Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was the son of a Minister and was born in Brabant. From 1869 he worked as an art dealer in the Hague and then in London until 1873. He then became a schoolteacher in England before training for the ministry at Amsterdam University in 1877. After failing to get a post in the Church, he went to live as an independent missionary among the Borinage miners. Mainly a self taught artist, van Gogh moved to Paris in 1886 where he met other artists like Pissarro, Seurat, Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec who greatly assisted him with colour and brushstroke. He then moved to Arles in 1888, in the south of France, where an argument with his guest, Gauguin, lead to the infamous episode in which van Gogh mutilated his ear. He became a voluntary patient at the St Remy asylum where he continued to paint in 1889. He then moved to Auvers to be closer to his brother Theo in 1890 where his last three months of life were spent on a frantic program of painting.