Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a post-Impressionist painter of Dutch origin whose work - notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty, and bold color - had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died aged 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted (although no gun was ever found). His work was then known to only a handful of people and appreciated by fewer still.
Van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches, and prints. His work included self portraits, landscapes, still lifes, portraits and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.
Van Gogh 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 at Isleworth and Ramsgate. 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 1885, he painted his first major work, entitled The Potato Eaters. His palette at the time consisted mainly of somber earth tones and showed no sign of the vivid coloration that distinguished his later work. In March 1886, he moved to Paris and discovered the French Impressionists. Later, he moved to the south of France and was influenced by the strong sunlight he found there. His work grew brighter in color, and he developed the unique and highly recognizable style that became fully realized during his stay in Arles in 1888.
Coin design
The front of this geocoin is designed after Vincent’s 1885 painting ‘Wheatfields with stokes and a Mill’. This mill is in fact the Roosdonck mill in the Dutch town of Nuenen, which is still in use today. Nearby this mill a geocache can be found (GC1N33T).
The back side of the geocoin is designed after a self-portrait of Vincent.
The design of this Geocoin was a collaboration between van Stoffelen Sr. and geocachingshop.nl