Vincent Van Gogh - Sadness and Beauty

My Favourite Vincent Van Gogh Paintings

"I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream." Vincent Van Gogh, the pioneer of Expressionism.

I most probably will never be able to afford a Vincent Van Gogh, but I have always admired his paintings which I've used as the wallpapers on my windows desktop. I love his colours and shapes, and here are five of my favourites with a bit about Van Gogh's insane personal life.

Vincent Van Gogh - Starry Night, 1889

Vincent Van Gogh was born in Holland in 1853 and is classified as a post impressionist painter. He started out working for an art dealer, later on teaching at a boarding school in England before working in a bookshop where he used to doodle on pieces of paper. He once worked as a Christian missionary during which he chose to sleep on a bed of straw in a small hut like the poor. He ate very little and preferred not to eat meat.

Vincent Van Gogh's - Red Vineyard, 1888

In 1880 he finally took up art on the advice of his brother Theo. He produced all of his work, some 900 paintings and 1100 drawings, during the last ten years of his life. In the two months before his death he painted 90 pictures.

Vincent Van Gogh - Pink and White Roses

Angry at his poverty filled lifestyle, his father once tried to get him admitted to a lunatic asylum. Vincent ran away from home to a city called Cuesmes. Later on when a woman he proposed to refused to marry him, he held his left hand in depression to the flame of a lamp, saying, "Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the flame". In December 1888, after an argument with fellow artist Gaugin, Van Gogh cut off the lower part of his left ear with razor, wrapped it in newspaper and gave it to a prostitute, asking her to "keep this object carefully".

Vincent Van Gogh - Vase with 12 Sunflowers, 1888

Around six months later he admitted himself to the mental hospital at St.Remy a former monastery where he drew swirly paintings. He too to smoing and started drinking heavily. After leaving the monastry, Van Gogh's depression deepened, and on July 27, 1890, at the age of 37, he walked into a field and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. Not realising that he was fatally wounded, he returned home to his bed and died two days later. He never married nor did he have any children.

Vincent Van Gogh's - Starry Night over the Rhone, 1888

A highly emotional person with low self confidence and a few failed romances, Vincent Van Gogh managed to sell only one painting before his death - Red Vineyard.

Tags - Vincent Van Gogh Paintings Art Starry Night