Post Impressionist Art of van Gogh

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The Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh was one of the best-known of the Post-Impressionists, in the company of CTzanne and Gauguin. Van Gogh's life has been repeated again and again as an example of the tortured artist who could turn out a huge number of beautiful works while in the throes of mental illness and torment. Yet, Van Gogh also highly unsuccessful during his lifetime as far as achieving any renown or selling any of his works was concerned; since his time, however, his works have been much prized and have inflated in value to proportions far beyond what he could ever have dreamed for them. Van Gogh produced some 800 paintings and a similar number of drawings, but he lived in poverty his entire artistic life. His works are marked by daring and startling colors and textures and by the vivid nature of his imagery. An examination of his life and time will serve as a beginning to a discussion of several of his works to show how they reflect aspects of his experience.

IMPRESSIONISTS AND POST-IMPRESSIONISTS

French art in the late nineteenth century entered a new phase with the work of a group of artists who became known as the Impressionists, and their work was very influential on the subsequent history of art in France and elsewhere. Impressionism is described by Arnold Hauser as the last universally valid European style, or the latest trend based on a general consensus of taste. He writes: "Since its dissolution it has been impossible to classify styl

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no future for himself, but at other times he would cheer up and work as well as ever (Bernard, Vincent by Himself, 14). THE POTATO EATERS As noted, one of the best known works from van Gogh's early period when he was given to painting the downtrodden and the working class was The Potato Eaters. The composition was inspired by the small lamp in the hut van Gogh used as a studio, and the figures in The Potato Eaters are illuminated by a pale glow from an overhead lamp. The work was not directly inspired by works by Emile Zola such as Germinal, but van Gogh did read Zola and was inspired by it to work on a scheme that resulted from the powerful impression made on him by peasants eating their frugal meal at the home of the Roman Catholic sexton (Hammacher and Hammacher, 94). Van Gogh described this as a picture he had felt and lived, and it has an immediacy that is reminiscent of a scene taking place before the eyes of the artist. The figures are distinctive, but at the same time they have a certain similarity that marks them as coming from the same milieu and the same family. Their faces show a tiredness and resignation that marks them as working people, people used to a certain drudgery and somewhat worn down by it. Their liv
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Approximate Word count = 3960
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)

Post Impressionist Art of van Gogh

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