The Potato Eaters, and the Sunflowers are not blooming
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Tribute: Vincent Van Gogh earned the right to paint the light because he was willing to stand in the darkness first. And that is why I am a fan, not because he was a great artist, or a tragic figure, but for how seriously he took the act of being human.
By Uttara Shidore in Mumbai
(Vincent Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Zundert, Netherlands. He died on July 29, 1890, in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, at the age of 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.)
People often assume that my love for Vincent Van Gogh comes from my experience of special -needs parenting, or maybe because I have lost someone close to me to suicide.
But that’s not it.
The reason I am a fan has nothing to do with a tragic mirror, nor with the vibrancy of his palette, but everything to do with the weight of his soul.
I read Lust for Life (a biographical novel on Van Gogh by Irving Stone) long before I studied his art in detail, and to me, the man has always meant more than his paintings. While the world focuses on his genius or his tragedy, I am drawn to the intensity of his righteousness.
In the years leading up to taking the brush in earnest, Vincent served as a lay preacher in the Borinage, a desolate coal-mining district in Belgium. It is here that his true character revealed itself.
Unlike the religious establishment of his time, Vincent refused to preach from a position of comfort. He didn't just speak to the poor, he became one of them.
He gave away his bed, his clothes, and his money. He blackened his face with coal dust so he wouldn't appear "above" the miners. He slept on the floor of a hut because his conscience would not allow him to be comfortable while others suffered.
He was eventually dismissed by the church, not because he had failed, but because he was too sincere for them to contain.
This was not just a passing phase. He remained, throughout his life, a man of radical, often uncomfortable integrity, and that same conviction extended into his relationships.
While many see his failed romances as mere tragedy, they were actually extensions of his moral compass. He took in Sien Hoornik, a pregnant sex worker, indifferent to the scandal it would cause.
That same sincerity defined his friendships. Vincent didn’t seek the company of the elite, and was drawn instead to the integrity of people like Joseph Roulin, a postman in Arles. Though Roulin was a simple mail-handler, Vincent saw in him the depth of a philosopher, famously comparing him to Socrates.
He wrote of Roulin:
"He is a man who is neither embittered, nor melancholy, but such a good soul, so wise, so full of feeling and so faithful."
Vincent’s art did not emerge from aspiration alone, but from exposure, from having lived among miners, peasants and workers whose lives stayed with him.
He carried their weight into his work, and into his thinking, a constant questioning of how one ought to live in a world where suffering is so commonplace that most people have trained their eyes to look past it. Whom he chose to be would shape the art that followed.
We see him giving rare dignity to the Potato Eaters and worn-out labourers, his paintings illuminating faces that others had chosen to dismiss. Even his famous sunflowers are rarely shown in full, pristine bloom.
He chose to paint them heavy-headed, bending, beginning to fade. He saw more dignity in what had been marked by life than in what was untouched.
Van Gogh was perpetually tormented by the misery of others, and constantly questioned his own worth in the face of it.
In July 1880, he wrote a letter to his brother Theo:
"I am a man of passions… it is a matter of being useful and of use to the world in some way... One must have a spark of the fire that is called soul within oneself, and one must feed it."
And in many ways, his life became a testament to these words.
Vincent earned the right to paint the light because he was willing to stand in the darkness first. And that is why I am a fan, not because he was a great artist, or a tragic figure, but for how seriously he took the act of being human.
And that, to me, is far rarer than genius.
Also see by Uttara Shidore:
Uttara Shidore is a diversity and inclusion consultant and a self-taught artist.
Editor's no;te: All images are representational, or AI generated.