38934 on Art History: Post-Impressionism: Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh is considered by many to be the greatest Dutch painter after Rembrandt and one of the greatest of Post-Impressionists, along with Cézanne and Gauguin. He was a strong influential force on the succeeding art movement, Expressionism. He was a prolific painter and although he painted only during a period of 10 years, he would oftentimes paint in a frenzy, which resulted in a large body of work. Approximately 2200 works: close to 900 paintings, over 1200 drawings and sketches, plus nearly 200 water colour works. In his last 70 days at the St Rémy asylum, he painted one canvas a day before dying from a self-inflicted bullet wound. Among his masterpieces are a series of self-portraits, sunflowers and the celebrated The Starry Night (1889).

He was poor and suffered recurrent depressive spells and nervous breakdowns, with his devoted brother Theo as his only means of support. In May 1889 he asked to have himself committed at an asylum in St Rémy, near Arles, and continued to paint in a frenzy, around 150 paintings, on top of numerous drawings. Starry Night was produced during this time.

He sold only one painting during his lifetime, the Red Vineyard at Arles, which is now at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, and would never receive the kind of recognition he would gain posthumously. But as mentioned earlier, his influence on Expressionism, as well as on Fauvism and early abstract art was powerful and one can see a bit of Van Gogh in 20th-century art.