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Posthumous fame is NOT A SIN is it ?
Added: (Fri Oct 16 2009)
Helen Anne Petrie (1932-2006) situation strangely similar to that of Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890)
Vincent was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist, a predecessor of Expressionism, whose revolutionary paintings had an enormous influence on 20th century art.
Many of his paintings—including his numerous self portraits, landscapes, portraits and sunflowers—are NOW among the world's most revered, recognizable and expensive works of art.
Little appreciated during his lifetime, his reputation VASTLY increased in the years after his death.
He is today regarded as one of history's greatest artists, and an important contributor to the foundations of modern art.
A central figure in his life was his younger brother Theo, an art dealer who continually and selflessly provided financial and emotional support to the troubled artist. Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Vincent's thoughts and theories of art, is recorded in the hundreds of letters they began exchanging from August 1872.
Van Gogh was anxious and unsettled for most of his life, VERY MUCH LIKE HELEN ANNE PETRIE of South Africa.
He spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers in The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught in England. An early vocation was to become a pastor and preach the gospel, and he later worked as a missionary in a poor mining region in Belgium.
In 1879, he began to sketch people from the local Belgian community and scenes from ordinary life.
In 1880, he undertook formal art classes, and studied anatomy, still-life and landscape. He began to paint in 1882 with the encouragement of his cousin-in-law Anton Mauve.
By 1885, he was living in Nuenen, where he painted his first major work, The Potato Eaters. Yet his palette consisted mainly of sombre earth tones and showed no sign of the vivid coloration that distinguished his later work. In March 1886, he moved to Paris where he discovered the French Impressionists and made his artistic breakthrough.
His work developed rapidly, and grew brighter in color.
He quickly developed a uniquely recognizable style, one fully realized by the time he departed for Arles in February 1888, having painted over 200 paintings.
Van Gogh did not begin his career as an artist until he was about 27.
During his last ten years he produced more than 2,000 pieces, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches.
Most of his NOW best-known works were produced during his final two years, amid recurrent bouts of mental illness. He committed suicide at the age of 37.
One thing is certain, Anne Petrie certainly sold more paintings in her lifetime than Vincent ever did during his.
Posthumous fame is NOT A SIN is it ?