Vincent Van Gogh, Mental Trouble
Vincent Van Gogh was a modern artist who led a disturbing life. His life was filled with failures, depression, and sometimes violence. He had many mood swings, and I believe had he lived today, he would have been diagnosed as a manic depressive. His turbulent life was clearly in his paintings. As a modern artist, his paintings set the direction of a new style called Expressionism. In this style, he puts his inner most feeling into the subject of his painting.
From the time of Vincent's childhood, he was odd and aloof. His sister, Elizabeth Van Gogh described Vincent's behavior as a child by saying, "He was intensely serious, uncommunicative, and walked around clumsily and in a daze, with his head hung low. Not only were his little sisters and brothers like strangers to him, but he was a stranger to himself." He became a disappointment to his mother and as he got older, to his entire family. His brother supported Vincent for the ten years that he worked as a painter. Except for Theo, he was rejected by his family. He says his childhood was gloomy, cold, and sterile.
Vincent seemed doomed to fail at most anything he tried from love to career. He was one to always come out behind no matter what he tried. His sudden outbursts in reaction to these bad things, alienated the people around him.
He tried becoming an apprentice at the age of 18 for an art dealer at the firm of Goupil & Co. located at The Hague, in Belguim. He learned of different styles of painting and what makes a painting valuable. He was not a salesperson nor understood how to sell paintings. If he thought a painting was junk, he would tell the customer so. He failed this job and was fired by the firm. After this, his family got him a temporary job as an assistant teacher, which he only held for a short time before returning home to Holland.
Vincent was 24 now. he lived in a rented room and worked as a clerk in a bookshop. Many kids would tease him by calling him a queer freak. Soon he began to know that he was not a good teacher or a good bookseller, but he was desperate for a job. His family thought of him as a failure by this time. To please his father, Vincent tried to become a minister. He studied for the University entrance exam in Theology. Soon he found out that he did not have the ability he needed to learn math and foreign language. His relatives helped him once again to enter an evangelical school in Brussels and after that he became a missionary preacher in the Borinage, a mining district.
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