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Van Gogh's work is organized chronologically into five periods, each representing a different phase of his life and work: The Netherlands, Paris, Arles, Saint-Remy and Auvers-sur-Oise

Vincent spends several weeks in The Hague in late 1881 taking painting lessons from his cousin by marriage, Anton Mauve, a leading member of the Hague School. Mauve introduces him to watercolor and oil technique.

Following in the footsteps of Millet and Breton, by 1884 Vincent resolves to be a painter of peasant life. He sketches and paints the weavers of Nuenen and completes 40 painted studies of peasant heads.

Theo admonishes Vincent that his darkly colored paintings are not in the current Parisian style, where Impressionist artists are now using a bright palette.

Van Gogh is invigorated by Antwerp's urbaneness: "I find here the friction of ideas I want." He has access to better art supplies, the opportunity to draw from nude models, and is exposed to the substantial collections of Dutch and Belgian art in the city's museums and galleries, particularly the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens. Among the exotic goods entering Europe through Antwerp are Japanese woodblock prints, which Vincent begins to collect.

On February 27, 1886, Vincent arrives in Paris. He lives with Theo in Montmartre, an artists' quarter. The move is formative in the development of his painting style. Theo, who manages the Montmartre branch of Goupil's (now called Boussod, Valadon & Cie), acquaints Vincent with the works of Claude Monet and other Impressionists. Previously he had known only Dutch painting and the French Realists; now he sees for himself how the Impressionists handle light and color, and treat their original themes from the town and country. For four months Van Gogh studies at the prestigious teaching atelier of Fernand Cormon, and he begins to meet the city's modern artists, including Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard, Camille Pissarro, and John Russell.

His palette becomes brighter, his brushwork more broken. Like the Impressionists, Vincent takes his subjects from the city's cafes and boulevards, and the open countryside along the Seine River. Through Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, he discovers the stippling technique of Neoimpressionism, also called Pointillism, and freely experiments with the style. "What is required in art nowadays," he writes, "is something very much alive, very strong in color, very much intensified."

...unable to afford models while perfecting his skills, Vincent turns to his own image: "I deliberately bought a good mirror so that if I lacked a model I could work from my own likeness."

Vincent keeps balls of wool with threads in different hues-red and orange, blue and yellow, orange and gray-to sample and test the effect of different color combinations. His palette gradually lightens, and his sensitivity to color in the landscape intensifies. Vincent regularly paints outdoors in Asnieres, a village near Paris where the Impressionists often set up their easels. Later, he writes to his sister Wil: "And when I painted the landscape in Asnieres this summer, I saw more colors there than ever before."

Vincent buys Japanese prints from the noted art dealer Siegfried Bing and studies them intensively. He arranges an exhibition of Japanese woodcuts at a Paris cafe and makes a few "copies" after Japanese prints. His own work takes on the stylized contours and expressive coloration of his Japanese examples.

Still hoping to establish an artists' cooperative, he rents a studio in Arles, the "Yellow House," and invites Gauguin to join him. In anticipation of his arrival, Vincent paints still lifes of sunflowers to decorate Gauguin's room. The flowers represent the sun, the dominant feature of the Provencal summer; Gauguin describes the paintings as "completely Vincent."

Vincent enters a period of sustained creative activity. He has little to distract him from his painting, for he knows almost no one: "Whole days go by without my speaking a single word to anyone." He befriends the local postman, Joseph Roulin, and paints portraits of his entire family as well as of his few other acquaintances.

Captivated by the spectacle of spring in Provence, Vincent paints the landscape. He concentrates on blossoming fruit trees and later, in summer, on scenes of rural life. He paints outdoors, often in a single long session: "Working directly on the spot all the time, I tried to grasp what is essential." He identifies each season and subject with characteristic colors: "The orchards stand for pink and white, the wheatfields for yellow."

Color also becomes an expressive tool by which Vincent conveys particular emotions, an innovation that aligns his work with Postimpressionism. For Bedroom in Arles, he depicts his room with a stark simplicity, using uniform patches of complimentary orange and blue, yellow and violet, red and green. He writes to Gauguin: "I wanted all these different colors to express a totally restful feeling."

Vincent converts an adjacent cell into a studio, and although subject to intermittent attacks, he produces 150 paintings during the year he stays at Saint-Remy. His doctor initially confines him to the immediate asylum grounds, so Vincent paints the world he sees from his room, deleting the bars that obscure his view. In the asylum's walled garden he paints irises, lilacs, and ivy-covered trees. Later he is allowed to venture farther afield, and he paints the wheatfields, olive groves, and cypress trees of the surrounding countryside.

Vincent is sometimes without the stamina or confidence to execute original works. He regains his bearings by painting copies after his favorite artists, including Millet, Rembrandt, and Delacroix. Relying on his collection of prints, Vincent translates the black and white reproductions into his own intensely personal color compositions. He makes more than twenty copies of Millet's peasant scenes, and he reinvents Delacroix's Pieta, in which the bearded Christ bears some resemblance to himself. After one particularly violent attack, in which he attempts to poison himself by swallowing paint, Vincent is forced for a time to confine himself to drawing.

Despite his illness, he paints one masterwork after another during this time, including Irises, Cypresses, and The Starry Night. Theo praises the new paintings: "They have an intensity of color you have not attained before . . . but you have gone even further than that. . . . I see that you have achieved in many of your canvases . . . the quintessence of your thoughts about nature and living beings."

Working with great intensity, he produces nearly a painting a day over the next two months. A series of 12 canvases in a distinctive panoramic format celebrates country life: "I'm all but certain that in those canvases I have formulated what I cannot express in words, namely how healthy and heartening I find the countryside."