The two themes that dominate Vincent van Gogh’s short life are love and suffering. Love for men, woman, countryside, art, life and flowers. Sorrow for the rejection, isolation and in the end, for suicide. With his intensely charitable heart he wanted to give the world something grand verging on religious fervor but sadly the world rejected him and deprived him of every comfort except his art. He battled in life with dignity and produced brilliant, touching and tortured art.
The world is a cruel place where tenderness, finer emotions and aesthetic sensibilities are not accounted for, where each is for himself or herself, elbowing others to gain status and a place in society.
Vincent was born on March 30, 1853 at Groot-Zundert in Holland. At that time the life of its inhabitants was narrow, easy and free from any troubles or spiritual crisis. He was not like other children with his long red hair that stood out. He was passionate, unsociable, undisciplined and lonesome. The only person who understood him was his younger brother Theo.
After finishing school, Vincent’s parents sent him to Hague where his uncle got him a job as a salesman in a Parisian firm of Goupil, selling books and pictures. He worked hard and as a reward he was sent to the London branch where he worked in strand. He lived in Brixton, a south London suburb, where he fell in love with the landlady’s daughter who first encouraged him and then rejected him. Vincent became desolate and as a result neglected his work. His customers objected to being served by a ‘Dutch peasant’, he was dismissed.
Vincent Van Gogh drifted from job to job and in the end decided to become an independent preacher. He found a position in a coal-mining district of Belgium where he lived among the poor and went about in worn old clothes, sleeping on the ground in wooden huts. Church authorities did not like his ‘excess of zeal’ for which he was dismissed.
Potato Eaters, 1885
Vincent returned to his parent’s house in Holland and for consolation began to draw and paint pictures. Suddenly he decided to become a painter. His colours were dark, crude and broody, typical example of this period being the now famous ‘Potato Eaters’.
He went to live with his brother Theo in Paris and fell under the spell of impressionists with their dazzlingly bright colours and consequently changed his own palette. He painted cityscapes, still life and portraits. One day Vincent realized that the city was not for him.
He arrived in Arles, in south of France in February 1888 and made a pact with his brother that Theo would pay for his upkeep in return for all the paintings he created. The southern sun awoke his hidden sensuality and under the warm skies he painted flaming landscapes, the churches, the town, people, sunflowers and his yellow house. He painted and painted and created most of his masterpieces. His favourite colour was yellow.
Wheat Field with Reaper and Sun, 1889
‘How beautiful is yellow’ he once wrote.
Under the spell of his art, he neglected himself completely spending all of his allowance on paints and canvasses, working under the sun, bare headed and without food.
“Oh, the beautiful sun of summer! It beats on my head and makes me a little queer.” The price of this sun worship was mental derangement.
He cut off a lobe of one ear and was admitted to an asylum where he kept painting during his lucid periods. Theo had him removed from there and placed him under the supervision of Dr.Gachet in northern France. Here he painted two expressive portraits of the Doctor; one of it recently fetched the highest price, ever paid for his painting.
Portrait of Doctor Gachet, 1890
On July 27, 1890 Vincent borrowed a revolver and shot himself in the chest. He lingered for two days, later dying in the arms of his brother Theo.
“Dying is hard but living is harder still. Misery will never end.”
Theo went mad and died soon thereafter. Both are buried side by side in a churchyard at Auvers-sur-Oise.
Strange are the ways of the world. Van Gogh painted pictures in his lifeblood but the world rejected him. He craved for affection but no woman could love him. He was mocked in the streets as a mad man. People laughed at his painting and said he could not paint. But look what happened after his death?
Vincent van Gogh has become one of the most popular artists in the history of art. People are captivated by his pure magical colours and for his love of art and humanity. As they say, the poet asked for bread but they gave him a stone. After starving him to death, they will erect stone monuments in his memory.
We never learn. We still do the same thing.
To Vincent (My tribute)
You did not love the sceptred sunshine
You loved the summer's undiluted sun
Which in the end took its bitter revenge
In depriving you of your saline serenity
Into the depths of crazed pivoted symphony.
Rest assured in your diverted quickened steps
That nobody loved the soul within your crest
The crazed straw hat topping your yellow hair
Your red beard drenched in the crowds, a fear
It was enough to drive the crazy sickened mob
For a revenge on your enflamed tortured throb.
Children will mock you
Citizen will lock you
Women will scorn you
People will disown you.
Dawning clouds and rustling winds
Broken strokes of the lemon rinds
Vermillioned lamps amid ochred yellows
Cobalt blues of the sulphured mellows
Embittered flowers in the wasted vase
Vibratory landscapes in twisted grass
Pavement cafes under the starry skies
Purpled deeds in hallucinatory nights.
With color and the light
And amid a creative start
An explosion within your soul
And a bullet in your heart.
![Potato Eaters](javascript:openWin("http://www.sikhspectrum.com/082002/images/potato.jpg"))
![Sunflowers](javascript:openWin("http://www.sikhspectrum.com/082002/images/wheat.jpg"))
![Paul Gachet](javascript:openWin("http://www.sikhspectrum.com/082002/images/gachet.jpg"))