Today, a painting by Vincent Van Gogh sells for quite $80 million. however whereas he was alive, nobody needed to buy his work. the general public either ignored him or laughed at him.
Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 in Groot-Zundert, Holland. His father was a church minister. He taught Vincent that it was important to help others. Van Gogh tried to be a minister too, but he was not successful. He tried many other jobs also. He worked as an art seller, a bookseller, and a teacher. He failed at each one. Unfortunately, van Gogh had mental problems and was often sad or angry. This made it difficult for him to succeed.
Van Gogh was very good at one thing— art. He taught himself to draw and paint. Van Gogh drew all the time. He drew on anything he could find—menus, books, and scraps of paper. In 1881, he began to study art, first in Brussels, then in Paris. His early paintings were about poor people in Holland. They were dark pictures and the people in them were sad. When he went to France, he started to paint with bright colors. He painted in an exciting way, and his paintings showed his strong feelings. He always painted the ordinary things in life—his bedroom, a chair, or some flowers. Often he went into the country to paint birds, flowers, and fields.
Van Gogh’s paintings were very different from the paintings of other artists, and people didn’t like them. Sometimes he left his paintings when he moved to a different place. When people found the paintings, they used them for firewood or to build things. He couldn’t sell his work, so he didn’t have much money. He often did not have food to eat because he used his money to buy paints and brashest. He also gave clothes and food to other poor people.
Van Gogh’s mental problems made his life very difficult. He had a strange, moody personality. He was stubborn and liked to argue. Some people were afraid of him. Others laughed at him. Children threw things at him in the street and called him bad names. His brother Theo was his only real friend. Theo was an art seller. He believed that Vincent was a genius. Theo gave him money and encouraged him to keep working.
Van Gogh spent the last two years of his life in southern France. During this time, he created almost 200 paintings. In 1888, French artist Paul Gaugin went to live with van Gogh. One night they had a terrible argument. Van Gogh chased Gaugin down a street with a razor. Later van Gogh was very sorry. He went home and cut off a piece of his left ear. He lost so much blood that he almost died.
Van Gogh realized that he needed help. He went to a mental hospital. While he was there, he continued to paint. In fact, in the last 70 days of his life, he painted a picture every day. He painted one of his best works, Starry Night, while he was looking out from his bedroom window at the hospital. Van Gogh went in and out of mental hospitals for many months. Finally, on July 27,1890, he shot himself. He died two days later. He was only 37 years old.
Theo was full of sorrow over his brother’s death. He became sick and died only six months later. He was just 33 years old. Theo’s widow, Johanna, worked hard to make van Gogh and his paintings well known. Less than 30 years after his death, van Gogh was called one of the greatest artists of all time.
