The third site crammed in the same day as the Louvre and the Palais Garnier was the Arc de Triomphe.

Bird’s eye view

The Arc is notably famous for how the Germans marched past the Arc during their invasion in World War Two, as well as other invasions since the completion of the Arc. And of course it is famous because the infamous Napoleon Bonaparte ordered its construction in 1806 to dedicate the glory of his triumphant army. As with many monuments, there were numerous set backs and the Arc was not completed until thirty years later in 1836. Sadly, Napoleon was long banished and dead by this point.

The famous monument is located at the Place de l’Etoile, which is a huge roundabout in Paris. In order to actually get to the monument, there are no sidewalks to cross the busy traffic circle (that is the intersection of 12! streets).

Instead, there’s an underground tunnel that takes you from somewhere outside the traffic circle, right up to the monument itself! To go through the tunnel you buy/show your ticket at the entrance, and they’ll let you go in it if there aren’t too many people in the tunnel already. I don’t really remember how long it took to get to the other side, but it was pretty cool to know you’re walking under busy Parisian traffic.

Once you get back into daylight, you can go up into the Arc de Triomphe, or go see the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier memorial.

View from the top!

The staircase is in one of the four columns, and as you can tell by the title, it was a long upward spiral up the 164 feet tall building. It was a cramped space, with everyone in a line while going up, so my mom and I had to take a little break from the spiraling about 3/4 of the way up.

At the top of those stairs there’s an “attic” like area where you are in the top section, but not on the “roof” per say. There’s a gift shop area, and some Napoleonic statuary as well.

Finally to get to the top, there’s a short staircase of about maybe 10-20 steps. The view from the top of the monument is definitely worth the trek.

Oh hey look it’s Le Tour Eiffel!

I also may or may not have tried to pinch the tip of the Eiffel Tower with my fingers in a photo, while I had such a great vantage point.

After taking too many photos, I went back down to the gift shop, bought a post card or two, and then the easier trip back down the stairs.

A cute French bear from the gift shop.

At street level, the monument has inscribed, the names of the 558 French generals who fought in the Napoleonic Wars, as well as the names of the many battles.

Below the Arc de Triomphe, the remains of the Unknown Soldier are buried. At street level there is an eternal flame that was lit on Armistice Day 1920. It commemorates the memory of the dead that were never identified in the two world wars. There were numerous people around the flame, which at the time I did not know what it was for. I now have a greater appreciation for what it stands for.

“Here lies a French Soldier, who died for his fatherland.”

Inside the ornately decorated opera room

After my short two hours at the Louvre, we spent the next four hours at le Palais Garnier.

The Palais Garnier is most famously known as the Opera House from The Phantom of the Opera. Or as I remember it from, the episode of Scooby Doo where they have to find the phantom that keeps interrupting a musical group from performing.

The Paris Opera is in the central 1st arrondissement of Paris, close to the Louvre. It houses a whopping  2200 seats to watch world renowned performances.

You can’t tell from the photo, but these statues are extremely tall in the open, grand entry room.

The palace was constructed  by Charles Garnier, a French architect, whose plans were chosen in the 1861 competition to design the new opera house. After many set-backs and interruptions the building was finally completed in 1875. The design is a mixture of Roman Classical and Baroque, which means it emphasizes grandeur and symmetry:

The entrance hall and side rooms are large open spaces with glass chandeliers, marble columns, and overall elegance everywhere. The ambiance reminds me of the Versailles palace in its ornateness, but with no way near as much gold inlay.

In the picture to the left, you can see there were even detailed paintings on the ceiling. One of these that caught my eye was one done by artist Marc Chagall.

The ceiling painting was painted in 1964, and it sticks out from the 19th century decor that surrounds it. But I think that’s what makes it the most interesting: its primary color, minimalism aesthetics.

Ceiling painting by Marc Chaggal.

