Dutch painter who lived in Montmartre with his brother Theo from March 1886 to February 1888 — the two years in which his dark Dutch palette turned into colour. He painted more than 200 pictures in Paris and died at Auvers-sur-Oise, north of the city, in 1890.
Vincent van Gogh spent two years in Paris, from March 1886 to February 1888, living with his brother Theo in Montmartre. Most accounts of his life hurry through them on the way from the dark Dutch pictures to the sunflowers of Arles. But Paris is where the change happened: he arrived painting in browns and left painting in colour.
He met Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Émile Bernard in Fernand Cormon's studio, met Paul Gauguin in 1887, saw the Impressionists whose work he had only read about, and painted more than 200 pictures — self-portraits, the view from his window, and the woman who ran the café where he hung his Japanese prints.
Vincent van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, in the southern Netherlands. Before painting he had failed at art dealing, teaching, and evangelism; he took up drawing seriously around 1880, and everything he painted in the Netherlands — peasant heads, weavers, The Potato Eaters — was built on brown and grey.
In late February or early March 1886 he sent his brother Theo, an art dealer with the firm Boussod, Valadon & Cie, a note announcing that he was already in Paris and would meet him in the Louvre's Salon Carré. Theo had not invited him. The two moved into Theo's small apartment on the rue Laval in lower Montmartre, where there was not even room to set up an easel, and in June 1886 they took a larger third-floor flat at 54 rue Lepic, on the hill itself.
In April and May 1886 he worked in the teaching studio of Fernand Cormon, a history painter whose atelier on the boulevard de Clichy took in students for drawing from casts and models. The teaching mattered less than the neighbours at the easels: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, then twenty-one, Émile Bernard, then eighteen, and the Australian painter John Russell, who painted Van Gogh's portrait that year.
Toulouse-Lautrec's 1887 pastel of Van Gogh leaning over a café glass is one of the few portraits of him by another artist's hand. Through Theo, whose gallery handled the Impressionists, Vincent also met Camille Pissarro, who explained broken colour to him — building a picture from small, separate strokes of pure colour rather than blended tones — and in the autumn of 1887 Paul Gauguin, newly back from Martinique. The two exchanged pictures. Their friendship would end violently in Arles two years later — the story is told below — but it began as an ordinary Paris acquaintance.
Paris gave him three things at once: the Impressionists in the flesh, the pointillism of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, and Japanese woodblock prints, which he bought by the hundred from the dealer Siegfried Bing and pinned to his walls. His answer to all three was painted across some two dozen self-portraits, because models cost money and his own face was free.
Set the winter 1887–88 Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat beside The Potato Eaters of 1885 and the two years explain themselves: the strokes have become short, separate and directional, and the colour has gone from earth to orange against blue. He painted more than 200 pictures in Paris — a fifth of everything he ever made — and almost none of them were for sale. Theo's apartment filled with canvases.
On the boulevard de Clichy stood Le Tambourin, a café whose tables were shaped like tambourines, run by Agostina Segatori, an Italian former artists' model who had sat for Corot and Manet. In 1887 Van Gogh and Segatori had an affair, documented in his own letters to Theo. He ate there, paid in paintings, hung an exhibition of his Japanese prints on its walls, and painted Segatori at one of her own tambourine tables with the prints visible behind her.
The affair ended badly, the café went bankrupt, and the pictures he had left there were sold off in a bundle. Later tellings improved the story in every direction; what the letters actually establish is the relationship, the exhibition, and the loss of the paintings.
City life and drink wore him down, and in February 1888 he left for Arles, in Provence, looking for the stronger light and colour the Paris pictures had been reaching toward. The sunflowers, the Yellow House, and the bedroom all followed within the year. In October 1888 Paul Gauguin came to live and work with him — the arrangement the brothers had planned in Paris — and after nine weeks it collapsed: on 23 December 1888, following a quarrel with Gauguin, Van Gogh cut off part of his own left ear.
He committed himself to the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in May 1889 and painted through the year he spent there, The Starry Night among the pictures. In early 1890 his The Red Vineyard sold in Brussels for 400 francs to the Belgian painter Anna Boch — one of the few sales of his life.
In May 1890 he moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, a village north-west of Paris, to be near Dr Paul Gachet, a physician and collector recommended by Pissarro. He painted roughly a canvas a day there for seventy days. On 27 July 1890 he shot himself in the chest in a field outside the village; he died two days later, on 29 July, with Theo beside him, aged thirty-seven. The money, work and worry of those years had run through Theo too: he outlived his brother by six months. The two are buried side by side in the cemetery at Auvers.
Born on 30 March in Groot-Zundert, in the southern Netherlands.
Paints The Potato Eaters in Nuenen — the summit of the dark Dutch palette he is about to abandon.
