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Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Post-Impressionist Vincent van Gogh was the epitome of the tortured genius. So much so, that his death was probably a happy release for him. He struggled to find happiness all his life, as he recalled: "My youth was gloomy and cold and sterile...."

Van Gogh is almost remembered more for his madness, as for his art. Yet the same man who produced the immortal paintings of sunflowers was the same man who had the short but tempestuous friendship, and probably the most famous friendship between artists in history, with French artist Paul Gauguin - ending with van Gogh going at Gauguin with a razor before the infamous act of self-mutilation and the slicing off of his own earlobe (a local paper had exaggerated things so that it was reported that he had cut off his whole ear).

Despite everything, Vincent van Gogh was not always hampered by depression. He did say: "Hardly a day passes that I do not make something. As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress." Around eighteen months after the Gauguin incident, Vincent ended his sad life in a French wheatfield, shooting himself in the stomach.

- Paul Rance/booksmusicfilmstv.com.