Original subtitles

Van Gogh's art blossomed in one of the most spectacular bursts of creativity in art history.

In just ten years, he produced over a thousand paintings and even more drawings.

His work seems effortless, with an almost childlike touch,

but it is in fact complex, passionate, expressive,

and the result of intense study as well as feeling,

and which transcends the brief and tragic life of the painter himself.

Van Gogh was born in 1853 in a small town in the southern Netherlands called Groot Zundert.

His father was a Protestant preacher who worked in the local church to provide for a family of six children,

of which Vincent was the oldest.

As a small boy, he was passionate about nature,

and often ventured miles away from home by himself to draw the surrounding countryside.

This drawing of a bridge near his house was completed when he was just nine years old.

On leaving school at 16, Vincent went to work for his uncle's art-dealing firm in The Hague,

where he had the chance to meet artists

and absorb the style and technique of the paintings that pass through the doors.

He worked for the firm in London and Paris, but couldn't settle.

Becoming increasingly unhappy, Van Gogh returned home in 1877

to pursue a career in the church, leaving any ambitions for the art world behind him.

A year later, Van Gogh took a job as a missionary in the bleak mining area of the Borinage in southern Belgium.

It was a job that no-one else wanted.

The miners' harsh living conditions made a deep impact on Van Gogh.

He decided to share their hardship, and he ate, dressed and lived as they did.

However, the church authorities were so alarmed by his behaviour,

that within two years he was sacked.

But his time here hadn't been wasted.

While living with the miners, a real passion had been awakened.

He'd experienced the urge to draw again,

making numerous sketches of the men and women bent double under sacks of coal.

Van Gogh had finally decided to become a full-time artist.

From that moment, everything has seemed transformed for me.

But Van Gogh was penniless.

His parents, fed up with another change in their son's career direction,

refused to continue their financial support.

Instead, the responsibility passed to Vincent's brother, Theo, an art dealer in Paris.

The two had been close since childhood, and continued to correspond frequently.

I heard in Etten that you'd sent me 50 francs, wrote Vincent to Theo in 1883.

Well, I've accepted them, with reluctance, of course,

but I'm in trouble, and what else can I do?

And so I'm writing to thank you.

Van Gogh spent the next five years developing his skills as an artist.

Funded by Theo's money, he travelled round the Netherlands from countryside to coast,

looking for inspiration, making sketches, and painting in oil and watercolour.

Van Gogh's search for an artistic voice and a location in which to paint

brought him to The Hague at the end of 1881,

and he lived in a flat a few minutes' walk from the seafront here at Schaveningen.

Now, the sea had made a big comeback in Dutch art at the end of the 19th century,

and members of The Hague School were often to be seen out here painting the sea.

And so, in one of his earliest oil paintings,

Van Gogh set up his easel on the beach and started to paint,

on a day just like today, when, as he said in a letter to Theo,

the sea was the colour of ditch water just before an angry storm.

This was to be the beginnings of a potent relationship

between the artist and his natural surroundings.

But depression was also a powerful force in Van Gogh's life and work.

Living itself seemed a continuous struggle for him.

He'd no money, and he often went hungry.

When he was 29, he fell in love with one of his models,

a pregnant and alcoholic prostitute called Scene Hornick.

This is a drawing of her, which he called Sorrow.

It's a simple work, but it reveals all the signs of his ability

to convey powerful feelings through line.

He sent the picture to Theo and wrote,

In my opinion, the enclosed is the best figure I've drawn yet.

His family deeply disapproved of the relationship

and turned their backs on him still further.

So Theo visited Vincent in his squalid house

and urged him to leave scene.

30 years old, desperate and poor,

Vincent reluctantly left his lover

and returned home to his family in Neunen.

He set up a small studio in his room at his parents' house,

and set about sketching and painting the local buildings and people.

His palette during this period is muted,

lots of browns and greys.

But Van Gogh's work here is already showing

how he was beginning to alter nature in his pictures,

by bringing his own expressive vision to a scene,

rather than faithfully recreating what was in front of his easel.

During the winter, the local agricultural workers had little to do,

so Vincent found himself plenty of willing models.

He spent his time making studies of the farmhands,

the weavers and the potato pickers.

And this is Van Gogh's first major oil painting,

done in 1885 when he's 32,

and a culmination of all the studies in oil he's made

of the workers, the peasants, around the farm at Neunen.

What we see here is an incredibly unsentimentalised image.

In fact, the faces of the figures around the table

at the end of the day, having their meal,

are almost caricatured.

But what really draws me to the painting are the hands.

They're gnarled but strong,

and these are the hands that have ploughed and sowed the seeds

and dug up the potatoes themselves that they're eating.

