Van worked first for art dealers,then as a private teacher.After his dismissal as preacher,he decided to become an artist.Initially he painted sombre scenes from the life of the poor which show his personal engagement with his subjects,using darktoned colours and a rough,sharp-edged technique.Although he sought friendship,all his life he suffered from loneliness because of his tragic and melancholic temperament and his emotional outbursts.He often went back to his parent’s home,where the most important of his pictures were painted between 1883 and 1885.

Until 1886 he was at Antwerp,where he entered the Academy for a few months.After discovering the charms of Japanese woodcuts he began to use lighter colours,and his two years in Paris from 1886 to 1888 became the most important period in his artistic career.He was introduced to the Impressionists,Symbolists and Pointillists,and also met Gauguin.

In 1888,in search of the southern light,he went to Arles,where Gauguin visited him.In 1889 he went to and asylum at St.Remy,where he continued to paint.In 1890 he moved to Auvers-sur-Oise,where his friend and patron Doctor Paul Gachet lived.Unfortunately this medical attention could not help him,and ,despair of his condition,he shot himself.

Between 1888 and his death van Gogh produced,in just thirty-six months of feverish creativity,those 463 paintings which established his worldwide fame and made him one of the founders of modern 20^th century painting.

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