Gogh, Vincent van

Gogh, Vincent van (1853-90), Dutch painter.

Vincent van Gogh was the son of a Protestant priest and, for a time, he showed a deep interest in religion.

He worked as an assistant in an art shop and as a school teacher, and then he became a preacher at Le Borinage in Belgium. There he gave away everything he owned and slept on the floor of an abandoned hut.

In 1881 he left, and studied art in Brussels. In 1885, he produced his first masterpiece, The Potato Eaters.

Vincent's brother, Theo, sold pictures and he gave Vincent money to go to France. In Paris he met some of the leading painters and later he stayed at Aries in the South of France. There he painted some of his best landscapes and portraits.

In later years, van Gogh was mentally ill. One night, he cut off one of his ears, wrapped it in paper and delivered it to a house at three o'clock in the morning. Afterwards he spent some time in an asylum for the insane. But he continued to paint and produced some remarkable work.

His last painting was Cornfield with Flight of Two Birds. On 27July, 1890, he went out to the place shown in that picture and shot himself.

Among his best-known paintings are Cypresses in the Moonlight, Crows over the Wheatfteld and Sunflowers which is in the Tate Gallery, London.

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