Vincent van Gogh did not begin painting seriously until his late twenties, after failed attempts at working as an art dealer, a teacher, and a preacher. He threw himself into painting with an almost obsessive intensity, often producing a finished canvas in a single day, driven by an urgency that friends and family struggled to understand.
He struggled for most of his adult life with severe mental illness, including episodes of psychosis, and spent time voluntarily in a mental health facility in Saint-Rémy, France, where he continued painting between episodes, producing some of his most recognized works, including 'The Starry Night,' from the view outside his room's barred window.
During his lifetime, by most accounts, he sold only a single painting, and relied almost entirely on financial support from his younger brother Theo, who also served as his closest confidant through years of letters that reveal both his artistic thinking and his private struggles.
He died in 1890 at thirty-seven, having produced over two thousand works in roughly a decade of serious painting. Within a few decades of his death, his work was recognized as some of the most influential in the history of Western art, and today his paintings are among the most valuable ever sold.