Barnabas Ministries UK

                                       Dr. David Allen

VAN GOGH THE PREACHER?

Vincent Van Gogh, often hailed as the greatest painter of a period that abounded in artistic talent, had a Protestant background and was had a very serious nature.  As a young man, he worked for a time as an art dealer. Unfortunately his strong opinions – always forcibly expressed – put off the customers and he began paint and draw himself, his first efforts   when he was living in the Hague.

Without much success as an artist, he began to be drawn to preaching and, with this end, he studied theology for a time.  His theologically studies challenged him to begin to preach in the Borinage, a mining in area in Belgium, where men and women lived lives of poverty and wretchedness. In order to preach to the people there, he began to live as one of them, living in the poorest of lodgings and almost dying of starvation. His lifestyle came to the notice of   the superintendency. They were not pleased and told him desist wearing the clothes of the miners as being   not fitting for a minister. Their attitude appalled him and made him disillusion with the church. Persuaded by his brother, Theo, he embraced  what he felt was his true vocation: he would  be a painter, not a preacher.

Vincent’s earlier efforts were sombre paintings of peasants and miners. But in 1880 he left Belgium and settled for a time in Paris, then the Mecca of artists, sculptors and aspiring novelists and poets. His palette became brighter. But, after travelling south, and lodging for a time with   Paul Gauguin, Vincent’s   paintings exploded.  His art became his obsession and he admitted, in one of his last letters, that his devotion to painting had almost made him lose his reason. In fact, he was a voluntary patient in the asylum at St Rémy and sadly, he took his own life in 1890. Even more   tragic, he only became famous after his suicide and never   sold a picture in his lifetime, whereas nowadays they sell for millions and are displayed in galleries all over the world.

Perhaps, if he had not been disillusioned by his  superiors in the church, Vincent’s  passionate and utter devotion might have made him a firebrand for Jesus and we would  be studying  Vincent van Gogh the preacher, rather  than Van Gogh the wonderful painter. What is probably more to the point:  all preachers ought to bring to their preaching the same passionate and fervour that Van Gogh brought to his painting!