Dutch painter (1853–1890) who came to art late and compressed nearly his entire output into a feverish decade, using surging color and visible brushstroke to render anguish, hope, and intensity. Dependent on his brother Theo and almost unknown in his lifetime, he painted the Sunflowers, the cypresses, the Starry Night, and his haunted self-portraits. He suffered severe mental illness whose exact nature is still debated, was voluntarily institutionalized at Saint-Rémy, and died at thirty-seven of a gunshot wound generally regarded as suicide. He sold almost nothing. He became one of the most loved painters in history.
Vincent van Gogh sold almost nothing while he was alive. He was a failed art dealer, a failed teacher, a failed preacher, and he did not commit fully to painting until his late twenties. Then, in barely a decade, he made some 860 oil paintings and around two thousand works in all, working in feverish bursts and living on money sent by his brother. He pushed paint into thick, swirling ridges and laid down color so pure it seems to vibrate: yellow sunflowers, dark cypresses twisting like flames, a night sky churning with stars. He was tormented by a mental illness whose nature historians and doctors still debate, cut off part of his own ear in a crisis, and voluntarily entered an asylum, where he painted some of his greatest pictures between breakdowns. At thirty-seven he died of a gunshot wound, generally regarded as suicide. He never knew that the world would come to love him. Today he is among the most famous painters who ever lived.