AN APPRECIATION: Vincent Van Gogh
(Part I The Early Years)

 Vincent Van Gogh may be the world's best known artist. When they come on the market, his paintings sell for many million dollars, the museum dedicated to him in Amsterdam is one of the city's most popular tourist attractions (see museum profile) and people crowd around his works at other museums.

Yet, in his lifetime, Van Gogh only sold one painting. His career was marked by a succession of failures. His personal life followed a similar pattern. He was mercurial and difficult to get along with. Yet, his works speak to people.

The Early Years

Van Gogh was saddled with a formidable burden from the time he was born. A year to the day before he was born on 30 March 1853, his mother gave birth to another boy. He was named Vincent but was stillborn. When the second boy, the future artist, was born, he was given the same name as his elder brother's name. Not surprisingly, the second Vincent felt that he was living someone else's life. Moreover, whenever he went to church, he could see a tombstone with his name written upon it.

Going to church was something that Vincent did frequently. His father, the son of a minister, was the Protestant Dutch Reform minister of Groot-Zundert, the area where the family lived for much of Vincent's boyhood. Vincent idolized his father. He was also close to his mother whose interests included drawing. They were a family of good social standing with a nice house and servants but little money.

Vincent was different than other children. Physically awkward, he preferred to be alone, often drawing or wandering the countryside. He had two brothers and three sisters. He liked his sister Wilhelmina but he was very close to his younger brother Theo who sometimes would accompany Vincent in his explorations of the countryside.

His education began at the local school. However, at age 12, he was sent to boarding school, which he hated.

When Vincent was 16, his father's brother (also called Vincent) arranged for him to work in an art gallery. The gallery was a branch of the French firm Goupil and Cie.

In 1873, Vincent was promoted and transferred to Goupil's London branch. He had read Charles Dickens' books and liked atmosphere of the Victorian city. He explored the city's streets and visited its museums and galleries. During this period, Van Gogh often drew pictures but only for his own amusement. His income was more than his father's and he liked working in the gallery.

The happy time in London ended when Vincent fell in love with his landlady's daughter. She was secretly engaged to another of her mother's boarders so when Vincent proposed marriage, she rejected him. This brought on depression and a sense of failure. He turned to religion for comfort.

In 1875, Van Gogh's father and uncle arranged for Vincent's transfer to Goupil's main gallery in Paris. There he explored the Louvre, attended exhibitions and decorated his rooms with prints and reproductions. However, he suddenly lost interest and without telling his employer, he returned home to Holland.

When he returned to Paris, Van Gogh resigned his position at the gallery. His employer was not sorry to see him go as he had taken to insulting customers and had declared that business was “organized theft.”
He did not return to Holland immediately. Instead, he holed up in Montmartre reading the bible and having theological discussions with Englishman Harry Gladwell. Vincent's brother Theo, who was by now working for Goupil, suggested that Vincent become a painter but his elder brother was not interested.

Instead, Vincent returned to England. Although his knowledge of the languages was scanty, he took a position teaching French and German. As part of the job, Vincent had to go into the slums of London's East End to collect school fees. Appalled at the poverty he saw, Vincent returned without collecting any money and was fired. He then started working with a Methodist minister named Jones, both teaching and preaching to the slum dwellers.

In late 1876, Van Gogh returned to Holland. An uncle arranged for him to work in a book shop. However, Van Gogh now had his heart set on following his father into the ministry. He dressed in drab Quaker-style clothing, ate little and spent much of his time translating the bible into various languages.

Impressed with his piety, his family agreed to help him become a minister. However, this required obtaining a university degree. Therefore, his mother's brother Pastor Johannes Strickler undertook to supervise a course of preparatory study for the entrance examination to the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Amsterdam. Vincent applied himself to studying ancient languages. However, this was to no avail as he failed the entrance examination miserably in July 1878.

This defeat was not enough to dampen Van Gogh's religious fervor. After attending an evangelical school near Brussels, Van Gogh obtained a post as a lay preacher in the poverty-stricken mining region of the Borinage, first in Paturages and then in Wasmes. Following in the footsteps of the early Christens, Van Gogh gave away all his possessions including the room that the church had arranged for him to live in. Living in a hut and sleeping on straw, Van Gogh ate a meager diet. He followed the miners down into the mines to preach and nursed them when they or their families became sick. When church officials came to inspect, they were appalled by Van Gogh's excessive zeal, which they felt was inappropriate for his position.

Word of Vincent's strange behavior reached his family and so his father came to visit. Finding Vincent sick and malnourished, the elder Van Gogh brought his son to the family home, now in Etten, to recover.

