Map of the life and works of Vincent van Gogh

In this painting, I tell the story of the life and works of Vincent van Gogh through his paintings and words. As it’s a schematic map,  I have shown motifs from some of his best-loved paintings very roughly in the locations where they were made.

How long did it take to paint?

The actual putting down of paint took only about 6 weekends. But I can honestly say that really it’s taken about 38 years of study.

The study of a lifetime

I became gripped by the life and works of Vincent van Gogh waaaay back in 1979. I was a teenager on a school trip to London’s National Gallery. My art teacher stood me in front of Vincent’s paintings of the Sunflowers (F 454/JH 1562) and the Artist’s Chair and Pipe (F 498/JH 1635). It was as if I’d been punched between the eyes! What an incredible fusion of colour, sponteneity, drawing, and passion! That moment has had a powerful influence my own art practice and also my travels. I have visited nearly all the places where Vincent lived and worked, and I have blogged about it extensively here.

Where did Vincent van Gogh live and work?

Vincent was born in the Netherlands, in the province of Brabant, close to the Belgian border. Over the years he travelled all over his native land. He had a very soft spot for The Hague, where (scandalously!) he lived with a woman and her children as a family. It’s the only time he enjoyed a family life of his own. In 1883 he went up to Drenthe a province in the north of the Netherlands where he says he taught himself to paint.

As a very young man, he went to live and work in the UK, in Ramsgate and then in London. He was a school teacher, a preacher, and an art dealer. From this period he leaves us only a few sketches in letters. He loved to read, not only the bible but also contemporary literature – he was a big fan of Charles Dickens.

In Belgium, Vincent went to work in the mining community of the Borinage as a lay preacher. He lived for a time in Antwerp where he briefly enrolled at the Art Academy.

But it was in France that Vincent’s outpouring of paintings was at its most frenzied. He lived in Paris with his brother Theo who was an art dealer, and in every sense Vincent’s greatest supporter. Then Vincent moved south producing many of his best-loved paintings in Arles which is also where the most infamous act of artistic self harm took place. He spent the last 3 months of his life in the beautiful village of Auvers just north of Paris. But it didn’t end well.

“You can’t be at the pole and the equator at the same time. You must choose your own line, as I hope to do, and it will probably be colour” wrote Vincent to his brother Theo, April 1888