title: Harrison Ford

text: Following his leading-man success as Indiana Jones, he played Rick Deckard in Ridley Scott's dystopian science-fiction film "Blade Runner" (1982). Compared to his experiences on the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, Ford had a difficult time with the production. He recalled to Vanity Fair, “It was a long slog. I didn’t really find it that physically difficult—I thought it was mentally difficult.” Ford and Scott also had differing views on the nature of his character, Deckard, that persist decades later. While not initially a success, "Blade Runner" went on to become a cult classic and one of Ford's most highly regarded films. Ford also proved his versatility throughout the 1980s with dramatic parts in films such as "Witness" (1985), "The Mosquito Coast" (1986), and "Frantic" (1988) as well as the romantic male lead opposite Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver in the comedy-drama "Working Girl" (1988). "Witness" and "The Mosquito Coast" in particular allowed Ford to explore his potential as a dramatic actor and both performances were widely acclaimed. Ford later recalled that working with director Peter Weir on both "Witness" and "The Mosquito Coast" were two of the best experiences of his career.


title: Harrison Ford

text: In the 1990s, Ford became the second actor to portray Jack Ryan in two films of the film series based on the literary character created by Tom Clancy: "Patriot Games" (1992) and "Clear and Present Danger" (1994), both co-starring Anne Archer and James Earl Jones. Ford took over the role from Alec Baldwin who had played Ryan in "The Hunt for Red October" (1990). This led to a long-lasting resentment from Baldwin who stated that he wanted to reprise the role but Ford had negotiated with Paramount behind his back. Ford also played leading roles in other action-based thrillers throughout the decade such as the critically acclaimed "The Fugitive "(1993), "The Devil's Own" (1997), and "Air Force One" (1997). For his performance in "The Fugitive", which also co-starred Tommy Lee Jones, Ford received some of the best reviews of his career, including from Roger Ebert who concluded that, "Ford is once again the great modern movie everyman. As an actor, nothing he does seems merely for show, and in the face of this melodramatic material he deliberately plays down, lays low, gets on with business instead of trying to exploit the drama in meaningless acting flourishes." He also played more straight dramatic roles in "Presumed Innocent" (1990) and "Regarding Henry" (1991) as well as another romantic lead in "Sabrina" (1995), a remake of a classic 1954 film with the same name.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford established working relationships with many well-regarded directors during this time, including Peter Weir, Alan J. Pakula, Mike Nichols, Phillip Noyce, and Sydney Pollack, collaborating twice with each of them. This was the most lucrative period of Ford's career. From 1977 to 1997, he appeared in fourteen films that reached the top fifteen in the yearly domestic box office rankings, twelve of which reached the top ten. Six of the films he appeared in during this time were also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture amongst numerous other awards: "Star Wars", "Apocalypse Now", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Witness", "Working Girl", and "The Fugitive".


title: Harrison Ford

text: In the late 1990s, Ford started appearing in several critically derided and/or commercially disappointing films that failed to match his earlier successes, including "Six Days, Seven Nights" (1998), "Random Hearts" (1999), "" (2002), "Hollywood Homicide" (2003), "Firewall" (2006) and "Extraordinary Measures" (2010). One exception was "What Lies Beneath" (2000) which grossed over $155million in the United States and $291million worldwide. Ford served as an executive producer on "K-19: The Widowmaker" and "Extraordinary Measures", both of which were based on true events.


title: Harrison Ford

text: In 2004, Ford declined a chance to star in the thriller "Syriana", later commenting that "I didn't feel strongly enough about the truth of the material and I think I made a mistake." The role eventually went to George Clooney, who won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his work. Prior to that, Ford had passed on a role in another Stephen Gaghan-written film, that of Robert Wakefield in "Traffic", which eventually went to Michael Douglas.


title: Harrison Ford

text: In 2008, Ford enjoyed success with the release of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", the first Indiana Jones film in nineteen years and another collaboration with Lucas and Spielberg. The film received generally positive reviews and was the second highest-grossing film worldwide in 2008. Ford later said he would like to star in another sequel, "...if it didn't take another 20 years to digest."


title: Harrison Ford

text: Other 2008 work included "Crossing Over", directed by Wayne Kramer. In the film, Ford plays an ICE/Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent, working alongside Ashley Judd and Ray Liotta. He also narrated a feature documentary film about the Dalai Lama entitled "Dalai Lama Renaissance". Ford filmed the medical drama "Extraordinary Measures" in 2009 in Portland, Oregon. Released January 22, 2010, the film also starred Brendan Fraser and Alan Ruck. Also in 2010, he co-starred in the film "Morning Glory", along with Rachel McAdams, Diane Keaton and Patrick Wilson. Although a disappointment at the box office, Ford's performance was well received by critics, some of which thought it was his best role in years. In July 2011, Ford starred alongside Daniel Craig and Olivia Wilde in the science-fiction/western hybrid film "Cowboys & Aliens". To promote the film, Ford appeared at the San Diego Comic-Con International and, apparently surprised by the warm welcome, told the audience, "I just wanted to make a living as an actor. I didn't know about this." Also in 2011, Ford starred in Japanese commercials advertising the video game "" for the PlayStation 3.


title: Harrison Ford

text: 2013 began a trend that saw Ford accepting more diverse supporting roles. That year, Ford co-starred in the corporate espionage thriller "Paranoia" with Liam Hemsworth and Gary Oldman, who he had previously worked with in "Air Force One", and he also appeared in "Ender's Game", "42" and "". His performance as Branch Rickey in "42" was praised by many critics and garnered Ford a nomination as best supporting actor for the Satellite Awards. In 2014, he appeared in "The Expendables 3" and the documentary "". The next year, Ford co-starred with Blake Lively in the romantic drama "The Age of Adaline" to positive notices.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford reprised the role of Han Solo in the long-awaited Star Wars sequel "" (2015), which became highly successful like its predecessors. During filming on June 11, 2014, Ford suffered what was said to be a fractured ankle when a hydraulic door fell on him. He was airlifted to John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England, for treatment. Ford's son Ben released details on his father's injury, saying that his ankle would likely need a plate and screws, and that filming could be altered slightly with the crew needing to shoot Ford from the waist up for a short time until he recovered. Ford made his return to filming in mid-August, after a two-month layoff as he recovered from his injury. Ford's character was killed off in "The Force Awakens", but it was subsequently announced, via a casting call, that Ford would return in some capacity as Solo in "Episode VIII". In February 2016, when the cast for "Episode VIII" was confirmed, it was indicated that Ford would not reprise his role in the film after all. When Ford was asked if his character could come back in "some form", he replied, "Anything is possible in space." He eventually made an uncredited appearance as a vision in "" (2019).


title: Harrison Ford

text: On February 26, 2015, Alcon Entertainment announced Ford would reprise his role as Rick Deckard in "Blade Runner 2049". The film, and Ford's performance, was very well received by critics upon its release in October 2017. Scott Collura of IGN called it a, "deep, rich, smart film that's visually awesome and full of great sci-fi concepts" and Ford's role, "a quiet, sort of gut-wrenching interpretation to Deckard and what he must've gone through in the past three decades." The film grossed $259.3million worldwide, far short of the estimated $400million that the film needed in order to break even. In 2019, Ford had his first voice role in an animated film, as a dog named Rooster in "The Secret Life of Pets 2". With filming for a fifth Indiana Jones film having been delayed by a year, Ford headlined a big-budget adaptation of Jack London's "The Call of the Wild", playing prospector John Thornton. The film was released in February 2020 to a mixed critical reception but its theatrical release was shortened due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the film industry.


title: Harrison Ford

text: In October 2022, Ford was cast as Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross in the 2024 films "" and "Thunderbolts", set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, replacing actor William Hurt who played the character in previous MCU films.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford has been married three times, and has four biological children and one adopted child. He was first married to Mary Marquardt from 1964 until their divorce in 1979. They had two sons, chef and restaurateur Benjamin (born 1966) and clothier Willard (born 1969). Benjamin co-owns Ford's Filling Station, a gastropub with locations at L.A. Live in Los Angeles and Terminal 5 in Los Angeles International Airport. Willard is the owner of Strong Sports Gym, and was co-owner of the Kim Sing Theater and owner of the Ludwig Clothing company.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford's second marriage was to screenwriter Melissa Mathison from March 1983 until their separation in 2000 and finalized divorce in 2004. They had a son, actor and musician Malcolm (born 1987), and a daughter, actress Georgia (born 1990). Mathison died in 2015.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford began dating actress Calista Flockhart after they met at the 2002 Golden Globe Awards. They are the parents of Liam (born 2001), the son she adopted before meeting Ford. He proposed to Flockhart over Valentine's Day weekend in 2009. They married on June 15, 2010, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Ford was filming "Cowboys & Aliens".


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford and Flockhart live on an ranch in Jackson, Wyoming, on which he has lived since the 1980s and approximately half of which he has donated as a nature reserve. They retain a base in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. He is one of Hollywood's most private actors, guarding much of his personal life. In her 2016 autobiography "The Princess Diarist", his co-star Carrie Fisher claimed that she and Ford had a three-month affair in 1976 during the filming of "Star Wars".


