Did Vincent Van Gogh have any artist training?

Answer 1

Van Gogh had quite a bit of training - some formal, but mostly informal.

Van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued making drawings throughout the years leading to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties. He spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers, traveling between The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught for a time in England. (One of his early aspirations was to become a pastor and from 1879 he worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium where he began to sketch people from the local community). In March 1886, he moved to Paris and discovered the French Impressionists. He had already started painting, but up to that point he was strictly self-taught.

On the recommendation of his brother Theo, he traveled to Brussels in 1880 to study with the prominent Dutch artist Willem Roelofs, who persuaded him, in spite of his aversion to formal schools of art, to attend the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he registered on November 15, 1880. At the Académie , he studied anatomy and the standard rules of modeling and perspective.

In January 1882, he settled in The Hague where he called on his cousin-in-law, Anton Mauve (1838-88) who was a Dutch realist painter and a leading member of the Hague School. Mauve introduced him to painting in both oil and watercolor and lent him money to set up a studio.

Despite his rejection of academic teaching, he took the higher-level admission exams at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 1885, and in January 1886, matriculated in painting and drawing. Van Gogh traveled to Paris in March 1886, to study at Fernand Cormon's studio.

In addition to his limited formal training van Gogh socialized with, exchanged ideas and methods with and learned from many of the prominent artists of his time. Vincent's brother Theo was an art dealer who stocked his gallery with paintings from other prominent contemporary artists such as Claude Monet and Edgar Degas. While he lived with Theo, Vincent was able to study their work. Theo introduced Vincent to Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Rousseau, Camille Pissarro and Georges Seurat. Vincent also was friends with Émile Bernard, Honoré Daumier, and several other lesser known artists of his time.