Meditation with Bach & Van Gogh

Johann Sebastian Bach (b. Eisenach, 21 March 1685; d. Leipzig, 28 July 1750) was a German composer and organist. He lived in the last part of the Baroque period. He never traveled very far, spending all his life in central Germany, but he studied all the music he could find by other composers of his time. His own music shows that he learned from the music of Italian, French and German composers. He spent several years working at courts of noblemen. Here he wrote most of his chamber music and orchestral music. Most of his life, however, he worked in a church where he was expected to write church music. Bach wrote almost every kind of music except opera. During the last part of his life most composers were writing in a new style called the Classical style, but Bach always wrote in the Baroque style. That made some people at the time think he was old-fashioned, but today we know that his work is the very best of Baroque music.

Vincent Willem van Gogh, March 30, 1853 -- July 29, 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. Suffering from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life, he died largely unknown at the age of 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Van Gogh's interest in art started at an early age. He began to draw as a child, and he continued making drawings throughout the years leading to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during his last two years. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,000 artworks, consisting of around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches. His work included self portraits, landscapes, portraits and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.

Van Gogh spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers, traveling between The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught for a time in England. One of his early aspirations was to become a pastor and from 1879 he worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium where he began to sketch people from the local community. In 1885, he painted his first major work The Potato Eaters. His palette at the time consisted mainly of somber earth tones and showed no sign of the vivid coloration that distinguished his later work. In March 1886, he moved to Paris and discovered the French Impressionists. Later he moved to the south of France and was taken by the strong sunlight he found there. His work grew brighter in color, and he developed the unique and highly recognizable style which became fully realized during his stay in Arles in 1888.

The extent to which his mental health affected his painting has been a subject of speculation since his death. Despite a widespread tendency to romanticize his ill health, modern critics see an artist deeply frustrated by the inactivity and incoherence brought about by his bouts of illness. According to art critic Robert Hughes, van Gogh's late works show an artist at the height of his ability, completely in control and "longing for concision and grace"

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