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford is a licensed pilot of both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. On several occasions, he has personally provided emergency helicopter services at the request of local authorities in Wyoming, in one instance rescuing a hiker overcome by dehydration.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford began flight training in the 1960s at Wild Rose Idlewild Airport in Wild Rose, Wisconsin, flying in a Piper PA-22 Tri-Pacer, but at $15 an hour (), he could not afford to continue the training. In the mid-1990s, he bought a used Gulfstream II and asked one of his pilots, Terry Bender, to give him flying lessons. They started flying a Cessna 182 out of Jackson, Wyoming, later switching to Teterboro, New Jersey, flying a Cessna 206, the aircraft in which he made his first solo flight.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford's aircraft is kept at Santa Monica Airport. The Bell 407 is often kept and flown in Jackson and has been used by the actor in two mountain rescues during his assigned duty time with Teton County Search and Rescue. On one of the rescues, Ford recovered a hiker who had become lost and disoriented. She boarded Ford's helicopter and promptly vomited into one of the rescuers' caps, unaware of who the pilot was until much later; "I can't believe I barfed in Harrison Ford's helicopter!" she said later.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford flies his de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver (N28S) more than any of his other aircraft, and has repeatedly said that he likes this aircraft and the sound of its Pratt & Whitney R-985 radial engine. According to Ford, it had been flown in the CIA's Air America operations and was riddled with bullet holes that had to be patched up.


title: Harrison Ford

text: In March 2004, Ford officially became chairman of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA)'s Young Eagles program, founded by then-EAA president Tom Poberezny and fellow actor-pilot Cliff Robertson. Ford was asked to take the position by Greg Anderson, Senior Vice President of the EAA at the time, to replace General Chuck Yeager, who was vacating the post that he had held for many years. Ford at first was hesitant, but later accepted the offer and has made appearances with the Young Eagles at the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh gathering at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for two years. In July 2005, at the gathering in Oshkosh, Ford agreed to accept the position for another two years. He has flown over 280 children as part of the Young Eagles program, usually in his DHC-2 Beaver, which can seat the actor and five children. Ford stepped down as program chairman in 2009 and was replaced by Captain Chesley Sullenberger and First Officer Jeff Skiles. He is involved with the EAA chapter in Driggs, Idaho, just over the Teton Range from Jackson, Wyoming. On July 28, 2016, Ford flew the two millionth Young Eagle at the EAA AirVenture convention, making it the most successful aviation-youth introduction program in history.


title: Harrison Ford

text: As of 2009, Ford appears in Internet advertisements for General Aviation Serves America, a campaign by the advocacy group Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA). He has also appeared in several independent aviation documentaries, including "Wings Over the Rockies" (2009), "" (2014) and "Living in the Age of Airplanes" (2015).


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford is an honorary board member of the humanitarian aviation organization Wings of Hope, and is known for having made several trips to Washington, D.C., to fight for pilots' rights. He has also donated substantial funds to aerobatic champion Sean Tucker's charitable program, The Bob Hoover Academy (named after legendary aviator Bob Hoover) which educates at-risk teens in central California and teaches them how to fly.


title: Harrison Ford

text: On August 22, 1987, Ford was traveling with Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke aboard a Gulfstream III when the jet developed trouble during a Paris-to-L.A. flight and was forced to land in Bangor, Maine. The trio spent the night at a hotel and after repairs and refueling resumed their flight the following day.


title: Harrison Ford

text: On October 23, 1999, Ford was involved in the crash of a Bell 206L4 LongRanger helicopter. The NTSB accident report states that Ford was piloting the aircraft over the Lake Piru riverbed near Santa Clarita, California, on a routine training flight. While making his second attempt at an autorotation with powered recovery, the aircraft was unable to recover power after the sudden drop in altitude. It landed hard and began skidding forward in the loose gravel before flipping onto its side. Neither Ford nor the instructor pilot suffered any injuries, though the helicopter was seriously damaged.


title: Harrison Ford

text: On March 5, 2015, Ford's plane, believed to be a Ryan PT-22 Recruit, made an emergency landing on the Penmar Golf Course in Venice, California. He was taken to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where he was reported to be in fair to moderate condition. Ford suffered a broken pelvis and broken ankle during the accident, as well as other injuries.


title: Harrison Ford

text: On February 13, 2017, Ford landed an Aviat Husky at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, on the taxiway left of runway 20L. A Boeing 737 was holding short of the runway on the taxiway when Ford overflew them.


title: Harrison Ford

text: On April 24, 2020, at the Los Angeles Hawthorne Airport while piloting his Husky, Ford crossed a runway where another aircraft was landing. According to the FAA, the two planes were about 3,600 feet from each other and there was no danger of a crash. A representative of Ford later said that he "misheard" an instruction given to him by air traffic control.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford is vice-chair of Conservation International, an American nonprofit environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. The organization's intent is to protect nature.


title: Harrison Ford

text: In September 2013, Ford, while filming an environmental documentary in Indonesia, interviewed the Indonesian Forestry Minister, Zulkifli Hasan. After the interview, Ford and his crew were accused of "harassing state institutions" and publicly threatened with deportation. Questions within the interview concerned the Tesso Nilo National Park, Sumatra. It was alleged the Minister of Forestry was given no prior warning of questions nor the chance to explain the challenges of catching people with illegal logging. Ford was provided an audience with the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, during which he expressed concerns regarding Indonesia's environmental degradation and the government efforts to address climate change. In response, the President explained Indonesia's commitment to preserving its oceans and forests.


title: Harrison Ford

text: In 1993, the arachnologist Norman Platnick named a new species of spider "Calponia harrisonfordi", and in 2002, the entomologist Edward O. Wilson named a new ant species "Pheidole harrisonfordi" (in recognition of Harrison's work as Vice Chairman of Conservation International).


title: Harrison Ford

text: Since 1992, Ford has lent his voice to a series of public service messages promoting environmental involvement for EarthShare, an American federation of environmental and conservation charities. He has acted as a spokesperson for Restore Hetch Hetchy, a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring Yosemite National Park's Hetch Hetchy Valley to its original condition. Ford also appears in the documentary series "Years of Living Dangerously", which reports on people affected by and seeking solutions to climate change.


title: Harrison Ford

text: In 2019, on behalf of Conservation International, Ford gave an impassioned speech during the United Nations' Climate Action Summit in New York on the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and its effect on climate change for the rest of the world. Ford urged his audience to listen to 'angry young people' trying to make a difference in the situation, emphasizing, "The most important thing we can do for them is to get the hell out of their way."


title: Harrison Ford

text: On September 7, 1995, Ford testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in support of the Dalai Lama and an independent Tibet. In 2007, he narrated the documentary "Dalai Lama Renaissance". In 2000, Ford donated a thousand dollars to the presidential campaigns of Bill Bradley, Al Gore and John McCain.


title: Harrison Ford

text: In 2003, he publicly condemned the Iraq War and called for "regime change" in the United States. He also criticized Hollywood for making movies which were "more akin to video games than stories about human life and relationships", and he called for more gun control in the United States.


title: Harrison Ford

text: After Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said his favorite role of Ford's was "Air Force One" because he "stood up for America", Ford responded that it was just a film and made critical statements against Trump's presidential bid.


title: Harrison Ford

text: For the first time ever endorsing a political candidate for office, Ford endorsed Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign against Donald Trump. He said that he wanted to "encourage people to support candidates that will support the environment" and felt that under Trump, the United States has "lost some of our credibility in the world". Along with Mark Hamill, Ford worked with the anti-Trump Republican group The Lincoln Project to produce and narrate a 2020 election ad attacking Trump's disparaging of Anthony Fauci.


title: Harrison Ford

text: In 2009, Ford signed a petition calling for the release of film director Roman Polanski, who had been arrested in Switzerland in relation to his 1977 charge for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Following on his success portraying the archaeologist Indiana Jones, Ford also plays a part in supporting the work of professional archaeologists. He serves as a General Trustee on the Governing Board of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), North America's oldest and largest organization devoted to the world of archaeology. Ford assists them in their mission of increasing public awareness of archaeology and preventing looting and the illegal antiquities trade.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford participated in a "Star Wars" promotion geared toward fans who donated to on video call which offered them the opportunity to purchase tickets to the premiere of "The Force Awakens".


title: Harrison Ford

text: Throughout his career, Ford has received significant recognition for his work in the entertainment industry. In 1986, he was nominated for Best Actor at the 58th Academy Awards for his performance in "Witness", a role for which he also received BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations in the same category. Three additional Golden Globe nominations went to Ford in 1987, 1994 and 1996 for his performances in "The Mosquito Coast", "The Fugitive" and "Sabrina". In 2000, he was the recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute for his body of work, presented to him by two of his closest collaborators and fellow industry giants, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. In 2002, he was given the Cecil B. DeMille Award, another career achievement honor, from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association at the 59th Golden Globe Awards ceremony. On May 30, 2003, Ford received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


title: Harrison Ford

text: In 2006, he received the Jules Verne Award, given to an actor who has "encouraged the spirit of adventure and imagination" throughout their career. He was presented with the first-ever Hero Award at the 2007 Scream Awards for his many iconic roles, including Indiana Jones and Han Solo (both of which earned him two Saturn Awards for Best Actor in 1982 and 2016, respectively), and in 2008 he received the Spike TV's Guy's Choice Award for "Brass Balls". In 2015, Ford received the Albert R. Broccoli Britannia Award for Worldwide Contribution to Entertainment from BAFTA Los Angeles. In 2018, Ford was honored by the SAG-AFTRA Foundation with the Artists Inspiration Award for both his acting and philanthropic work alongside fellow honoree Lady Gaga. SAG-AFTRA Foundation Board President JoBeth Williams in the press release said, “Harrison Ford is an acting legend in every known galaxy, but what many do not know are the decades of philanthropic service and leadership he has given to Conservation International to help protect our planet."


title: Harrison Ford

text: Other prestigious film honors for Ford include the Honorary Cesar, the Career Achievement Award from the Hollywood Film Awards, the Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, the Box Office Star of the Century Award from the National Association of Theatre Owners and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Locarno Film Festival.


