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2008-04-30 12:18 | 只看楼主 树型| 收藏| 小 中 大 11#

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101-year-old man parachutes into record book

A 101-year-old man is believed to be the world's oldest skydiver after he accepted a dare from friends and jumped out of an airplane at nearly 10,000 feet.

Frank Moody, from Holloways Beach on Australia's northeastern coast, beat the record set by a 94-year-old Norwegian in 1999, said Amanda Pilkington, from Skydive Cairns, which organized the jump.

On the morning of June 16, Moody jumped in tandem with an experienced skydiver from more than 9,900 feet, she said.

"He's an absolute legend. It was a bit of a drunken dare by some of his mates at the local Holloways Beach football club. He said: 'Sure, I'll go jump out of an airplane,'" Pilkington quoted him as saying, adding she nearly fell off her chair when she first heard Moody go for the record.

"We decided to attempt to beat the record as well as giving Frank an awesome experience and one that he'll remember for the rest of his life. He's very switched-on and very witty and charming. It's an absolute pleasure to have done this for him," she said.

Pilkington said the club would send video of the jump and other details to the Guinness Book of Records head office in London and expects confirmation of the record shortly.

Moody went down to the football club with his son John after the jump to have a Guinness beer to celebrate and collect on bets place by his friends.

"He's been given his footage and photographs so he's got proof and evidence that he's done it," Pilkington said.
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2008-04-30 12:19 | 只看楼主 树型| 收藏| 小 中 大 12#

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Briton who saved Jews remembered

A British agent who saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis is being remembered with a plaque being placed outside the British embassy in Berlin.

Frank Foley was based in Berlin in the 1930s, working as a passport control officer, and using his position to provide papers for Jewish people.

It is believed Mr Foley saved tens of thousands of lives, even hiding people in his own home.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw described him as "a true British hero".

Eyewitnesses recall Mr Foley as an unassuming hero - a small, slightly overweight man with round glasses .

But he was actually Britain's top spy in the city.

He not only interpreted the rules on visas loosely, enabling Jews to escape to Britain and Palestine, but he also helped to forge passports.

And, despite not having diplomatic immunity, he gave shelter to some people in his own home.

Mr Foley's efforts have already been recognised by Israel, which declared him a righteous gentile, like Oskar Schindler, and he has also been honoured by his home town of Stourbridge in the West Midlands.

Michael Smith of the Daily Telegraph, who wrote a book about him, said that although it is not known exactly how many lives Mr Foley saved, archive evidence would suggest the number was in the tens of thousands.

He said, "With Schindler you had 1,400 people working in a factory, working with him, they worked closely together. Their lives were together.

"So when they moved to Palestine, which later became Israel, they are all talking to each other, they are still on the phone to each other even if they are not living in Israel - they have a collective memory of what Schindler did.

"But with Foley a lot of the people he helped probably didn't even know he helped them.

"They were helped in ones or twos or in small family units - five or six people perhaps. They have got to Palestine. They have a visa they know they shouldn't have - they are not going to talk about it."
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2008-04-30 12:19 | 只看楼主 树型| 收藏| 小 中 大 13#

