Imagine a man sitting down painting a picture that he will soon call the Starry Night.  Vincent Van Gogh was born in the small village of Groot-Zundert, Holland on March 30, 1853.  His dad Theodorus was a preacher, and his mother, came from a family of bookbinders.  Vincent also had three younger sisters and two younger brothers,  although Theo  was to be his strongest support.   
      As a child he was of difficult temper.  He had a lot of love for flowers and animals, and had all kind of collections.  He grew up among the cornfields and the pine forests.  In 1864 he was sent to a boarding school in Zevenbergen and begins drawing for the first time.  Vincent later worked in his uncle's art galleries. Vincent was at one time a preacher, a bookseller, a teacher and an art dealer before becoming an artist. Vincent went to several art schools to learn how to paint.  He, probably, also had help from his friends, Gaughin, Seurat, Pissaro and Rousseau in learning art.  Van Gogh had two periods one for almost half his life where he painted only sad and dark paintings, the other half where he painted bright pictures.  

   Van Gogh was not very successful when he was alive.  He was surviving mostly with the money that his family, and more particularly his brother Theo was sending him.  He was using a lot of paints and some times had to go hungry because he was using his money to buy paint.  He sold almost no paintings.  The way he felt and the way he was dealing with it were also creating a lot of trouble.  He cut his ear because he was really angry and upset, went to a lunatic asylum and ended up shooting himself.

    Van Gogh's style of painting was to paint in blots of colorful paint.  When the violent colors are next to each other, they trick the eye in a sensation of movement.  He painted a variety of things: people, landscapes, and objects.

   "Starry Night" is one of Vincent Van Gogh's most famous artworks.  It is the picture of a town guarded by the pointed church steeple and  tall cypress trees.  The lines Van Gogh made are very thick.  They appear to be painted over again.  The shapes he used are mostly curved, such as the church. The textures are rough, it is particularly visible for the stars and the mountains. 

 The colors he used were orange, yellow, green, purple, and white.   The colors that are repeated most are black, orange and yellow.  "Starry Night" looks balanced because it looks like the town weighs as much as the cypress trees.  

    Van Gogh was probably thinking about painting a picture of the sky at night and he was probably happy looking at the church that was reminding him of the church from the village where he grew.

    Van Gogh said,  "It is good to love many things, for therein lies strength, and whosoever performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done with love is well done."  Van Gogh made his paintings seem alive with color.  The strength of feeling in his painting makes him one of the world's greatest artist.  It is sad that he died so young, in such a terrible way, before he had a chance to see how admired his paintings would be.
   

Researched and written by Christophe F.
Mrs. Sunda's 3rd Gifted Resource Class

Sources:
Van Gogh - Art for Children by Ernet Raboff
Vincent Van Gogh by Mike Venizia

             My Favorite

Vincent Van Gogh,
how did you paint
the Starry Night
with stars as bright
as the light from the
heavens above,
that stand out like white diamonds
shining in a black mine,
and those cyress trees
that look like velvet flames
rising to the clouds?

           written by Christophe F.