title: Harrison Ford

text: Ford has also been honored multiple times for his involvement in general aviation, receiving the Living Legends of Aviation Award and the Experimental Aircraft Association's Freedom of Flight Award in 2009, the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy in 2010, and the Al Ueltschi Humanitarian Award in 2013. "Flying" magazine ranked him number 48 on their 2013 list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Not commercially successful, he struggled with severe depression and poverty, eventually leading to his suicide at age thirty-seven.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Born into an upper-middle class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet, and thoughtful. As a young man, he worked as an art dealer, often traveling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881, having moved back home with his parents. His younger brother Theo supported him financially; the two kept a long correspondence by letter. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers, contain few signs of the vivid colour that distinguished his later work. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the "avant-garde", including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed he created a new approach to still lifes and local landscapes. His paintings grew brighter as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the South of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include series of olive trees, wheat fields and sunflowers.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor when, in a rage, he severed part of his own left ear. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, he came under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. His depression persisted, and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver, dying from his injuries two days later.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh was commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime, and he was considered a madman and a failure. As he only became famous after his suicide, he came to be seen as a misunderstood genius in the public imagination. His reputation grew in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists. He attained widespread critical and commercial success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world's largest collection of his paintings and drawings.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: The most comprehensive primary source on Van Gogh is the correspondence between him and his younger brother, Theo. Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Vincent's thoughts and theories of art, are recorded in the hundreds of letters they exchanged from 1872 until 1890. Theo van Gogh was an art dealer and provided his brother with financial and emotional support as well as access to influential people on the contemporary art scene.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Theo kept all of Vincent's letters to him; but Vincent kept only few of the letters he received. After both had died, Theo's widow Jo Bonger-van Gogh arranged for the publication of some of their letters. A few appeared in 1906 and 1913; the majority were published in 1914. Vincent's letters are eloquent and expressive and have been described as having a "diary-like intimacy", and read in parts like autobiography. Translator Arnold Pomerans wrote that their publication adds a "fresh dimension to the understanding of Van Gogh's artistic achievement, an understanding granted to us by virtually no other painter".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: There are more than 600 letters from Vincent to Theo and around 40 from Theo to Vincent. There are 22 to his sister Wil, 58 to the painter Anthon van Rappard, 22 to Émile Bernard as well as individual letters to Paul Signac, Paul Gauguin, and the critic Albert Aurier. Some are illustrated with sketches. Many are undated, but art historians have been able to place most in chronological order. Problems in transcription and dating remain, mainly with those posted from Arles. While there, Vincent wrote around 200 letters in Dutch, French, and English. There is a gap in the record when he lived in Paris as the brothers lived together and had no need to correspond.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: The highly paid contemporary artist Jules Breton was frequently mentioned in Vincent's letters. In 1875 letters to Theo, Vincent mentions he saw Breton, discusses the Breton paintings he saw at a Salon, and discusses sending one of Breton's books but only on the condition that it be returned. In a March 1884 letter to Rappard he discusses one of Breton's poems that had inspired one of his own paintings. In 1885 he describes Breton's famous work "The Song of the Lark" as being "fine". In March 1880, roughly midway between these letters, Van Gogh set out on an 80-kilometre trip on foot to meet with Breton in the village of Courrières; however, he was apparently intimidated by Breton's success and/or the high wall around his estate. He turned around and returned without making his presence known. It appears Breton was unaware of Van Gogh or his attempted visit. There are no known letters between the two artists and Van Gogh is not one of the contemporary artists discussed by Breton in his 1891 autobiography "Life of an Artist".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, in the predominantly Catholic province of North Brabant in the Netherlands. He was the oldest surviving child of Theodorus van Gogh (1822–1885), a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and his wife, Anna Cornelia Carbentus (1819–1907). Van Gogh was given the name of his grandfather and of a brother stillborn exactly a year before his birth. Vincent was a common name in the Van Gogh family. The name had been borne by his grandfather, the prominent art dealer Vincent (1789–1874), and a theology graduate at the University of Leiden in 1811. This Vincent had six sons, three of whom became art dealers, and may have been named after his own great-uncle, a sculptor (1729–1802).


