Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh, Vincent (1853–90), Dutch postimpressionist painter. His early, dark-toned work, done in the Netherlands, focuses on peasant life. Later (1886–88), in Paris, he met Paul Gauguin and Georges Seurat. In 1888 he moved to Arles, in southern France, where—among many other paintings— he produced the brilliantly colored Sunflowers in a direct style and the symbolic The Night Café, using color suggestively. After a fit of insanity, in which he cut off his left ear (1889), he painted at the asylums of St. Rémy and Auvers. In Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1890) he attempted to express ideas and emotion in and through paint. He committed suicide.