Was born on 30 March, 1853 in Groot Zundert in the Dutch Brabante . His father, a Pastor of a local church, started him in the profession of merchant of etchings. He worked at a branch of the Goupil Gallery of Paris in The Hague and stayed there for three years between 1869-73. He then passed on to the more important branch in London between 1873-75 and lastly went to the main branch in France. Quite suddenly he left his job and returned to his home in 1876. He worked in Ramsgaste as a language professor and afterwards as assistant preacher in Isleworth near London and bookstore assistant in Dordrecht. Later on he studied Theology in Amsterdam. In January 1879 he was appointed free preacher in the Belgian mining area of Borinage and it is there that he discovered his painting vocation. Like with his viscitudes towards his religious vocation, those of his artistic life are also developed in an irregular manner. He left Borinage and moved to Brussels to study Anatomy and perspective. In London in 1874, he suffered another amorous setback. In 1881 he stayed in The Hague under the direction of his cousin, the painter Antonio Mauve and made his first trials at paintings. At this stage of his life he was living with a prostitute, Cristina, and because of his desperate economic situation, he had to return with his family in Nuenen. Between 1883 and 1885 he remained there and worked constantly. At this time, a neighbour of his, Margarita Begemann tried to commit suicide since her family did not want her to marry van Gogh. This, added to the death of his father and the necessity to earn money, made him go to Antwerp betwen 1885-86 and later to Paris where he became reunited with Theo. Over these years he acquired a cultural maturity and frequented the Cormon workshop where he met Toulouse-Lautrec and Emile Bernard, he participated in the crisis of impressionism and adhered to the Divisionists and the Sythetists where he met many artists such as Camille Pissarro, Seurat, Signac and Gaughin. He struck up a deep friendship with Gaugin.
The difference in character and the continual arguments that they had ruined van Gogh`s nerves to such as extent that on 23 December he attacked his friend with a knife. Afterwards he decided to punish himself by cutting off his ear. This was the first violent crisis tht he suffered and that would return to torment the last years of his life. In 1889 he entered the psychiatric hospital at Saint-Remy-de-Mausole to undergo treatment but his health continued to deteriorate. After a year he moved to Auvers-sur-Oise where he placed himself in the hands of Dr. Gachet. When it seemed that he was recovering and only after two months of treatment, van Gogh shot himself in the chest. On 27 June 1890, he died surrounded by his brother, Theo and Dr. Gachet.
