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Vincent van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853 in Zundert, a village in the southern province of North Brabant. He was the eldest son of the Reverend Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Cornelia Carbentus. At the age of 16 he started work at the Hague gallery of the French art dealers, in which his uncle Vincent was a partner. Vincent was dismissed from the firm at the beginning of 1876. He then took a job as an assistant teacher in England, but disappointed by the lack of prospects he returned to Holland at the end of the year. He now decided to follow in his father's footsteps and become a clergyman.
After a brief spell of training as an evangelist, Van Gogh went to the Borinage mining region in the south of Belgium. In 1879, however, his appointment was not renewed. After a long period of solitary soul-searching in the Borinage, Van Gogh set his sights on becoming an artist. His earlier desire to help his fellow-man as an evangelist gradually developed into an urge, as he later wrote, to leave mankind "some memento in the form of drawings or paintings - not made to please any particular movement, but to express a sincere human feeling. " His parents could not go along with this latest change of course, and the financial responsibility for Vincent passed to his brother Theo, who was now working in the Paris gallery of Boussod the successors of Gospel & Co.
It was because of Theo's loyal support that Van Gogh later came to regard his oeuvre as the fruits of his brother's efforts on his behalf. When Van Gogh decided to become an artist, no one, not even he himself, suspected that he had extraordinary artistic gifts. He evolved astonishingly rapidly from an inept but fervent novice into a truly original master. He eventually proved to have an exceptional feel for bold, harmonious color effects, and an infallible knack of choosing simple but memorable compositions. Initially Van Gogh lived at his parents' home in Even, where he set himself the task of learning how to draw. At the end of 1881, he moved to The Hague, and there too he concentrated mainly on drawing.
In late 1883, after a brief stay in the wilds of the moorland province of Drenthe, he went back to live with his parents who had moved to the village of Nutten near Eindhoven. It was here that he first began painting regularly, modeling himself chiefly on the French painter Jean-Francois Millet (1814 - 1875), who had caused a sensation throughout Europe with his scenes of the harsh life of peasants. After two years spent in the countryside of Brabant, Van Gogh left for Antwerp at the end of 1885 where he studied briefly at the art academy. In early 1886 he went to live with his brother in Paris. There, at last, he was confronted with the modern art of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.
He discovered that the dark palette he had developed back in Holland was hopelessly out-of-date, and mastered the modern style within two years -- a remarkable achievement. At the beginning of 1888, now a mature artist, Van Gogh went south to Arles, in Provence, where he at last began to feel certain about his choice in career. He now set out to make a personal contribution to modern art with his daring color combinations. Towards the end of the year, his optimism was rudely shattered by the first signs of his illness, a type of epilepsy that took the form of delusions and psychotic attacks. It was during one of those seizures that he cut off his left ear lobe. In April 1889, he went to nearby Saint-Remy, where he entered the Saint-Paul-de-Muscle asylum as a voluntary patient.
He left at the end of 1889 and went north again, this time to the rustic village of Adverse-sur-Oise, near Paris. Although he now had a small but growing circle of admirers, Van Gogh had lost his original passion. "I feel a failure, " he wrote to his brother. "That's it as far as I'm concerned - I feel that this is the destiny that I accept, that will never change. " On July 27, 1890 Van Gogh shot himself in the chest. He died two days later. Theo, who had stored the mass of Vincent's work in Paris, died six months later. His widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, returned to Holland with the collection, and dedicated herself to getting her brother-in-law the credit he deserved. In 1914, with his fame assured, she published the letters between the two brothers.
From that moment on Van Gogh's oeuvre became inextricably interwoven with the story of his remarkable and tragic life. Approximately 13 months before the tragic death of Van Gogh, he finished what is probably his most famous work, The Starry Night. The Starry Night painting is filled with vibrant, expressive colors, as well as vivacious brush strokes. Vincent's basis for the painting came from the window of his bedroom at the asylum at Saint-Re. He stayed up three nights to finish the work where he felt that the night was more alive than the day.
The painting was composed on a 29 x 36 inch canvas using oil paints. Starry Night was not only painted from what Van Gogh saw from his bedroom window, but from his imagination and memory as well. The church is a creation of the memories of Van Gogh's home country of Holland. Churches such as this could be seen throughout Holland.
According to Kirk Varnedoe, the large cypress tree to the left of the painting was a symbolic path to heaven. When described by Van Gogh to his brother Theo he wrote: .".. looking at the stars always makes me dream... Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. " It is believed that Van Gogh knew that he could not go on much longer. As he worked on The Starry Night painting, one can see how his seizures aggravated his brush strokes.
However, the brush strokes are so uniform that they enhance the work greatly. In the realization of his own demise, Van Gogh seems to have captured his struggle between heaven and hell. Hell being his life at that point as he traveled to many asylums in search of a cure for his illness. His heaven, is no longer having to live with the illness, knowing that in death there would be peace. The general emotion of The Starry Night painting is one of hopefulness. Van Gogh, at this time is able to express how he is plagued by his illness and is searching for the end of his torment.
He placed everything that he wanted to recall in the work though it was not there. The tragic ness of Van Gogh's struggle with himself is conceptualized in the obscurity of the night sky. Van Gogh's The Starry Night will continue to admonish his life and mark his artistic, yet maddening visions. This work is full of expressive, heartfelt feelings fo torment, and easement.
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Research essay sample on Expressionism In Vincent Van Starry Night
