Vincent Van Gogh Strengths

Vincent Van Gogh’s strength as an artist comes from both the relationships with the people that he is close with and the connection that he has to the common man as shown in his many paintings of friends, family, and strangers, and the techniques that he has incorporated into them, learned from his many artist acquaintances.
When Van Gogh focused on average workers in his early career, his drawings represented a side of humanity that no other painter was quite able to achieve. He was born on March 30, 1853, in Zundert, the Netherlands, to Reverend Theodorus Van Gogh and Anna Cornelius Carbentus, and had a relatively normal childhood with his brother, Theo, with whom he was close and lifelong friends with. Vincent was generally content and enjoyed
While stationed in Paris from the rest of 1886 to 1888, he became acquainted with Emile Bernard, a fellow Post-Impressionist, and Julien Tanguy, who dealt with art supplies and so had many artist friends and contacts, some of whom he would give loans and places to work. Julien Tanguy became fast friends, and he lent Van Gogh a place where he could work. Tanguy also had a hand in the Japanese art market, and this is reflected in his portrait by Van Gogh- although it is titled Portrait of Père Tanguy,(“Père”, meaning “Father”, was Tanguy’s nickname), it portrays Julien Tanguy with his Japanese prints: the painting is one of a series of three, demonstrating Tanguy’s importance to Van Gogh: he was the first to sell his paintings, though he was not an artist himself: however, he collected paintings, sometimes in lieu of payment for his supplies, making him a good match for Van Gogh. The painting itself(though there were two, one was completed in only half an hour and the more technically advanced one is considered the definitive version) is one of Van Gogh’s most symbolistic works. As Van Gogh says himself, in an October 1887 letter to Willemien van Gogh, his sister: “Now having this serenity as much as possible, even when one knows — little — nothing — for certain, is perhaps a better remedy against all ills than what’s sold in the
In February of 1888, Van Gogh and Theo left Paris for Arles, a popular spot for artists that was south of Paris. There, though they approached many artists, and even found an unexpected friend in Joseph Roulin, a postman who would agree to be painted along with his family several times over the years, the one that Theo’s firm found to be the most useful was Paul Gauguin, a stockbroker-turned artist who would be given rent in the “Yellow House”, the apartments shared by him and Van Gogh, in exchange for paintings for Goupil’s to sell. Gauguin and Van Gogh would become good friends, featuring each other in their paintings, and they lived in the Yellow House for most of a year. Gauguin had a different technique than Van Gogh, drawing subjects from memory instead of painting what was directly in front of him, and though Van Gogh attempted this method, he found that it gave almost too much color and emotion into his works, and mainly used this style to paint plant life, such as his piece Blossoming Almond Branch in a Glass, which resembles the Japanese prints that he took inspiration from as well as his earliest drawings as a child. Gauguin also tended to buy different art supplies than what Van Gogh was used to, leading to a unique feel to all his paintings produced in Arlens in both subject and