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梵高是荷兰后印象派画家。他是表现主义的先驱，并深深影响了20世纪艺术，尤其是野兽派与德国表现主义。梵高的作品，如《星夜》、《向日葵》与《有乌鸦的麦田》等，现已跻身于全球最具盛名、广为人知与昂贵的艺术作品的行列。1890年7月29日，梵高终因精神疾病的困扰，在美丽的法国瓦兹河畔结束了其年轻的生命，是年他才37岁。那么，如何用英文介绍梵高呢？About Van Gogh关于梵高Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853–29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. He suffered from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life and died, largely unknown, at the age of 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.Little appreciated during his lifetime, his fame grew in the years after his death. Today, he is widely regarded as one of the history’s greatest painters and an important contributor to the foundations of modern art.Van Gogh did not begin painting until his late twenties, and most of his best-known works were produced during his final two years. He produced more than 2,000 artworks, consisting of around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches. Today many of his pieces―including his numerous Self Portraits, Landscapes, Portraits and Sunflowers―are among the world’s most recognizable and expensive works of art.Van Gogh spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers and traveled between The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught in England. An early vocational aspiration was to become a pastor and preach the gospel, and from 1879 he worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium. During this time he began to sketch people from the local community, and in 1885 painted his first major work 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 taken by the strong sunlight he found there. His work grew brighter in color and he developed the unique and highly recognizable style which became fully realized during his stay in Arles in 1888.The extent to which his mental illness affected his painting has been a subject of speculation since his death. Despite a widespread tendency to romanticise his ill health, modern critics see an artist deeply frustrated by the inactivity and incoherence brought about by his bouts of sickness. According to art critic Robert Hughes, Van Gogh’s late works show an artist at the height of his ability, completely in control and “longing for concision and grace”.梵高着意于真实情感的再现，也就是说，他要表现的是他对事物的感受，而不是他所看到的视觉形象。他最出名的作品就是我们熟悉的《向日葵》。这些简单地插在花瓶里的向日葵，呈现出令人心弦震荡的灿烂辉煌。梵高以重涂的笔触施色，好似雕塑般在浮雕上拍上一块黏土。黄色和棕色调的色彩以及技法都表现出充满希望和阳光的美丽世界。然而在画此作的同时，画家死命想抓住的这个世界还是缓慢却无情地溜走了。或许这画的表面反映了他悲剧性的短促一生接近终结时期的心理状态。他是个热爱自然并能从简单的事物中看到纯粹之美的画家，他说他宁可画从窗户向外看到的树影而不是想象中的美丽幻象。