This failure was not quite the end of Van Gogh's career as a preacher. After he recovered, he returned to the Borinage. However, his heart was no longer in being a preacher. Instead, he now wanted to be an artist. He took to drawing pictures of the peasants going about their daily lives. Illustrating the extent of his zeal for his new ambition, Vincent decided that he wanted to meet the painter Jules Breton who lived in Northern France. Van Gogh walked for a week, sleeping in the open and in barns. When he arrived, Breton's fine new studio offended Van Gogh's idea of how an artist should live, so he left without even knocking on the door.

By 1880, Theo was convinced of the sincerity of Vincent's new passion and promised to help Vincent financially in his study of painting. Theo was not a rich man but he continued to provide financial as well as moral support for the remainder of Vincent's life.

At first, Vincent studied from books and by viewing works in museums and galleries. In Brussels, he met art student Anton Van Rappard who also gave him advice. Vincent also enrolled in the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts but did not like the academic approach to art.

Still, when Vincent returned home to Etten in April 1881, it was not as a failure. His studies had helped to develop his artistic abilities. However, heartbreak was waiting for him.

His cousin, Kee Vos, a widow with a young child, came to visit Vincent's family. Vincent fell in love with her. When she flatly refused his proposal of marriage, Vincent was devastated and began to behave erratically. In one incident, he went to her parents' home in Amsterdam and thrusting his hand into an open flame, pleaded to see Kee for as long as he could hold his hand in the flame. Her parents blew out the flame.

After a quarrel with his father over Vincent's refusal to attend church, Vincent left for the Hague in December 1881. There, he met an alcoholic prostitute called Sien Hoornik. She had one child and was pregnant with another. Vincent, who was living on the money he received from Theo, took her in and they lived together for several months. After the birth of her child, Vincent considered marrying her but was dissuaded by Theo. Van Gogh's father also tried to end his son's relationship with Sien.

During his stay in the Hague, the realist painter Anton Mauvre, a cousin by marriage, gave Van Gogh lessons in art.  Van Gogh revered Mauvre and he was very influential in Van Gogh's early career. 

By the Spring of 1882, Van Gogh had quarreled with Mauvre who declred that he wanted nothing more to do with him.  Van Rappard advised Vincent to move to country where he could paint landscapes.  Sien refused to go with him so  Vincent moved to the poverty-stricken area of Dienthe alone.   There, he painted people working in the fields and scenes of country life.  

Late in 1883, he returned to his family who were now living in Nuenen He took a room in a local Catholic church in order to use as a studio. There, he developed his first unique style, using a palate heavy with browns and dark colors. His subjects were peasants and the countryside.

Van Gogh's first masterpiece “The Potato Eaters” was done during this time. In addition, works done during this period show that Van Gogh was a good draughtsman and capable of using conventional techniques.

There was again emotional turmoil. Margot Bergemann, ten years older than Vincent, often joined him on his painting expeditions. She fell in love and he reciprocated. However, both of their families were against them marrying. She took poison but was saved when Vincent took her to the hospital.

In November 1885, Vincent moved to Antwerp where he took art classes at the Academy of Fine Arts. Once again, he did not care for the academic approach and quarreled with the teachers. However, his stay in Antwerp was profitable in that it enabled him to view the works of Peter Paul Rubens in the local churches and museums. In addition, shops along the waterfront sold works by Japanese artists brought back to Europe by sailors. Vincent became very interested in Japanese prints and incorporated ideas he learned from them into his art.

During his time in Antwerp, Vincent spent most of the money Theo sent him on art supplies. He lived in poverty and ate a meager diet. He drank heavily and may also have had a venereal disease. As a result, he spent part of 1886 in hospital.

Throughout his early career, Van Gogh had periodically returned to his father's home.  Inasmuch as his father died of a heart attack in 1885, Vincent turned to Theo to provide the home base that he had always needed.  Therefore, in March 1886, Vincent moved to Paris to join Theo.

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2 (The Paris Years)

See our profiles of these other Post Impressionists
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See our profiles of the Impressionists and members of  their circle.

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Art reviews and articles index

"The Potato Eaters" (above)  is considered Van Gogh's first masterpiece.  It was done in a unique style that he developed towards the end of the early period, which made considerable use of brown and other earth colors. 

A frequent subject during his early period was the life of  peasants as in "Woman with a Spade" (below).     

Van Gogh considered a similar pose in "Worn Out" (above) and "Sorrow" (below).  The model for the latter picture was Van Gigh's companion Sien.

Van Gogh also returned to similar visual concepts in "Alley Bordered by Trees" (above) and "Avenue of Poplars" (below).  

"Autumn Landscape October" demonstrates Van Gogh's ability to produce high quality works in a traditional style.  Thus, his later more simplified and abstract works were a product of choice.

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Artist appreciation - Vincent Van Gogh​ (Part I The Early Years)