Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30th, 1853. He was a Dutch post-impressionist who is considered one of the most famous and influential figures in the history of western art . In a little over a decade, Van Gogh created about 2,100 artworks including about 860 oil paintings, the majority of which date from the final two years of his life. The paintings include landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits that are easily recognizable by their bold colors and expressive brushwork. Although, today he is seen as an extremely influential artist, he only sold one painting during his lifetime.

Vincent Van Gogh lived in a village in the southern province of North Brabant during his early life. He was the eldest son of the couple, Reverend Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Cornelia Carbentus, whose other children were Vincent's sisters Elisabeth, Anna, and Wil, and his brother Theo and Cor. Little is known about Vincent's early years other than that he was a quiet child with no obvious artistic talent. 

Van Gogh received a fragmentary education, one year at the village school in Zundert, two years at a boarding school in Zevenbergen, and eighteen months at a high school in Tilburg. At sixteen years old he began working at the Hague gallery of the French art dealers Goupil et Cie., in which his uncle Vincent was a partner. His brother Theo, who was born 1 May 1857, later worked for the same firm. In 1873 Goupil's transferred Vincent to London, and two years later they moved him to Paris, where he lost all ambition to become an art dealer. Instead, he immersed himself in religion. He took very little interest in his work and was dismissed from his job in earl 1876. Van Gogh then took a job as an assistant teacher in England, saddened by the lack of prospects, returned to Holland at the end of the year. He decided to follow in his father's footsteps and become a clergyman. Although disturbed and confused by his fanaticism and odd behavior, his parents agreed to pay for the private lessons he would need to gain admission to the university. This proved to be another thing he failed at in his life. Van Gogh abandoned the lessons, and after his brief training as an evangelist he went to the Borinage coal-mining region in the south of Belgium. His ministry among the miners led him to deeply connect and identify with the workers and their families. In 1897, however, his appointment was not renewed, and his parents regarded him as a social misfit. In a careless moment, his father talked about admitting him to a mental asylum. Vincent also started to think he wouldn’t amount to anything and decided to follow his brother's advice and become an artist. When Van Gogh decided to become an artist, no one, not even himself, thought that he held extraordinary gifts. His evolution from an inept but passionate novice into an innovative talent was remarkably rapid. He eventually proved to have a disposition for bold and harmonious color effects.

In April 1881, Van Gogh returned back home to live with his parents in Etten in North Brabant, where he set himself the task of learning how to draw. He experimented with all sorts of drawing materials and concentrated on mastering technical aspects of his craft like perspective, anatomy, and physiognomy. Most of his subjects were taken from peasant life. At the end of 1881 he moved to The Hague, and there, he also concentrated heavily on drawing. At first he took lessons from Anton Mauve, his cousin by marriage, but the two fell out quickly, partly due to the fact Mauve was disgruntled by Vincent's relationship with Sien Hoornik, a pregnant prostitute who already had an illegitimate child. Van Gogh made a couple paintings while in The Hague, but drawing was his true passion. In order to achieve his ambition of becoming a figure painter, he drew from the live model whenever he had the chance. In September 1883 he decided to end his relationship with Sien and follow in the footsteps of artists like Van Rappard and Mauve by trying his luck in the picturesque eastern province of Drenthe, which was fairly inaccessible in those days. After three months, however, a lack of drawing materials and models forced him to leave. He decided once again to move back with his parents, who were now living in the North Brabant village of Nuenen. In Nuenen, Van Gogh began painting regularly, using French painter Jean-Francois Millet (1814 - 1875) a role model, who was famous throughout Europe for his scenes depicting the harsh life of peasants. Van Gogh set to work showing the life of the villagers and humble workers. In May 1884, he moved into one of the rooms he rented from the sacristan of a local Catholic church, one of which he used as his personal studio. In 1885, he felt it was necessary that he receive proper artistic training and enrolled at the academy in Antwerp. He found the lessons tedious but was impressed by the city and its museums. He fell under the spell of Peter Paul Rubens' palette and brushwork, while also discovering Japanese prints.

At the beginning of 1888, Van Gogh considered himself a mature artist, he went south to Arles, in Provence, where he began to feel confident about his career choice. He set out to make a contribution to modern art with his daring color combinations. In the spring he painted numerous scenes of fruit trees in blossom, and in the summer yellow wheat fields. Although he had difficulty finding models, he continued making portraits, among which were those of the Roulin family. Van Gogh's lack of confidence led to his decision to not to try to sell any work yet but to wait until he had thirty top-class pictures with which he could proudly announce himself to the world. He cherished the hope that several other artists would come and join him in Arles, where they could all live and work together. Toward the end of that year, however, his optimistic outlook was shattered by the first signs of his mental illness, a type of epilepsy that took form by way of delusions and psychotic breaks . It was during one of those seizures that he cut off his left earlobe, soon after Van Gogh's dreams of an artist's colony disappeared. In April 1889 he went to nearby Saint-Remy, where he entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum as a voluntary patient, this is where he drew one of his most notable works The Starry Night. Van Gogh found it difficult to work there when suffering from bouts of illness. If he felt well enough, though, he would go out to draw and paint in the garden of the asylum. His use of color, which had often been so intense in Arles, became more muted, and he tried to make his brushwork even more graphic. In the closing months of the year, he found a bit of success when two of his paintings were shown at the fifth exhibition of Societe des artistes independents. Van Gogh left Saint-Remy in May 1890 and went north again, this time to the rustic village of Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris. On his way he stopped off in Paris to see his brother, Theo, his wife Johanna, and their infant son, named Vincent Willem. Although he had a growing circle of fans, Van Gogh had lost his original passion. He wrote to his brother saying “I feel - a failure. That's it as far as I'm concerned - I feel that this is the destiny that I accept, that will never change.” He nevertheless continued working hard during his final two months in Auvers, producing dozens of paintings and drawings. On 27 July 1890, Vincent van Gogh shot himself in the stomach, and passed away in the early morning of 29 July 1890 in his room at the Auberge Ravoux in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise. Although official history maintains that Van Gogh committed suicide, the latest research reveals that it’s possible that Van Gogh's death might have been an accident. Theo, who had stored the bulk of Vincent's work in Paris, sadly died six months later. His widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, returned to Holland with the collection, and dedicated herself to getting her brother-in-law the recognition he truly deserved. In 1914, with his fame assured, she published the correspondence between the two brothers. Today, Van Gogh is revered as the greatest Dutch painter after Rembrandt.