Vincent van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, Netherlands. Van Gogh was a post-impressionist painter whose work, notable for its beauty, emotion and color, highly influenced 20th century art. He struggled with mental illness, and remained poor and virtually unknown throughout his life. Van Gogh died in France on July 29, 1890, at age 37, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
But did you know: Vincent van Gogh was said to have placed lit candles in his hat so he could paint at night. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam still lists his death as a definitive suicide — but Vanity Fair published an article in November 2014 that featured a forensic scientist’s skeptical take on the possibility that van Gogh shot himself, due to the artist’s inability to hold the gun so close to his body and the absence of burn marks on his hands. Vincent van Gogh painted “The Starry Night” while peering out the window as a self-admitted patient at the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy. Somebody else might have cut off Vincent van Gogh’s ear. He was prone to physical fights with Paul Gauguin who lived with van Gogh at the time and the night his ear was cut off they had engaged in a very violent sword fight.
He was a busy bee when it came to work even though he got a late start….Vincent van Gogh didn’t start painting until he was 27 or 28, but his oeuvre included nearly 900 works — an average of about 2 per week — before he died at 37.
