Theodorus "Theo" van Gogh (1 May, 1857 – 25 January 1891) was a successful
art dealerAn art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art. Art dealers' professional associations serve to set high standards for accreditation or membership and to support art exhibitions and shows.-Role:...
. He was the younger brother of
Vincent van GoghVincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. He suffered from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life, and died largely unknown, at the age...
, and Theo's unfailing financial support allowed his brother to devote himself entirely to
paintingPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
. Theo died at the age of 33 several months after his brother Vincent died at the age of 37.
Theodorus "Theo" van Gogh was born on 1 May 1857 in the village
Groot-ZundertZundert is a municipality and a town in Noord Brabant, the Netherlands.Zundert lies about 10 metres above Dutch sea level , and is located 15 km south-west of the city of Breda, and 35 km north-east of Antwerp, Belgium...
in the province of
BrabantNorth Brabant is a province of the Netherlands, located in the south of the country, bordered by Belgium in the south, the Meuse River in the north, Limburg in the east and Zeeland in the west.- History :...
, Netherlands.
He was the son of Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Cornelia Carbentus.
Theodorus "Theo" van Gogh (1 May, 1857 – 25 January 1891) was a successful
art dealerAn art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art. Art dealers' professional associations serve to set high standards for accreditation or membership and to support art exhibitions and shows.-Role:...
. He was the younger brother of
Vincent van GoghVincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. He suffered from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life, and died largely unknown, at the age...
, and Theo's unfailing financial support allowed his brother to devote himself entirely to
paintingPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
. Theo died at the age of 33 several months after his brother Vincent died at the age of 37.
Biography
Theodorus "Theo" van Gogh was born on 1 May 1857 in the village
Groot-ZundertZundert is a municipality and a town in Noord Brabant, the Netherlands.Zundert lies about 10 metres above Dutch sea level , and is located 15 km south-west of the city of Breda, and 35 km north-east of Antwerp, Belgium...
in the province of
BrabantNorth Brabant is a province of the Netherlands, located in the south of the country, bordered by Belgium in the south, the Meuse River in the north, Limburg in the east and Zeeland in the west.- History :...
, Netherlands.
He was the son of Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Cornelia Carbentus. His elder brother was
Vincent van GoghVincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. He suffered from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life, and died largely unknown, at the age...
(1853–1890), who later became a famous
painterPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
.
Business
Vincent worked for some years at the Dutch (
The HagueThe Hague is the third largest city in the Netherlands after Amsterdam and Rotterdam, with a population of 485,818 and an area of approximately 100 km²...
) office of the Parisian art dealers
Goupil & CieGoupil & Cie was a leading art dealership in 19th century France, with headquarters in Paris. Step by step, Goupil established a worldwide trade with reproductions of paintings and sculptures, with a network of branches in London, Brussels, The Hague, Berlin and Vienna, as well as in New York and...
, and Theo joined the
BrusselsBrussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the de facto capital city of the European Union and the largest urban area in Belgium...
office on 1 January 1873 as their youngest employee. After Vincent was transferred to the London office, Theo moved to the office in The Hague, where he developed into a successful art dealer. By 1884, he was transferred to the Paris main office. Starting in the winter of 1880–1881, he sent painting materials as well as monthly financial support to Vincent, who was living back in the Netherlands.
Private life
In Paris, Theo met Andries Bonger and his sister
JohannaJohanna Gezina van Gogh-Bonger was the wife of Theo van Gogh, art dealer, and the sister-in-law of the painter Vincent van Gogh. After the death of Vincent and her husband she worked assiduously on editing the brothers' correspondence, producing the first volume in Dutch in 1914...
, whom he married in
AmsterdamAmsterdam is the capital and largest city of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country...
on 17 April 1889. The couple lived in Paris, where on 31 January 1890 their son Vincent Willem was born. On 8 June, the family visited Vincent, who was living near Paris in
Auvers-sur-OiseAuvers-sur-Oise is a commune in the north-western suburbs of Paris, France. It is located . from the center of Paris. It is associated with several famous artists, the most prominent being Vincent van Gogh.-History:...
