About Van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was born on 30 March, 1853 in Zundert, a town in the southern Netherlands. The son of a Protestant pastor, he was the eldest of six children and, by all accounts had a normal and happy childhood. He came from an upstanding family of clergymen, art dealers and military officers, and his parents would have liked for him to have followed in that tradition.

Van Gogh spent his early life working for a firm of art dealers, and after a brief spell as a teacher, became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880 at the age of 27.

Vincent van Gogh produced all of his more than 2,000 works, including 900 paintings and 1100 drawings or sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best known works were produced in the final two years of his life, and in the two months before his death he painted 90 pictures.