van Gogh's life is not merely the story of an individual's personal misfortune, it is a story of an intelligent man's refusal to accept the hypocrisy and injustice of nineteenth-century materialistic society. Like his contemporaries in many parts of the world, he put into pictorial form this great dissatisfaction. The son of a Dutch minister, van Gogh came to painting through relatives in the art business. At the age of fifteen he was given a job in The Hague branch of the family firm, Goupil and Company, but did not like the work. He was transferred to London in 1873 where he suffered intensely from the refusal of his landlady's daughter to marry him. For some years he shuttled back and forth between the various branches of the company. Nowhere was he able to accommodate himself to what he considered the dishonesty of telling people that the pictures he was selling were good art.

His natural religious tendencies led him to try the ministry, but he failed to qualify and volunteered to do missionary and relief work instead. Characteristically he chose the most miserable industrial area in northern Europe, the Belgian Borinage. He lived with the coal miners, shared in their misery, and worked with such fervor that the officials in Brussels dismissed him. It was in these wretched surroundings that he began to draw sketches of the miners and their families. From there he went to Brussels to study art, developing very slowly. A second disappointment in love was followed by a period in The Hague where van Gogh studied with his cousin, the animal painter Anton Mauve. In 1884 at the home of his parents he produced a second batch of studies; soapy, green spiritualistic sketches dealing with the lives of the poor peasants and weavers of the town. Although crude and awkward in many ways, these early works, such as the famous Potato Eaters (below), show a moving and impressive intensity of feeling for people.

In 1886 his brother Theo, who had become an important art dealer, brought him to Paris. He met Degas, Seurat, Gauguin, Lautrec, and others and fell under the influence of Impressionist color and Japanese perspective effects. However, the excitement of the big city was not good for him; in 1888 he was sent to Arles in the south of France for his health. Now, van Gogh's art had changed from the dark tones of his early work to the more joyous hues of Impressionism. Now under the powerful southern sun his colors intensified tremendously. Varying the Impressionist technique, he applied his spots of paint in a systematic personal manner. Tiny wriggles of pure pigment were squeezed out of the tube directly onto the canvas. His La Mousme (below) utilizes this trick of color application; through it the picture is set in motion in a new way. The emphasis now is on sinuous curving movements, on outlines of form as in Gauguin, but sparkling and vibrant in effect rather than broad and resonant. The slight clashes of color create a restless reaction, as do the rough and irregular outlines. Comparing this girl's expression to that of Renoir's young women, we see the difference between the joyousness of Impressionism and what van Gogh called "the heartbroken expression of our time."

Superficial charm is the furthest things from the painter's mind. He distorts the various elements of the figure and makes them conform to the outline of the chair; the body is reduced to a series of color and form patterns. Thus he allows us to look at the face against the pale background, giving an internal rather than external quality. Instead of an "impression" of form and atmosphere, van Gogh is concerned with an "expression" of the inner character of the person or the scene. The Night Cafe (below) is a type of scene painted many times before by other artists. However, most painters use the cafe as a scene of enjoyment, whereas Van Gogh brings together a group of unhappy people who have no other place, like the figures in the left background. It becomes a scene of social misery; the sad people scattered about the room are to be pitied. The deliberately clashing reds and greens, violets and blues are van Gogh's way of giving greater impact to the scene. In a letter to his brother, Theo, he wrote the scene represents "a place where one can ruin oneself, run mad or commit a crime."