Vincent van Gogh, Self-portrait without beard, end of September 1889, Oil on canvas, 40 × 31 cm., Private collection. This was Van Gogh's last self-portrait. Given as a birthday gift to his mother.
Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died aged 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted (although no gun was ever found). His work was then known to only a handful of people and appreciated by fewer still.
Van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. His work included self portraits, landscapes, still lifes, portraits and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.
Van Gogh spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers, traveling between The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught for a time in England. One of his early aspirations was to become a pastor and from 1879 he worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium where he began to sketch people from the local community. In 1885, he painted his first major work The Potato Eaters. His palette at the time consisted mainly of somber earth tones and showed no sign of the vivid coloration that distinguished his later work. In March 1886, he moved to Paris and discovered the French Impressionists. Later, he moved to the south of France and was influenced by the strong sunlight he found there. His work grew brighter in color, and he developed the unique and highly recognizable style that became fully realized during his stay in Arles in 1888.
The extent to which his mental health affected his painting has been a subject of speculation since his death. Despite a widespread tendency to romanticize his ill health, modern critics see an artist deeply frustrated by the inactivity and incoherence brought about by his bouts of illness. According to art critic Robert Hughes, van Gogh's late works show an artist at the height of his ability, completely in control and "longing for concision and grace".
Self-Portrait with Straw Hat, Paris, Winter 1887/88, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gongshow: Gaiden[]
Vincent Van Gogh was met by Karissa, Mark, and Topher on the Violence layer of Hell, in the forest of suicides. He was a great oak tree that stood in the centre of a larger number of thinner trees. He appeared to have no knowledge of his death or of the fact that he was in Hell. When asked about souls, he claimed to have been searching for his soul through art for a very long time, and believed that one could create a soul through art.
He claimed to be waiting for his brother Theo, and missed his old gang, including a young man named Astor.
The crevice that formed to pull Gongshow: Gaiden down deeper into hell ripped the tree Vincent in half. It is unknown what happened to him next.