And the whole picture is one of earthy colours.

In the right-hand side here, the woman pours coffee.

Again, part of the peasant staple diet.

But this is Van Gogh fudging the composition.

He wants five people, but she's out on a limb.

You don't have coffee and potatoes at the same time.

You spin the meal out.

And so here's Van Gogh putting the needs of a painter

before the actual truth in the scene.

But there is an honesty about the scene

that's reflected in Van Gogh's letters to Theo

when he talks about the honesty of these people,

the fact they've earned their meal, honestly.

And he's trying to depict an image of them

that comes somewhere close to truth.

He says if you want sentimentalised images of peasants,

look elsewhere.

But right at the heart of the picture is the light.

It illuminates the faces,

it casts a shadow down on the table

that itself is tilted up.

And when people saw this picture,

they said that they thought it was rather harshly painted.

They thought it was rather rough.

And he was slightly offended by that.

He said it was the best he'd done.

But look at the light itself.

There's this wonderful flicker,

this jab of orange paint.

There's two spots of orange paint on the girl's eyes there.

And I think you can see clearly,

just in that gesture and in that colour,

Van Gogh's talent slowly coming to light.

Van Gogh spent months painting the workers,

but by the end of the year,

he was ready to move on both physically and artistically.

And he sought new styles of painting in Antwerp.

Here he found his inspiration on the streets,

painting oil studies of ordinary people who lived and worked in the city,

as well as pictures of the houses seen from the window of his flat.

Vincent was still relying on the charity of his younger brother.

He wrote,

Van Gogh also hungered for more stimulation,

which he thought he might find in Paris.

When Van Gogh arrived here in Paris in 1886,

the city was already the artistic capital of the Western world,

but it also introduced a new idea and a new concept to art history,

that of the avant-garde,

where a group of radical artists

shattered the idea of what painting was and what it could be.

Leading the way were the Impressionists,

inspired first by Manet, and then Monet, Renoir, Cézanne and others,

who looked at the world around them

and painted the optical effects of light and reflection,

not just in the countryside around Paris,

but also in its parks and looked at its railway station.

In other words, they were painting modern life.

And Van Gogh had a direct introduction

into the milieu of the Impressionists

because his brother Theo was selling a lot of their work

and was also Gauguin's dealer.

And so this heady combination of a new location

with artists of his own age

and a new approach to painting

led in effect to a new Van Gogh.

Vincent was immediately excited by this new approach to art.

He began to work feverishly on self-portraits,

landscapes and still lives.

He abandoned his dark palette in favour of bright colours.

But perhaps the most noticeable change

was the technique of breaking up his brushstrokes

into dashes and dots of pure colour.

However, the cold, dark winter of 1887

left Vincent irritable and depressed

and he became restless again.

His two years in Paris had a tremendous impact

on his evolution as an artist.

But now he'd acquired what he was seeking,

it was time to move on.

And Vincent decided to leave Paris

to look for the sun in the south.

In the February of 1888,

he arrived in Arles, Provence,

where he believed he could find the right warmth

and brightness for his work.

By the time summer arrived,

Van Gogh was in his element

and thought he'd found an artist's paradise.

He started painting like a man possessed.

His frequent letters to Theo back in Paris

are full of passion for his painting and surroundings.

I'm up to my ears in work, he said,

for the trees are in blossom

and I want to paint a Provençal orchard

of astounding gaiety.

Nature here is extraordinarily beautiful.

In Arles, his palette brightened up even more,

a blossoming array of sky blues,

bright yellows and oranges.

He applied his oil paint thick,

straight from the container,

to achieve pure colour.

And the result was the many, vivid,

eye-assulting canvases

for which Van Gogh is now monumentally famous.

Vincent Van Gogh had entered his prime

at the age of 35.

He became more confident in his work

and his output was phenomenal.

Despite battling with frequent bouts of depression,

he painted relentlessly,

drawing directly from the bright new world

in which he found himself.

And this is where Van Gogh lived in Arles,

a small four-bedroom house,

the yellow house, as he called it,

next to the cafe where he ate his meals.

And it was here that he was able to settle

for the first time, really,

over the previous ten years

and almost fulfil his desire

to create a studio in the south,

as he called it.

The picture itself looks rather roughly painted.

There's something almost naive about it.

Texture and brushwork is everywhere.

But in fact, it's extraordinarily complex

and rather sophisticated.

Spatially, the way the roads

cut down in the painting

create this abstract cube

in the middle.

Also, you see the railway lines there.

The train cutting another angle

through the picture

and also linking Van Gogh

to his former life

up in Paris and in the north.

