Vincent Van Gogh is a Dutch postimpressionist painter who has a tragically short career. His work represents the archetype of expressionism, the idea of emotional spontaneity in painting. Vincent van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, Holland. He was the eldest son of six children in the family, and his father was a Dutch Protestant pastor. By the age of 27 he had been a salesman in an art gallery, a French tutor, a theological student, and a preacher among the miners at Wasmes in Belgium. When he was twelve to sixteen years old, he went to a boarding school, and the next year he started workin