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The Firm Helen Keller

In 1882 a baby girl caught a fever that was so fierce she nearly died. She survived but the fever left its mark - she could no longer see or hear. Because she could not hear she also found it very difficult to speak.
So how did this child, blinded and deafened at 19 months old, grow up to become a world-famous author and public speaker?
The fever cut her off from the outside world, depriving her of sight and sound. It was as if she had been thrown into a dark prison cell from which there could be no release.
Luckily Helen was not someone who gave up easily. Soon she began to explore the world by using her other senses. She followed her mother wherever she went, hanging onto her skirts; she touched and smelled everything she came across. She copied their actions and was soon able to do certain jobs herself, like milking the cows or kneading dough, she even learnt to recognize people by feeling their faces or their clothes. She could also tell where she was in the garden by the smell of the different plants and the feel of the ground under her feet.
By the age of seven she had invented over 60 different signs by which she could talk to her family, if she wanted bread for example, she would pretend to cut a loaf and butter the slices. If she wanted ice cream she wrapped her arms around herself and pretended to shiver.
Helen was unusual in that she was extremely intelligent and also remarkably sensitive. By her own efforts she had managed to make some sense of an alien and confusing world. But even so she had limitations.
At the age of five Helen began to realize she was different from other people. She noticed that her family did not use signs like she did but talked with their mouths. Sometimes she stood between two people and touched their lips. She could not understand what they said and she could not make any meaningful sounds herself. She wanted to talk but no matter how she tried she could not make herself understood. This makes her so angry that she used to hurl herself around the room, kicking and screaming in frustration.
As she got older her frustration grew and her rages became worse and worse. She became wild and unruly. If she didn't get what she wanted she would throw tantrums until her family gave in. Her favorite tricks included grabbing other people's food from their plates and hurling fragile objects to the floor. Once she even managed to lock her mother into the pantry. Eventually it became clear that something had to be done. So, just before her seventh birthday, the family hired a private tutor - Anne Sullivan.
Anne was careful to teach Helen especially those subjects in which she was interested. As a result Helen became gentler and she soon learnt to read and write in Braille. She also learnt to read people's lips by pressing her finger-tips against them and feeling the movement and vibrations. This method is called Tadoma and it is a skill that very, very few people manage to acquire. She also learnt to speak, a major achievement for someone who could not hear at all.
Helen proved to be a remarkable scholar, graduating with honors from Radcliff College in 1904. She had phenomenal powers of concentration and memory, as well as a dogged determination to succeed. While she was still at college she wrote 'The Story of My Life'. This was an immediate success and earned her enough money to buy her own house.
She toured the country, giving lecture after lecture. Many books were written about her and several plays and films were made about her life. Eventually she became so famous that she was invited abroad and received many honors from foreign universities and monarchs. In 1932 she became a vice-president of the Royal National Institute for the Blind in the United Kingdom.
After her death in 1968 an organization was set up in her name to combat blindness in the developing world. Today that agency, Helen Keller International, is one of the biggest organizations working with blind people overseas.
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2008-04-30 12:19 | 只看楼主 树型| 收藏| 小 中 大 14#

