Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. His oeuvre includes landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, most of which are characterised by bold colours and dramatic brushwork that contributed to the rise of expressionism in modern art. Van Gogh's work was only beginning to gain critical attention before his death from suicide at age 37. During his lifetime, only one of Van Gogh's paintings, The Red Vineyard, was sold.

Quotes

I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.

Fate
For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
Great things are done by a seris of small things brought together.
One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever come to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on the way.
Well, the fact is that one cannot retrace one's steps, and the steps one has taken greatly influence the future.
Art is something greater and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which, though produced by human hands, is now wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from a man's soul.
I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.
The thing has already taken form in my mind before I start it. The first attempts are absolutely unbearable. I say this because I want you to know that if you see something worthwhile in what I am doing, it is not by accident but because of real direction and purpose.
If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

Success
A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.
If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.
I would rather die of passion than of boredom.