Vincent Van Gogh
Zundert is the birthplace and childhood home of the famous painter Vincent van Gogh. He was born on 30 March 1853 in a little house on Zundert's main street, "Markt 29". The former house is gone as it was too dilapidated to preserve, but a plaque at this location still commemorates his birth. In May 2007 the renovation of the house at Markt 29, and the neighbouring house, started. After the renovation, the Vincent van Gogh house was opened in August 2008.
People can still visit the Dutch Reformed church built in 1806 in which the father of Vincent, Theodorus van Gogh, started preaching in 1849. In the graveyard is the grave of Vincent's one year older brother, who died soon in infancy - also called Vincent van Gogh. Vincent did not paint when he lived in Zundert, but drew some sketches. In letters to his Brother Theo, Vincent recalls Zundert, and its surroundings a few times when writing about childhood, serenity and learning about life. Because he died in the French town of Auvers-sur-Oise, on 29 July 1890, a special relation between these two places exists. This can, for example, be noticed by the existence of a slightly hidden Auvers-sur-Oise Street, ending at the Van Gogh Square.
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Famous quotes containing the words vincent van gogh, van gogh, vincent, van and/or gogh:
“It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to.... The feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.”
—Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890)
“It is not a certain conformity of manners that the painting of Van Gogh attacks, but rather the conformity of institutions themselves. And even external nature, with her climates, her tides, and her equinoctial storms, cannot, after van Gogh’s stay upon earth, maintain the same gravitation.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“Country of hunchbacks!—where the strong, straight spine
Jeered at by crooked children, makes his way
Through by-streets at the kindest hour of day,”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
“The variables of quantification, ‘something,’ ‘nothing,’ ‘everything,’ range over our whole ontology, whatever it may be; and we are convicted of a particular ontological presupposition if, and only if, the alleged presuppositum has to be reckoned among the entities over which our variables range in order to render one of our affirmations true.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“It is not a certain conformity of manners that the painting of Van Gogh attacks, but rather the conformity of institutions themselves. And even external nature, with her climates, her tides, and her equinoctial storms, cannot, after van Gogh’s stay upon earth, maintain the same gravitation.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)