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh's mother came from a prosperous family in The Hague, and his father was the youngest son of a minister. The two met when Anna's younger sister, Cornelia, married Theodorus's older brother Vincent (Cent). Van Gogh's parents married in May 1851, and moved to Zundert. His brother Theo was born on 1 May 1857. There was another brother, Cor, and three sisters: Elisabeth, Anna, and Willemina (known as "Wil"). In later life, Van Gogh remained in touch only with Willemina and Theo. Van Gogh's mother was a rigid and religious woman who emphasized the importance of family to the point of for those around her. Theodorus's salary as a minister was modest, but the Church also supplied the family with a house, a maid, two cooks, a gardener, a carriage and horse; his mother Anna instilled in the children a duty to uphold the family's high social position.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh was a serious and thoughtful child. He was taught at home by his mother and a governess, and in 1860, was sent to the village school. In 1864, he was placed in a boarding school at Zevenbergen, where he felt abandoned, and he campaigned to come home. Instead, in 1866, his parents sent him to the middle school in Tilburg, where he was also deeply unhappy. His interest in art began at a young age. He was encouraged to draw as a child by his mother, and his early drawings are expressive, but do not approach the intensity of his later work. Constant Cornelis Huijsmans, who had been a successful artist in Paris, taught the students at Tilburg. His philosophy was to reject technique in favour of capturing the impressions of things, particularly nature or common objects. Van Gogh's profound unhappiness seems to have overshadowed the lessons, which had little effect. In March 1868, he abruptly returned home. He later wrote that his youth was "austere and cold, and sterile".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In July 1869, Van Gogh's uncle Cent obtained a position for him at the art dealers Goupil & Cie in The Hague. After completing his training in 1873, he was transferred to Goupil's London branch on Southampton Street, and took lodgings at 87 Hackford Road, Stockwell. This was a happy time for Van Gogh; he was successful at work and, at 20, was earning more than his father. Theo's wife, Jo Van Gogh-Bonger, later remarked that this was the best year of Vincent's life. He became infatuated with his landlady's daughter, Eugénie Loyer, but she rejected him after confessing his feelings; she was secretly engaged to a former lodger. He grew more isolated and religiously fervent. His father and uncle arranged a transfer to Paris in 1875, where he became resentful of issues such as the degree to which the art dealers commodified art, and he was dismissed a year later.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In April 1876, he returned to England to take unpaid work as a supply teacher in a small boarding school in Ramsgate. When the proprietor moved to Isleworth in Middlesex, Van Gogh went with him. The arrangement was not successful; he left to become a Methodist minister's assistant. His parents had meanwhile moved to Etten; in 1876 he returned home at Christmas for six months and took work at a bookshop in Dordrecht. He was unhappy in the position and spent his time doodling or translating passages from the Bible into English, French, and German. He immersed himself in Christianity, and became increasingly pious and monastic. According to his flatmate of the time, Paulus van Görlitz, Van Gogh ate frugally, avoiding meat.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: To support his religious conviction and his desire to become a pastor, in 1877, the family sent him to live with his uncle Johannes Stricker, a respected theologian, in Amsterdam. Van Gogh prepared for the University of Amsterdam theology entrance examination; he failed the exam and left his uncle's house in July 1878. He undertook, but also failed, a three-month course at a Protestant missionary school in Laken, near Brussels.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In January 1879, he took up a post as a missionary at Petit-Wasmes in the working class, coal-mining district of Borinage in Belgium. To show support for his impoverished congregation, he gave up his comfortable lodgings at a bakery to a homeless person and moved to a small hut, where he slept on straw. His humble living conditions did not endear him to church authorities, who dismissed him for "undermining the dignity of the priesthood". He then walked the to Brussels, returned briefly to Cuesmes in the Borinage, but he gave in to pressure from his parents to return home to Etten. He stayed there until around March 1880, which caused concern and frustration for his parents. His father was especially frustrated and advised that his son be committed to the lunatic asylum in Geel.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh returned to Cuesmes in August 1880, where he lodged with a miner until October. He became interested in the people and scenes around him, and he recorded them in drawings after Theo's suggestion that he take up art in earnest. He traveled to Brussels later in the year, to follow Theo's recommendation that he study with the Dutch artist Willem Roelofs, who persuaded him – in spite of his dislike of formal schools of art – to attend the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. He registered at the Académie in November 1880, where he studied anatomy and the standard rules of modelling and perspective.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh returned to Etten in April 1881 for an extended stay with his parents. He continued to draw, often using his neighbours as subjects. In August 1881, his recently widowed cousin, Cornelia "Kee" Vos-Stricker, daughter of his mother's older sister Willemina and Johannes Stricker, arrived for a visit. He was thrilled and took long walks with her. Kee was seven years older than he was and had an eight-year-old son. Van Gogh surprised everyone by declaring his love to her and proposing marriage. She refused with the words "No, nay, never" (""nooit, neen, nimmer""). After Kee returned to Amsterdam, Van Gogh went to The Hague to try to sell paintings and to meet with his second cousin, Anton Mauve. Mauve was the successful artist Van Gogh longed to be. Mauve invited him to return in a few months and suggested he spend the intervening time working in charcoal and pastels; Van Gogh returned to Etten and followed this advice.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Late in November 1881, Van Gogh wrote a letter to Johannes Stricker, one which he described to Theo as an attack. Within days he left for Amsterdam. Kee would not meet him, and her parents wrote that his "persistence is "disgusting"". In despair, he held his left hand in the flame of a lamp, with the words: "Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the flame." He did not recall the event well, but later assumed that his uncle had blown out the flame. Kee's father made it clear that her refusal should be heeded and that the two would not marry, largely because of Van Gogh's inability to support himself.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Mauve took Van Gogh on as a student and introduced him to watercolour, which he worked on for the next month before returning home for Christmas. He quarrelled with his father, refusing to attend church, and left for The Hague. In January 1882, Mauve introduced him to painting in oil and lent him money to set up a studio. Within a month Van Gogh and Mauve fell out, possibly over the viability of drawing from plaster casts. Van Gogh could afford to hire only people from the street as models, a practice of which Mauve seems to have disapproved. In June Van Gogh suffered a bout of gonorrhoea and spent three weeks in hospital. Soon after, he first painted in oils, bought with money borrowed from Theo. He liked the medium, and he spread the paint liberally, scraping from the canvas and working back with the brush. He wrote that he was surprised at how good the results were.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: By March 1882, Mauve appeared to have gone cold towards Van Gogh, and he stopped replying to his letters. He had learned of Van Gogh's new domestic arrangement with an alcoholic prostitute, Clasina Maria "Sien" Hoornik (1850–1904), and her young daughter. Van Gogh had met Sien towards the end of January 1882, when she had a five-year-old daughter and was pregnant. She had previously borne two children who died, but Van Gogh was unaware of this. On 2 July, she gave birth to a baby boy, Willem. When Van Gogh's father discovered the details of their relationship, he put pressure on his son to abandon Sien and her two children. Vincent at first defied him, and considered moving the family out of the city, but in late 1883, he left Sien and the children.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Poverty may have pushed Sien back into prostitution; the home became less happy and Van Gogh may have felt family life was irreconcilable with his artistic development. Sien gave her daughter to her mother and baby Willem to her brother. Willem remembered visiting Rotterdam when he was about 12, when an uncle tried to persuade Sien to marry to legitimise the child. He believed Van Gogh was his father, but the timing of his birth makes this unlikely. Sien drowned herself in the River Scheldt in 1904.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In September 1883, Van Gogh moved to Drenthe in the northern Netherlands. In December driven by loneliness, he went to live with his parents, then in Nuenen, North Brabant.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In Nuenen, Van Gogh focused on painting and drawing. Working outside and very quickly, he completed sketches and paintings of weavers and their cottages. Van Gogh also completed "The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen", which was stolen from the Singer Laren in March 2020. From August 1884, Margot Begemann, a neighbour's daughter ten years his senior, joined him on his forays; she fell in love and he reciprocated, though less enthusiastically. They wanted to marry, but neither side of their families were in favour. Margot was distraught and took an overdose of strychnine, but survived after Van Gogh rushed her to a nearby hospital. On 26 March 1885, his father died of a heart attack.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh painted several groups of still lifes in 1885. During his two-year stay in Nuenen, he completed numerous drawings and watercolours and nearly 200 oil paintings. His palette consisted mainly of sombre earth tones, particularly dark brown, and showed no sign of the vivid colours that distinguished his later work.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: There was interest from a dealer in Paris early in 1885. Theo asked Vincent if he had paintings ready to exhibit. In May, Van Gogh responded with his first major work, "The Potato Eaters", and a series of "peasant character studies" which were the culmination of several years of work. When he complained that Theo was not making enough effort to sell his paintings in Paris, his brother responded that they were too dark and not in keeping with the bright style of Impressionism. In August his work was publicly exhibited for the first time, in the shop windows of the dealer Leurs in The Hague. One of his young peasant sitters became pregnant in September 1885; Van Gogh was accused of forcing himself upon her, and the village priest forbade parishioners to model for him.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: He moved to Antwerp that November and rented a room above a paint dealer's shop in the rue des Images ("Lange Beeldekensstraat"). He lived in poverty and ate poorly, preferring to spend the money Theo sent on painting materials and models. Bread, coffee and tobacco became his staple diet. In February 1886, he wrote to Theo that he could only remember eating six hot meals since the previous May. His teeth became loose and painful. In Antwerp he applied himself to the study of colour theory and spent time in museumsparticularly studying the work of Peter Paul Rubensand broadened his palette to include carmine, cobalt blue and emerald green. Van Gogh bought Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts in the docklands, later incorporating elements of their style into the background of some of his paintings. He was drinking heavily again, and was hospitalised between February and March 1886, when he was possibly also treated for syphilis.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: After his recovery, despite his antipathy towards academic teaching, he took the higher-level admission exams at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and, in January 1886, matriculated in painting and drawing. He became ill and run down by overwork, poor diet and excessive smoking. He started to attend drawing classes after plaster models at the Antwerp Academy on 18 January 1886. He quickly got into trouble with Charles Verlat, the director of the academy and teacher of a painting class, because of his unconventional painting style. Van Gogh had also clashed with the instructor of the drawing class Franz Vinck. Van Gogh finally started to attend the drawing classes after antique plaster models given by Eugène Siberdt. Soon Siberdt and Van Gogh came into conflict when the latter did not comply with Siberdt's requirement that drawings express the contour and concentrate on the line. When Van Gogh was required to draw the "Venus de Milo" during a drawing class, he produced the limbless, naked torso of a Flemish peasant woman. Siberdt regarded this as defiance against his artistic guidance and made corrections to Van Gogh's drawing with his crayon so vigorously that he tore the paper. Van Gogh then flew into a violent rage and shouted at Siberdt: 'You clearly do not know what a young woman is like, "God damn it!" A woman must have hips, buttocks, a pelvis in which she can carry a baby!' According to some accounts, this was the last time Van Gogh attended classes at the academy and he left later for Paris. On 31 March 1886, which was about a month after the confrontation with Siberdt, the teachers of the academy decided that 17 students, including Van Gogh, had to repeat a year. The story that Van Gogh was expelled from the academy by Siberdt is therefore unfounded.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh moved to Paris in March 1886 where he shared Theo's rue Laval apartment in Montmartre and studied at Fernand Cormon's studio. In June the brothers took a larger flat at 54 rue Lepic. In Paris, Vincent painted portraits of friends and acquaintances, still life paintings, views of Le Moulin de la Galette, scenes in Montmartre, Asnières and along the Seine. In 1885 in Antwerp he had become interested in Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and had used them to decorate the walls of his studio; while in Paris he collected hundreds of them. He tried his hand at Japonaiserie, tracing a figure from a reproduction on the cover of the magazine "Paris Illustre", "The Courtesan or Oiran" (1887), after Keisai Eisen, which he then graphically enlarged in a painting.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: After seeing the portrait of Adolphe Monticelli at the Galerie Delareybarette, Van Gogh adopted a brighter palette and a bolder attack, particularly in paintings such as his "Seascape at Saintes-Maries" (1888). Two years later, Vincent and Theo paid for the publication of a book on Monticelli paintings, and Vincent bought some of Monticelli's works to add to his collection.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh learned about Fernand Cormon's atelier from Theo. He worked at the studio in April and May 1886, where he frequented the circle of the Australian artist John Russell, who painted his portrait in 1886. Van Gogh also met fellow students Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – who painted a portrait of him in pastel. They met at Julien "Père" Tanguy's paint shop, (which was, at that time, the only place where Paul Cézanne's paintings were displayed). In 1886, two large exhibitions were staged there, showing Pointillism and Neo-impressionism for the first time and bringing attention to Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Theo kept a stock of Impressionist paintings in his gallery on boulevard Montmartre, but Van Gogh was slow to acknowledge the new developments in art.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Conflicts arose between the brothers. At the end of 1886 Theo found living with Vincent to be "almost unbearable". By early 1887, they were again at peace, and Vincent had moved to Asnières, a northwestern suburb of Paris, where he got to know Signac. He adopted elements of Pointillism, a technique in which a multitude of small coloured dots are applied to the canvas so that when seen from a distance they create an optical blend of hues. The style stresses the ability of complementary colours – including blue and orange – to form vibrant contrasts.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: While in Asnières Van Gogh painted parks, restaurants and the Seine, including "Bridges across the Seine at Asnières". In November 1887, Theo and Vincent befriended Paul Gauguin who had just arrived in Paris. Towards the end of the year, Vincent arranged an exhibition alongside Bernard, Anquetin, and probably Toulouse-Lautrec, at the Grand-Bouillon Restaurant du Chalet, 43 avenue de Clichy, Montmartre. In a contemporary account, Bernard wrote that the exhibition was ahead of anything else in Paris. There, Bernard and Anquetin sold their first paintings, and Van Gogh exchanged work with Gauguin. Discussions on art, artists, and their social situations started during this exhibition, continued and expanded to include visitors to the show, like Camille Pissarro and his son Lucien, Signac and Seurat. In February 1888, feeling worn out from life in Paris, Van Gogh left, having painted more than 200 paintings during his two years there. Hours before his departure, accompanied by Theo, he paid his first and only visit to Seurat in his studio.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Ill from drink and suffering from smoker's cough, in February 1888 Van Gogh sought refuge in Arles. He seems to have moved with thoughts of founding an art colony. The Danish artist Christian Mourier-Petersen became his companion for two months, and, at first, Arles appeared exotic. In a letter, he described it as a foreign country: "The Zouaves, the brothels, the adorable little Arlésienne going to her First Communion, the priest in his surplice, who looks like a dangerous rhinoceros, the people drinking absinthe, all seem to me creatures from another world."


