Vincent vanGogh

We have begun studying a new artist.  The students are learning a bit about Vincent van Gogh's short life growing up in Holland.  The students learned that he was a pastor early on until he realized he wanted to become a painter.  They were fascinated to see the differences between his early work that was primarily composed of dark colors and some of his later pieces that included vibrant colors.  They were also taken back by the fact that art became more important to him than the basic need to eat and were surprised to hear that he would rather buy art materials than food.  They were very confused as they thought he should have been making a lot of money because he created such great artwork, but they found out that only 1 painting sold while he was alive.  We will be looking closely at, "The Starry Night" and doing a replication of this piece. We will also be looking at a variety of other pieces he created that have become popular in the last 100 years.