Arrives in Paris unannounced in early March and moves in with Theo; in June the brothers take the third floor at 54 rue Lepic in Montmartre. Works in Fernand Cormon's studio in April and May, beside Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Émile Bernard.
The Paris palette arrives: self-portraits in broken colour, the affair with Agostina Segatori and the Japanese print exhibition at Le Tambourin, and a first meeting with Paul Gauguin.
Leaves Paris for Arles in February, after two years and more than 200 paintings. Gauguin joins him at the Yellow House in October; on 23 December, after a quarrel, Van Gogh cuts off part of his left ear.
Enters the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in May; paints The Starry Night there in June.
The Red Vineyard sells in Brussels for 400 francs in early 1890. He moves to Auvers-sur-Oise in May; on 27 July he shoots himself in the chest in a field outside the village and dies two days later, aged thirty-seven.
Met · 1886
Met in Paris through Theo van Gogh's gallery; Pissarro explained the Impressionists' broken colour to him. In 1890 Pissarro recommended Dr Paul Gachet at Auvers-sur-Oise, which is how Van Gogh came to spend his last seventy days there.
Met · 1886
Fellow students in Fernand Cormon's Paris studio in 1886. Toulouse-Lautrec drew Van Gogh in pastel in 1887, in profile at a café table; the portrait is in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Sat for a portrait by · 1887
Pastel on cardboard, 1887: Van Gogh in profile at a café table with a glass in front of him. The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam holds it.
Met · 1887
Met in Paris in late 1887, through Theo van Gogh's gallery, after Gauguin returned from Martinique; the two exchanged paintings. Gauguin's nine weeks at the Yellow House in Arles in 1888 grew out of this Paris acquaintance and ended with the quarrel of 23 December 1888.
Yes, for two years — March 1886 to February 1888 — with his brother Theo, an art dealer, first on the rue Laval and from June 1886 in a third-floor apartment at 54 rue Lepic in Montmartre. The building still stands. He painted more than 200 pictures there, about a fifth of everything he made.
It is where his colour changed. He arrived painting in the browns and greys of The Potato Eaters and left painting in the broken orange-against-blue of the 1887 self-portraits. Seeing the Impressionists, Seurat's pointillism, and the Japanese prints he collected — all at once, all in Paris — is what did it.
They met in 1886 as students in Fernand Cormon's teaching studio on the boulevard de Clichy, alongside Émile Bernard. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec drew Van Gogh in pastel in 1887, in profile over a café glass — one of the few portraits of Van Gogh made by another artist. It hangs in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
In Paris in the autumn of 1887, through his brother Theo's gallery, when Paul Gauguin returned from Martinique — a year before Gauguin joined him at the Yellow House in Arles in October 1888. The nine weeks in Arles ended on 23 December 1888, when, after a quarrel with Gauguin, Van Gogh cut off part of his left ear.
He shot himself in the chest on 27 July 1890 in a field outside Auvers-sur-Oise, north-west of Paris, where he had moved that May to be near the physician Paul Gachet. He walked back to his room at the Auberge Ravoux and died there two days later, on 29 July, with Theo at his bedside. He was thirty-seven. Years of poverty, overwork, drink and repeated breakdowns — he had committed himself to the Saint-Rémy asylum the year before — lay behind it. Theo died six months after him, and the brothers are buried side by side at Auvers.
Very few. The documented sale is The Red Vineyard, bought for 400 francs by the Belgian painter Anna Boch at the Les XX exhibition in Brussels in early 1890, months before his death. The often-repeated claim that it was the only picture he ever sold overstates the case — there were smaller sales and trades — but the poverty was real: Theo supported him for his entire painting life.
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam holds the largest share, including the self-portraits and Agostina Segatori in Le Tambourin. In Paris, the Musée d'Orsay hangs several works including an 1887 self-portrait, and 54 rue Lepic in Montmartre — a private building, viewable from the street — still stands.
Met · 1886
Met in Paris through Theo van Gogh's gallery; Pissarro explained the Impressionists' broken colour to him. In 1890 Pissarro recommended Dr Paul Gachet at Auvers-sur-Oise, which is how Van Gogh came to spend his last seventy days there.
Met · 1886
Fellow students in Fernand Cormon's Paris studio in 1886. Toulouse-Lautrec drew Van Gogh in pastel in 1887, in profile at a café table; the portrait is in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Met · 1887
Met in Paris in late 1887, through Theo van Gogh's gallery, after Gauguin returned from Martinique; the two exchanged paintings. Gauguin's nine weeks at the Yellow House in Arles in 1888 grew out of this Paris acquaintance and ended with the quarrel of 23 December 1888.
Sat for a portrait by · 1887
Pastel on cardboard, 1887: Van Gogh in profile at a café table with a glass in front of him. The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam holds it.
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