Vincent Van Gogh Facts

Among our oil paitings for sale, Van Gogh's artwork is one of the most popular. Myself is also a big fan of Van Gogh. Van Gogh is a Madman but a Genius. He lived only 37 years, but now he is one of the most famouse and expensive artist in the art history. Every knows Van Gogh and also heard something about Van Gogh, but there are more stories I think you will be intersted in.

 
1. Vincent Van Gogh was named after both his grandfather and an older brother who was stillborn exactly one year earlier.

2. Van Gogh did not start out as an artist.He supported himself by working for an art dealer in the early 1870s, but because of this bad work attitude and habit, he was fired. He also worked as a schoolmaster in Ramsgate, England, but was dismissed too. Van Gogh became deeply religious around this time and worked as a Methodist preacher's assistant, and then as a missionary in Belgium.

3. Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime, although he painted over 900 paintings and 1100 drawings and sketches - most of them between 1881 and 1890. The painting he sold, called "The Red Vineyard," brought in 400 francs, or around $1,000 of today's US dollars. By comparison, his "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" is the #4 most expensive painting of all time, which sold in 1990 for $82,500,000 - or $139,000,000 in today's dollars.

4. Van Gogh is a deeply troubled person, he was in and out of mental hospitals throughout his life. "The Starry Night," was painted in 1889 while he was staying at Saint-Paul-de-Masole, an asylum in a former monastery in the town of Saint-Ry.

5. We all know Van Gogh cut off one of his ear, but actually he did not cut off his whole ear. The story about this incident goes like this: Paranoid that his close friend and fellow artist, Paul Gauguin, was going to desert him, Van Gogh confronted Gauguin on December 23, 1888, threatening him with a razor blade. Panicked by his outburst, he ran off, and later cut off the lower part of his left ear lobe. He wrapped it in tissue paper and mailed to a prostitute named Rachel, asking her to take good care of it. Gauguin and Van Gogh never saw each other again, later  Van Gogh painted the self portrait which shows him smoking a pipe with his left ear bandged.

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