t himself to unnecessary hardships, mocked him and dismissed him as insane. This intensity made him difficult to deal with and his belief in his religious calling made for a conflict between religion and art when he began painting during his Belgian mission.4
Van Gogh was rejected twice by the women he loved. The first time was in London, the second was a cousin. After being rejected by everyone he tried to love or to help, Van Gogh found someone so extremely unlovable that he could not be rejected. This was a prostitute, "ugly, stupid and pregnant" whom he picked up on the street.5 This horrible relationship lasted for twenty months.
During his struggle over the choice of missionary work or art, Van Gogh had painted and drawn the peasants he lived with. He had also taken some art instruction at the academy in Brussels. In 1880, with nowhere else to turn, Van Gogh finally made the decision to become a painter. He was rather old to begin such a career. Van Gogh knew that it would be difficult, would involve enormous sacrifices, and that he would be financially dependent on his brother Theo, who was employed by Goupil.6 But Van Gogh welcomed these difficulties in the same way he had welcomed the miserable life he lived among the poor coal miners. He was not just another painter trying to make a career. Van Gogh's intensity, and the torment he went through to decide to paint, marked him as "a man intent on saving his soul, in creating his very being, by painting pictures."7 Van Gogh began by studying at the academic art school in The Hague where he had a cousin, Anton Mauve, who was a popular and successful painter. But he quarreled with Mauve, as he quarreled with almost everyone he worked with.
Van Gogh's work from 1880 (when he painted the miners and
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