[MUSIC PLAYING]
If I ask you which painter cut off part of his ear and painted
sunflowers, my guess is you're instantly
going to know who I'm talking about, right?
Vincent van Gogh.
But there's a lot more to van Gogh than just ears
and sunflowers that made him one of the most influential artists
who ever lived.
Let's dig into, who was Vincent van Gogh?
This episode is funded by The Glick Fund and the Christel
DeHaan Family Foundation who inspire
philanthropy and creativity.
On March 30, 1853, Vincent van Gogh
was born in a small town in the Netherlands
to a Protestant minister, Theodorus van Gogh,
and his wife, Anna Carbentus.
Unfortunately, one year earlier, Anna
had a baby who died stillborn whose name was also Vincent.
They must have really liked the name
since they used it once again for the Vincent van Gogh
we know.
Vincent had three sisters and two brothers, Anna, Theo, Wil,
Lis, and Cor.
When Vincent was 11, his parents sent him off
to boarding school.
He did not like this at all, but he did manage
to get pretty good grades.
And at age 13, he was sent to secondary school
in Tilburg where he did quite well, especially in languages.
By the way, did you know that Vincent could speak and write
in Dutch, English, and French?
Yep.
Unfortunately, Vincent's family wasn't doing well financially
back home, so he quit school after his second year
to return.
That was the last of his schooling.
As you can imagine, van Gogh's parents started worrying about,
what would he do with himself?
A concern his parents had pretty much the rest of their lives.
Thankfully, in 1869 at age 16, his uncle--
known as Uncle Cent--
got Vincent a job as a trainee at the international art dealer
Goupil & Cie in a town of La Hague.
It was at this time that Vincent's
younger brother Theo was working for Goupil as well,
but in Brussels.
In 1872, Vincent began writing letters to Theo,
a practice that lasted his entire life.
In fact, he wrote some 651 letters to Theo.
Good thing texting wasn't around.
I have a feeling Theo's phone would have been, like,
ringing off the hook.
[BLEEPING]
In 1875, he transferred to Paris where he
became increasingly religious.
Even though Vincent was becoming more interested in art,
he was becoming less interested in his job.
So in 1876, he quit and returned back to England
to begin several years of what we might call his job hunting
or experimenting.
Vincent tried a variety of jobs such as teaching and working
in a bookstore, but ultimately decided
to follow his dream of studying theology at the age of 24.
He continued to write to his brother Theo,
and began including sketches in his letters.
But Vincent and I shared a common difficulty
when it came to school, which was staying focused.
Vincent preferred to wander around the city and take long
walks through the countryside.
Historians guesstimate Vincent would walk-- get
this-- four to six miles a day.
As you probably have guessed, Vincent
quit school again, but decided he still wants to serve God.
He moves to Belgium on a new mission.
Work as a preacher in the mining region of Borinage.
Vincent went all in and lived with the miners,
sharing in their poverty.
He would sleep on the floor and gave away just about everything
he owned.
His nickname was the Christ of the coal mine.
We now come to a pivotal moment for Vincent
when his brother advised him to concentrate more
on his drawings.
Vincent started taking painting lessons
from artist Anton Mauve, who taught him the basics of oils
and watercolors.
Vincent ate this instruction up and practiced fanatically.
His uncle commissioned him to draw some perspective
drawings of the city, one of which
was this one of the Hague.
Vincent moved back to Nuenen in 1883
where his parents lived, and rented a small studio
on the back of the house.
Soon after in 1885, Vincent's father died,
and he started working on "The Potato Eaters,"
along with taking up chain smoking and a terrible diet.
MAN: Yummy!
On the move once again, Vincent moves to Paris
to live with his brother--
uninvited, I might add--
where Theo introduces him to artists
like Claude Monet, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec
and Emile Bernard.
All this exposure to the new impressionists
inspired Vincent to start using brighter colors.
So compare "The Hill of Montmartre with Stone Quarry"
to "The Potato Eaters."
Pretty drastic difference, right?
At this time, Vincent was also amazed by the German composer
Wagner, and became excited by the analogies
between painting and music.
He even took organ lessons at one point, which apparently
didn't work out, because Vincent continually
compared musical chords with colors like Prussian blue
or cadmium yellow.
Yeah.
The organist decided he was dealing with a madman.
Vincent also discovered a new inspiration
in Japanese woodcuts, which sold all over Paris.
Both he and his brother Theo started collecting them.
After just two years, Vincent is getting
tired of the busy lifestyle in Paris,
and dreamt of sunshine and countryside.
So he hopped on a train and headed south to Provence.
In 1888, he ended up in the small town of Arles
where he went on one of the most amazing creative sprints
the world has ever seen.
Vincent was so excited after arriving in Arles
and seeing all the bright light and the colors,
he immediately got to work painting flowers
such as orchids and workers gathering the harvest
and boats along the coast.
Feeling inspired but a bit lonely,
Vincent wrote to Theo about setting up
a Studio of the South for artists to work at.
With this in mind, Vincent rented a small yellow house
with four rooms.
It's hard to imagine just what it
was like in that yellow house, but apparently, paintings
were everywhere.
Of the 200-plus works created while Vincent was there,
only a few made it back to Theo in Paris to hopefully sell.
