Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853. His uncle was a partner in the international firm of picture dealers, Goupil and Co., and in 1869 van Gogh went to work in the branch at The Hague. He was sent to the London branch in 1873, and there he entered into the first of his disastrous attempts to find happiness with a woman, in this case the daughter of his landlady. He was dismissed from his job because of the effect these disasters had on him, and he returned to England in 1876 as an unpaid assistant at a school. His experience of the urban squalor and suffering of the time brought a religious devotion out of van Gogh. His father was a Protestant pastor, and van Gogh first trained for the ministry. He abandoned his studies in 1878 and started to work as a lay preacher among the impoverished miners of a district in Belgium. He gave away his own worldly goods to the poor, and he was dismissed for his literal interpretations of the teachings of Christ. He remained in the region, however, suffering acute poverty and spiritual c
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