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Medical specialists have so far failed to agree on a diagnosis, although the most likely one is bipolar disorder. But between these attacks, for the majority of the time, he was relatively sane. He later endured eight further attacks, culminating in a final crisis on 27 July 1890, when he shot himself in the chest. During the first severe one, just before Christmas in 1888, he cut off most of his ear.
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Rather, he suffered a series of mental crises. Van Gogh had extremely serious mental health issues, but it is a crude oversimplification to label him as “mad”. Vincent was not poor, but the problem was that he was terrible at managing money. In Arles, for instance, he received around 2,500 francs (£100) in his first year. But once Vincent set out to become an artist, his brother Theo supported him with a regular financial allowance. It is true that when Van Gogh was a preacher in the coal-mining area of the Borinage he lived a life of miserable poverty.
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This was actually more than the salary that his father got as a clergyman, although his father did get free accommodation. At 20, as a young art dealer in London, he earned £90 a year (a workman, with a family to support, might have earned a quarter of this). Myth 5: Van Gogh was poverty strickenĪlthough Van Gogh had constant financial problems, for most of his life he actually received a good income. The current exhibition at the Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch, Van Gogh’s Inner Circle: Friends, Family, Models (until 12 January 2020), vividly emphasises how Vincent successfully maintained a network of sympathetic people around him. Although Bernard was 15 years younger, the two men remained loyal to each other to the very end. But despite these challenges, Van Gogh got to know a large number of people, and had several close friends, such as the artist Emile Bernard, whom he met in Paris. Van Gogh undoubtedly had an awkward personality, resulting in some friendships ending badly and his continual travels often made it difficult to sustain relationships. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Portrait of Van Gogh (1887) Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) Myth 4: Van Gogh was a loner without friends Van Gogh became intimately bound up with the avant-garde Parisian art scene during this period, making him more of an insider than an outsider. While living with Theo in 1886-88 Vincent met hundreds of artists, including most of the Impressionists (and their Australian follower John Russell). Vincent could hardly have had a better link to potential customers, since his brother Theo was employed by Goupil in Paris and knew the art scene intimately-but Van Gogh’s works were too radical for the time. After later setting out to become an artist, he attended classes in Brussels, Antwerp and Paris, although each time he quickly dropped out, mainly because he had his own strong ideas and was disinclined to follow instructions.
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Van Gogh worked as an assistant art dealer for six years, for the Goupil gallery in The Hague, Paris and London-so from his late teens he was learning about art and the art trade. John Peter Russell’s Portrait of Van Gogh (1886) Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) Myth 1: Van Gogh was an outsider in the art world
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