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: The time in Arles became one of Van Gogh's more prolific periods: he completed 200 paintings and more than 100 drawings and watercolours. He was enchanted by the local countryside and light; his works from this period are rich in yellow, ultramarine and mauve. They include harvests, wheat fields and general rural landmarks from the area, including "The Old Mill" (1888), one of seven canvases sent to Pont-Aven on 4 October 1888 in an exchange of works with Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard, Charles Laval and others.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: The portrayals of Arles are informed by his Dutch upbringing; the patchworks of fields and avenues are flat and lacking perspective, but excel in their use of colour.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In March 1888 he painted landscapes using a gridded "perspective frame"; three of the works were shown at the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. In April, he was visited by the American artist Dodge MacKnight, who was living nearby at Fontvieille. On 1 May 1888, for 15 francs per month, he signed a lease for the eastern wing of the Yellow House at 2 place Lamartine. The rooms were unfurnished and had been uninhabited for months.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: On 7 May, Van Gogh moved from the Hôtel Carrel to the Café de la Gare, having befriended the proprietors, Joseph and Marie Ginoux. The Yellow House had to be furnished before he could fully move in, but he was able to use it as a studio. He wanted a gallery to display his work and started a series of paintings that eventually included "Van Gogh's Chair" (1888), "Bedroom in Arles" (1888), "The Night Café" (1888), "Café Terrace at Night" (September 1888), "Starry Night Over the Rhone" (1888), and "Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers" (1888), all intended for the decoration for the Yellow House.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh wrote that with "The Night Café" he tried "to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime". When he visited Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in June, he gave lessons to a Zouave second lieutenant – – and painted boats on the sea and the village. MacKnight introduced Van Gogh to Eugène Boch, a Belgian painter who sometimes stayed in Fontvieille, and the two exchanged visits in July.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: When Gauguin agreed to visit Arles in 1888, Van Gogh hoped for friendship and to realize his idea of an artists' collective. Van Gogh prepared for Gauguin's arrival by painting four versions of "Sunflowers" in one week. "In the hope of living in a studio of our own with Gauguin," he wrote in a letter to Theo, "I’d like to do a decoration for the studio. "Nothing but large Sunflowers"."


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: When Boch visited again, Van Gogh painted a portrait of him, as well as the study "The Poet Against a Starry Sky."


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In preparation for Gauguin's visit, Van Gogh bought two beds on advice from the station's postal supervisor Joseph Roulin, whose portrait he painted. On 17 September, he spent his first night in the still sparsely furnished Yellow House. When Gauguin consented to work and live in Arles with him, Van Gogh started to work on the "Décoration for the Yellow House," probably the most ambitious effort he ever undertook. He completed two chair paintings: "Van Gogh's Chair" and "Gauguin's Chair."


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: After much pleading from Van Gogh, Gauguin arrived in Arles on 23 October and, in November, the two painted together. Gauguin depicted Van Gogh in his "The Painter of Sunflowers"; Van Gogh painted pictures from memory, following Gauguin's suggestion. Among these "imaginative" paintings is "Memory of the Garden at Etten". Their first joint outdoor venture was at the Alyscamps, when they produced the pendants "Les Alyscamps". The single painting Gauguin completed during his visit was his portrait of Van Gogh.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh and Gauguin visited Montpellier in December 1888, where they saw works by Courbet and Delacroix in the Musée Fabre. Their relationship began to deteriorate; Van Gogh admired Gauguin and wanted to be treated as his equal, but Gauguin was arrogant and domineering, which frustrated Van Gogh. They often quarrelled; Van Gogh increasingly feared that Gauguin was going to desert him, and the situation, which Van Gogh described as one of "excessive tension", rapidly headed towards crisis point.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: The exact sequence that led to the mutilation of van Gogh's ear is not known. Gauguin said, fifteen years later, that the night followed several instances of physically threatening behaviour. Their relationship was complex and Theo may have owed money to Gauguin, who suspected the brothers were exploiting him financially. It seems likely that Vincent realised that Gauguin was planning to leave. The following days saw heavy rain, leading to the two men being shut in the Yellow House. Gauguin recalled that Van Gogh followed him after he left for a walk and "rushed towards me, an open razor in his hand." This account is uncorroborated; Gauguin was almost certainly absent from the Yellow House that night, most likely staying in a hotel.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: After an altercation on the evening of 23 December 1888, Van Gogh returned to his room where he seemingly heard voices and either wholly or in part severed his left ear with a razor causing severe bleeding. He bandaged the wound, wrapped the ear in paper and delivered the package to a woman at a brothel Van Gogh and Gauguin both frequented. Van Gogh was found unconscious the next morning by a policeman and taken to hospital, where he was treated by Félix Rey, a young doctor still in training. The ear was brought to the hospital, but Rey did not attempt to reattach it as too much time had passed. Van Gogh researcher and art historian Bernadette Murphy discovered the true identity of the woman named Gabrielle, who died in Arles at the age of 80 in 1952, and whose descendants still live just outside Arles. Gabrielle, known in her youth as "Gaby," was a 17-year-old cleaning girl at the brothel and other local establishments at the time Van Gogh presented her with his ear.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh had no recollection of the event, suggesting that he may have suffered an acute mental breakdown. The hospital diagnosis was "acute mania with generalised delirium", and within a few days, the local police ordered that he be placed in hospital care. Gauguin immediately notified Theo, who, on 24 December, had proposed marriage to his old friend Andries Bonger's sister Johanna. That evening, Theo rushed to the station to board a night train to Arles. He arrived on Christmas Day and comforted Vincent, who seemed to be semi-lucid. That evening, he left Arles for the return trip to Paris.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: During the first days of his treatment, Van Gogh repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked for Gauguin, who asked a policeman attending the case to "be kind enough, Monsieur, to awaken this man with great care, and if he asks for me tell him I have left for Paris; the sight of me might prove fatal for him." Gauguin fled Arles, never to see Van Gogh again. They continued to correspond, and in 1890, Gauguin proposed they form a studio in Antwerp. Meanwhile, other visitors to the hospital included Marie Ginoux and Roulin.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Despite a pessimistic diagnosis, Van Gogh recovered and returned to the Yellow House on 7 January 1889. He spent the following month between hospital and home, suffering from hallucinations and delusions of poisoning. In March, the police closed his house after a petition by 30 townspeople (including the Ginoux family) who described him as "le fou roux" "the redheaded madman"; Van Gogh returned to hospital. Paul Signac visited him twice in March; in April Van Gogh moved into rooms owned by Dr Rey after floods damaged paintings in his own home. Two months later, he left Arles and voluntarily entered an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Around this time, he wrote, "Sometimes moods of indescribable anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and fatality of circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant."


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh gave his 1889 "Portrait of Doctor Félix Rey" to Dr Rey. The physician was not fond of the painting and used it to repair a chicken coop, then gave it away. In 2016, the portrait was housed at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and estimated to be worth over $50 million.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum on 8 May 1889, accompanied by his caregiver, Frédéric Salles, a Protestant clergyman. Saint-Paul was a former monastery in Saint-Rémy, located less than from Arles, and it was run by a former naval doctor, Théophile Peyron. Van Gogh had two cells with barred windows, one of which he used as a studio. The clinic and its garden became the main subjects of his paintings. He made several studies of the hospital's interiors, such as "Vestibule of the Asylum" and "Saint-Rémy (September 1889)", and its gardens, such as "Lilacs" (May 1889). Some of his works from this time are characterised by swirls, such as "The Starry Night". He was allowed short supervised walks, during which time he painted cypresses and olive trees, including "Valley with Ploughman Seen from Above", "Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background 1889", "Cypresses 1889", "Cornfield with Cypresses" (1889), "Country road in Provence by Night" (1890). In September 1889, he produced two further versions of "Bedroom in Arles" and "The Gardener".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Limited access to life outside the clinic resulted in a shortage of subject matter. Van Gogh instead worked on interpretations of other artist's paintings, such as Millet's "The Sower" and "Noonday Rest", and variations on his own earlier work. Van Gogh was an admirer of the Realism of Jules Breton, Gustave Courbet and Millet, and he compared his copies to a musician's interpreting Beethoven.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: His "Prisoners' Round (after Gustave Doré)" (1890) was painted after an engraving by Gustave Doré (1832–1883). Tralbaut suggests that the face of the prisoner in the centre of the painting looking towards the viewer is Van Gogh himself; Jan Hulsker discounts this.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Between February and April 1890, Van Gogh suffered a severe relapse. Depressed and unable to bring himself to write, he was still able to paint and draw a little during this time, and he later wrote to Theo that he had made a few small canvases "from memory ... reminisces of the North". Among these was "Two Peasant Women Digging in a Snow-Covered Field at Sunset". Hulsker believes that this small group of paintings formed the nucleus of many drawings and study sheets depicting landscapes and figures that Van Gogh worked on during this time. He comments that this short period was the only time that Van Gogh's illness had a significant effect on his work. Van Gogh asked his mother and his brother to send him drawings and rough work he had done in the early 1880s so he could work on new paintings from his old sketches. Belonging to this period is "Sorrowing Old Man ("At Eternity's Gate")", a colour study Hulsker describes as "another unmistakable remembrance of times long past". His late paintings show an artist at the height of his abilities, according to the art critic Robert Hughes, "longing for concision and grace".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: After the birth of his nephew, Van Gogh wrote, "I started right away to make a picture for him, to hang in their bedroom, branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky."


