is as modest as his reputation was at the time, befitting an artist who had sold only a few paintings and drawings during his too-brief life.

Vincent’s work was only known to a small circle when he died, but this would swiftly change after 1900, thanks to the efforts of an extraordinary woman, his sister-in-law Jo van Gogh-Bonger.