Vincent van Gogh
...d before working as a lay preacher in Borinage. (Expo-vangogh) There, he identified with the miners and their families. (Expo-vangogh His helpfulness reached an extreme level when he began to give away all his possession and food to the poor people. The church looked down on his actions and dismissed him. (Expo-vangogh) Van Gogh refused to leave the people he had been a spiritual leader to, and moved to a neighboring village. (Vangoghgallery) During this time, van Gogh began drawing the miners and their families. He had chosen his final profession, art. His early work, the Dutch period of 1880-1885, consists of dark greenish-brown, heavily painted studies of peasants and miners, The Potato Eaters. (Expo-vangogh) He copied the work of Millet, whose portrayal of the rural poor he admired. (Expo-vangogh) In 1886, he joined Theo in Paris, where he met the French painters of the postimpressionist period. (Expo-vangogh) Pissarro made a huge contribution to van Gogh’s art by convincing him to use a colorful palette. His painting Pere Tanguy was the first complete and successful work in his new colors. (vangoghgallery) Impressed by the theories of Seurat and Signac, van Gogh briefly adopted a pointillist style. (vangoghgallery) In 1888, in ill health and believing that he was a burden on Theo’s life, he took a house at Arles. (Expo-vangogh) During this time, he mutilated his left ear in his first sign of dementia. Some believe that his mental problems stem for the fact that his mother’s pregnancy before he was born was a still birth that she named Vincent. This theory states that van Gogh felt like a replacement child for the dead brother that had his same name and birth date. (Vangoghgallery) His paintings from this period include The Night Café and The Public Gardens in Arles. His illness led to his confinement in the Arles Hospital, then to the asylum at...