Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) was born in Zundert in the Netherlands on 30 March 1853, the son of a Protestant pastor. He worked for an art dealer from 1869 to 1876, taught briefly in England, and tried to become a preacher before turning to painting in 1880. For the next years his younger brother Theo, an art dealer in Paris, supported him with money from his own small salary. Van Gogh painted peasants and labourers in dark, earthy colours, and the best known of these early pictures is The Potato Eaters of 1885.
In 1886 he moved to Paris to live with Theo and met the Impressionists. Under their influence, and that of Japanese prints, his palette grew lighter and his handling freer. In February 1888 he settled at Arles in the south of France, hoping to found a colony of artists, and in fifteen months painted more than two hundred canvases there, among them the Bedroom and the swirling, intensely coloured landscapes by which he is best known. After a crisis in December that year, he entered the asylum at Saint-Rémy in May 1889, where he kept painting between spells of illness. Starry Night dates from that year.
In May 1890 he moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris, to be close to Theo, and lodged near Dr Paul Gachet, painting the village church and wheat fields under stormy skies. He died at Auvers on 29 July 1890, aged thirty-seven. During his lifetime he sold almost nothing, but the letters he wrote to Theo and the pictures he left have made him one of the most loved painters in the world.