The Rise And Tragic Fall Of Vincent Van Gogh 

“Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch post-impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. ” (Wikipedia, 2019) Artists such as Paul Gauguin and Monet, two other famous painters, positively influenced Van Gogh to start painting. Van Gogh created Starry Night using oil on canvas. Starry Night portrays his view outside his sanatorium cell window in the evening, but it actually was painted from memory in the day. “Since 1941 Starry Night has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. ” (Wikipedia, 2019) Van Gogh uses the color white and light yellows to create a spiral effect that baits your eye to the night sky. “Van Gogh uses a contrast in lines to show depth, as he painted the city with calm straight lines and the sky in chaotic swirls. ”(Weebly, 2019) And, the town's linear lines are there so it looks as if the town is a quiet place and one excluding movement. Also, Van Gogh created Starry Night in 1889, just one year prior to his death. Evidence points towards his heavy depression, which, eventually, became too much for him, and he committed suicide. Even with his mental illness, Van Gogh is up there with the best artists of all time.

To begin, Vincent Van Gogh is one of the most notorious painters in the history of art, with his post-impressionist style he made a very unique painting. Van Gogh used oil on canvas to paint Starry Night, and a technique called impasto. The advantages of oil paints include flexibility, depth of colour. “They can be applied in many different ways, from thin glazes diluted with turpentine to dense thick impasto and because it is slow to dry, artists can continue working the paint for much longer than other types of paint. ”(Visual Arts, 2019) Also, Van Gogh´s passion for the evening is noticeable in Starry Night, where the authoritative sky hangs above the town and the main light sources are shown to be the shining stars and the moon. For example, “The little village lays at the base in the painting in browns, greys, and blues. ”(Van Gogh Gallery, 2019) The village seems depressed and dark, like a person suffering from a mental illness. Maybe Van Gogh intended it to be that way, due to his own depression. “The night sky depicted by van Gogh in the Starry Night painting is brimming with whirling clouds, shining stars, and a bright crescent moon. ”(Atrble, 2019) The use of blues and yellows really makes the painting draw your eye. The spiraling of these colors adds a certain beauty to the sky. Continuing, Starry Night is certainly an eye-popping piece of art that demands attention as soon as you see it.

Moving on, Starry Night portrays a certain authority of nature, the church spire and the cypress tree resembling man, nature pointing to the heavens. There is some symbology behind Starry Night, for instance, “In The Starry Night Van Gogh put a small church which resembles those common churches in his native Holland in the centre of the painting; on the left he painted a cypress in the foreground, whereas the small village and the swirling sky with bright orbs seem to blend into one another. ” (The Art Post Blog, 2019) “The planet Venus is represented as a star in this sky, and researchers have determined that in the spring of 1889, between the end of May and the beginning of June, it was indeed near its brightest possible. So Van Gogh really observed reality to paint this work. ” (The Art Post Blog, 2019)“I feel a tremendous need for religion, so I go outside at night to paint the stars”, said Van Gogh. It’s awesome to know some of the meanings, or the purposes behind paintings that are so popular. The style of this painting is Post-Impressionism. “The stylistic variations assembled under the general banner of Post-Impressionism range from the scientifically oriented Neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat to the lush Symbolism of Paul Gauguin, but all concentrated on the subjective vision of the artist. ” (The Art Story, 2019) Other artists that used this style included: Picasso, Munch, and Paul Gauguin. The Tone and Mood are another two interesting aspects of this painting, for example, “There are various interpretations of Starry Night and one is that this canvas depicts hope. It seems that van Gogh was showing that even with a dark night such as this it is still possible to see light in the windows of the houses. ” (Artble, 2019) The thought of there being hope in such a gloomy, depressed looking town is encouraging. It seems Van Gogh wasn’t completely void of hope. Carrying on, Starry Night definitely has a lot to offer symbolically, and its tone and mood are both something to think about.

Moving forward, this paragraph will tell some of Van Gogh’s upcoming into art, and what inspired him to paint. “Van Gogh, the eldest of six children of a Protestant pastor, was born and reared in a small village in the Brabant region of the southern Netherlands. He was a quiet, self-contained youth, spending his free time wandering the countryside to observe nature. At 16 he was apprenticed to The Hague branch of the art dealers Goupil and Co. , of which his uncle was a partner. ”(Britannica, 2019)

He taught languages and was a missionary worker before he became a painter. He also was an art dealer, which brewed a hunger for him to start painting. “Daily contact with works of art aroused his artistic sensibility, and he soon formed a taste for Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and other Dutch masters. ” (Britannica, 2019) Dutch art is supposed to describe the history of visual arts in the Netherlands. If Van Gogh never worked with art dealers, he may never have become a painter. “Van Gogh died in 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise where he was painting wheat fields. He sustained a gunshot injury to his abdomen while out in those fields before dying in an inn two days later. ” (Independent, 2019)

“On his death bed he revealed he had shot himself. ” (Independent, 2019) Some people believe he was actually shot by a 16-year old boy, but there’s no way of knowing for sure. Nonetheless, it’s tragic the way Van Gogh went out, and it’s really sad to see someone suffer from a mental illness, because is it can lead to horrible outcomes such as this. The story of Van Gogh ends tragically, but he still is a wonderful artist and his painting Starry Night is certainly one of the most renowned paintings in the world.

Van Gogh was a very unique and powerful artist, and it shows in his painting Starry Night which was created in 1889. To this day, Gogh has had a lasting effect on artists, and he certainly was a trailblazer for future artists as well. “His work exerted a powerful influence on the development of much modern painting, in particular on the works of the Fauve painters, Chaim Soutine, and the German Expressionists. ” (Britannica, 2019) Van Gogh is to this day recognized as one of the best artists of all time, even with his issues leading to his death. This painting helps us realize that people with mental illnesses can be the best of us, and make the most unique, and wonderful things.