But this is also everyday life for him.

Where he eats his meals,

the streets he ambles down,

and as he says in a letter to Theo,

between the two railway bridges,

that's where his only friend,

or his real friend,

the postman Roulan lives.

It's also a picture, though,

that is more broadly an evocation

of contemporary life.

And here on the left-hand side,

the gas lamp,

are two symbols of modernity,

two inventions of the 19th century.

Colour, too,

is incredibly subtly balanced.

In a letter to Theo,

he says how wonderful

the light is in Arles

and how the yellow house

against the blue sky

is something that takes off

in his eyes.

And you see it here

in the painting

with the orange

on the edge of the roofs there

and often on the edge

of the buildings

being the complementary of blue

to give the picture

an extra sparkle.

And he'd spent the whole summer

painting outside feverishly.

In September,

he paints the yellow house

and then he turns

his attention inwards.

In fact,

straight through that window.

Which takes us here

into Van Gogh's bedroom.

It's a wonderful picture,

this.

It's become almost an emblem

of Van Gogh himself.

And in a way,

it is a self-portrait.

What we see

is Vincent's bed,

his own pictures,

two portraits that he painted

hanging on the wall.

There's his hat

and his coat

hanging by the bed.

We see the towel

hanging by the bathroom

and this simple

pine furniture.

It's wonderfully

thickly painted.

You can see globules

of paint

that have been scraped

along to create the floor.

His blanket

is this thick miasma

of red paint

and the pillows,

likewise,

this kind of haze

of ice cream yellow.

It's a picture, though,

where everything

is slightly skewed

to make a more

effective image.

The back wall

certainly seems tilted

and, in fact,

it was in the yellow house.

But look at the way

the bed

and the floor

and the chairs

are all slightly tilted

to give a Japanese-style

patterning.

He says in a letter

to Theo

he wants to try

and recreate the impact

of a Japanese print.

And colour

is supremely well-balanced here.

It really is a model

in how you make

complementary colours,

in particular,

blue and orange

and red and green,

work,

with yellow then

dominantly seeping through.

For me, though,

even though this picture

comes vibrantly to life,

it's a symphony of colours,

it's tinged with sadness.

The two pillows

in the single bed,

the monastic cell-like aura

that's created,

and it hints, I think,

at a growing isolation

in Van Gogh.

In fact,

Van Gogh's mind

was troubled

by much more

than isolation.

He found himself

gripped by terrible seizures

and hallucinations.

Doctors later

diagnosed epilepsy,

but Van Gogh

feared insanity.

He told Theo,

there are moments

when I'm twisted

by enthusiasm

or madness

or prophecy.

The attacks

made him prone

to moments of delusion

and he experienced

startling religious visions,

which he sometimes

incorporated into his work.

The illness

was becoming

a central part

of his painting.

The artist

Paul Gauguin,

seen here

in a self-portrait,

was persuaded

by Theo

to go to Arles

and visit Vincent

in 1888.

He stayed

for an exhausting

two months.

Van Gogh

had hopes

of setting up

an artist's colony

in Arles

and he saw

Gauguin's visit

as the beginning

of that plan.

Gauguin,

on the other hand,

was just doing

his art dealer

a favour.

In anticipation

of Gauguin's visit,

Vincent redecorated

the Yellow House

and painted sunflowers

to hang on

Gauguin's bedroom walls.

When Gauguin

visited the Yellow House,

he compared

Vincent's sunflowers

to those painted

by Monet

and stated that

he liked Van Gogh's

better.

These words

meant a great deal

to Van Gogh.

He wrote,

the uglier I get,

the older,

sicker and poorer,

the more I want

to avenge myself

by going in

for brilliant,

resplendent colour.

He used

thickly applied paint.

In some places

it stands out

from the canvas

in great blobs.

giving an extra

dimension to the

flower heads.

In fact,

Van Gogh produced

a series of

sunflower paintings.

This one,

though,

is more stylised

than the others.

The petals

are angular.

There are flashes

of blue and red

in some of the

flowers.

Because of their

emblematic quality,

to many people,

the sunflowers

are Van Gogh.

In 1987,

one of the

sunflower paintings

sold at auction

for nearly $40 million,

the ultimate accolade

in a market-driven world,

but supremely ironic

given that Van Gogh

failed to sell

more than a single picture

in his lifetime.

Van Gogh and Gauguin

quarrelled frequently,

and the relationship

between the two

headstrong artists

became increasingly strained.

The tension between them

came to a head

when Vincent attempted

to attack Gauguin

with a cutthroat razor.

Nothing came of the attack,

but soon after,

Van Gogh turned the razor

on himself

and mutilated his own ear.

