Vincent van Gogh
Sold one painting in his lifetime and produced most of his work in the last two years of it
Vincent van Gogh was the son of a Dutch pastor. He tried and failed at several careers: he was dismissed from the art dealers Goupil after seven years, drifted through jobs as a teacher and bookseller's clerk in England and Holland, and in 1879 went to preach among coal miners in Belgium, giving away his clothes and sleeping on straw until the church authorities removed him for excessive zeal.
He was 27 when he decided to become an artist. His brother Theo, an art dealer in Paris, sent him money every month for the rest of his life and received in return hundreds of letters that are among the most honest documents any artist has left. Vincent taught himself to draw, painted the peasants of Nuenen in dark browns, then moved to Paris in 1886 and discovered colour.
In Arles in 1888 he painted sunflowers, orchards and his bedroom, and invited Paul Gauguin to join him. The friendship collapsed within weeks; after a quarrel Vincent cut off part of his own ear. He admitted himself to an asylum at Saint-Remy in 1889 and painted The Starry Night from his window between attacks.
He sold a single painting, The Red Vineyard, in early 1890. That July, in Auvers, he shot himself and died two days later with Theo at his side. Theo died six months after him. It was Theo's widow, Johanna, who kept the paintings together and spent the rest of her life making his name.