Nude Woman on a Bed

Vincent Willem van Gogh ; 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890 was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty, and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died at the age of 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted . His work was then known to only a handful of people and... appreciated by fewer still. Van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. His work included self portraits, landscapes, still lifes of flowers, portraits and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.
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The Barnes Foundation is an American educational art and horticultural institution with locations in Merion, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, and Logan Square, Philadelphia. It was founded in 1922 by Albert C. Barnes, a chemist who collected art after making a fortune by co-developing an early antigonorrhea drug marketed as Argyrol. Today, the foundation possesses more than 2,500 objects – including 800 paintings –... estimated to be worth about $25 billion. These are primarily works by Impressionist and Modernist masters, but the collection includes many by leading European and American artists, as well as ancient works from other cultures. The foundation became embroiled in controversy due to a financial crisis in the 1990s, partially related to longstanding restrictions related to the original trust and to its location in a residential neighborhood. The relocation of the gallery from Merion to the site in downtown Philadelphia on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, for enhanced public access, occurred on May 19, 2012.
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