30th March: Birthday of Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh,the artist, was born on this date in 1853. Here are 10 facts about him:

Starry Night

1. In his lifetime, van Gogh created 2,000 pieces of art of which 900 were paintings, but he only sold one painting in his lifetime, which was called The Red Vineyard.
2. He painted 37 portraits of himself - possibly because he could not afford to pay models to sit for him.
3. He didn't cut off his ear - only a part of his ear lobe, after an argument with his friend Paul Gauguin. Van Gogh is said to have left the part of his ear at a brothel he is thought to have frequented with Gauguin, either as a gift for one of the women, or to be passed on to Gauguin.
4. Van Gogh's first career choice was to become a pastor, but he failed two courses. He became a missionary, living an austere life in a Belgian coal mining village, However, the church felt he was "undermining the dignity of the priesthood." and eventually his family persuaded him to give it up.
5. The happiest year of his life was spent working for an art dealer and living in Brixton, London.
6. Van Gogh was not lucky in love. He proposed marriage to two women - a fellow lodger in Brixton, and his widowed cousin. They both refused him. He lived with a prostitute for a time, much to the horror of his family; he eventually left her and she drowned herself. In Nuenen, he proposed to a neighbour's daughter. She accepted, but the two families disapproved and they were never married.
7. He used to pay boys to bring him birds' nests so that he could paint them. (The nests, not the boys!)
8. Most of what we know about the artist comes from the many letters he wrote to his brother, Theo, an art dealer. It was Theo who suggested to him that his paintings were too dark to be fashionable and that perhaps he should consider using brighter colours.
9. Jeanne Louise Calment, famous for being the longest lived woman ever, remembered serving van Gogh with canvas and pencils in her uncles shop when she was 13. She said that he was "dirty, badly dressed and disagreeable, very ugly, ungracious, impolite, sick."
10. Van Gogh was just 37 when he died. It is believed that he died as a result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest, although no-one saw it happen and the gun was never found. The shot itself didn't kill him - he died over a day later from an infection. His brother Theo was with him, and reported that his brother's last words were “La tristesse durera toujours” meaning “the sadness will last forever.”