people and nature is the essence of Vincent Van Gogh's extremely prolific but tragically short career.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Holland, son of a Dutch Protestant pastor

and eldest of six children. His favorite brother Theo was four years younger. When Vincent was twelve to

sixteen years old, he went to a boarding school. That next year he was sent to The Hague to work for an

uncle who was an art dealer, but van Gogh was unsuited for a business career. Actually, his early interests

were in literature and religion. Very dissatisfied with the way people made money and imbued with a

strong sense of mission, he worked for a while as a lay preacher among proverty-stricken miners. Van

Gogh represented the religious society that trained him in a poor coal-mining district in Belgium. Vincent

took his work so seriously that he went without food and other necessities so he could give more to the

poor. The missionary society objected to Vincent's behavior and fired him in 1879. Heartsick, van Gogh

struggled to keep going socially and fin!

cosmopolitan bustle of the city as Manet, Monet, Renoir, and the others had been twenty years before him.

although he also painted many landscapes. Later, in 1890, he devoted his main energy to landscape

and form, the opposite of the abstractions into which Monet was heading and which seemed the inevitable

The portrait of Dr. Gachet is a perfect example of his melancholy, proto-Expressionist late work. By

missionary which proved to be the most painful experience of his life, and one from which he never quite

he had to integrate it with the style of his earlier years before his genius could fully unfold. Paris opened

must have meant a great deal to him. Van Gogh had broken with Christianity when he was fired from the

fingers which would make it quite coarse. In Arles he attached the greatest importance to his portraits,

limit of Impressionist techniques. Van Gogh thought it was the color, not the form, that determined the

his eyes to the senses and beauty of the visible world and taught him the pictorial language of the color

Anton Mauve, a leading member of the Hague school was a cousin of van Gogh's mother. This

Some common words found in the essay are:
Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh, Mile Bernard, Belgium Vincent, Academy January, Gogh's Impressionist, Hague September, Gogh Impressionist, Theo Vincent, Dr Gachet, van gogh, van gogh's, bright colors, color van gogh, father's death, importance color, phase lasted, southern france, jean-francois millet, potato eaters, den hague,
Approximate Word count = 1948
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)