Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born in 1853 in Groot-Zundert, a village in the southern Netherlands. He worked as an art dealer, a teacher, and a lay preacher among coal miners before deciding, at 27, to devote himself to art. Largely self-taught, he drew and painted the rural laborers around him, producing his first major work, The Potato Eaters, in 1885.

In 1886 Van Gogh moved to Paris, where his palette brightened under the influence of the Impressionists. Two years later he settled in Arles in the south of France, painting sunflowers, orchards, and wheat fields with extraordinary intensity. Struggling with mental illness, he entered an asylum at Saint-Rémy in 1889, where he painted The Starry Night, among the most recognized images ever created.

In just over a decade Van Gogh produced around 900 paintings and more than a thousand drawings, sustained by the devotion of his brother Theo. He died in Auvers-sur-Oise in July 1890, aged 37, having sold few works. Within decades his art reshaped modern painting, and his letters and canvases continue to move millions with their honesty, color, and feeling.