VAN GOGH, Vincent. – Dutch painter, b. at Groot-Zundert on 30 March 1853, d. by suicide at Auvers-sur-Oise on 29 July 1890.
His painting sums up the various aspects of artistic experience over half a century: inspired, in the Dutch period (1880–85), by the realistic-social motifs of Millet and Israëls (The Potato Eaters), it opens, in the brief Parisian period (1886–88), to the purely pictorial influences of Impressionism (The Guinguette, View of Montmartre), Pointillism (Interior of a Restaurant), and Japanese prints, but asserts itself, in the Provençal period (1888–90), with disconcerting originality. With V. G., Expressionism announces and establishes itself with the emotional power of colour and the impetuous deformations of line; freed from earthly bonds, he wished to be the interpreter of the sense of being (The Cornfield, The Harvest, The Sower), of cosmic infinity (Starry Night), of vital impulse and the elements (Field of Poppies, Cypresses, Sunflowers), and of human destiny (A Ward in the Hospital at Arles, The Reapers, The Night Café; and in many portraits). His vision often becomes dark and hallucinatory (Cottages at Montcel); yet, in the face of the formal excesses of later Expressionists, he remains a classic. Famous are his letters to his brother Théo (Amsterdam 1914–25) and to Bernard (Paris 1911).