Vincent van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Zundert in the Brabant region of the Netherlands. He was the eldest surviving child of Theodorus van Gogh, a Protestant minister, and Anna Carbentus.

Though modern art was long a form of expression that the general public found hard to accept, the work of Vincent van Gogh, almost alone, proved easy to assimilate; in truth he is so universally ...