(no subject)
Thomas Chapman
June 25, 2009
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh is one of the most famous post-Impressionist painters of all time. Born on March 30, 1853 to Dutch minister Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Cornelia Carbentus in the village of Groot-Zundert in the Netherlands, van Gogh attended school in the village until his eighth birthday, when he was pulled out and home-schooled by a governess and then sent away to boarding school in Zevenbergen. In 1866 he began attending school in Tilburg, where he began to learn how to draw under the care of Constantijn C. Huysmans (an artist who achieved moderate fame in Paris several years before.)
His career with art began at the age of fifteen, when he acquired a position as an art dealer with Goupil and Cie in the Hague. He was fired in 1876 due to an increasing attitude of cynicism toward the under-appreciation of art, which he openly expressed to his customers. He worked a handful of other jobs after his termination by Goupil and Cie, including a failed attempt at becoming a minister like his father. He took up a more fervent interest in art in 1880 at the suggestion of his brother Theo, and began attending the Royal Academy of Art. Van Gogh spent the next decade penniless in the pursuit of art in various cities, and experienced bouts of mental illness, syphilis, and gonorrhea. In the depths of his depression, van Gogh committed suicide in 1890 at the age of thirty-seven. He did not experience true artistic success until after his death.
I chose to replicate van Gogh’s still-life technique because his self-taught style is most accentuated and recognized in his still-life pieces. One of his most famous sets of work is his “Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers,” painted in 1888, only two years before his suicide. The unreal and abstract quality of his still-life paintings make his work both striking and expressive. The abstract quality of his artwork seems to lend a sense of movement to his still-life paintings and even his landscapes. I hoped to be able to capture this quality myself through my replication and adaptation of his piece “Van Gogh’s Chair.”
June 25, 2009
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh is one of the most famous post-Impressionist painters of all time. Born on March 30, 1853 to Dutch minister Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Cornelia Carbentus in the village of Groot-Zundert in the Netherlands, van Gogh attended school in the village until his eighth birthday, when he was pulled out and home-schooled by a governess and then sent away to boarding school in Zevenbergen. In 1866 he began attending school in Tilburg, where he began to learn how to draw under the care of Constantijn C. Huysmans (an artist who achieved moderate fame in Paris several years before.)
His career with art began at the age of fifteen, when he acquired a position as an art dealer with Goupil and Cie in the Hague. He was fired in 1876 due to an increasing attitude of cynicism toward the under-appreciation of art, which he openly expressed to his customers. He worked a handful of other jobs after his termination by Goupil and Cie, including a failed attempt at becoming a minister like his father. He took up a more fervent interest in art in 1880 at the suggestion of his brother Theo, and began attending the Royal Academy of Art. Van Gogh spent the next decade penniless in the pursuit of art in various cities, and experienced bouts of mental illness, syphilis, and gonorrhea. In the depths of his depression, van Gogh committed suicide in 1890 at the age of thirty-seven. He did not experience true artistic success until after his death.
I chose to replicate van Gogh’s still-life technique because his self-taught style is most accentuated and recognized in his still-life pieces. One of his most famous sets of work is his “Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers,” painted in 1888, only two years before his suicide. The unreal and abstract quality of his still-life paintings make his work both striking and expressive. The abstract quality of his artwork seems to lend a sense of movement to his still-life paintings and even his landscapes. I hoped to be able to capture this quality myself through my replication and adaptation of his piece “Van Gogh’s Chair.”