In the morning,

he was found unconscious

in his bed

and taken to hospital.

He'd suffered

one of his worst fits.

This painting shows

the artist a month

after the attack,

and you can see

that he's a broken man.

The fact that the bandage

is on full display

suggests that Van Gogh

his painting is physical

and by implication

his mental injuries.

Van Gogh painted

many self-portraits.

Between 1885 and 1889

he completed over

40 pictures of himself

in a whole range

of emotional guises.

He left hospital

after a few weeks,

but the people of Isle

were anxious about Van Gogh

posing a menace

to the community.

He therefore returned

to the hospital

where he was kept

in isolation for a month.

During this time,

Van Gogh were extremely depressed.

His dream of an artist's

community in Isle

lay in tatters.

I don't dare to ask

other painters

to come here

after what has happened,

he wrote.

They risk losing their mind,

just like me.

Van Gogh continued to paint

despite his growing

mental illness,

but the attacks

made things difficult.

He wrote of his fears

to Theo.

I know the opportunities

of working don't return,

especially in my case,

in which a more violent attack

may forever destroy

my power to paint.

This letter was written

from an asylum

in the nearby village

of Saint-Rémy,

where he'd become

a voluntary patient.

Here, in moments of sanity,

he painted anything

and everything he could see,

the other patients,

the rooms,

the grounds outside,

and the night sky.

And it was here

that he painted

the monumental work

Starry Night.

Perhaps more than

any other Van Gogh painting,

it reveals the state

of the artist's mind.

The sky swirls around

the enormous yellow stars

and moon,

above a town

that is not Saint-Rémy,

but an imaginary place.

It's thought that

his condition intensified

the colours and lights

that he saw,

and that this inspired him

to create such a turbulent

effect in the sky.

Theo exhibited

the work in Paris.

The painting grabbed

everyone's attention.

It was like nothing

they'd ever seen before.

The painting illustrates

Van Gogh's development

of Impressionist ideas.

The broken brushwork

is reminiscent of their style,

but the bold contrast

and dynamic movement

in the painting

goes far beyond

an impression of starlight.

Van Gogh is presenting

his actual experience

of the night,

how the landscape

under the stars

actually makes him feel.

In May 1890,

Van Gogh left the asylum

and the south of France

and arrived in

Auvers-sur-Oise,

an artist community

just north of Paris.

In Auvers,

Van Gogh worked prolifically,

completing 70 canvases

in as many days.

Many of these works

were turbulent landscapes.

He wrote to Theo,

''They're vast fields

of wheat under troubled skies

and I didn't need

to go out of my way

to try and express sadness

and extreme loneliness.

I almost think

that these canvases

will tell you

what I can't say in words.''

This is Van Gogh's

last great work,

painted between one

and two weeks

before he died.

It's called

''Wheatfields and Crows''.

And what it shows

is an image

of absolute emptiness

and chaos.

When your eye looks

at the painting,

first of all,

you're drawn this way

and that.

The whole eye pattern

swirls over the paint

surface itself,

rather as Vincent

has done with his brush,

stabbing these thick

yellow wheat sheaves.

And then look

at the sky itself.

It's as if he's almost

sculpturally moulded it

with his hands.

He's got his hands

stuck into the paint

and swirled around.

And then you try

and find a path through.

And then in the end,

the route,

literally and metaphorically

through the painting,

is the road here

that meanders his way

and then dumps you

nowhere and perhaps

onto oblivion,

just beyond.

You can see it there

on the horizon.

And then as an afterthought,

it's as if the ghosts

of despair

are descending upon him.

With just the shortest

of little black brush strokes,

he puts in the crows,

these great symbols

of foreboding.

And this painting

tragically marked

the site of Vincent's

suicide.

It's thought that

he walked into the field

and shot himself

in the stomach.

He then struggled

back to his lodgings

and lay on his bed

till he was found

in a pool of blood.

Van Gogh died

two days later

on July the 29th, 1890.

He was buried in Auvers

where sunflowers

were thrown

onto his grave.

Van Gogh lived his life

in isolation,

poverty,

obscurity

and then notoriety,

feared as a madman.

But now he's loved

around the world.

He's become

a cultural legend,

the stuff of which

creative dreams

and Hollywood movies

are made of.

But amidst the industry

that's grown up

around Van Gogh,

it's easy to lose sight

of the radical expressiveness

of his paintings,

their edginess,

their delicacy

and precariousness,

surfaces which still

seem fresh,

radiating light

and energy

and feeling.

If you want to find out

more about the artists

and work explored

in this series,

there's an accompanying book

called Great Artists

available in all good bookshops.