| 1851 | Theodorus van Gogh, a Protestant minister, marries Anna Cornelia Carbentus, daughter of a book dealer. |
| 1853 | Vincent Willem van Gogh is born in Groot-Zundert in the province of Brabant on 30 March. The couple have five more children, amongst whom, Vincent's favourite brother, Theodorus (Theo, 1857). |
| 1861 | Vincent's education begins at the village school. Later, his parents send him to two boarding schools in Zevenbergen and Tilburg. Vincent shines in languages and becomes competent in French, English and German. He also starts sketching. |
| 1868 | In March, in the middle of the school year, he leaves school suddenly and returns to Zundert. He does not complete his formal education. |
| 1869 | On his uncle Vincent's recommendation Vincent gets a job as the youngest assistant at Goupil & Co., art dealers in The Hague. |
| 1872 | Vincent begins a correspondence with his brother Theo. |
| 1873 | In January Theo accepts a post at Goupil. At first he works in Brussels, but is transferred to The Hague in November of the same year. Vincent is sent to the Goupil branch in London. |
| 1874 | In October Vincent leaves London for another Goupil branch, this time in Paris. His declining interest in art dealership is paralleled by a growing interest in religion. |
| 1876 | After leaving Goupil, Vincent returns to England where he works briefly as a teacher at boarding schools in Ramsgate and Isleworth. In Isleworth he is an assistant Methodist preacher for a while and delivers his first sermon on 4 November. His interest in the gospel and in preaching to the poor acquires an obsessive dimension. In the same year he returns to the Netherlands and joins his father in his new parsonage in Etten. |
| 1877 | Vincent moves to Amsterdam and applies for a degree in theology. When he is rejected he follows a short course at a missionary college near Brussels. |
| 1878 | In December Van Gogh is sent as a lay preacher to the Borinage, a poor mining area in southern Belgium. His excessive involvement with the impoverished miners does not go down well with the church. He is relieved of his position but continues his evangelical activities. |
| 1880 | Van Gogh starts to sketch seriously, having realised that he can also serve God as an artist. Though he considers enrolling at the Academy of Art in Brussels he decides to study independently. He copies works by Millet and applies himself to perspective and anatomy. |
| 1881 | At the end of 1881 he spends several weeks in The Hague where he receives painting lessons from his cousin Anton Mauve, a leading representative of the Hague School who introduces him to aquarelle and oil-painting techniques. Theo supports his brother financially. After a quarrel with his father Vincent leaves his parental home in Etten. He rents a studio. |
| 1882 | Van Gogh shocks his family when he takes into his home his model Sien Hoornik - a pregnant, unmarried prostitute - and her young daughter. |
| 1883 | After spending barely three months in Drenthe, recording peasant life under arduous conditions, Van Gogh returns to his parental home. His father has been appointed minister in the Brabant town of Nuenen. Having decided to become a painter of peasants, Van Gogh sketches and paints the Nuenen weavers. |
| 1885 | On 26 March Theodorus van Gogh dies suddenly from a stroke. Shortly afterwards Vincent finishes The Potato Eaters, his first ambitious painting on a large scale. |
| 1886 | After a period of strained family relationships, Van Gogh goes to Antwerp where he visits museums and buys his first Japanese prints. He cuts short a course at the École des Beaux-Arts after two months and heads for Paris. He moves in with Theo, who works at the Paris branch of the former firm of Goupil (now Boussod & Valadon) on the Boulevard Montmartre. For four months Vincent studies at the prestigious studio of Fernand Cormon. He meets contemporary artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard, Camille Pissarro and John Russell. In Paris his style as a painter changes radically. His palette becomes lighter and more carefree and he is clearly being strongly influenced by impressionism, pointillism and other new trends. |
| 1887 | Van Gogh organises a group exhibition in a Paris restaurant to display his own work and paintings by his friends, artists who are younger and less well-known than established impressionists such as Monet and Degas. Gauguin visits the exhibition and the two artists exchange paintings. At Vincent's insistence, Theo visits Gauguin's studio and is enthusiastic about his work. |
| 1888 | In February Vincent leaves for Arles with plans to set up an artists collective. This marks the start of a period of relentless creativity. In March he begins corresponding with Gauguin. Two months later he rents the now famous 'Yellow House', where he gets ready for the avidly awaited arrival of Gauguin. The visit ends in bitter disappointment. After a vehement quarrel Gauguin disappears to Paris and Van Gogh is admitted to the hospital at Arles. |
| 1889 | Van Gogh resumes painting. Still in precarious mental health, he decides to enter the Saint-Rémy asylum near Arles. He spends a year there and converts a nearby cell into a studio. Periods of high productivity alternate with severe bouts of mental illness. A doctor in the asylum gives the diagnosis 'epilepsy'. |
| 1890 | Van Gogh exhibits six paintings at an exhibition of the art circle Les Vingt in Brussels. The ten works that he contributes to the Salon des Indépendents in Paris receive glowing acclaim. In May Vincent leaves the asylum in Saint-Rémy and goes to Auvers-sur-Oise, a village near Paris, where he stays under the care of the physician Paul Gachet. The peace of mind that he appears to find here is disrupted by a message from Theo telling him that he plans to become an independent art dealer and will have less money to support his brother. On 27 July 1890 Vincent walks into a cornfield and shoots himself in the chest. He stumbles back to his room where he dies two days later in Theo's presence. The next day he is buried in Auvers. |
