VINCENT VAN GOGH

Vincent Van Gogh - Self Portrait
This picture was painted with oil on canvas in 1887 in Paris. From what is seen, Van Gogh is trying to communicate the use of colour in his self portrait.  The green is an effective background as it is neutral and makes the colour of his eyes stand out and contrasts with the colour of his face. It conveys the feeling of seriousness as for the look on his face and perhaps he wants to emphasise this because of the fact that he uses such a neutral colour.

He has used dashes which creates movement in the picture.  This is because he has used a technique called Pointillism which was devised by Georges Seurat but made a mark on Van Gogh’s own style. There is texture in the picture due to the dashes where lighter colours have been blended in to it such as the colour that he has used for his skin (a peachy colour).  This is repeated in the background, his jacket and there is green in his hair. The green in the background works really well with the other colours in the painting such as the orange of his beard and moustache, his blond hair and the blackness of his coat. Throughout the whole picture he has blended continually green such as in his jacket and his hair. This is very effective as it is continuous and works very well. From a distance you don’t notice the green that he has used, but just see the character in his face and the shadows around his eyes.

Vincent Van Gogh was born in the Netherlands in Zundert his father was a protestant minister, a profession that Vincent found interesting. His sister described him as a ‘serious and introspective child’.

At sixteen, he started to work for an art dealer called Goupil & Co. He was very close to his younger brother, Theo. They sent lots of letters to each other which provided an insight into background to some of his paintings and Theo was a great source of encouragement to Vincent, and shows him to be a talented writer with a keen mind. Theo supported Vincent financially throughout his life. In 1873, his firm transferred him to London, then Paris. He soon became very interested in religion. Due to this, in 1876 Goupil & Co dismissed him for lack of motivation. He became a teaching assistant in Ramsgate in Kent and then returned to Amsterdam to study theology in 1877.  

In 1880, Vincent van Gogh followed the suggestion of his brother Theo and passionately took up painting. For a small period, Vincent took painting lessons from Anton Mauve at The Hague. Although Vincent and Anton soon split over difference of artistic views, his influences remained in his work, notably in the way he played with light and in the looseness of his brush strokes. However his usage of colours, favoring dark tones, set him apart from his teacher.  Impressed and influenced by Jean-Francois Millet, Van Gogh focused on painting peasants and countryside scenes.  He joined an art academy in the winter of 1885-1886 of Antwerp, Belgium but did not find this a success as he was a dismissed after a few months by his Professor. However Van Gogh began to find Japanese art interesting during this period, which he started to keenly collect. He admired its bright colors, use of canvas space and the role lines played in the picture.  Van Gogh made some painting in Japanese style. Also some of the portraits he painted are set against a background which shows Japanese art.

In 1886 Van Gogh went to Paris and moved in with his brother Theo, Here he met the painters Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Bernard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin. He discovered impressionism and liked its use of light and color.  Van Gogh is regarded as a post-impressionist, rather than an impressionist.

In 1888, Van Gogh found that city life was too much, left Paris and went to Arles, France. He was impressed with the landscapes there. He decorated a "yellow house" and created a celebrated series of yellow sunflower paintings for this purpose. Van Gogh suffered a mental breakdown and cut off part of his left ear. He began suffering from depression and stayed in a psychiatric centre where the garden became his main art subject and his pencil strokes began to change from dots and small strikes to spiral curves.  On July 27 of the same year, at the age of 37 Van Gogh shot himself in the chest. He died two days later, with Theo at his side.

I have chosen Van Gogh mainly because of his interesting painting techniques and precision in his work. I like how his work is very different and he has used the movements of pointillism and impressionism as they show a great impact in his work though with his swirling patterns in ‘starry night’ he created his own distinctive style. I also like the fact that he took great interest in things that other artists didn't, Gauguin, Degas and Pissarro, such as painting the peasants and Japanese art.  When I did a copy of his work I used chalk pastel which didn’t get the same effect as I would’ve done by using acrylic paint even he used oils though I got the effect of the specs of different colours on his jacket and in the background that he created with his pointillism movement.