Famous Artist Friday - Vincent Van Gogh

Famous Artist Friday

Maiden Voyage

Vincent Van Gogh

Thank you so much for joining me today on my maiden voyage of Famous Artist Friday.  My goal is to learn about famous past artists and while I’m learning, you’ll be learning.

 So let’s get started.

I have chosen Vincent Van Gogh as my very first Famous Artist because, hey, I love his work.  I love it for several reasons.  Van Gogh has different styles as he goes through life, has different experiences, and experiments in his work.

Born March 30, 1853 and died July 29, 1890 by a self inflicted gunshot wound.  While he has influenced almost every artist of the 20^th century, he was literally unknown and sold almost no paintings and suffered with mental illness during his life time.

While most people think of Van Gogh as an oil painter, of his 2100 works, only 860 were oil with more than 1300 water color works, (I did not know that).

Van Gogh was a prolific painter and like most artists, he had favorite subjects.  One such subject must have been himself because he painted 43 self portraits.  He explained to his brother and sister that he was trying to get a better or clearer picture of himself than from a photograph.  I love the ones of himself that he did using tiny lines creating his face and its sharp features.  I think it’s a difficult style to understand or execute.

Another favorite subject was sunflowers.  He painted several series of sunflowers and other single paintings.  His colors are so vibrant and how he sees the petals on sunflowers is so interesting.

Starry Night may be his most favorite painting.  Van Gogh painted the haunting nocturne scene while he was in an asylum in Saint –Rem’y, France in 1889, one year before his death.  He saw the scene outside his window on a particularly bright night lit by the morning star.  The swirling sky and exaggerated lights  is what is first noticed but then the viewer is drawn through the lower half of the painting noticing the highlights on the buildings in the village.  Starry Night is currently housed in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City.

I love Van Gogh’s use of vibrant color, but most of all I love his strong strokes.  Wouldn’t it have been wonderful to have been a fly on the wall or tree as he painted. 

He was a ground breaking artist as his style moved away from art of the day and he was confident enough to paint what he saw in his mind.  He painted what was important to him, and while it seems he was disappointed that others did not share his vision, he did not alter his vision in exchange for sales.

Van Gogh was forced to leave his education at the young age of 15 to go to work to help support his family.  He spent the next 20 years in a myriad of professions: worked in a gallery, teacher, preacher, preacher to miners, until finally in 1880, 10 years before his death, he decided to become an artist.  Van Gogh averaged four paintings per week for 10 years as he amassed a huge body of work. 

Vincent’s brother and art representative sold one of his paintings and he died 6 months after Vincent.  His wife JoHanna was always a supporter of Vincent and gathered up as many of his paintings as she could find and put on an exhibition.  It wasn’t until 1901, 10 years after his death, that he began to gather acclaim as an artist.  His works can be seen in museums all over the world. 

Van Gogh is considered the most famous Dutch painter after Rembrandt and is certainly a favorite of artists and collectors.

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article on Vincent Van Gogh.  I have several books on Van Gogh, I’ve taught his Starry Night to a group of children this past year and I attended an exhibit of his work at the Cincinnati Museum of Art last year as well.

Some information for this article came from a website titled Biography.   

I tried to give you a link, but it wouldn't work.

 This is a class of elementary students I taught and we painted 

Starry Night.

We had a big time.

Thank you so much for stopping by today and I would love to hear you ideas on this new feature on my blog.

Also, if you have a famous artist you'd like me to cover,

leave it in the comments.