Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh painted for roughly ten years, and for the first five of them he was not very good. That is worth saying plainly, because the usual telling turns him into a natural whose genius was simply unrecognised. He trained himself late, starting at twenty-seven after failing as an art dealer, a teacher and a lay preacher, and the early Dutch work is dark, thick and often badly drawn — he knew it, and he kept drawing figures for years specifically because he knew it. What changed was Paris. Two years there, from 1886, put him in front of Impressionist colour and Japanese prints at the same time, and the palette opened completely. The last two and a half years, in Arles and then in the asylum at Saint-Rémy and finally at Auvers, produced most of what he is known for, at a rate of nearly a canvas a day in some months. He sold very little in his lifetime. His brother Theo, an art dealer, supported him throughout and died six months after him; Theo's widow Jo van Gogh-Bonger is the reason the work survives and is known, having spent decades placing it with critics, dealers and museums.