Vincent Van Gogh
Artists & Masterpieces
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
This book contains 658 paintings by Vincent Van Gogh.
Vincent Van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Zundert in the southern Netherlands, the son of a pastor. In 1869, he took his first job, working in the Hague branch of an international art dealing firm. He began to write to his younger brother Theo, a correspondence which continued for the rest of Van Gogh's life.
Van Gogh's job took him to London and Paris, but he was not interested in the work and was dismissed in 1876. He briefly became a teacher in England, and then, deeply interested in Christianity, a preacher in a mining community in southern Belgium.
In 1880, he decided to become an artist. He moved around, teaching himself to draw and paint and receiving financial support from Theo. In 1886, Van Gogh joined Theo in Paris, and met many artists including Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro and Gauguin, with whom he became friends. His style changed significantly under the influence of Impressionism, becoming lighter and brighter. He painted a large number of self-portraits in this period.
In 1888, Van Gogh moved to Provence in southern France, where he painted his famous series 'Sunflowers'.
He spent time in psychiatric hospitals and swung between periods of inertia, depression and incredibly concentrated artistic activity, his work reflecting the intense colours and strong light of the countryside around him.
On 27 July 1890, again suffering from depression, Van Gogh shot himself. He died two days later.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A man possessed, van Gogh transformed himself over a 10-year period from a somewhat awkward, overwrought sketcher into a master painter. His best work in both media is abundantly sampled in this magnificent set, the catalogue of a large retrospective held concurrently at two museums in the Netherlands on the centenary of the artist's death. Essays provide insight into how this dissatisfied experimenter viewed his own output ( The Starry Night ``said nothing'' to him). We are also able to situate the paintings in a biographical context. The color reproductions--hundreds of them--are glorious, the commentaries consistently interesting. The volume devoted to drawing rescues a body of work from undeserved, comparative obscurity; here we see van Gogh the doer and pragmatist, using charcoal, pencil, chalk, ink, watercolor, in whatever combinations needed, to penetrate the secrets of what he was observing.
