Vincent Van Gogh Vincent Willem Van Gogh, born on March 30th, 1853, and died July 29th, 1890, was one of the most important and influential painters of the 19th century. He was a very skilled Dutch artist, and his work had a wide influence on painters of the 20th Century as well as today. His work includes many portraits, self-portraits, landscapes and still-lives, mainly including and depicting trees, wheat farmer’s fields, and expressing his love for sunflowers. Most of these pieces seemed to have an abstract tone, but always came back to realism, impressionism, and naturalism. Van Gogh drew as a child but did not paint until his early adult life, in his twenties. The majority of his better-known …show more content…
He traveled around England, afterwards, teaching in the English schools of art at Ramsgate and Islesworth. Van Gogh was extremely religious in his youth and for most of his younger days, and wanted to work towards becoming a preacher in his adulthood. From 1879, he worked as a religious missionary in a Belgian mining region, where he began creating sketches of the locals. In the year 1885, he painted his piece The Potato Eaters, which is commonly known as his first great piece, and one of his better-known pieces. At the time of painting The Potato Eaters, his palette included primarily somber and melancholy earth-like tones and was very far away on the color spectrum from his works later in life, which consisted of very vivid coloration. Early on in the year 1866, he moved to Paris and was introduced to the works of the French Impressionist painters. Later, he relocated to the south side of France and was influenced by the strong rays of sunlight and peaceful qualities he found there as well as memories he created while being there. His pieces became increasingly brighter on the color spectrum, and he developed the unique and widely known style that became fully developed during his times in Arles in the year