The main entrance was more than a place to enter the opera house. It has a wide marble staircase where the upper class society would come to show off in their fancy dresses and handsome outfits before the opera began.

There were other less grand side entrances where the less rich entered and came to their cheaper seats. The cheapest seats today start around 150 euros, about 165 US Dollars. And surprisingly, what we consider to be cheaper, less desirable seats have changed since the 19th century era.

We got a grand tour of the opera house, as it was July, the off-season for the actors. That way we even got to do down into the lower seats.  Our tour guide told us how the more expensive seats were those on the sides closest to the stage, because everyone in the theater would be able to see the persons in these seats. And that was the point of the opera for the rich high class families, to be seen in their important seats in their expensive, beautiful clothes. The even fancier seating box you can see above was the box of honor, for the most important family to sit at.

Seats of Honor

The cheap seats were those in the back, while they might get a more encompassing view of the stage, they would not be seen by others. Nowadays the seating is different, as the closest seats are the most expensive, as the point of going to the opera is experiencing it up close.

Question of the day: What opera/ballet would you want to see?

For me- I think it would be cool to see The Nutcracker ballet again, because I have not seen it since I was a little child.

Costumes from famous operas in the past

Next stop –  the world’s second most visited museum, the Louvre!

And yes I did get a selfie with the Mona Lisa which I’ll talk about shortly, no clickbait here…

Here is the interior courtyard of the Louvre, featuring the famous glass pyramids.

The Louvre Palace was built in late 12th century and served as a fortress for several centuries. Then in 1682 Louis XIV, remember him? – the famous sun king we talked about before, chose Versailles as his household and left Lourvre to display his royal collection instead. What a great cross-blog post connection!

The Louvre we know today as a public museum opened in 1793, four years after the start of the bloody(pardon my British) French Revolution. Around ten years later it was expanded greatly under Napoleon who seized (stole) art with his great army crusades, temporarily named the museum after himself, and hung the Mona Lisa in his bedroom.

He also started the Egypt department, which now has 50,000 pieces, with the expedition where Jean Francois Champollion found the Rosetta Stone!

Here is the inverted pyramid you can view from the underground of the museum. An amazing engineering feat.

Between 1988 and 1993 the iconic glass pyramids were built.

Guess how many items are in the permanent collections of the Louvre?

Make that guess even higher…

The museum has 380,000!!! And of those objects, only 35,000 can be displayed at one time. My tour guide who was with us the entire trip told us you would have to spend years at the museum to even glance at every object for a couple seconds, let alone take in their beauty or meaning. That’s because the museum is made up of 652,000sq feet (around 15 acres of space).

And boy is it crowded in there, with about 15,000 visitors/day, of which over half are foreign tourists (that’s me).

The most crowded room was of course the room that contained the Mona Lisa. I had to wiggle my way through the dense crowd to get to the front of the barricade. I took a picture, and then a girl from my tour group asked me if I was gonna take a selfie with it. So I figured YOLO, and got the best angle I could in the crowded space and being 15-20 feet from the bullet proof glass.

But let’s have a real moment here- why is the Mona Lisa so famous? It’s certainly not the most eye mesmerizing or technique masterpiece.

The back third of the crowd, this is the painting opposite of the Mona Lisa.

Is it her mysterious smile? Her lack of eyebrows? The fact that Da Vinci painted her? Or simply the cultural hype?

Whatever it is, it works well.

Ok maybe it was clickbait since you could say this is half of a selfie…

I saw a couple more famous paintings I had learned about in AP Euro History. But after seeing those I only had an hour to pick a section of the museum to see. Yeah an hour. At the most famous museum.

That I won’t see again for years. I was mildly *sarcastic eye roll* mad that we were only there for two hours, tops.

The Coronation of Napoleon – Jacques-Louis David (dah-veed)

Oath of the Horatii – Jacques-Louis David

Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss- Antonio Canova

As much as I wanted to see more European Renaissance/Baroque/etc paintings I had to go to the Ancient Egypt section. I have always LOVED Egyptian history and mythology (my major is currently archaeology), but hardly seen any in museums – this was my big chance.

