Programme 1

Now one of the world's favourite artists, with curiosity about his life at an all time high, the story of van Gogh starts in his birthplace, the town of Zundert in the Netherlands. Today's floral processions celebrating the artist contrast starkly with the conflict within the quiet Protestant family as they tried to find gainful employment for their son. His birth on 30 March 1853 to the pastor Theodorus van Gogh and his wife Anna, was the first of six to the couple. He was named after his uncle, an art dealer, Vincent Willem van Gogh. After a lonely and awkward childhood at boarding school in Tilburg then at secondary school, Vincent was despatched to The Hague to join his namesake at Goupil & Co. In 1873 he was promoted and sent to London, home of four million people. During a daily walk from his lodgings in Brixton to Covent Garden, his eyes were opened to the realities of poverty and wretched living conditions. It was here too that he suffered his first painful rebuff in love, from his landlady's daughter Eugenie. Always religious, his found solace in the bible, and after being transferred then removed from his gallery job in Paris, he taught in Ramsgate and Isleworth before setting his sights on missionary work among the poor. After 15 months of futile attempts to enter university in Amsterdam, Vincent, now aged 27, was finally sent on trial to the impoverished Borinage coal mining area in France, where the living conditions horrified him and soaked into his growing art work. In echoes of The Pilgrim's Progress, he walked to Brussels in his quest to become an artist, learning largely from textbooks. Returning to his parents' house in Etten, van Gogh met and fell in love with his recently widowed cousin Cornelia Kee. Upset by her rejection and by his father's condemnation, Vincent left for The Hague and immediately moved in with a prostitute, Sien.