You take a handful of sesame seeds and throw them in the lake behind your house to feed the koi fish breathing in it. But some of them sprout next to the seaweed on the rugged floor. A colony of bacteria finds home in the cracks of the seeds’ membrane. And the local family of yellow frogs starts praying to your hand as that of a god.
Perhaps that is how we ought to think of art. Art is not necessarily put into the world to start a revolution or inspire a pioneer. We create art for the little things- to pluck a piece of this world and stare at it till it turns beautiful- those Koi fish.
But, maybe, in the process of putting that beauty on a pedestal for the world to see, we do end up changing the world, the very source of that beauty, in ways that we didn’t expect, and creating a ripple that adds to it. The beauty we see changes the beauty that exists.
That is how we like to see Vincent Van Gogh- a man stuck in a world that weighed on him, but still chose to force both eyes open, just so that he could appreciate the view. And appreciate it he did, putting it into art that changed, inspired, and spoke.
Of over the 900 paintings he made, he managed to sell just one. He did, however, leave footprints on art styles that are still visible today. In this piece, we take you through his life, and how it shaped his art. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll give you a glimpse of the world through his eyes- the eyes which replicated this world on a canvas so beautifully.
Even a butterfly’s magnificent wings come from the innocent munching of birch leaves as a larva- likewise, all of Van Gogh's brilliance came from somewhat soft beginnings.
He was born in 1853 to a Catholic family of art dealers in the Netherlands and he spent much of his youth working immersing himself in Christianity. He ran headfirst into a crisis of faith, though, when he was dismissed by the Church for living humbly. He travelled a lot following this, searching for a new calling amongst the quiet, cloudy burrows of Europe.
“A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.”
Like all unfortunate humans who must at least once go through the turmoils of unrequited affection, Vincent too found himself in love with his newly widowed cousin Kee in the summer of 1881. Perhaps it was shared melancholy that drew him to her, or simply the forbidden affection of a woman who understood emotions as deeply as he did. He pursued her with the intensity of a man possessed, holding his hand over a flame in desperation, vowing not to remove it until he was allowed to see her. But alas, even as his skin burned red, her refusal of “no, nay, never” carved even deeper wounds that forced him to forever shut this chapter of his life.
The following year, Vincent found himself in The Hague, embarking on a new artistic journey under the guidance of his cousin Anton Mauve.
The bustling city, with its cobbled streets, canals, and vibrant community, became a setting for Vincent to find his passion. Living in a modest studio, he developed a distinctive style characterised by bold lines and stark contrasts. Despite criticism, he focused on the lives of ordinary people, and their struggles, which became a defining theme in his work.
His paintings were also influenced by his then lover, Sien, whom he had met whilst recruiting models for his work, and who even named one of her children after him. Works like "Sorrow," depicting Sien with her head bowed in despair, and "Woman with a Spade," illustrating resilience and inner turmoil- showcase his ability to convey unfiltered realism.
Despite Sien’s positive influence, many factors such as his health, finances and mentor’s disapproval ultimately led him to the hard decision of abandoning her and moving to Nuenen.
Nuenen was a small cluster of houses, inhabited by weavers and peasants- god fearing and hard working people of simple souls, living in little thatched huts. Inspired by them, Vincent immersed himself in capturing the essence of peasant life.
The Potato Eaters was a study of peasants' heads absorbed in earning their daily keep, revealing striking emotions and the beauty he found in their common meal. It showed that amidst their care for one another and struggle with nature, they had little space left for self-striving.
Vincent’s relationship with his family during this time was strained to say the least. Amidst all this, an unexpected love, Margot Begemann, his neighbour's daughter who fell for him, blessed his life with affection. However, like various elements of Vincent's life, even this relationship was tinged with darkness. Disapproved by her lover’s family and her own, Margot attempted to commit suicide- as an act of rebellion aginst her controlling mother and sisters. While she survived, his lover’s body shaking into collapse became a recurring part of Vicent’s nightmares for years to come.
But by the time Vincent left for Antwerp in 1885, he had produced hundreds of drawings and paintings. Nuenen really was Van Gogh's artistic adolescence – a time of experimentation, struggle, and gradual self-discovery. His palette not only reflects the sombre reality of his subjects but also his own inner turmoil.
Antwerp in the 1880s, with its lively theatres and dance halls, was a people’s hub, though it was also one of those places that could make one feel cold despite all the festivity. Van Gogh, possibly an outcast in a town as happening as this one, found himself imprinting his loneliness onto the canvas with a series of three artworks that depict the city’s dynamic atmosphere.
