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Things You Didn't Know About the Tortured Life of Vincent van Gogh
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Jun 9, 2025
Although it resulted in some of the most remarkable artwork ever created, the life of Vincent van Gogh was marked by poverty, loneliness, rejection, and mental illness. Vincent van Gogh's biography is sad enough on its own; that his paintings would ultimately become the most sought after and expensive status symbols in the art world is an irony practically too cruel to comprehend. To an individual who frequently had to choose between purchasing food or canvas and paint, the idea that even a single Van Gogh would today fetch hundreds of millions of dollars would seem inconceivable. But in the context of the painter's life, it is only appropriate, considering these sad and bizarre facts about Vincent van Gogh.
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The life of Vincent Van Gogh was marked by poverty, loneliness
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rejection, and mental illness. He was so poor he frequently had to choose between purchasing food
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or canvas and paint. Van Gogh was a failure in just about everything he did in life
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At the same time, he was an artistic genius way ahead of his time
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Today, we're going to take a look at some facts about the tortured, miserable life of Vincent Van Gogh
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In the summer of 1888, Van Gogh left Paris and headed to Provence, a region in the south of France
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Supported financially by his art dealer brother, Theo, he ultimately settled in the town of Arles
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That's where he rented a house and began to dream of establishing an artist colony where he and other like-minded painters could live and work
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Theo and Vincent were acquainted with Paul Gauguin, another cutting-edge impressionist that both men admired professionally
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It took some persuasion, but in October of 1888, Gauguin agreed to move to the house
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Initially, the two artists functioned reasonably well together. Gauguin was a streetwise former stock exchange worker
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and Van Gogh was a talented but troubled young man. Unfortunately, the acerbic and condescending Gauguin
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and the sensitive, needy Vincent Van Gogh quickly began to get on each other's nerves
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Eventually, sensing that Gauguin was preparing to abandon him in the so-called artistic colony
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Van Gogh got drunk and angry. According to Gauguin, on December 23rd, after yet another
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savage argument, he moved out and checked into a hotel where Van Gogh threatened him with a knife
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Supposedly, Van Gogh sliced off much of his left earlobe, walked to a familiar brothel
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and presented the bloody appendage to a prostitute named Rachel. Rachel fainted on the spot. Flowers
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might have been a better choice and less bloody. Because Gauguin's self-serving account is the only
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one that remains, speculation about its accuracy continues to this day. One recent theory holds
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that Gauguin, an accomplished fencer, was actually the one who lopped off the ear during the pair's
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final argument. Whatever the case, Van Gogh evaded police on the night of the 23rd. However, since
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they knew his identity, the authorities eventually made it to his home, where they discovered him in
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his blood-soaked bed. The young artist was taken to the hospital and eventually committed himself
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to a mental asylum. Although the two artists would never see each other again
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they would continue to correspond. In fact, just weeks later, Gauguin would send Van Gogh a letter
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requesting the return of paintings that he had previously gifted to Vincent
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Friend breakups are never pretty. In 1889 Van Gogh was invited to exhibit at Les Vins the 20 an annual art show in Brussels sponsored by 20 local artists who displayed their own work as well as the work of invitees Vincent submitted three landscapes two sunflower studies
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and a painting titled The Red Vineyard. Anna Bosch, the sister of one of Van Gogh's friends
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paid 400 francs for the painting, which is about the equivalent of $2,000 today
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Van Gogh's work had been greeted by many in the art community with derision, so Anna made the purchase to encourage him
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Amazingly, this is the only publicly recorded sale of a Van Gogh that occurred in his lifetime
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Today, the Red Vineyard hangs in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. In May of 1889, Van Gogh voluntarily committed himself to the St. Paul Asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
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He was granted some studio space so he could paint, and many of the works that he turned out during this period
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were merely landscapes of the view from his asylum room, minus the bars
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However, for what would become his most famous painting, The Starry Night, he was allowed to sketch a nightscape
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The swirling skies and aura around the stars have been interpreted as everything
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from the symbolism of infinity to the hallucinations resulting from Van Gogh's mental illness
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Today, it's worth millions, but the artist thought so little of The Starry Night
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that he actually withheld it from the batches of paintings he routinely sent to his brother to sell in Paris
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because he wanted to save money on postage. Of the painting, he commented in a letter
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Once again, I let myself go reaching for stars that are too big. A new failure
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And I have had enough of it. Without Theo van Gogh, you would never have heard of Vincent van Gogh
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It was Theo who first encouraged his brother to pursue art as a vocation, and because his
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instability and mental illness made him virtually unemployable, most of Vincent's financial
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support came from Theo as well. Theo was also a strong proponent of Impressionist art and artists, when it was still a relatively
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undiscovered school of painting. Vincent lived with Theo in Paris from 1886 until 1888, and through Theo's business contacts
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he met some of the most prominent artists of the time period, including Toulouse-Lautrec
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Pizarro, Seurat, Cezanne, and of course, Gauguin. Theo and Vincent's remarkable relationship and
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Theo's unflagging encouragement and emotional support are chronicled in the numerous letters
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that they exchanged. Discussing his brother with another artist friend, Theo even prophetically
