研究所、轉學考(插大)、學士後-英文題庫下載題庫

Although Vincent Van Gogh was one of the world's most innovative artists and left behind hundreds of famous paintings, his first choice was not art. This sensitive young man wandered through life and worked in various places before he finally decided to become a painter at the age of 27. These early experiences combined with his family background were unlikely preparation for the eventual development of his artistic career.

   Vincent Van Gogh was born in 1853 in Zundert, a village in the south of the Netherlands. Van Gogh's father was a preacher, or religious leader, in the Dutch Reformed Church. Vincent began attending the village school at the age of 8 and later went to a boarding school where he proved to be an excellent student of languages. However, at age 15, he suddenly returned home and never continued his education. 

    Instead, Van Gogh took a position as a trainee at the age of 16 at Goupil & Cie, an international art dealer with offices in the Hague. Four years later, he was transferred to the company's London offices, where he developed a deep appreciation for the paintings and drawings he saw in the city's museums. However, Van Gogh gradually began to lose interest in his work and became more and more focused on religion. This inhibited his ability to do a good job. The company he worked for sent him to Paris several times, but his job performance continued to get worse until they let him go in 1876. At this point, Van Gogh decided to become a minister like his father and he joined a boarding school outside of London as a teacher and assistant preacher. 

   A year later, Van Gogh gave in to his parents’ wishes to return to the Netherlands, but remained devoted to religion. Even though he did not have the required formal preparation, he started work as a minister for the poor. Finally, in 1880, he decided to combine his interest in religion with his desire to become a painter. He said, “To try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God; one man wrote or told it in a book; another, in a picture.” Living on a subsidy from his beloved brother Theo, Van Gogh managed to complete his first paintings in 1882 at the age of 29. 

   During the next six years, the artist spent time in the Netherlands, Belgium and Paris. Finally, in 1888, exhausted by the intensity of the art world in Paris, he moved to Arles in the South of France to recover. There, he entered the most productive two-year period of his life. The paintings from this period are full of aggressive brush work and bold colors. Although he was fighting serious depression at the time, Van Gogh produced an amazing number of beautiful paintings before he killed himself at the age of 37.