In Couple Dancing, for instance, there is emphasis on the two lovers embracing each other. A similar theme can be seen in Dance Hall- but seemingly from the view of someone who is not part of the ecosystem. Two Women in a Balcony Box, meanwhile, captures possibly some other observers similar to Vincent himself, peeking at the scene like sparrows on a telephone line.
The rain-cluttered streets of Paris were where Vincent’s art transformed into the all-too-familiar classic Van Gogh style that we know today, with the presence of thick, discreet brush strokes.
He met a variety of artists in the big city, mastering the use of complementary colours – blue-yellow, red-green – that catch the eye like a camera flash. This knowledge would find expression in some of his greatest pieces, such as The Night Café, Wheatfield with Crows, and The Starry Night.
He drew numerous self-portraits with this newfound style. It’s nearly impossible though, to find one in which he is smiling- with the portraits getting more distorted over the years, possibly signifying his troubled self-perception and descent into madness.
During his stay in Paris, his relationship with Theo soured, causing him to leave his brother’s home and move to Arles.
“You’ll like Arles, it's quiet, no one to bother you, the heat is dry, the colour magnificent, and the only place in Europe where you can find sheer Japanese clarity. It's a painter’s paradise.”
-Lust for life (Van Gogh’s biographical novel, Irving Stone)
The Arlesian Sun filled his eyes with an unfamiliar clarity. The calm blue and lush greens, a stark contrast to the chimney-smoke of Paris, rendered him speechless. Arles turned him into a blind painting machine, making him express simple themes through numerous captivating compositions. Vincent also realised that he no longer wanted success, or even a family- and that the one thing he could not live without was his ability to create.
One of his first creations was of his Yellow house- painted in said colour contrasting the blue sky- depicting it as an optimistic space for the artistic mind away from the pressures of Parisian life.
“The most beautiful paintings are those one dreams of while smoking a pipe in one's bed.”
As this suggests, his bedroom in this yellow house served as a sanctuary- allowing him to create his brilliant Nocturne series- The Cafe terrace at Night and The Night Cafe, complementary to each other, with the former having shapes fitted to each other like a jigsaw, contrasting yellows and blues, and the latter using reds and green to convey a more sombre vibe; there is also Starry Night over the Rhone, which emphasises the natural spark of the night sky along with the artificial lighting that was new to this period.
A brief, but very intense period of Van Gogh’s life started when he met Paul Ganguin in 1888. Their artistic brushes captured the same scenes, yet through different eyes. While Vincent's "The Painter of Sunflowers" depicted Gauguin at work, Paul’s portrait of Van Gogh painting sunflowers offered a glimpse into their shared space and mutual inspiration.
It was at this time that Van Gogh created the only painting he ever sold: The Red Vineyard, which captures people at work in a vineyard while the evening sun gets reflected in the river.
The collaboration between Vincent and Paul reached its peak with their paintings of local Arlesian women, but soon after, their different artistic styles and contrasting personalities started to create tensions between them. The situation reached a breaking point when Van Gogh apparently confronted Gauguin with a razor, but then turned it on himself, cutting off a portion of his ear. However, some historians propose that it was Gauguin who cut Van Gogh's ear, and that Van Gogh, in an act to save his friend from legal consequences or perhaps due to his fragile mental state, took the blame upon himself.
Regardless of what truly happened, the aftermath was Gauguin leaving Arles immediately after which Van Gogh was admitted to a hospital. In his short stay of two weeks, his doctor diagnosed him with "acute mania with generalised delirium”, (which would today be recognized as a severe mental health crisis).
Despite his challenges or perhaps because of it, Van Gogh produced some of his most raw works in this time including “Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear”.
The local community, though, concerned with Vincent’s erratic behaviour, signed a petition requesting his confinement- which led to him again being admitted to a hospital. He experienced bouts of severe mental distress interspersed with periods of lucidity and intense artistic productivity, and when treatment in Arles yielded little success, Vincent was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Saint-Remy.
Though his movement in the Saint-Remy asylum was very restricted- his caretakers perhaps realised that he needed art to keep himself alive. So, they allowed him to paint, and paint he did- some of his best works, in fact.
It was at the beginning of his stay here, when he was just adapting to staring at the four walls of his room that he painted his most treasured masterpiece. He didn’t leave his room often, so he captured the one captivating sight his eyes could see- the view of the lighthouse from his east facing window- giving us his most brilliant piece- The Starry Night.
“I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.”
The tricky question that can be asked for any of his pieces, but particularly this one is- did he make his work because of his mental illness, or despite it? We can probably never know, but if it were the latter, perhaps The Starry Night was his way of giving us a glimpse of the scene through his epilepsy-struck eyes. Or maybe it was a glimpse of his own perceptive senses- his own world; because what is the ‘real’- what exists or what is seen.