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Albert Aurier praised his work in the "Mercure de France" in January 1890 and described him as "a genius". In February, Van Gogh painted five versions of "L'Arlésienne (Madame Ginoux)", based on a charcoal sketch Gauguin had produced when she sat for both artists in November 1888. Also in February, Van Gogh was invited by "Les XX", a society of avant-garde painters in Brussels, to participate in their annual exhibition. At the opening dinner a "Les XX" member, Henry de Groux, insulted Van Gogh's work. Toulouse-Lautrec demanded satisfaction, and Signac declared he would continue to fight for Van Gogh's honour if Lautrec surrendered. De Groux apologised for the slight and left the group.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: From 20 March to 27 April 1890, Van Gogh was included in the sixth exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in the Pavillon de la Ville de Paris on the Champs-Elysées. Van Gogh exhibited ten paintings. Eight of these can be identified as "Cypresses" (F 613 / JH 1746 ), "Road menders (‘The tall plane trees’)" (F 657 / JH 1860 ), "Ravine" (F 662 / JH 1804 ), "Avenue of chestnut trees in blossom" (F 517 / JH 1689 ), "Mulberry tree" (F 637 / JH 1796 ), "Trees with ivy in the garden of the asylum" (F 609 / JH 1693 ), "Wheatfield at sunrise" (F 737 / JH 1862 ). ‘Les Tournesols’ is either "Sunflowers in a vase" (F 454 / JH 1562 ) or "Sunflowers in a vase" (F 456 / JH 1561 ) "Wheatfield after a storm" (F 611 / JH 1723 ) and "Olive grove" (F 586 / JH 1854 ).


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: While Van Gogh's exhibit was on display with the Artistes Indépendants in Paris, Claude Monet said that his work was the best in the show.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In May 1890, Van Gogh left the clinic in Saint-Rémy to move nearer to both Dr Paul Gachet in the Paris suburb of Auvers-sur-Oise and to Theo. Gachet was an amateur painter and had treated several other artists – Camille Pissarro had recommended him. Van Gogh's first impression was that Gachet was "iller than I am, it seemed to me, or let's say just as much."


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: The painter Charles Daubigny moved to Auvers in 1861 and in turn drew other artists there, including Camille Corot and Honoré Daumier. In July 1890, Van Gogh completed two paintings of "Daubigny's Garden", one of which is likely his final work.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: During his last weeks at Saint-Rémy, his thoughts returned to "memories of the North", and several of the approximately 70 oils, painted during as many days in Auvers-sur-Oise, are reminiscent of northern scenes. In June 1890, he painted several portraits of his doctor, including "Portrait of Dr Gachet", and his only etching. In each the emphasis is on Gachet's melancholic disposition. There are other paintings which are probably unfinished, including "Thatched Cottages by a Hill."


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In July, Van Gogh wrote that he had become absorbed "in the immense plain against the hills, boundless as the sea, delicate yellow". He had first become captivated by the fields in May, when the wheat was young and green. In July, he described to Theo "vast fields of wheat under turbulent skies".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: He wrote that they represented his "sadness and extreme loneliness" and that the "canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words, that is, how healthy and invigorating I find the countryside". "Wheatfield with Crows", although not his last oil work, is from July 1890 and Hulsker discusses it as being associated with "melancholy and extreme loneliness". Hulsker identifies seven oil paintings from Auvers that follow the completion of "Wheatfield with Crows".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Research published in 2020 by senior researchers at the museum Louis van Tilborgh and Teio Meedendorp, reviewing findings of Wouter van der Veen, the scientific director of the Institut Van Gogh, concluded that it was "highly plausible" that the exact location where Van Gogh's final work "Tree Roots" was some from the Auberge Ravoux inn where he was staying, where a stand of trees with a tangle of gnarled roots grew on a hillside. These trees with gnarled roots are shown in a postcard from 1900 to 1910. Mr Van der Veen believes Van Gogh may have been working on the painting just hours before his death.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: On 27 July 1890, aged 37, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a 7 mm Lefaucheux pinfire revolver. There were no witnesses and he died 30 hours after the incident. The shooting may have taken place in the wheat field in which he had been painting, or in a local barn. The bullet was deflected by a rib and passed through his chest without doing apparent damage to internal organs – probably stopped by his spine. He was able to walk back to the Auberge Ravoux, where he was attended to by two doctors, but without a surgeon present the bullet could not be removed. The doctors tended to him as well as they could, then left him alone in his room, smoking his pipe. The following morning, Theo rushed to his brother's side, finding him in good spirits. But within hours Vincent's health began to fail, suffering from an untreated infection resulting from the wound. He died in the early hours of 29 July. According to Theo, Vincent's last words were: "The sadness will last forever".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh was buried on 30 July, in the municipal cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise. The funeral was attended by Theo van Gogh, Andries Bonger, Charles Laval, Lucien Pissarro, Émile Bernard, Julien Tanguy and Paul Gachet, among twenty family members, friends and locals. Theo had been ill, and his health began to decline further after his brother's death. Weak and unable to come to terms with Vincent's absence, he died on 25 January 1891 at Den Dolder and was buried in Utrecht. In 1914, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger had Theo's body exhumed and moved from Utrecht to be re-buried alongside Vincent's at Auvers-sur-Oise.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: There have been numerous debates as to the nature of Van Gogh's illness and its effect on his work, and many retrospective diagnoses have been proposed. The consensus is that Van Gogh had an episodic condition with periods of normal functioning. Perry was the first to suggest bipolar disorder in 1947, and this has been supported by the psychiatrists Hemphill and Blumer. Biochemist Wilfred Arnold has countered that the symptoms are more consistent with acute intermittent porphyria, noting that the popular link between bipolar disorder and creativity might be spurious. Temporal lobe epilepsy with bouts of depression has also been suggested. Whatever the diagnosis, his condition was likely worsened by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia and alcohol.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: The gun Van Gogh was reputed to have used was rediscovered in 1965 and was auctioned, on 19 June 2019, as "the most famous weapon in art history". The gun sold for €162,500 (£144,000; $182,000), almost three times more than expected.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh drew, and painted with watercolours while at school, but only a few examples survive and the authorship of some has been challenged. When he took up art as an adult, he began at an elementary level. In early 1882, his uncle, Cornelis Marinus, owner of a well-known gallery of contemporary art in Amsterdam, asked for drawings of The Hague. Van Gogh's work did not live up to expectations. Marinus offered a second commission, specifying the subject matter in detail, but was again disappointed with the result. Van Gogh persevered; he experimented with lighting in his studio using variable shutters and different drawing materials. For more than a year he worked on single figures – highly elaborate studies in black and white, which at the time gained him only criticism. Later, they were recognised as early masterpieces.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In August 1882 Theo gave Vincent money to buy materials for working "en plein air". Vincent wrote that he could now "go on painting with new vigour". From early 1883 he worked on multi-figure compositions. He had some of them photographed, but when his brother remarked that they lacked liveliness and freshness, he destroyed them and turned to oil painting. Van Gogh turned to well-known Hague School artists like Weissenbruch and Blommers, and he received technical advice from them as well as from painters like De Bock and Van der Weele, both of the Hague School's second generation. He moved to Nuenen after a short period of time in Drenthe and began work on several large paintings but destroyed most of them. "The Potato Eaters" and its companion pieces are the only ones to have survived. Following a visit to the Rijksmuseum Van Gogh wrote of his admiration for the quick, economical brushwork of the Dutch Masters, especially Rembrandt and Frans Hals. He was aware many of his faults were due to lack of experience and technical expertise, so in November 1885 he travelled to Antwerp and later Paris to learn and develop his skills.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Theo criticised "The Potato Eaters" for its dark palette, which he thought unsuitable for a modern style. During Van Gogh's stay in Paris between 1886 and 1887, he tried to master a new, lighter palette. His "Portrait of Père Tanguy" (1887) shows his success with the brighter palette and is evidence of an evolving personal style. Charles Blanc's treatise on colour interested him greatly and led him to work with complementary colours. Van Gogh came to believe that the effect of colour went beyond the descriptive; he said that "colour expresses something in itself". According to Hughes, Van Gogh perceived colour as having a "psychological and moral weight", as exemplified in the garish reds and greens of "The Night Café", a work he wanted to "express the terrible passions of humanity". Yellow meant the most to him, because it symbolised emotional truth. He used yellow as a symbol for sunlight, life, and God.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh strove to be a painter of rural life and nature; during his first summer in Arles he used his new palette to paint landscapes and traditional rural life. His belief that a power existed behind the natural led him to try to capture a sense of that power, or the essence of nature in his art, sometimes through the use of symbols. His renditions of the sower, at first copied from Jean-François Millet, reflect Van Gogh's religious beliefs: the sower as Christ sowing life beneath the hot sun. These were themes and motifs he returned to often to rework and develop. His paintings of flowers are filled with symbolism, but rather than use traditional Christian iconography he made up his own, where life is lived under the sun and work is an allegory of life. In Arles, having gained confidence after painting spring blossoms and learning to capture bright sunlight, he was ready to paint "The Sower".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh stayed within what he called the "guise of reality" and was critical of overly stylised works. He wrote afterwards that the abstraction of "Starry Night" had gone too far and that reality had "receded too far in the background". Hughes describes it as a moment of extreme visionary ecstasy: the stars are in a great whirl, reminiscent of Hokusai's "Great Wave", the movement in the heaven above is reflected by the movement of the cypress on the earth below, and the painter's vision is "translated into a thick, emphatic plasma of paint".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Between 1885 and his death in 1890, Van Gogh appears to have been building an "oeuvre", a collection that reflected his personal vision and could be commercially successful. He was influenced by Blanc's definition of style, that a true painting required optimal use of colour, perspective and brushstrokes. Van Gogh applied the word "purposeful" to paintings he thought he had mastered, as opposed to those he thought of as studies. He painted many series of studies; most of which were still lifes, many executed as colour experiments or as gifts to friends. The work in Arles contributed considerably to his "oeuvre": those he thought the most important from that time were "The Sower", "Night Cafe", "Memory of the Garden in Etten" and "Starry Night". With their broad brushstrokes, inventive perspectives, colours, contours and designs, these paintings represent the style he sought.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh's stylistic developments are usually linked to the periods he spent living in different places across Europe. He was inclined to immerse himself in local cultures and lighting conditions, although he maintained a highly individual visual outlook throughout. His evolution as an artist was slow, and he was aware of his painterly limitations. He moved home often, perhaps to expose himself to new visual stimuli, and through exposure develop his technical skill. Art historian Melissa McQuillan believes the moves also reflect later stylistic changes, and that Van Gogh used the moves to avoid conflict, and as a coping mechanism for when the idealistic artist was faced with the realities of his then current situation.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh said portaiture was his greatest interest. "What I’m most passionate about, much much more than all the rest in my profession," he wrote in 1890, "is the portrait, the modern portrait." It is "the only thing in painting that moves me deeply and that gives me a sense of the infinite." He wrote to his sister that he wished to paint portraits that would endure, and that he would use colour to capture their emotions and character rather than aiming for photographic realism. Those closest to Van Gogh are mostly absent from his portraits; he rarely painted Theo, Van Rappard or Bernard. The portraits of his mother were from photographs.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh painted Arles' postmaster Joseph Roulin and his family repeatedly. In five versions of "La Berceuse" ("The Lullaby"), Van Gogh painted Augustine Roulin quietly holding a rope that rocks the unseen cradle of her infant daughter. Van Gogh had planned for it to be the central image of a triptych, flanked by paintings of sunflowers.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh created more than 43 self-portraits between 1885 and 1889. They were usually completed in series, such as those painted in Paris in mid-1887, and continued until shortly before his death. Generally the portraits were studies, created during periods when he was reluctant to mix with others, or when he lacked models, and so painted himself.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: The self-portraits reflect a high degree of self-scrutiny. Often they were intended to mark important periods in his life; for example, the mid-1887 Paris series were painted at the point where he became aware of Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Signac. In "Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat", heavy strains of paint spread outwards across the canvas. It is one of his most renowned self-portraits of that period, "with its highly organized rhythmic brushstrokes, and the novel halo derived from the Neo-impressionist repertoire was what Van Gogh himself called a 'purposeful' canvas".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: They contain a wide array of physiognomical representations. Van Gogh's mental and physical condition is usually apparent; he may appear unkempt, unshaven or with a neglected beard, with deeply sunken eyes, a weak jaw, or having lost teeth. Some show him with full lips, a long face or prominent skull, or sharpened, alert features. His hair is sometimes depicted in a vibrant reddish hue and at other times ash colored.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh's self-portraits vary stylistically. In those painted after December 1888, the strong contrast of vivid colors highlight the haggard pallor of his skin. Some depict the artist with a beard, others without. He can be seen with bandages in portraits executed just after he mutilated his ear. In only a few does he depict himself as a painter. Those painted in Saint-Rémy show the head from the right, the side opposite his damaged ear, as he painted himself reflected in his mirror.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh painted several landscapes with flowers, including roses, lilacs, irises, and sunflowers. Some reflect his interests in the language of colour, and also in Japanese ukiyo-e. There are two series of dying sunflowers. The first was painted in Paris in 1887 and shows flowers lying on the ground. The second set was completed a year later in Arles and is of bouquets in a vase positioned in early morning light. Both are built from thickly layered paintwork, which, according to the London National Gallery, evoke the "texture of the seed-heads".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In these series, Van Gogh was not preoccupied by his usual interest in filling his paintings with subjectivity and emotion; rather, the two series are intended to display his technical skill and working methods to Gauguin, who was about to visit. The 1888 paintings were created during a rare period of optimism for the artist. Vincent wrote to Theo in August 1888: "I'm painting with the gusto of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won't surprise you when it's a question of painting large sunflowers ... If I carry out this plan there'll be a dozen or so panels. The whole thing will therefore be a symphony in blue and yellow. I work on it all these mornings, from sunrise. Because the flowers wilt quickly and it's a matter of doing the whole thing in one go."


