Vincent van Gogh: The tormented genius

“Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer's day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills,
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land.”
--Lyrics from “Vincent” by American singer DonMclean.

DonMcLean's famous tribute to Post-Impressionist Dutch artist Vicnent van Gogh's is a mirror on the life of the  tormented genius. If works like “The Potato Eaters”, “Starry Night Over The Rhone”, paintings of glorious sunflowers and his portraits now find place in some of the greatest museums in the world, in his lifetime he lived unrecognised, tortured by poverty and his own instability.
Biographers trace his lifelong anguish to a longing for maternal love.  Exactly a year prior to his birth in Groot Zundert, a small village in Dutch Brabant, on March 30, 1853 his mother Anna Cornelia Carbentus had given birth to a still born child, also  christened Vincent. Van Gogh was constantly plagued by guilt and the feeling that he was undeserving of his mother's love for being alive instead of his brother.
That haunting pain, miserable relationships, heavy drinking and a licentious life left van Gogh bereft of an anchor except for his adored brother Theo. To Theo he confided his innermost thoughts that have enabled succeeding generations to reconstruct his life and art.
“The Potato Eaters'” is considered to be van Gogh's first great work of art. The work is reflective of his solidarity with poor people whose lives like his own were full of suffering. The painting reveals five figures, four female and one male, seated around a table eating potatoes. This is a sombre work with the subjects caught in darkness except for a meagre oil lamp.
Van Gogh's later works appear more vivid though many were painted when he was in and out of sanitariums and asylums in France.  His bizarre behaviour surfaced many times over. The most notorious incident was a violent fallout with famous artist Paul Gaugin with whom he shared residence at the “Yellow House” in Arles. The two had a rocky relationship. One day after a particularly violent argument, van Gogh threatened Gaugin with a razor. A fearful Gaugin spent the night in a boarding house. The following day the “Yellow House” was besieged by crowds and police--van Gogh had cut off part of his left ear and presented it to a prostitute.
After Theo's wedding he agreed to be admitted at an asylum at Saint-Remy. While at Saint-Remy, van Gogh painted a series of cypress trees. Later he went on to his famous “Starry Night” series.  There were also dark and brooding works like "Prisoners Exercising" which he did while in hospital at Arles.
Van Gogh died just as he had lived. In Auvers-sur-Olise where he was then, he wandered into a field and shot himself. Two days later he was dead. Van Gogh died on July 29, 1890 at the age of 37. His brother Theo died six months later, on January 25, 1891.While there are numerous controversies surrounding van Gogh's personal and artistic life, a strong body of art critics regard him as the precursor of the Abstract Expressionism of the 1940 and 1950s and the trailblazer of modern art.