Expressionism in Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night
Uploaded by spootyhead on Mar 20, 2007
Expressionism in Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night
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 Goupil & 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 Etten, 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...