Vincent van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert in the Netherlands. After failed attempts at dealing art, teaching, and preaching, he turned seriously to drawing and painting in the early 1880s, first in the Netherlands and then in Paris, where contact with Impressionism and Japanese prints brightened his palette. From 1888 he worked in Arles, later Saint-Rémy, and finally Auvers-sur-Oise, producing most of his mature canvases in a little over a decade.
Canonical works include The Potato Eaters (1885, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), Sunflowers (1888 versions, National Gallery, London, and Van Gogh Museum), The Bedroom (1888, Van Gogh Museum; related versions at the Art Institute of Chicago and Musée d’Orsay, Paris), and The Starry Night (1889, Museum of Modern Art, New York). Self-portraits and drawings across these collections document relentless experimentation with colour and line.
Van Gogh’s thick impasto, rhythmic contour, and heightened colour made emotion visible in landscape and still life. Posthumously he became a defining figure of Post-Impressionism, shaping Expressionism and the modern idea of the painter’s hand as signature.