paperback Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsɛnt ˈʋɪləm vɑn ˈɣɔx] ( listen);[note 1] (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work had far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. His paintings include portraits, self portraits, landscapes, still lifes, olive trees and cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers. He was largely ignored by critics until after his early death in 1890. The only substantial exhibitions held during his lifetime were showcases in Paris and Brussels. The first published full-length article came in 1890, when Albert Aurier described him as a Symbolist. The widespread and popular realisation of his significance in the history of modern art did not begin until his adoption by the Fauves and German Expressionists in the mid-1910s. Vincent van Gogh was born to upper middle class parents and spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers before travelling to The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught in England at Isleworth and Ramsgate. Although he drew as a child, he did not paint until his late twenties; most of his best-known works were completed during the last two years of his life. He was deeply religious as a younger man and aspired to be a pastor and from 1879 worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium where he sketched people from the local community. His first major work was 1885's The Potato Eaters, from a time when his palette mainly consisted of sombre earth tones and showed no