About Van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch post impressionist painter who grew up in Holland but later moved to Belgium, France and Arles where he completed some of his most famous works.

Van Gogh's own writing provides us with some insights as to his own personal views towards the paintings. As can be seen, he was not initially overly enthusiastic about the painting. As he wrote to his brother Theo, when he sent it along with some other paintings:

"The first four canvases are studies without the effect of a whole that the others have . . . The olives with white clouds and background of mountains, also the moonrise and the night effect, these are exaggerations from the point of view of arrangement, their lines are warped as that of old wood."

Later in this letter, Van Gogh once more referred to the painting:

"In this entire batch I think nothing at all good save the field of wheat, the mountain, the orchard, the olives with the blue hills and the portrait and the entrance to the Quarry, and the rest says nothing to me, because it lacks individual intention and feeling in the lines.

Where these lines are close and deliberate it begins to be a picture, even if it is exaggerated. That is a little what Bernard and Gauguin feel, they do not ask the correct shape of a tree at all, but they insist absolutely that one can say if the shape is round or square - and my word, they are right, exasperated as they are by certain people's photographic and empty perfection."

Some of his most famous works include Starry Night, Sunflowers, Irises and The Potato Eaters. Although Van Gogh and his art was never appreciated in his time he is now considered one of the greatest painters in art history. This blog is dedicated to the life of Van Gogh and the many Van Gogh Paintings that bring joy to us all.