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commented, I should not be surprised if my brother were one of the great geniuses and
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will one day be compared to someone like Beethoven. On July 27, 1890, Van Gogh made his way to the Wheatfields
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just north of his residence at an inn in Auvers-sur-Oise. He had borrowed a pistol from his innkeeper for the stated purpose of scaring off crows while he was painting Instead he is believed to have turned the gun on himself Coincidentally one of Van Gogh final paintings is the haunting and symbolic wheat fields with crows
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an abstract work filled with black crows, paths leading nowhere, and ominous skies
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It depicts the field where Van Gogh attempted to kill himself. Wounding himself in the chest, he would stumble back to his inn
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saying little about what he had done, and die 30 hours later with his brother at his side
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The cemetery that Vincent and Theo are buried in is only a few hundred feet from the spot
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on which he finished the painting. Vincent van Gogh was reclusive and, by most accounts
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socially inept. However, he still attempted to romance and even marry almost every female
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acquaintance he ever had. For example, while living in England in his early 20s, he was rebuffed by
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the daughter of a landlady who was engaged to another man. He was also famously rejected by
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his first cousin with the phrase, no, nay, never. Hey, cuz, one was probably enough
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Demonstrating behavior that today we would identify as stalking, he then showed up in
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Amsterdam to continue the pursuit. His cousin, for her part, would not even agree to see him
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In 1882, Van Gogh made the acquaintance of a seamstress and prostitute named Klesina Maria Hornick
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Hornick had a five-year-old daughter and was expecting a child fathered by a man who had
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abandoned her. Eventually, she would move in with Van Gogh, making it the only known domestic relationship
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he enjoyed in his life. He told Theo he wanted to marry the woman, but his apoplectic pastor father demanded
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he end the relationship, and his brother advised the same. Vincent eventually left Klessina Hornick
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As a parting gift, it turns out she gave Vincent the gift of gonorrhea. Van Gogh was one of six children in his family
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and he wasn't the only one who struggled with mental illness for his entire adult life
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and then ended it in suicide. Theo Van Gogh died under mysterious circumstances that are historically obscure
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but may have been related to syphilis, suicide, or mental illness. The third brother, Cornelius, was 14 years younger than Vincent
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and lived in South Africa. After his marriage disintegrated, he enlisted during the Boer-British conflict, was captured
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and ended his life at the age of 33. Wilhelmina van Gogh would spend the last four decades
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of her life in a mental institution, suffering from conditions that were similar to Vincent's maladies
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The innkeeper who housed Vincent van Gogh at the Aubergine Ravoux for the last three months of the artist's life was Arthur Ravoux. His family
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got to know the artist, who even took his meals with him. In fact, it was his absence at dinner
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on the day he attempted suicide that first alerted everyone something was seriously wrong Upon Van Gogh death Arthur Ravoux not wanting to appear greedy refused any additional paintings from Theo save for the two he already possessed
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a portrait of his daughter Adeline, and a landscape of the Auvers Town Hall
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which Van Gogh painted from the street in front of the inn. Both paintings were displayed in the auberge
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until the Ravoux family moved to the town of Moulin and operated a café there
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In 1905, two American artists staying in Moulin heard that Arthur Ravoux had two Van Goghs and asked to see them
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When they mentioned that the paint was already deteriorating and he should give the artworks to them to be preserved properly
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Ravoux demanded that he be paid something, despite his belief that the paintings were virtually worthless
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They quickly settled on a price, 40 francs, the equivalent of about 10 American dollars at the time
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and around 300 of today's dollars. Joanna Jo van Gogh-Bonger was born in Amsterdam in 1862 and married Theo van Gogh in 1889
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While this should have been a happy occurrence for both, the marriage and the son it produced
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may have been the main factors in Vincent's decision to end his own life. Many believe
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that Vincent feared that Theo, now with a growing family, would soon be unable to support him
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With Theo's death shortly after Vincent's, it was left to Joe Van Gogh to make something of the then-worthless artistic legacy
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She promoted Vincent's work to prominent art dealers and through her publication of Letters to Theo in 1914
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The book began a public fascination with the work and life of Vincent Van Gogh that never subsided
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After her death, her son Vincent Willem, named for his uncle, continued her work and established the foundation that is responsible for the Vincent van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam
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In 1990, one of the two van Gogh Portrait of Dr. Gachet paintings was auctioned off by its owners
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The painting was one of several van Goghs owned by banker Siegfried Kramarski, who died in 1961
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Kromarski bought the painting when the Nazi government purged it from a Frankfurt art museum
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and ordered it sold because they considered Van Gogh a degenerate. The auction caused a sensation in the art world when a Japanese industrialist
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Ryoe Saito, bid $82.5 million, an amount that far exceeded the expected price of $40 million
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and set a new world record. Saito irritated many in the art world by placing the painting in his private office
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and then declaring that, upon his death, he wanted to be cremated while clutching the portrait in his arms
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Lucky for the art world, Saito subsequently experienced severe financial difficulties, and the painting was reportedly sold
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Its whereabouts today, however, are unknown. The record price would stand until May 2004
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when it was broken by Picasso's Boy with a Pipe, which sold for $93 million
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