(Sorry if the last several photos are not organized well, sometimes the photos don’t format very well. )

Question of the day: If you could visit one time period & country in history where would it be & what would you do?

PS: Happy Halloween!!!

I promise I’m more excited than I look.

Sarcophagus of Ramses III

Sphinx.

Ramses the Great in the Narmer stance.

Golden Mummy

Last week I showed you this picture of Notre Dame:

If you look on the bottom right you can see a part of the lock bridge in Paris. I went onto the bridge in order to take a picture of the flying buttresses of Notre Dame. After I snapped some beautiful pictures, I began to look at the thousands of locks on the bridge, realizing I was on a famous, romantic lock bridge!

The Pont de l’Archevêché was the last place I would have expected to end up at, as it was not an extremely famous historical place. But that made it an even cooler experience, in its unexpectedness.

The lock bridge itself is one of hundreds of bridges on the River Seine, the river that runs through Paris. It  carries pedestrians, bikes, and motor vehicles, and is the narrowest road bridge in Paris. Built in 1828, it is fifty-six feet wide and two hundred and twenty-three feet long.

Pont de l’Archevêché

The Pont de l’Archevêché is one of the two famous lock bridges. The Pont Des Arts is the bigger and more famous bridge that has been showcased in movies such as Now You See Me. It is thirty-six feet across and around five hundred and ten feet long!

Interestingly the Pont Des Arts was the first metal bridge in Paris, built between 1802-1804 (when the famous Napoleon was in power). During that time the bridge had trees, flowers, and benches- a fancy bridge that cost one sou, a small coin, to go across. But by 1979 the bridge had gone through aerial bombings in the two world wars, and a barge that rammed into it causing sixty meters to collapse. The bridge was reconstructed along the lines of the old bridge look, but with two less arches.

Today the bridge occasionally serves as a place for art exhibits and a plein air studio where artists of all kinds come to work in the fresh air. And of course the famous locks.

The love locks are a fairly recent happening, surprisingly. The phenomenon of attaching locks with names onto the Pont Des Arts and then throwing the key into the Seine only started in late 2008. When those locks were cleared in 2010, tourists started to do the same with the Pont de l’Archevêché. By 2014 some parts of the panels on the Pont Des Arts collapsed under the weight of the seven hundred thousands love locks.

Locks up close.

Eventually in June 2015 over one million locks had been places, to weigh about forty-five tons, before they were cut down by city council workers. Many supporters were sad to see the love symbols being taken down, while many Parisian locals were happy to see the obstructions removed.

Graffiti section on the love locks, Pont de l’Archevêché.

But the Pont de l’Archevêché locks were still intact when I saw them last July, at least.

And in case you were wondering, I did not put a lock on the bridge, as I figured it would not be worth it because it would be likely taken down in the near future.  But I think the love locks are a cute gesture of couples and loved ones.

Front of Notre Dame

After my many hours spent in Versailles, it was time to visit two more stops on that Sunday. The first stop fittingly was the grand cathedral of Notre Dame. Notre Dame means “our lady” in French, alluding to the Virgin Mary.

It is the most famous Gothic style cathedral of the Middle Ages.

But originally it was built on from two ruins of earlier basilicas. Construction began in 1163 and ended around 1250. But through the centuries other changes and embellishments have been made. Today, the rose windows, gargoyles, and flying buttresses are the most distinguished aspects of this grand cathedral.

I sadly did not get to go into the cathedral for reasons I do not recall. I think it may have not had visitor hours when we walked by it, or it simply was not put into our schedule of places to go (inside).

If you do want to see beautiful pictures of the inside of the cathedral click on this link. I’m going to focus more on the outside aspects.