. Vincent died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds in July 1890 at the age of 37 and Theo died in January 1891 at the age of 33, apparently of dementia paralytica, the last stage of
syphilisSyphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochetal bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The route of transmission of syphilis is almost always through sexual contact, although there are examples of congenital syphilis via transmission from mother to child in utero.The...
.
Theo van Gogh's great-grandson, also named
Theo van GoghTheodoor "Theo" van Gogh was a Dutch film director, film producer, columnist, author and actor. He was the great-grandson of Theo van Gogh, who was the brother of artist Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh worked with writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali to produce the film Submission, which analyzed the treatment of...
, was a film director, famous for his
controversialControversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of opinion, but sometimes the allegation that a matter of scientific fact is no better than opinion or even religious belief, as in the controversy between evolutionary biology and Creationism or Intelligent...
criticism of
IslamIslam Islam Islam ( al-’islām,
[There are ten pronunciations of Islam in English, differing in whether the first or second syllable has the stress, whether the s is or , and whether the a is pronounced as in father, as in cat, or (when the stress is on the i) as in the a of sofa...]
. He was murdered in 2004, at the age of 47.
Brothers
Theo admired his elder brother,
Vincent Van GoghVincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. He suffered from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life, and died largely unknown, at the age...
, for his whole life. But communicating with him proved to be difficult, even before Vincent opted to follow his artistic vocation. The communication between both brothers suffered from diverging definitions of standards, and it was evidently Theo who kept on writing letters. Therefore, mostly Vincent's answers survived and little of Theo's input. Theo was often concerned about Vincent's mental condition and he was amongst the few who understood his brother.
Dealer and artist
Theo was instrumental in the popularity of
ImpressionistImpressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence in the 1870s and 1880s...
artists such as
Claude MonetClaude Monet also known as Oscar Claude Monet or Claude Oscar Monet
[ giverny.org...]
and
Edgar DegasEdgar Degas
[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas , was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
by persuading his employers, Goupil & Cie, to exhibit and buy their works. On demand only, Theo seems to have shown Vincent's paintings, but evidently, a loyal apprentice of Goupil & Cie, he never sold one of them.
The two brothers maintained an intensive correspondence with Theo often encouraging his depressed brother. These letters have been collected and published into books, as revealing of the artist's mind and nature.
The relationship between the two brothers was the subject of the movie
Vincent & TheoVincent & Theo is a 1990 biographical drama directed by Robert Altman, starring Tim Roth and Paul Rhys. The movie is an exploration of the relationship between Vincent van Gogh and his art dealer brother, Theo....
(1990), directed by
Robert AltmanRobert Bernard Altman was an American film director known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective...
.
In 1886, he invited Vincent to come and live with him, and from March of that year they shared a house in
MontmartreMontmartre is a hill which is 130 meters high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district...
. Theo introduced Vincent to
Paul GauguinEugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading Post-Impressionist painter. His bold experimentation with colouring led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way...
,
Paul CézannePaul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century...
,
Henri de Toulouse-LautrecHenri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draftsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...
,
Henri RousseauHenri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naive or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier after his place of employment...
,
Camille PissarroCamille Pissarro was a French Impressionist painter. His importance resides not only in his visual contributions to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, but also in his patriarchal standing among his colleagues, particularly Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin.-Early life and work:Jacob-Abraham-Camille...
and Georges Seurat, and in 1888 he persuaded Gauguin to join Vincent, who had moved to
ArlesArles is a city in the south of France, in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, of which it is a subprefecture, in the former province of Provence.-Geography:...
in the meantime.
External links
- John Lichfield, Van Gogh's little brother goes on show, 1999, The Independent, retrieved 27 January 2009