The house reeked of pipe smoke, turpentine, and paint pigment.
It was hot, and with no bathroom,
washing arrangements were a bit limited.
Vincent was also addicted to coffee, something else
we definitely have in common.
Was short on cash.
Vincent lived on little else but coffee and bread.
Only one artist ever came down, which was Paul Gauguin.
To welcome Gauguin to the yellow house,
Vincent painted this little gem.
Might look a bit familiar to you.
While people often focus on the dysfunctional aspects
of their relationship, they actually got along quite often.
Vincent certainly was inspired by Gauguin,
who was also a bit cocky and probably hard to deal with.
Part of the problem might have been
the room they both shared to work in,
which was less than 16 feet across.
At its longest wall, measured 24 feet.
But the room had a strange shape where
it narrowed to nine and a half feet on the other side.
Not a super tiny room, but they were definitely
bound to bump into each other.
The two had very different painting techniques.
Gauguin liked to work from memory,
while Vincent preferred to paint what was in front of him.
Vincent also applied paint with amazing speed,
gathering up the paint as with a shovel.
He was known to sit and stare at the canvas,
and then suddenly leap up, attack the canvas
with two or three brush strokes, and then scramble back
to his chair.
Both artists had very differing views
on art, which led to some pretty heated arguments.
It was on December 29 in 1888 around 11
PM that Gauguin and Vincent got into another argument,
and Gauguin threatened to leave.
Vincent, who always had a difficult time working
through his emotions, grabbed a razor and sliced off his ear.
The part of this story you may not know about
is what happens next.
Vincent wrapped up the ear in newspaper,
headed down to the red light district,
and presented the package to a young lady
and said, guard this object carefully,
and they disappeared.
After waking up in a hospital the next morning,
Vincent didn't remember much about the incident,
and seemed to be perplexed by the whole situation, which
seems to come out in a self-portrait done soon after.
Vincent's dream of sharing a studio came to an end,
and Gauguin left.
van Gogh also realized he had some sort of illness,
and fearing he might have another episode,
he admitted himself to Saint-Paul-de-Mausole,
a psychiatric hospital in Saint-Remy.
There are many different ideas as to what illness Vincent had.
Some believe Vincent suffered from temporal lobe
epilepsy, which causes seizures as well as manic depression.
Interestingly, another creative who
suffered from the same thing was Edgar Allan Poe.
Perhaps this is why on good days,
Vincent would paint the walled garden at Saint-Remy,
and was later even allowed to work outside as well.
But his mental health would fluctuate,
and one time during an episode of extreme confusion,
he ate some of his oil paint.
Despite the relapses, Vincent was incredibly productive.
He completed around 150 paintings within a year.
Yeah, you heard me right.
One year.
Of these paintings was the iconic
"Starry Night," which he painted while looking
through the iron-barred windows in his room.
While Vincent did only sell a few paintings
while still alive, he did start to see
some appreciation for his work.
In 1890, six of his paintings were shown in Brussels.
One art critic, Albert Aurier, published a positive article
about the show, and Vincent even sold one painting, "The Red
Vineyard."
Interestingly, "Starry Night" was not in this show.
As the year continued, Vincent felt pretty good,
and even left the mental hospital,
heading north to Auvers-Sur-Oise.
This was closer to his brother Theo
and there was a Dr. Paul Gachet to watch over him.
Vincent threw himself into his work, painting gardens
and wheat fields around the village.
Unfortunately, it was during this time
that Vincent started to worry about money since he
heard his brother Theo might quit his job.
This sent Vincent into an episode
of extreme worry and depression concerning the future.
It was on July 27 in 1890 he set out to paint a wheat field
and shot himself in the chest with a pistol.
Wounded, he staggered back to the inn
where he was staying, some two-plus miles away.
Two days later, he died from his injuries.
As you can imagine, medicine at this time
was not what it is today, especially for mental illness
and depression.
I imagine neither Vincent nor his doctor
had any idea how serious his condition was or could get.
And man, do I wish he could have had the medicine and doctors we
have today.
Either way, Vincent's legacy is like none other,
creating over 850 paintings and nearly 1,300 works on paper.
Unfortunately, not six weeks after Vincent's death,
his brother Theo became ill, and then died a year later in 1891.
This brings us Theo's wife, Jo van Gogh.
Jo knew the power of Vincent's work,
and it became her goal to raise public awareness,
including loaning paintings to museums
all over the world, which finally brought
in more and more buyers.
In 1914, she also published the first edition
of Vincent's letters to Theo.
This passion for seeing Vincent van Gogh's work
appreciated passed down to her son Vincent.
After Jo's death in 1925, the massive art collection
passed down to her son who loaned it
to a museum in Amsterdam in 1930.
After the Vincent van Gogh Foundation was formed in 1962,
work began on a dedicated museum for the collection.
In 1973, the Van Gogh Museum opened.
Over 1.5 million people visit this incredible museum
every year.
There was certainly more to Vincent van
Gogh than some flowers and cut off ears.
He was driven to find his calling in the world,
and once he did, he poured himself
into what he was most passionate about.
If anything, it inspires me to keep
creating, keep following what you believe you are born to do,
even if the crowd does not agree.
Until next time, be artragous.
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