As you can see I was photobombed by a trio of French police

After getting pictures in the front of the cathedral, as well as seeing a trio if French policemen walk by, I did get to go around the side of the building and see the “gargoyles” closer, and walk to a bridge where the famous flying buttresses could be seen.

First of all, I just learned that the gargoyles are actually the creatures that have been used  as rain spouts since the first construction- not the grotesque creatures we usually think of! The “gargoyles” are actually chimeras, solely ornamental sculptures of mythical creature and grotesque monsters.

Gargoyles up close

These chimeras served a purpose as guardians of the church, to ward off evil things by scaring them away. They were added on during the reconstruction in the 1840s, several centuries after the original building went on.

Normally to see the gargoyles up close, as they are at the top of the building, one would climb stairs. But I think there was a construction/restoration issue so it was not open to go there sadly. But I did go around the side of the building and see the added sculpture of author Victor Hugo of the Hunchback of Notre Dame (the original book, not the Disney movie). This was done in commemoration because his book based in the Notre Dame helped call attention to the cathedral that was in bad condition. So in the 19th century the cathedral was again restored.

Special addition

Notre Dame from a bridge, featuring my thumb

Next, we went to a nearby bridge to get in view of the flying buttresses. If you’re like I was, you probably have no clue what I mean by that. I did not understand what they were at all until they were pointed out to me in person. And wow are they cool-looking.

Flying buttresses are supports for walls that come out of the wall towards the ground. If you click the link you’ll better see them in my pictures.

Flying buttresses

Notre Dame is definitely a site I would love to visit again, so I could go up the stairs and see the chimeras and gargoyles up close!

When I saw snails near the one trianon I couldn’t help but take a picture of an iconic French animal.

So last week I left you all high & dry(like my fountain experience) with mostly talk of the gardens & fountains. Now this week it’s all about Marie Antoinette’s hamlet. No, she was not questioning “to be, or not to be, that is the question” like in Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Hamlet as in a small village.

Not only is Versailles a huge plot of land, it has it’s own village!

Queen’s Reception room in le Petit Trianon

In order to get away from the stressful and ever busy palace life, Marie Antoinette liked to spend her days at the Petit Trianon ( a small elegant villa) and the Queen’s Hamlet.

Le Petit Trianon was an elegant building with first floor reception rooms and apartments of the Queen. It was given to Marie Antoinette by her husband Louis XVI in 1774, and nobody could come here without her express permission and invitation.

On the other hand, the interior of the hamlet homes was not even close to peasant farm houses. Marble tile, bathtubs, etc were still luxurious but much simpler than the ornate rooms of the Versailles château.

That simplicity was what Marie Antoinette strived for, she ordered the building of the hamlet in 1783 to be a getaway from the crazy palace life. In four years the hamlet was constructed in a rustic style, with eleven houses, a lake, vineyards, barn areas, a tower, and more.

Five of the houses were solely for the Queen and her companions, and four of the houses were for the peasants to live on. The Queen herself would dress up as a milkmaid and pretend to be a peasant! I also remember my AP European teacher telling my class how they would give the sheep and other animals baths! It’s funny to think of that being done, but obviously the Queen would not know what real peasant life was like.

One can only imagine what the common people would think of this fake glorification of peasant life, especially in the pre-French Revolution days of starvation and inequality. I imagine if they did know, it would have only increased their hatred toward royal life and the Austrian queen who already had slurs aimed at her.

A drove of donkeys

Vineyard

In another manner, the farm and gardens of the Hamlet did contribute to Versailles. The palace was provided with a large amount of food stuffs. The farm had a herd of cows(whose milk was processed through the hamlet’s dairy building), goats, and pigeons, and there were many little vegetable gardens. Orchards of apple and cherry trees, as well as a vineyard, contributed fruits to the palace as well.

Someone was feeding the fish under this bridge. They were all about a foot or longer, with big mouths.

Even today the hamlet is stocked with fish in the lake, pigs, donkeys, a peacock, and more, as it would have been back in the eighteenth century. I could almost feel like I had been transported back in time to this quaint little village only miles from the hustle and bustle of the Parisian life.

This sassy white peacock wouldn’t ruffle out his feathers for me.

All in all, the entire grounds of Versailles are like no other, and are a must see if you visit Paris, France.

À la semaine prochaine!

aerial view of Versailles, courtesy of  http://christopherwesson.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/18_PalaceOfVersailles_France.png

We are finally onto my favorite place I have visited in Europe- les jardins de Versailles, or ‘the gardens of Versailles’ in English.

Garden Landscape of plants and fountain

While the opulence and grandeur of the gold coated château mesmerizes me, the extensive gardens out back are truly awesome. I took hundreds of photos in the outdoor lands of Versailles, and I still did not see even a third of the outside estate. Narrowing down which photos to put in this post will be a challenge for sure.

Fountain from view inside the chateau

The gardens take up 800 hectares of land, which is about equal to three square miles. The gardens are one of the most visited sites in France, with more than six million visitors per year.

As with the palace, the Sun King, Louis the fourteenth, first undertook the work to make the gardens what they are today. In 1661 he commissioned André Le Nôtre to design the layout of the gardens. These works took forty years to complete, as the land to be renovated comprised of woods, grasslands, and marshes.

I could blast out numerous more facts about the changes the gardens undertook over the hundreds of years, but I want to share just a tidbit of the beauty in these gardens…

To the right is a picture of one of the many fountains that can be found in Versailles. The fountains only run for a couple hours during the weekend, and my savvy tour leader knew this so we visited Versailles on a Sunday.

Grand Canal, with no fountains running

The weather was looking quite gloomy while we were in the palace, and of course, low and behold, soon after we go outside to visit the outside gardens, it begins to sprinkle. Which was not a big deal, until the fountains turn off because of this. Yep. We specifically go on the day the fountains are run, and the pesky weather stops us from experiencing the fountains up close. (But luckily enough I did get a picture of myself with a fountain in the distance, before they got turn off, take that rain!)

As highlighted by the photo on the right, there were fountains that sprayed high up in the air, but just looked like unfinished pipework when dormant.

But hey I couldn’t stay mad for too long- especially when I remembered how the fountains were run back in the days of the old French Regime:

The fountains’ water supply came from the ponds on the grounds of Versailles so there was limited water availability. In order to counteract this, only the fountains able to be seen from the chateau would run nonstop, but the other would lie dormant. But if an important dignitary or royal (such as the King himself) would go to walk by one of these fountains, the fountain servants who controlled the water flow via underground tunnels would turn said fountain on. And as soon as the important person walked away, that fountain would be turned off, amd the next would be turned on.

Poseidon Fountain

As you can see, the French palace workers were very smart in this, to conserve water when no one was around.

Cupid Statue

We also saw this beautiful Cupid statue under a random building, while wandering around the estates.

Additionally, there was a big garden/shrub maze, which my mother and I managed to get lost in for a bit. We would turn to find what looked like an exit and there would be a ten foot high wall blocking us. Oh, and the sprinkling decided to turn into sneaker-soaking rain as well. But I did get a cool cross photo out of the wandering in the a-mazeing maze.

And with that horrible pun, you’ll have to wait until next week to see the rest of the gardens of Versailles, especially Marie Antoinette’s quaint hamlet village.

The day after Chocostory, our last stop, we traveled via bus to Paris, about a three-ish hour drive from Bruges. We did a mini tour of the city, including taking pics with the Eiffel Tower in the background, while waiting for the hotel check in time.

France was the country I was most excited to go to, as I love French culture (and I speak amateur French). Paris is a très, très beau city filled with numerous historical sites. My time in Paris was limited to five days so most days we saw several sites per day just to cover the biggest attractions.

Gates of Versailles

Golden Gates featuring tourists

My second day in Paris began with a ride on the Subway to the RER train station, which took us to the grand palace and grounds of Versailles. Today I’m only going to just talk about the palace itself, and leave the beautiful gardens outside for next week. The outside grounds are too enormous to adequately cover them with the château.

To get to the entrance of the gate to the château, I walked along this uneven cobblestone road, that you can see above. The gates themselves were covered entirely in gold, a first glimpse into how ornate the rest of the site is.

The chateau was originally a hunting lodge made out of brick and stone, and was used as a seasonal home for the French royal family. Then in 1682 it became Louis XIV’s permanent residence, and went under construction.

The first round of expansion was designed and led by the architect Louis Le Vau. He created the addition of three new wings of stone that surrounded the original building. After he died, the work was completed by his assistant,  d’Orbay. Charles Le Brun designed the elaborate interior decoration, which comprised of only the finest goods produced in France. More rounds of expansion took place in later times.

Queen’s bedroom

statue of King Louis XIV

King’s Bedroom

King Louis XIV, called the Sun King, ruled at the height of French aristocratic power.

Versailles was not simply a very expensive home. The chateau’s immense wealth was a symbol for divine right, that God gave the royalty their absolute authority. Versailles also housed most of the aristocrats from Louis XIV through Louis XVI. The Sun King invited them to live at the palace in order to keep an eye on them so they did not stir up trouble for the king, and to drain their money with the lavish lifestyle of parties every night at Versailles.

Years later, Louis XIV’s grandson came into power, the famous Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. By this time, the extravagent lifestyle and poor running of the country had depleted the economy. This of course brought about the French Revolution, and the famous beheading of the two monarchs.

Marie Antoinette and children

Hall of Mirrors

You might be wondering by now how much did this lavish palace cost. Well in 1994, American TV company PBS concluded that the French palace could have cost anywhere between $2-300 billion in today’s money.

The Versailles chateau was an expensive palace for French royalty, and played a part in the history of France. It is hands down the most beautiful home I have ever been in, so if you get the chance to go to Paris, France make sure Versailles is at the top of your list.

*All pictures taken by myself*

A day after our last stop at the Van Gogh museum in the busy city of Amsterdam, I traveled to the quaint and quieter city of Bruges, Belgium. The cobblestone roads, horse-drawn carriages, and canals added to the air of taking a step back into history.

Side Street in Bruges

Horse & carriage

Canal

My second day in Bruges constituted a visit to the Choco-Story, a chocolate museum where one can watch chocolate being made, as well as walk around and learn about chocolate throughout history. I already knew the basics of  chocolate making, having rode the fun/informational ride at Chocolate World in Hershey Park several times, and read about how to make chocolate in nearly every biannual grade assessment throughout middle and high school. But I still learned cool, new facts about chocolate that I will talk about later, as well as receiving a pound of Belgian chocolate after the tour.

And lemme tell you, a Hershey chocolate bar has nothing on the rich, creaminess of hand-crafted Belgian chocolate (even the cheaper, quarter-sized chips that I got). Sorry, Hershey.

Peanut-butter Filled Chocolate in form of the Choco-Story ‘mascot’

The museum building itself was constructed in the sixteenth century, home to a wine tavern, then bakery, then furniture making shop, and finally, the unique chocolate museum of today.

The most interesting thing I learned at the museum, which has stuck with me since then, is that the hot chocolate we think of today is nothing like the original drink. Hot chocolate was not even hot! The chocolate beverage consisted of cocoa seed paste, water, cornmeal, chili peppers, and more. These ingredients made for a bitter and spicy concoction. Probably the farthest from sweet hot chocolate we drink today. But this chocolate drink was a staple of the ancient Mayan diet, from the dirt poor to the kings who drank from expensive, decorated cups.

Nearly two thousand years later, when the Spanish conquistador Cortez  visited/took over/decimated Central America, he made his own recipe (see bottom left picture). The recipe calls for 700 grams of ground cocoa and 75o grams of white sugar, among other ingredients. This is the beginning of hot chocolate becoming a sweet drink, with more sugar than cocoa. Two hundred years pass, and hot chocolate is a commonplace drink in cafes around Europe. In the bottom right picture you can see a recipe for a hot chocolate and coffee mix by Voltaire, famous writer and philosopher of the Enlightenment period. Additionally, a recipe by Diderot and d’Alembert was listed in the famous Encyclopedia. I have not tried any of the recipes, but if I was at home right now, and not in my box of a dorm room, I definitely would.

Explorer Cortez’s Chocolate Recipe

Hot Chocolate in Enlightenment-Era Europe

Chocolate and hot chocolate are two of many food items that nearly all Americans have consumed before, yet most of us probably did not know their origins. I hope you learned something new today, and maybe go try out one of the different recipes I wrote about–add some history to your diet!

Non-creepy Ceramics from museum

Just for fun, here is creepy baby ceramics from the museum. I have no clue why they were there….

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

On my second official day in Europe, I visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Many of Van Gogh’s more famous pieces were on display, for example: his sunflowers, self-portraits, irises, and Dutch landscapes. Arguably his most famous piece, Starry Night, was on rotation at a different museum, much to my disappointment.

Nonetheless, the numerous pieces of Van Gogh (and some of his post-impressionist contemporaries) on exhibition were breathtaking. Paintings were paired with detailed descriptions of Van Gogh’s life, and short video clips. With over two thousand paintings/drawings that Van Gogh created in his life, hundreds of them were displayed throughout the multiple storied layout of the museum.

Similarly to last week, the museum does not allow photography, either. But I promise next week I’ll finally bring in some of my own photos I took while visiting Europe!

Today we’re going to dive into the lesser known world of Van Gogh’s life and challenges to his career and mind, insipred by the museum’s current exhibition theme “On the Verge of Insanity. Van Gogh and His Illness.”

“Irises” 1889. A print of this painting is at my house, and I would see it every day.

“Self-Portrait with Straw Hat” 1887.

Vincent Van Gogh (correctly pronounced ‘goff ‘ as it is a Dutch name) did not initially aspire to be an artist, he was a clerk, art salesman, and preacher before he decided to become an artist. His short career as an artist started in 1880, until his death in 1890. From 1880-86 his works portrayed a somber style, before he moved to Paris and befriended Pissaro, Monet, and Gauguin. Van Gogh tried to emulate the Impressionism painting style they used, but he put his own twist on it. That twist came to be called Post-Impressionism.

The years of 1886-1890 constitute the height of Van Gogh’s paintings, when he created his most famous pieces, and hundreds of others. Like most artists, he did

not reach fame until after death, and lived an extremely poor and unsuccessful life. (He only sold one painting in his entire life!) Both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism contrasted to the more classical painting styles of the time, and was therefore unpopular. In fact, the name ‘impressionism’ was coined by a critic who said the painting style full of obvious brush strokes was more like an impression than a realistic painting.

His lack of success while alive may have been contributed to by his temperament and mental health. Van Gogh struggled with self-confidence and emotions. He painted during the day hours and spent his night talking with other painters, leaving little time for needed sleep. This eventually led him down the road to how he famously cut off his ear. But it was not to send a declaration of love to a lover! In a bout of insanity, he pursued Gauguin with a razor, and during the struggle he accidentally cut part of his ear off! After this crazy stunt he was admitted to an asylum for two years. In 1890 he was released, only to seemingly die of suicide two months later.

Despite the lack of success and debilitating mental issues Van Gogh faced in his lifetime, he created over two thousand pieces of artwork, influenced painters after him, and has vast popularity in modern times.

“Almond Blossom” 1890. I bought a wallet with this print on it at the museum store.

“Wheatfield with Crows” 1890. Pencil holder tin from the museum shop (2015)