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Bill Gates in His Boyhood

As a child-and as an adult as well-Bill was untidy. It has been said that in order to counteract this. Mary drew up weekly clothing plans for him. On Mondays he might go to school in blue, on Tuesdays in green, on Wednesdays in brown , on Thursdays in black, and so on , Weekend meal schedules might also be planned in detail. Everything time, at work or during his leisure time.
Dinner table discussions in the Gate's family home were always lively and educational. "It was a rich environment in which to learn," Bill remembered.
Bill's contemporaries, even at the age, recognized that he was exceptional. Every year, he and his friends would go to summer camp. Bill especially liked swimming and other sports. One of his summer camp friends recalled, "He was never a nerd or a goof or the kind of kid you didn't want your team. We all knew Bill was smarter than us. Even back then, when he was nine or ten years old, he talked like an adult and could express himself in ways that none of us understood."
Bill was also well ahead of his classmates in mathematics and science. He needed to go to a school that challenged him to Lakeside-an all-boys' school for exceptional students. It was Seattle's most exclusive school and was noted for its rigorous academic demands, a place where "even the dumb kids were smart."
Lakeside allowed students to pursue their own interests, to whatever extent they wished. The school prided itself on making conditions and facilities available that would enable all its students to reach their full potential . It was the ideal environment for someone like Bill Gates.
In 1968, the school made a decision that would change thirteen-year-old Bill Gates's life-and that of many of others, too.
Funds were raised, mainly by parents, that enabled the school to gain access to a computer-a Program Data processor(PDP)-through a teletype machine. Type in a few instructions on the teletype machine and a few seconds later the PDP would type back its response. Bill Gates was immediately hooked- so was his best friend at the time, Kent Evans, and another student, Paul Allen, who was two years older than Bill.
Whenever they had free time, and sometimes when they didn't, they would dash over to the computer room to use the machine. The students became so single-minded that they soon overtook their teachers in knowledge about computing and got into a lot of trouble because of their obsession. They were neglecting their other studies-every piece of word was handed in late. Classes were cut. Computer time was also proving to be very expensive. Within months, the whole budget that had been set aside for the year had been used up.
At fourteen, Bill was already writing short programs for the computer to perform. Early games programs such as Tic-Tac-Toe, or Noughts and Crosses, and Lunar Landing were written in what was to become Bill's second language, BASIC.
One of the reasons Bill was so good at programming is because it is mathematical and logical. During his time at Lakeside, Bill scored a perfect eight hundred on a mathematics test. It was extremely important to him to get this grade-he had to take the test more than once in order to do it.
If Bill Gates was going to be good at something. It was essential to be the best.
Bill's and Paul's fascination with computers and the business world meant that they read a great deal. Paul enjoyed magazines like Popular Electronics, Computer time was expensive and, because both boys were desperate to get more time and because Bill already had an insight into what they could achieve financially, the two of them decided to set themselves up as a company: The Lakeside Programmers Group. "Let's call the real world and try to sell something to it!" Bill announced.
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2008-04-30 12:20 | 只看楼主 树型| 收藏| 小 中 大 15#

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AN UNUSUAL ARCHITECT—LEOH MING PEI

On this vivid planet, it appears colorful with azure blue seawater, lush green plants and many world famous buildings. Among these largest artificial articles in the world, many originated from the same architect—Ieoh  Ming  Pei.

Ieoh Ming Pei, the 1983 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, is a founding partner of I. M. Pei & Partners based in New York City. He was born in China in 1917, the son of a prominent banker. He came to the United States in 1935 to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B. Arch. 1940) and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (M. Arch. 1946). 

During World War Ⅱ, he served on the National defense Research Commission at Princeton, and from 1945 to 1948, taught at Harvard. In 1948 he accepted the newly created post of director of Architecture at Webb & Knapp, Inc., the real estate development firm, and this association resulted in major architectural and planning projects in Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Pittsburgh and other cities. In 1958, he formed the partnership of I. M. Pei & Associates, which became I. M. Pei & Parteners in

1966. The partnership received the 1968 Architectural Firm Award of The American Institute of Architects.

Pei has designed over forty projects in this country and abroad, twenty of which have been award winners. His more prominent commissions have included the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D .C.; the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library near Boston; the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado; the Dallas City Hall in Texas; the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Centre (OCBC) and Raffles City in Singapore; the West Wing of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Fragrant Hill Hotel near Beijing, China, designed to graft advanced  technology onto the roofs of indigenous building and thereby sow the seed of a new ,distinctly Chinese form of modern architecture; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse , New York; and the Texas Commerce Tower in Houston.

He has designed arts facilities and university buildings on the campuses of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Rochester, Cornell University, the Choate School, Syracuse University, New York University and the University of Hawaii. He has been selected to design the headquarters for the Bank of China in Hong Kong.

Pei is currently a member of the National Council on the Arts, and previously served on the National Council on the Humanities. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (of which he served a term as Chancellor), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Design. He is a member of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institue of Technology.

As a student, he was awarded the MIT Traveling Fellowship, and the Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship at Harvard. His subsequent honors include the following: the Brunner Award, the Medal of Honor of the New York Chapter of the AIA, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Medal for Architecture, the Gold Medal for Architecture of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Alpha Rho Chi Gold Medal, la Grande mé-daille d’Or de I’ Académie d’ Architecture (France), and The Gold Medal of The American Institute of Architects. In 1982, the deans of the architectural schools of the United Sates chose I. M. Pei as the best designer of significant non-residential structures.
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2008-04-30 12:20 | 只看楼主 树型| 收藏| 小 中 大 16#

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A WOMAN BILLIARDIST ALLISON FISHER

In school, Allison was a very competitive team sport player and almost pursued a career as a physical education teacher, but snooker was the game she excelled in. She got her start in Snooker by simply falling in love with the game.

“My first interest in snooker occurred when I was seven years old. My dad was watching a snooker competition on the television, and I liked what I saw so much that I asked for a table. Being the youngest and spoilt, my with was granted. I became the proud owner of the smallest competitive table on earth: 1.5 long. I graduated to a 6’ x 3’ table when I was eleven years old, and challenged everyone who entered our house. Whether they liked it or not! When I was twelve years old, I went to the Peacehaven Central Club with my parents where, for the first time I saw a full size snooker table(12’×6’). I had a burning desire to play on it. I went home that night and I was crying in bed. My mum came in and asked me what was wrong. “I want to play on the big table.’ I replied. So she asked my dad to ask the owner, John Copper, if I could play on it. And he made my dreams come true.”

At thirteen Allison got into a league, and at fifteen she was seriously competing in the world of Snooker. By the age of seventeen, she had won her first world title and never looked back. From then until the age of twenty-seven. Allison Fisher was a dominant  force in the world of Snooker, She left Snooker, winning over 80 national titles and eleven world championships, including three mixed doubles and the only Ladies Mixed Doubles event ever held. She played in her first Women’s Professional Billiards Association (WPBA) Tournament in October 1995. This newcomer startled everyone by winning two of her four events, and by placing third in the World Pool Association (WPA) World 9-Ball Championship In 1996 Allison continued to storm the tour with seven first place finishes, and a # I ranking. As she would for the next three years, Allison earned Player of the Year honors from Billiards Digest and Pool and Billiard Magazine. She also won her first WPA World 9-Ball championship, and her first WPBA Championship.

She kept up her stellar performances in 1997 by winning six of eleven WPBA events. Allison defended her championship when she again won the WPA World 9-Ball title. As in 1996, this year saw Allison Fisher end with the # I ranking in the WPBA. Her peers also honored her with a “Most Congenial Player” award from the Year-End Billiards Digest Awards.

On the personal side, Allison is British enough to miss her Mom’s pot roast, the atmosphere in pubs, small villages, lifelong friends and family, and Alfie, her dog. Never one for the “bar scene,” a great evening for Allison is to have good food, good friends, and a night of laughter ·····

As good as she has been for the game. Allison is quick to point out that it has been even to her. Allison Fisher has always counted her blessings and since her beginning, she has never hesitated to give her time to worthy charities. She has a heart of gold and never hesitates to involve herself where she can help others.

Her sponsors are proud to have her associated with them, and Allison only promotes what she believes in .Be sure and take a peek at her sponsor page, as well as Allison’s new line of signature cues. Allison is also developing a new series of instructional videotapes that are intensely focused on the fundamentals, concentration and technique that have made her game what it is today. With Pool and Billiards on the rise with Olympic recognition. And even more television exposure thanks to the WPBA; Allison Fisher continues to be at the top of her game. Her desire is to see the sport enjoy the same “boom” in popularity that tennis enjoyed in the 1970’s. For Allison the sport itself comes ahead of the player. Family, friends, her new home and the intense level of competition keep her on her toes and enjoying life to its fullest. As Allison would say “Cheers all! Hope to see you soon!”
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2008-04-30 12:21 | 只看楼主 树型| 收藏| 小 中 大 17#

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FREUD’S DISCOVERY

In April 1884 Freud read of a German army doctor who had successfully employed cocaine as a means of increasing the energy and endurance of soldiers. He determined to obtain some for himself and try it as a treatment for other conditions—heart disease, nervous exhaustion and morphine addiction. It was little known at that time and the extensive ethical and methodological rules governing modern drug trials did not exist.

Freud took some himself and was immediately impressed with the sense of well-being it engendered, without diminishing his capacity for work. Having read a report in the Detroit Medical Gazette concerning its value in the treatment of addictions his next step was to recommend the substance as a harmless substitute to his friend and colleague, Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow. Fleischl. Who had become a morphine addict following repeated therapeutic administrations for intractable neurological pain and was in desperate straits, took to cocaine with enthusiasm and was soon consuming it in large quantities.

Meanwhile Freud continued to extol the virtues of the drug, writing a review essay on the subject, taking it himself and pressing it upon his fiancee, friends as a panacea for all ills, He had gone overboard with enthusiasm, writing to Martha when he heard she had lost her appetite,“Woe to you, my Princess. When I come. I will kiss you quite red and fees you ‘till you are plump. And if you are forward you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle little girl who doesn’t eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body.’’

Among the people to whom Freud introduced cocaine was his colleague Carl Koller, a young doctor working in the department of ophthalmology. Freud published his essay in the July issue of the Centralblatt für Therapie, concluding it by drawing attention to the possible future uses of the drug as a local anaesthetic. Koller was impressed, thought it likely to be useful in eye operations and two months later tried it out , first on animals and then on his own eyes with complete success. He was quick to publish his findings, thus securing a place in world history as the discoverer of what turned out to be virtually the only medical use for the substance.

Freud had missed his chance, but worse was to follow. Fleischl’s  temporary improvement on taking cocaine was short lived. Within a week his condition deteriorated, his pain became unbearable and he relapsed into morphine consumption. He now had not one addiction but two, taking cocaine in doses a hundred times larger than Freud used to do. He suffered toxic confusional states in which he became agitated, experiencing severe anxiety and visual hallucinations. Yet Freud continued to advocate the use of cocaine in morphinism, presumably on the basis that (as had been reported by others) it was beneficial in selected cases.

His paper On the General Effect of Cocaine. Written in the spring of 1885, was published in August and subsequently abstracted in the Lancer, By the following year, however, cases of cocaine addiction and intoxication were being reported from all over the world. Freud came under severe criticism for his advocacy of the drug and defended himself by claiming(inaccurately)that he had never advised its use in subcutaneous injections. He expressed the following view, “Theory is fine but it doesn’t stop facts from existing.” This became a favorite warning against the uncritical acceptance of received wisdom.
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2008-04-30 12:21 | 只看楼主 树型| 收藏| 小 中 大 18#

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I LIVE ENTIRELY IN MY MUSIC—BEETHOVEN

Beethoven probably began to go deaf after what he called his ‘terrible typhus’ of 1797, but he tried to keep it a secret, while consulting doctors and trying various remedies, such as the application of almond oil. He was extremely anxious about its possible effect on his career as a musician, and embarrassed by its effect on his social life.

  In the summer of 1801 he wrote to tow friends. To Franz Wegeler in Bonn he wrote that he was very busy, with more commissions than he could cope with，and publishers competing to get hold of his latest works, but he was worried about his health, and particularly about his gradual loss of hearing. He had been leading a miserable life for the previous two years because of his deafness, and had avoided human company because he found it hard to tell people that he was deaf. He would always say, “I live entirely in my music.”

  Two days later he wrote to Karl Amenda, a more recent friend. On the same lines, expressing the anxiety that his best years would pass “without my being able to achieve all that my talent and my strength have commanded me to do.” His fear that his deafness would prevent him from realizing his artistic potential led him to contemplate taking his own artistic life, but in the so-called ‘Heiligenstadt Testament’, addressed to his brothers and found among his papers after his death, which he wrote in the depths of despair in October 1802, he said that he had rejected suicide, and was resigned to his condition. He explained that his deafness was the reason why he had been withdrawing from people’s company, because he found it so humiliating not being able to hear, but he did not want to tell people about it. Although tempted to kill himself, “the only thing that held me back was my art. For indeed it seemed to me impossible to leave this world before I had produced all the works that I felt the urge to compose.”

During the summer of 1802 he had spent six months in Heiligenstadt, thirteen miles outside Vienna, on the advice of one of his doctors who thought that his hearing might improve in the peace and quiet away from Vienna. But his pupil, Ferdinand Ries (son of the leader of the Bonn court orchestra) visited him in the summer, and during a walk in the summer, and during a walk in the woods pointed out o fan elder twig. Beethoven could not hear it, and this made him very morose , As the winter approached he realized that his hearing was no better, and that it was likely to get worse, and he might end up totally deaf.

It could be argued that Beethoven’s deafness helped the development of his art: isolated from the world, and unable to perform, he could devote all his time to composing, He was already composing less at the piano, and the first of his bound sketchbooks, in which he made detailed drafts of the works in progress. Date from 1798. In his panic, at the beginning, Beethoven may have believed himself to be deaf. He suffered from tinnitus ( humming and buzzing in the ears), and loud noises caused him pain. In 1804 his friend Stephan von Breuning, with whom he briefly shared lodgings, wrote to Franz Wegler about the terrible effect his gradual loss of hearing was having on Beethoven: it had caused him to distrust his friends, and he was becoming very difficult to be with. But Beethoven did not start using an ear trumpet until 1814.

But above all else, Beethoven was dedicated to his art and the urge to compose remained with him throughout his life. It may be that he shielded away form the commitment of marriage because he knew it would interfere with his art. From a very early age he wanted to compose and, although he needed to earn a living, he wrote ‘I love my art too dearly to be activated solely by self-interest.’
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2008-04-30 12:22 | 只看楼主 树型| 收藏| 小 中 大 19#

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GIFT FOR MUSIC— LEONARD BERNSTEIN 

In 1986, Leonard Bernstein said, “God knows, I should be dead by now. I smoke, I drink, I stay up all night… I was diagnosed as having emphysema in my mid-20s. I was told that if II didn’t stop smoking, I’d be dead at 35. Well. I beat the rap.” But in recent months he canceled engagements and a fortnight age announced that, on his doctor’s advice, he was retiring as a conductor, In 1990, Leonard Bernstein, 72, died in his Manhattan apartment after a heart attack brought on by lung failure.  Perhaps to abandon conducting was to end a love affair, to give up life.

A first-generation Jewish American, Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Mass. In 1918. His father, Samuel, who was in the beauty-supplies business. Hoped his son would someday work with him. But at 10 Lenny discovered the piano. When he used his allowance to pay for lessons his father stopped doling it out— but reinstated it after discovering his son was playing in a dance and to earn money. At the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia (after graduating from Harvard, at 20. with honors), Bernstein was the most gifted pupil of the great Fritz Reiner. This so enraged one student that he threatened homicide.

Contrary to legend, the golden boy did have some lean times. In 1942. Bernstein moved to New York City armed with glowing references, but couldn’t find work. Lyricist Irving Caesar happened to hear him play the piano and thought he resembled his former collaborator George Gershwin. Bernstein told him that he needed $10 a week to stay alive. “What!” Caesar exclaimed. “You, a genius, starving? Ten dollars a week for a genius? I’ll get you fifty!” And promptly got him a job transcribing music. Within two years Bernstein had published his first symphony, written a successful ballet (“Fancy Free”), had a hit Broadway show (“In the Town”) and made his now legendary New York Philharmonic conducting debut in Carnegie Hall. Filling in for an ailing maestro, the dashing 25-year-old(who had a fierce hangover) was such a smash he got as much front-page space in New York Times as the American submarines that sank seven Japanese ships.

The great creative output of the late ‘40s and ‘50s— the musicals “Candide”, “Wonderful Town” and “West Side Story”, the film score for “ On the Waterfront,” the ballet “The Age of Anxiety”— came, with good reason, before Bernstein acquired an orchestra. In 1958, he became music director of the New York Philharmonic — the first American-born conductor to head a top symphony orchestra. He revived the works of Mahler and Nielsen and programmed such contemporary music, even if he, a dedicated tonalist, was uncomfortable with it.

Bernstein, says Leonard Slatkin, music director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. “not only opened doors for all of us, but was the musical conscience of this country for years. We couldn’t have had a better spokesman.” After leaving the Philharmonic in 1969, Bernstein, the original globe-trot-ting maestro, maintained close ties with many orchestras, including (with typical Bernstein irony) the Israel Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic.

Since the late ‘50s his compositions have often been disappointing, but he was back in form in some recent works, especially the delicious Arias and Barcarolles. Though he had become white-haired and craggy, he retained the passion and quickness of a wunderkind, and no one could dispute the depth of understanding he brought to the podium, particularly in recent years, when his interpretive powers were sharper than ever.
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2008-04-30 12:22 | 只看楼主 树型| 收藏| 小 中 大 20#

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An Impressionist — Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh was a man in a hurry, an artist of tremendous energy and prodigious output. He killed himself when he was only 37, but he left behind him more than 2,000 paintings and drawings, which established his reputation in a way he would never have considered possible. 

Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1835 at Groot Zundert in the Dutch province of Noord Brabant. He was the son of a clergyman. His first artistic impressions were formed as a boy, from his uncle who was an art dealer. The motivation bore early fruit and from the age of 12 the young Vincent was drawing. The interest led to an apprenticeship in an art dealer’s firm, Groupil’s, in the Hague. When he was only 20, he was transferred to the firm’s London office.

In London Van Gogh faced his first major crisis, when he was rejected in love. After that, he turned to religion, expressed disapproval with art-dealing and neglected his work, Groupil transferred him from London to Paris but, when his work was still unsatisfactory, dismissed him in 1876.

The young Van Gogh made religion a consuming interest and during the next few years traveled in Britain, Belgium and Holland, trying to establish himself as a preacher, but without success. He developed strong opinions on social morality, customs and church life and alienated those he mixed with by an uncompromising attitude.

In 1880, at the age of 27, he found himself drawn back to art. He had a job as an assistant evangelist in the mining village of Borinage in Belgium but realized an artistic drive which was to motivate him unceasingly until his death 10 years later.

Although he returned to Noord Brabant and his family early in 1881, his first recognized works were set in Borinage and reflected the rural culture in which he was living and his belief in order and symmetry in both society and art. The period resulted in what became known as the Brabant canvases.

At this time he was becoming obsessed with artistic development. Although he was limited in practical experience, his work showed confidence and maturity from the start, no doubt influenced by the strength of his personal convictions. It was not an easy time, however, emotionally. There were tensions within the family, now that he was living back with his parents in Brabant. He was short of money and rebelling against social and academic standards.

Late in 1881 he moved to the Hague and established a relationship with a woman, Christine Hoornik, with whom he lived for a time. He broke with her in 1883, however, and never again established a significant intimate relationship with a woman.

Between 1883 and 1886, at Noord Brahant again, his painting developed into characteristic dark landscapes and scenes of country life. He stressed character and expression rather than perspective and physical accuracy; he was already experimenting with impressionism.

In 1886 Van Gogh left Holland forever and traveled via Antwerp to Paris, and to major changes in artistic style. Van Gogh’s work became more youthful in Paris. He lived with his brother, Theo, who managed the modern department of an art dealer’s. A new, more animated, painting style emerged and the impressionist tendencies of earlier work weakened somewhat.

Van Gogh developed a taste for personalized brushwork and brilliant, unmixed colours. Among his most prominent experiments with colour were a series of some 30 flower paintings, a fascination which stayed with him until his death.
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