Vincent van Gogh

Abstract

Vincent Wilhelm van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853. He was the son of Anna Cornelia Carbentus and Theodorus van Gogh. Three of Vincent’s uncles were art dealers, and one was a successful sculptor. It is often noted that Van Gogh didn’t begin painting until the ten years before his death, and while this is true, it also bears remembering that art had a presence in Vincent’s life long before that. As a child, he received tuition from a successful artist, and as a young man, his first job was as an art salesman in the Goupil & CIE dealership. Although for the most part Vincent wasn’t drawing or painting methodically, art pervaded his existence: his education, his family connections and his work were all imbued with it. Vincent van Gogh’s younger brother and truest friend, Theodore, was an art dealer. It was Theodore van Gogh who was to supply Vincent with the money he needed to pursue his painting in the later years. And it was Theodore who gave the troubled young man the compassion and affirmation which would otherwise elude the efforts Vincent made in his life, until long after he had ended it.