Vincent Willem van Gogh, or English: ˌvæn ˈɡɒx, 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) is a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work has a far-reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact.

He suffers from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life, and dies largely unknown, at the age of 37, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Little appreciated during his lifetime, his fame grows in the years after his death.

Today, he is widely regarded as one of history's greatest painters and an important contributor to the foundations of modern art.

Van Gogh does not begin painting until his late twenties, and most of his best-known works are produced during his final two years.

He produces more than 2,000 artworks, consisting of around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches.

Although he is little known during his lifetime, his work is a strong influence on the modernist art that follows.

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 spends his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers and travels between The Hague, London and Paris, after which he teaches in England.

An early vocational aspiration is to become a pastor and preach the gospel, and from 1879 he works as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium.

During this time he begins to sketch people from the local community, and in 1885 paints his first major work The Potato Eaters.

His palette at the time consists mainly of somber earth tones and shows no sign of the vivid coloration that distinguishes his later work.

In March 1886, he moves to Paris and discovers the French Impressionists.

Later he moves to the south of France and is taken by the strong sunlight he finds there.

His work grows brighter in color and he develops the unique and highly recognizable style which becomes 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 romanticize 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".