>>5919481He was a successful art dealer. His minister uncle sent him to apprentice for an art dealer when he was 16 and he already had a pretty big collection by the time he was 20, when he got a promotion and moved to London for awhile, then Paris. Vincent got his brother into art dealing too.
Then after he eventually flaked out in like 76 or whenever he dabbled with some ministry shit for awhile before deciding he was gonna become a full time artist in 1880.
All the letters between him and his brother talking about various artists they were speculating about and investing in and stuff were preserved. You can basically see him following the trends of the 1870s and predicting where things were heading, which was later a major motivating factor in his decision to become an artist.
Like he wasn’t just some goofball flake that did his own thing and happened to be a hit after he died and his hoarded works were revealed. He was anticipating trends and partially hoarding works because he didn’t think they were being valued high enough and would be worth more later, and he didn’t need to sell them because his family has money.
And his earlier stuff was also intentionally ugly and amateurish. His entire peasant painting period was basically his thesis statement where instead of making pretty paintings of rich people he was making ugly paintings of poor people as a subversion goof.