The sky in The Starry Night stands out in thick, outwards strokes. The source of light is a tiny village sitting in the underlit ground beneath the tower. The village, however, happens to be imaginary- there was no village visible from that window. Again, we can’t know why he added it. Could it be that the village was the refuge from the wild, unsettling night sky depicted? Or maybe it was the other way round- maybe the sky, in all its tumultuous glory, was the drop of beauty meant to contrast the ocean of melancholy that was the village.
Soon after this masterpiece, Van Gogh unfortunately slipped into one of the few attacks he would have in his years at Saint Remy, finding himself unable to paint for over a month.
Eventually, however, he found sanctuary in the institution’s elaborate gardens and continued to paint, translating the comfort of that paradise into some pieces.
After being discharged from the asylum, his focus stayed on nature, as he made numerous creations in the vibrant fields and pastures, as well as the memorable architecture of the province of Auvers. These were, however, some of his last few paintings.
That is because after a mere few weeks of staying in Auvers, Van Gogh returned to the barn he was staying in with a gunshot wound in his chest, presumably self inflicted. His last words said in his brother’s arms, after two days of failed attempts at saving him, were “The sadness will last forever”.
Was it amongst the standing crops of Wheatfield with Crows or the slanting rooftops of Thatched Cottages by a Hill that he found himself contemplating the unthinkable? We cannot know for sure but his loss remains one of the most heartbreaking ones in the history of art.
He was tired. His body that had once burned with passion to paint, now felt empty and unspeakably weary. He tried; to run his hands over the familiar crusted edges but stopped dead, thinking of another seizure in due time. His poor brother, forced to close his shop, had already wasted thousands of francs on him, on top of having a family to feed. Nausea rose in him uninvited; was it not enough to push his father into despair that he’d feast on his brother, too?
On one dreary afternoon like any other, he took his canvas- and climbing up the hill past the church, sat in the yellow cornfield opposite the cemetery. While the sun was blazing, a rush of blackbirds suddenly flew across the field, encasing the entire sky in a blanket of darkness, burying him in a black cloud of flapping wings. Something snapped in him then. He’d known for a while in Arles, but the realisation was clear to him now. That day, Vincent painted. He knew not how long it took, but when he saw that he’d finished, he released a breath, signing “Crows on the cornfield”.
He knew it was the end.
But- how does one paint goodbye?
He thought about it, lying on his bed wide awake. Despite all he’d been through, it’d been a good world to live in. And now, he wished to say goodbye to those who’d helped mould his life. To Ursula, who looked at his love with disgust; to Kee, whose “no, never, never!” had etched across his sou; to Decruq, Jacques, who had taught him to love the despised of the earth; to Reverend Pieterson, who had taught him to draw as one teaches a toddler to walk; to his father and mother who’d loved him the best he could; to Sien, who taught him to love in fear; to Mauve, his master; to Margot, the only woman to love him enough to kill herself; to Pere and Roulin; who had shown him kindness and patience; to Doctor Gachet and Albert, the only two men who’d thought him a great painter; and at last, to his good old brother Theo, who’d loved him more than a mother had ever loved a child, more than a man had ever loved another.
But words had never been his to commence. He’d only ever known how to paint.
How does one paint goodbye? At last, he closed his eyes.
After a decade of living his art and painting over 2100 artworks, Vincent Van Gogh, a man turned away from everything he loved, who was stranded in a universe of loss but art his solace, finally succumbed under the weight of a world who wished to cut him, passing away in 1890. Soon after, his brother, who was intent on raising the profile of his work, also died.
Thus, a great deal of credit for Van Gogh’s success goes to wife, Joanna, who went to great pain to bring his work to the limelight after his passing. She tediously sold and loaned his pieces out and even published his letters to Theo, preserving a lot of his valuable thoughts that would otherwise have been lost.
“I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly'.”
We find solace in the hope that this love- tenderly, yet painstakingly put into the fruit that is his fame, has reached Vincent in his heavenly abode. Just maybe, it has eased the suffering he went through in his last moments.
As we strive to carry on in a world that seems to be changing too fast for all of our comfort, art continues to keep us alive, as it kept Van Gogh alive. When we’re at our lowest, struggling with the things we feel nobody understands and failing to cover the gap between each other, art serves as a bridge- or maybe even a tightrope, giving us a shot at hope. Van Gogh has contributed to that art- and as we remain grateful for that contribution; it might just keep us afloat.
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