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: The sunflowers were painted to decorate the walls in anticipation of Gauguin's visit, and Van Gogh placed individual works around the "Yellow House's guest room" in Arles. Gauguin was deeply impressed and later acquired two of the Paris versions. After Gauguin's departure, Van Gogh imagined the two major versions of the sunflowers as wings of the "Berceuse Triptych", and included them in his "Les XX" in Brussels exhibit. Today the major pieces of the series are among his best known, celebrated for the sickly connotations of the colour yellow and its tie-in with the Yellow House, the expressionism of the brush strokes, and their contrast against often dark backgrounds.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Fifteen canvases depict cypresses, a tree he became fascinated with in Arles. He brought life to the trees, which were traditionally seen as emblematic of death. The series of cypresses he began in Arles featured the trees in the distance, as windbreaks in fields; when he was at Saint-Rémy he brought them to the foreground. Vincent wrote to Theo in May 1889: "Cypresses still preoccupy me, I should like to do something with them like my canvases of sunflowers"; he went on to say, "They are beautiful in line and proportion like an Egyptian obelisk."


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In mid-1889, and at his sister Wil's request, Van Gogh painted several smaller versions of "Wheat Field with Cypresses". The works are characterised by swirls and densely painted impasto, and include "The Starry Night", in which cypresses dominate the foreground. In addition to this, other notable works on cypresses include "Cypresses" (1889), "Cypresses with Two Figures" (1889–90), and "Road with Cypress and Star" (1890).


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: During the last six or seven months of the year 1889, he had also created at least fifteen paintings of olive trees, a subject which he considered as demanding and compelling. Among these works are "Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background" (1889), about which in a letter to his brother Van Gogh wrote, "At last I have a landscape with olives". While in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh spent time outside the asylum, where he painted trees in the olive groves. In these works, natural life is rendered as gnarled and arthritic as if a personification of the natural world, which are, according to Hughes, filled with "a continuous field of energy of which nature is a manifestation".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: The "Flowering Orchards" (also the "Orchards in Blossom") are among the first groups of work completed after Van Gogh's arrival in Arles in February 1888. The 14 paintings are optimistic, joyous and visually expressive of the burgeoning spring. They are delicately sensitive and unpopulated. He painted swiftly, and although he brought to this series a version of Impressionism, a strong sense of personal style began to emerge during this period. The transience of the blossoming trees, and the passing of the season, seemed to align with his sense of impermanence and belief in a new beginning in Arles. During the blossoming of the trees that spring, he found "a world of motifs that could not have been more Japanese". Vincent wrote to Theo on 21 April 1888 that he had 10 orchards and "one big [painting] of a cherry tree, which I've spoiled".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: During this period Van Gogh mastered the use of light by subjugating shadows and painting the trees as if they are the source of light – almost in a sacred manner. Early the following year he painted another smaller group of orchards, including "View of Arles, Flowering Orchards". Van Gogh was enthralled by the landscape and vegetation of the south of France, and often visited the farm gardens near Arles. In the vivid light of the Mediterranean climate his palette significantly brightened.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh made several painting excursions during visits to the landscape around Arles. He made paintings of harvests, wheat fields and other rural landmarks of the area, including "The Old Mill" (1888); a good example of a picturesque structure bordering the wheat fields beyond. At various points, Van Gogh painted the view from his window – at The Hague, Antwerp, and Paris. These works culminated in "The Wheat Field" series, which depicted the view from his cells in the asylum at Saint-Rémy.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Many of the late paintings are sombre but essentially optimistic and, right up to the time of Van Gogh's death, reflect his desire to return to lucid mental health. Yet some of his final works reflect his deepening concerns. Writing in July 1890, from Auvers, Van Gogh said that he had become absorbed "in the immense plain against the hills, boundless as the sea, delicate yellow".


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh was captivated by the fields in May when the wheat was young and green. His "Wheatfields at Auvers with White House" shows a more subdued palette of yellows and blues, which creates a sense of idyllic harmony.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: About 10 July 1890, Van Gogh wrote to Theo of "vast fields of wheat under troubled skies". "Wheatfield with Crows" shows the artist's state of mind in his final days; Hulsker describes the work as a "doom-filled painting with threatening skies and ill-omened crows". Its dark palette and heavy brushstrokes convey a sense of menace.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: After Van Gogh's first exhibitions in the late 1880s, his reputation grew steadily among artists, art critics, dealers and collectors. In 1887, André Antoine hung Van Gogh's alongside works of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, at the Théâtre Libre in Paris; some were acquired by Julien Tanguy. In 1889, his work was described in the journal "Le Moderniste Illustré" by Albert Aurier as characterised by "fire, intensity, sunshine". Ten paintings were shown at the Société des Artistes Indépendants, in Brussels in January 1890. French president Marie François Sadi Carnot was said to have been impressed by Van Gogh's work.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: After Van Gogh's death, memorial exhibitions were held in Brussels, Paris, The Hague and Antwerp. His work was shown in several high-profile exhibitions, including six works at "Les XX"; in 1891 there was a retrospective exhibition in Brussels. In 1892, Octave Mirbeau wrote that Van Gogh's suicide was an "infinitely sadder loss for art ... even though the populace has not crowded to a magnificent funeral, and poor Vincent van Gogh, whose demise means the extinction of a beautiful flame of genius, has gone to his death as obscure and neglected as he lived."


