My favourite painting is De Sterrenacht (The Starry Night), by Vincent van Gogh. I'd never read van Gogh's life story, although I could identify his Sunflowers, and his self-portrait with a bandage over the ear that I'd heard he cut off himself in a fit of madness. (But after all, aren't all artists a bit mad? This is what they say.)
Today I saw a collection of stills from a Dr. Who episode about van Gogh, which left a rumbling curiosity behind. Mostly because I was fresh out of something to watch on Netflix, but also because I love The Starry Night, I decided to satisfy the rumble. (I poked around on a few places on the internet, but my biggest source was Britannica - click here to read their comprehensive entry.)
Van Gogh was born into a Protestant family. He was a quiet kid who liked the outdoors. At age 16 he began to work with his uncle, an art dealer.
At age 19, he suffered a heartbreak, being rejected by his love.
The encyclopedia doesn't say why, but he moved to England and worked as a teacher and lay preacher. I am pretty certain he was trying to get as far away from his pain as possible. He wanted to share the gospel, and ended up doing missionary work in southern Belgium, where he gave away everything he owned to the poor.
Upon learning he did that, the church told him he was interpreting the scriptures too literally, and dismissed him from his missionary post.
Rejected by his love, and rejected by the church that he loved, van Gogh gathered up his twice-broken heart and began to dedicate himself to painting, not to wallow in despair, but wanting to "bring consolation to humanity through art."
“I want to give the wretched a brotherly message,” he explained to his
brother Theo. “When I sign [my paintings] ‘Vincent,’ it is as one of
them.”
He painted - a lot - for ten years.
Then came the madness of the ear-episode. This is what we know.
On Christmas Eve, 1888, van Gogh and Gaugin had an argument. Britannica says "van Gogh snapped." The original story was that van Gogh chased Gaugin with a razor and then cut off the bottom half of his own ear. Then he took the severed earlobe to a brothel and asked the women there to guard it carefully.
Two art historians in 2008, however, published a work called Van Gogh's ear: Paul Gaugin and the Pact of Silence. They claim that Gaugin cut off van Gogh's ear with a sword, but the two men made a pact of silence and van Gogh took the blame for it. (I feel like this action is a lot more likely and in keeping with the character of his life so far than that he chased Gaugin down only to cut off his own ear.)
Anyway, after this he was checked into an asylum, and once he was released, checked himself back in in order to be under medical supervision. It was there he painted De Sterrenacht. He continued to experience periods of calm and despair.
He painted. He wrote long, detailed letters to friends. He wrote about seeing the steady luminous morning star, which he included in The Starry Night. He worked and he trembled with loneliness.
Eventually, the despair loomed larger than he could bear, and he shot himself. He died 2 days later.
I did not expect to find that the now-famous painter had once been a passionate preacher. I did not imagine that the theme of despair and consolation, which see-saws so heavily in my own life, was also the see-saw in his.
I did not expect to cry over an Encyclopedia Britannica entry.
But here we are.
And apparently I'm not the only one his life has spoken to. He is now considered one of the most widely influential artists of all time.
(ps if you want to cry over a song, here's one.)
And here's a screen-grab of the stills I saw that started me down this rabbit hole:
The thing about stars is, you can only see them at night. You can only really see them when everything around you is really dark.
And hope shines steady through the starry night.
(Did we miss it? We did not. God splashed the metaphor all over Bethlehem's night sky. The gift of the darkness is this: hope shines on.)
Merry Christmas, friends.
xo.
