Artist # 22 Vincent Van Gogh

Along with Monet's impressionist style, I thought I would go ahead and do Van Gogh as well. I learned that Van Gogh wanted to become a priest, so he went into seminary. He ended up flunking out and then moving to Belgium to teach the scriptures. He wanted to be as the Belgium people and live poorly, so he lived in a small shack. When the church found out about that, they excommunicated him. I thought that was pretty harsh! After that he becomes very poor and barely gets by, making paintings practically for free.

He made paintings of the Dutch land and of poor workers. The purpose of the paintings was to say that these people are dignified. They live honest and dignified lives. It's kind of ironic that he went to seminary and taught scriptures because in his paintings, he's not really giving any reference or credit to God. He's saying that the people have what they have because of how hard they work. They get where they are by themselves, not by God.

Van Gogh's most famous painting, and possibly one of the most famous paintings of all time, is his Starry Night.



Each piece of the painting is very distinguished. You can tell the stars from the sky, the fields from the houses, etc. It seems pretty obvious that in a painting you should be able to distinguish those things, but when it's an impressionist painting out of lines, it could be a little more difficult. Some other paintings by Van Gogh are: