I close my eyes and the image of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Irises” springs to mind…

Deep blue irises dancing on a sea of blue-green leaves arising from riotous red earth dominate the canvas with some small indeterminate red-orange flowers at the top left hand corner.

The details of his life are now a part of history – a preacher among coal-miners, his devotion and close relationship with his brother Theo, his fascination with Japanese art and Impressionism, his time in sunny southern France where he painted many of his famous “Sunflower” works, his collaboration with Paul Ganguin and his troubled mental health.

 

His frequent mental and physical breakdowns, culminating in the cutting off of his ear lobe, are legendary. Even during periods of incarceration in asylums and hospitals, yielding little beneficial treatment, he continued to turn to painting as a healing solace and the “Irises” was one such outcome of his confinements.

In 1890, less than forty years old, the impoverished man whose paintings currently sell for hundreds of millions of dollars at modern auctions, shot himself in the chest, probably as an outcome of a disagreement over money with Theo. After suffering agonizing pain over two days he finally passed away reconciled in the arms of his beloved brother. One of his last words was “La tristesse durera toujours” (“The sadness will last forever.”). Modern research suggests that his mental degradation may have been brought on by his habit of absentmindedly sucking his paintbrushes, which resulted in lead poisoning.

 

Vincent was many things to many people. The town of Arles considered him a madman and its Catholic church refused burial since his death was a suicide. Many of his contemporaries thought he was poor, disagreeable and restless. His own mother towards whom he nursed a lifelong one-sided devotion was said to have destroyed hundreds of his canvases which he had sent as gifts to her. Monet said of him “How could a man who painted flowers as beautifully as he did ever be so unhappy?” Vincent was termed a “brilliant failure”. Theo, who died six months after he did and was eventually buried next to him, was probably the one person who truly loved him while recognizing his advanced genius that was beyond the understanding of contemporaries.

To me, Vincent Van Gogh was the essential artist – an unconventional seeker of truth, the theologist who could feel ardent love for a street prostitute and ambitiously pursued inner vision rather than money, a ground-breaking painter of hard-working peasantry in unembellished reality (see the “Potato Eaters”), who laid magic on canvas with his paintings of vibrant beautiful flowers that bring joy to thousands of viewers even today. Vincent said “A profession isn’t something that we do to bring home our pay … a profession is something that we do here on earth that brings us as close to God as possible.” And that in essence is the uncompromising and vibrant beauty of Vincent Van Gogh.