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Theo died in January 1891, removing Vincent's most vocal and well-connected champion. Theo's widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger was a Dutchwoman in her twenties who had not known either her husband or her brother-in-law very long and who suddenly had to take care of several hundreds of paintings, letters and drawings, as well as her infant son, Vincent Willem van Gogh. Gauguin was not inclined to offer assistance in promoting Van Gogh's reputation, and Johanna's brother Andries Bonger also seemed lukewarm about his work. Aurier, one of Van Gogh's earliest supporters among the critics, died of typhoid fever in 1892 at the age of 27.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In 1892, Émile Bernard organised a small solo show of Van Gogh's paintings in Paris, and Julien Tanguy exhibited his Van Gogh paintings with several consigned from Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. In April 1894, the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris agreed to take 10 paintings on consignment from Van Gogh's estate. In 1896, the Fauvist painter Henri Matisse, then an unknown art student, visited John Russell on Belle Île off Brittany. Russell had been a close friend of Van Gogh; he introduced Matisse to the Dutchman's work, and gave him a Van Gogh drawing. Influenced by Van Gogh, Matisse abandoned his earth-coloured palette for bright colours.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In Paris in 1901, a large Van Gogh retrospective was held at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, which excited André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, and contributed to the emergence of Fauvism. Important group exhibitions took place with the Sonderbund artists in Cologne in 1912, the Armory Show, New York in 1913, and Berlin in 1914. Henk Bremmer was instrumental in teaching and talking about Van Gogh, and introduced Helene Kröller-Müller to Van Gogh's art; she became an avid collector of his work. The early figures in German Expressionism such as Emil Nolde acknowledged a debt to Van Gogh's work. Bremmer assisted Jacob Baart de la Faille, whose "catalogue raisonné" "L'Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh" appeared in 1928.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh's fame reached its first peak in Austria and Germany before World War I, helped by the publication of his letters in three volumes in 1914. His letters are expressive and literate, and have been described as among the foremost 19th-century writings of their kind. These began a compelling mythology of Van Gogh as an intense and dedicated painter who suffered for his art and died young. In 1934, the novelist Irving Stone wrote a biographical novel of Van Gogh's life titled "Lust for Life", based on Van Gogh's letters to Theo. This novel and the 1956 film further enhanced his fame, especially in the United States where Stone surmised only a few hundred people had heard of Van Gogh prior to his surprise best-selling book.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In 1957, Francis Bacon based a series of paintings on reproductions of Van Gogh's "The Painter on the Road to Tarascon", the original of which was destroyed during the Second World War. Bacon was inspired by an image he described as "haunting", and regarded Van Gogh as an alienated outsider, a position which resonated with him. Bacon identified with Van Gogh's theories of art and quoted lines written to Theo: "[R]eal painters do not paint things as they are ... [T]hey paint them as "they themselves" feel them to be."


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings. Those sold for over US$100 million (today's equivalent) include "Portrait of Dr Gachet"," " and "Irises". The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired a copy of "Wheat Field with Cypresses" in 1993 for US$57 million by using funds donated by publisher, diplomat and philanthropist Walter Annenberg. In 2015, "L'Allée des Alyscamps" sold for US$66.3 million at Sotheby's, New York, exceeding its reserve of US$40 million.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: In October 2022, two activists protesting the effects of the fossil fuel industry on climate change threw a can of tomato soup on Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" in the National Gallery, London, and then glued their hands to the gallery wall. As the painting was covered by glass it was not damaged.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: Van Gogh's nephew and namesake, Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890–1978), inherited the estate after his mother's death in 1925. During the early 1950s he arranged for the publication of a complete edition of the letters presented in four volumes and several languages. He then began negotiations with the Dutch government to subsidise a foundation to purchase and house the entire collection. Theo's son participated in planning the project in the hope that the works would be exhibited under the best possible conditions. The project began in 1963; architect Gerrit Rietveld was commissioned to design it, and after his death in 1964 Kisho Kurokawa took charge. Work progressed throughout the 1960s, with 1972 as the target for its grand opening.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: The Van Gogh Museum opened in the Museumplein in Amsterdam in 1973. It became the second most popular museum in the Netherlands, after the Rijksmuseum, regularly receiving more than 1.5 million visitors a year. In 2015 it had a record 1.9 million. Eighty-five percent of the visitors come from other countries.


title: Vincent van Gogh

text: During the Nazi period (1933–1945) a great number of artworks by Van Gogh changed hands, many of them looted from Jewish collectors who were forced into exile or murdered. Some of these works have disappeared into private collections. Others have since resurfaced in museums, or at auction, or have been reclaimed, often in high-profile lawsuits, by their former owners. The German Lost Art Foundation still lists dozens of missing van Goghs and the American Alliance of Museums lists 73 van Goghs on the Nazi Era Provenance Internet Portal.


title: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

text: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (; born Rachel Meghan Markle; August 4, 1981) is an American member of the British royal family and former actress. She is the wife of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, the younger son of King Charles III.


title: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

text: Meghan was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Her acting career began at Northwestern University; her last and most significant screen role was that of Rachel Zane for seven seasons (2011–2018) in the American TV legal drama "Suits". She also developed a social media presence. This included "The Tig" (2014–2017) lifestyle blog which gained recognition for her fashion sense and led to creation and release of two clothing lines in 2015–2016. During "The Tig" period, Meghan became involved in charity work focused primarily on women's issues and social justice. She was married to American film producer Trevor Engelson from 2011 until their divorce in 2014.


title: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

text: Meghan retired from acting upon her marriage to Prince Harry in 2018 and became known as the Duchess of Sussex. They have two children, Archie Mountbatten-Windsor and Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor. In January 2020, the couple stepped down as working royals and later settled in California. In October 2020, they launched Archewell Inc., an American public organization that focuses on non-profit activities and creative media ventures. In the following years, she released a picture book for children, "The Bench", and launched a Spotify podcast, "Archetypes". Meghan and Harry filmed a highly publicized interview with Oprah Winfrey, which was broadcast in March 2021, and a docuseries, "Harry & Meghan", which was released in December 2022.


title: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

text: Rachel Meghan Markle was born on August 4, 1981, at West Park Hospital in Canoga Park, Los Angeles, California. She identifies as mixed race, often answering questions about her background with "My dad is Caucasian and my mom is African American. I'm half black and half white." Her parents separated when she was two years old and divorced four years later. Markle's father, Thomas Markle Sr. (born 1944), is an Emmy Award winning television lighting director and director of photography. He worked as a director of photography and lighting for "General Hospital" and "Married... with Children", and Meghan occasionally visited the set of "Married... with Children" as a child. Meghan has been estranged from her father and paternal half-siblings, Samantha Markle and Thomas Markle Jr. She has a close relationship with her mother, Doria Ragland (born 1956).


title: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

text: Growing up in Los Angeles, Markle attended Hollywood Little Red Schoolhouse. Both her parents contributed to raising her until the age of 9, after which her father was left in charge of caring for her as her mother pursued a career. At age 11, she and her classmates wrote to Procter & Gamble to gender-neutralize a dishwashing soap commercial on national television. She was raised as a Protestant but graduated from L.A.'s Immaculate Heart High School, an all-girl Catholic school. Markle took part in plays and musicals at the school, where her father helped with lighting. During her teenage years, she worked at a local frozen yogurt shop and later as a waitress and babysitter. She also volunteered at a soup kitchen in Skid Row, Los Angeles. In 1999, she was admitted to Northwestern University (NU) in Evanston, Illinois, where she joined Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. With other members of Kappa Kappa Gamma, Meghan did volunteer work with the Glass Slipper Project. After her junior year, she secured an internship as a junior press officer at the American embassy in Buenos Aires, with the help of her uncle Michael Markle, and considered a political career. However, she did not score high enough in the Foreign Service Officer Test to proceed further with the US State Department, and returned to NU. She also attended a study abroad program in Madrid. In 2003, Markle earned her bachelor's degree with a double major in theater and international studies from Northwestern's School of Communication.


title: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

text: According to Markle, she had some difficulty getting roles early in her career due to being "ethnically ambiguous" because "I wasn't black enough for the black roles and I wasn't white enough for the white ones." To support herself between acting jobs, she worked as a freelance calligrapher and taught bookbinding. Her first on-screen appearance was a small role as a nurse in an episode of the daytime soap opera "General Hospital", a show for which her father served as a lighting director. Markle had small guest roles on the television shows "Century City" (2004), "The War at Home" (2006) and "" (2006). For her role in "Century City", she told the casting directors that she was a SAG-AFTRA member when she was not, but after being cast the employers were obliged to help her join the union according to the Taft–Hartley Act. Markle also did several contract acting and modeling jobs. Between 2006 and 2007, she worked as a "briefcase girl" on 34 episodes of the US-version of the game show "Deal or No Deal". She appeared in Fox's series "Fringe" as Junior Agent Amy Jessup in the first two episodes of its second season.


title: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

text: Markle appeared in small roles in the films "Get Him to the Greek", "Remember Me" (produced by her then-partner Trevor Engelson) and "The Candidate" in 2010 and the film "Horrible Bosses" in 2011. She was paid $187,000 for her role in "Remember Me" and $171,429 for her role in the short film "The Candidate". In July 2011, she joined the cast of the USA Network show "Suits" through to late 2017 and the seventh season. Her character, Rachel Zane, began as a paralegal and eventually became an attorney. While working on "Suits", she lived for nine months each year in Toronto. "Fortune" magazine estimated that she was paid $50,000 per episode, amounting to an equivalent annual salary of $450,000.


title: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

text: Markle and American film producer Trevor Engelson began dating in 2004. They were married in Ocho Rios, Jamaica on August 16, 2011. They separated in July 2013 and concluded a no-fault divorce in February 2014, citing irreconcilable differences. Markle's subsequent live-in relationship with Canadian celebrity chef and restaurateur Cory Vitiello ended in May 2016 after almost two years.


title: Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

text: In mid-2016, Markle began a relationship with Prince Harry, a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II. According to the couple, they first connected with each other via Instagram, though they have also said that they were set up on a blind date by a mutual friend in July 2016. In November, the prince directed his communications secretary to release a statement on his behalf to express personal concern about pejorative and false comments made about his girlfriend by mainstream media and internet trolls. Later, in a letter to a British media regulator Markle's representatives complained about the harassment from journalists. In September 2017, Markle and Prince Harry appeared together in public in Toronto at the Invictus Games, of which Harry is founding patron.