Vincent van Gogh's Real Name: Vincent Willem van Gogh

Quick answer: Vincent van Gogh's full name was Vincent Willem van Gogh. The Dutch Post-Impressionist was born on March 30, 1853, in Zundert, Netherlands. He died on July 29, 1890, in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, at 37, two days after apparently shooting himself. His paintings include The Starry Night (1889) (Britannica; Library of Congress).

Real name and early life

Britannica lists him as "Vincent Willem van Gogh." The Library of Congress name authority files him as "Gogh, Vincent van, 1853-1890," following the Dutch practice of alphabetizing under the main surname rather than the particle "van." LOC also records "Van Gogh, Vincent" as a cross-reference.

According to Britannica, he was the eldest of six children of a Protestant pastor and grew up in the Brabant region of the southern Netherlands. He was a quiet youth who liked wandering the countryside. At 16 he was apprenticed to The Hague branch of the art dealers Goupil and Co., where his uncle was a partner. He later worked for the firm in London and Paris but disliked art dealing. Before becoming an artist he also worked as a language teacher, bookseller, lay preacher, and missionary worker.

Career highlights

Van Gogh discovered his vocation as an artist in 1880, at 27, after a period of despair following his missionary work. Britannica quotes a letter to his brother Theo: "I want to give the wretched a brotherly message. When I sign [my paintings] 'Vincent,' it is as one of them."

In about ten years he produced roughly 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings. His distinctive style, with striking color, emphatic brushwork, and contoured forms, emerged only in the last three years of his life. Works such as The Starry Night and the three versions of The Bedroom (1888–89) date from that period. He sold little during his lifetime, but his work strongly influenced Expressionism and became enormously popular after his death. His letters to Theo document his struggles with poverty and mental illness.

Britannica says historians offer various explanations for the December 23, 1888, episode in Arles in which he cut off his ear, which happened during a quarrel with Paul Gauguin. On his death, Britannica notes a 2011 theory that he was killed by someone else, but says many historians maintain he died by suicide.

Name notes for searchers

He usually signed his paintings simply "Vincent." The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has published an explainer on why he used his first name rather than his surname. In Dutch, "van" is lowercase in the middle of a name, so "Vincent van Gogh" is the standard spelling.