|
COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
He was born on March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, a village in the southern Netherlands, near the Belgian border, to a father, Theodorus van Gogh, who was himself an anomaly--a Protestant clergyman in a predominantly Catholic region. With his high white collars, his erect posture, and his love for an unforgiving God, Theodorus demanded order, rationality, and unremitting guilt. His flame-haired oldest son was not the first Vincent van Gogh; a baby had been given the name a year earlier, but had died at birth. And, like most children who grow up consoling their parents for the loss of a child no one ever really knew, Vincent could never live up to the legend of his brother, the ghost. Nor could he fit comfortably into the traditional role of eldest child--responsible, uncomplaining, a model of good sense for the siblings who follow. He struggled all his life--which ended with his suicide in 1890, only eleven years after he had decided to devote himself to art--to be heard above the drone of what might have been, had the first, the superior, Vincent lived. In all probability, that Vincent, the dead boy, would not have been so awkward, so emotionally overwrought, so determined to express himself to others. But, whether he liked it or not, this Vincent was alive. At the age of sixteen, he was given a junior post at an art dealership in The Hague, where one of his uncles had been a prominent seller. In 1873, when he was twenty, he moved to the firm's London gallery, where he worked on and off...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
