Vincent van Gogh

Artist: Vincent van Gogh

Background: Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch post impressionist painter whose work had an influence on 20th century art. Van Gogh was born on March 1853 and started painting in his late twenties. His first work was painted using somber earth tones which slowly changed over time to his renowned brightly colored paintings most of which contained yellow because Van Gogh was heavily influenced by sunlight during his stay in the south part of France. Van Gogh died by suicide and was theorized by critics to be frustrated at his state before death as he felt that his illness hindered his ability to paint.

Renowned work: Sunflowers series. Van Gogh painted sunflowers with varying backgrounds but kept his theme of yellow sunflowers and the flowers remained inside a vase. However the background is different in each initial painting going from turquoise to royal blue to blue green and finally yellow. However one of the initial paintings (The one with royal blue as background) was destroyed by fire during World War II, the others remain today.