Vincent van Gogh

A closer introduction

The son of a clergyman, Vincent van Gogh was sent to The Hague at the age of sixteen to become an apprentice at Goupil & Co., an art dealer with whom his uncle was affiliated. In August 1872 van Gogh began his extensive correspondence with his younger brother Theo, who would join the Brussels branch of the firm the following year. Vincent was transferred to the London offices in 1873 and two years later to the Paris office, but he despised the art trade and was dismissed in 1876. He then taught briefly at a boarding school in Ramsgate and Isleworth, and, back in the Netherlands, worked in a bookshop in Dordrecht before moving to Amsterdam to study theology. In little more than a year he had left the university and entered missionary school, failing again.