14 August 2024

We have visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam on several occasions and marvelled at the collection of paintings by Vincent van Gogh. During his life, he painted over 900 canvases. He only began painting when he was 27 and died by his own hand ten years later.

During his lifetime, he sold only one painting. His poverty was only alleviated by the generosity of his brother, Theo, who, strange as it may seem, died six months after him. Vincent spent what money he had on paints rather than food.

Because of his poverty, we are the beneficiaries of a whole series of self-portraits. If an artist couldn’t afford a model, he could always paint himself. And Vincent did this with enormous honesty. Remember the portrait with the bandaged ear?

In order to conserve canvases, he would paint over some of his earlier works. There may yet be a masterpiece hidden underneath a masterpiece. The tragedy of his life was memorably capsulated by the singer Don McLean who wrote his song Vincent in 1971 when I was a teenager. It has the memorable lines:

They did not listen,

they did not know how …

perhaps they’ll listen now.

As one who aspired to be a minister like his father, his life resonates with deep insights from the Gospel.  ‘I sent you out to reap that for which you did not labour.’ said Jesus. ‘Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.’ We sow the seeds  but the harvest is not guaranteed in our day.

In the poem, ‘Vincent’, by the Scottish poet, Kenneth Steven, we see Vincent embracing the sun, the ripening crops, the colour and vitality of the day. This is contrasted with the slum dwellings and the oppressive factories. The poet concludes:

He is free to feel: his few years measured

by the way he sees what is beautiful,

and puts everything the world considers worthless

onto canvas for the rest of time.