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Vincent Van Gogh Essay

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What fascinates me much, much more than anything else in my métier is the portrait, the modern portrait . . . I should like to do portraits which will appear as revelations to people in 100 years time."
- VINCENT VAN GOGH, 1890

What could be a more disturbing image than the one of Vincent Van Gogh as the wanderer? Of his time spent in poverty and isolation he sought to help those around him, and perhaps to find himself in the process. Picture Vincent as he gives his first Sunday sermon in Isleworth, outside of London. He was so passionate about his beliefs, but never really connected with the religious world. His sermon must have really been something.
Van gogh traveled to Brussels on foot to seek counsel from Pastor Pietersen at …show more content…

Here is another crucial point in Van Gogh's life. He was a passionate, often eccentric artist. The idea of Van gogh arguing art theory with other painters in Montmartre is a very strong image, but one of the most powerful and moving images come from his time in Arles. Here is Van gosh: deeply hopeful that his dream of establishing an artists' community in the south would soon come true. One of Van gogh’s most personal works of his Arles period is Painter on His Way to Work. It's a very touching image--Vincent as the lone painter, trekking along the sun-scorched roads of Provence--looking for the right spot among the cypresses to set up his easel. There's as much of the real Van gogh in this small sketch as there is in any of his more famous self-portraits.
It's impossible not to be moved by the incredibly turbulent final years of Van gogh’s life. Picture it--someone with a profound appreciation of nature and beauty one moment, and a seeming madman the next. The last images of Van gogh’s life never fail to move anyone. Van gosh is dying from his self-inflicted gunshot wound and spends his last few hours on earth with the most important person in his life, his brother Theo. Theo had always been there for him--without Theo, there wouldn't have been the Van gogh we know today (to say nothing of his works). There they are, the two of them--Theo climbs into bed with Vincent, cradles his head and

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