Van Gogh Essay
Van Gogh Essay
In this essay I am going to discuss Vincent Van Gogh and post-Impressionism. Vincent Willem van Gogh (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.
France in the late 19th century was in the rule of the ambitious Napoleon III. Prussian prime minister, Otto von Bismarck waged war on France, capturing Paris and claiming other regions of French territory. The French troops proved no match to the well trained and large Prussian army, forcing Napoleon III to surrender and go into exile. A year later the war with Germany had ended and the Third Republic emerged, signalling the final days of the monarchy in France. Struggles between the Monarchists and the Republicans continued until finally in 1877 a move by the Royalists to replace the president with a king was blocked. This was a time of industrial expansion as well as of extensive cultural contributions, especially in the literary and artistic fields.
Breaking free of the impressionist style in the late 1880’s, a group of painters found independent artistic styles for expressing emotions instead of just optical impressions, concentrating on themes of deeper symbolism. Their work was characterized by a new aesthetic sense as well as abstract tendencies due to their use of simplified colours and finished forms. Seurat, Van Gogh, Gaugin and Cezanne all followed various stylistic paths to find genuine intellectual and artistic achievements. Although they didn’t see themselves as a group of the same movement, they are categorized as post-impressionists. For example The Boulevard Montmartre At Night
In this essay I am going to discuss Vincent Van Gogh and post-Impressionism. Vincent Willem van Gogh (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.
France in the late 19th century was in the rule of the ambitious Napoleon III. Prussian prime minister, Otto von Bismarck waged war on France, capturing Paris and claiming other regions of French territory. The French troops proved no match to the well trained and large Prussian army, forcing Napoleon III to surrender and go into exile. A year later the war with Germany had ended and the Third Republic emerged, signalling the final days of the monarchy in France. Struggles between the Monarchists and the Republicans continued until finally in 1877 a move by the Royalists to replace the president with a king was blocked. This was a time of industrial expansion as well as of extensive cultural contributions, especially in the literary and artistic fields.
Breaking free of the impressionist style in the late 1880’s, a group of painters found independent artistic styles for expressing emotions instead of just optical impressions, concentrating on themes of deeper symbolism. Their work was characterized by a new aesthetic sense as well as abstract tendencies due to their use of simplified colours and finished forms. Seurat, Van Gogh, Gaugin and Cezanne all followed various stylistic paths to find genuine intellectual and artistic achievements. Although they didn’t see themselves as a group of the same movement, they are categorized as post-impressionists. For example The Boulevard Montmartre At Night