Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was Dutch painter who is said to be a major post-impressionist. He was born on March 30 1835 but died on 29 July 1890. Van Gogh is said to have had a history of mental illnesses and painful anxiety which was probably the reason he decided to take his own life as it is said that he died from a gunshot wound although no gun was ever found. Van Gogh's father was a minister and his family was very religious and this highly influenced his work as observers realised.

Van Gogh's work is highly praised due to the fact that because his work portrayed rough beauty, emotional honesty, and bold colours, it was able to easily influence the 20th century art. 

Van Gogh's piece, "The Potato Eaters", is an oil painting which was painted on a canvas (image on the left). This piece is said to be Van Gogh's first great art work. It is said that Van Gogh painted this piece because he didn't want to paint figures that appeared to be awkward but he wanted to paint figures to exist naturally. This piece consisted of the De Groot family, they are all sitting at a square table eating potatoes; four of the people are woman and one of them is male. In my opinion this piece has been painted with such intensity that you can almost hear the conversation that is going on in the room and what I noticed with this piece is that the way it has been painted allows a viewer to notice the minor details within the piece and not only concentrate on he characters within the piece.

Van Gogh was influenced by art movements such as Post-impressionism and Impressionism and he was influenced by artist such as Pissaro, Monet, Bernard, and was greatly influenced by his close friend Gauguin.