After a lack of inspiration, he moved back with his parents to continue mastering his skills, and ran across a French artist, Jean Francois Millet, who had based her paintings on peasant life, like Van Gogh, and revolved his style around hers. At the age of 29, Van Gogh rented a small studio from a church, and continued working on his collection, and here he created his first real piece of work, "The Potato Eaters ". Later on, he was influenced by Peter Paul Rubens and various Japanese artists, and once again moved to Paris to live with his brother. .
This is when Van Gogh interacted with other artists, such as Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, and Emile Bernard. They opened his eyes to modern art from the Impressionist to the Post-Impressionists. Van Gogh then dropped the dark colors, and began discovering a brighter, and more vibrant color pallet. In 1888, Van Gogh moved to Arles and started a school of art with Paul Gauguin. At this point, his style had become more modern, and focused on more unique colors. He created "Sunflowers ", which became one of Van Gogh's most popular works of art. Towards the end of the year in 1888, Van Gogh suffered from multiple illnesses. One episode even caused him to threaten his friend Paul Gauguin with a knife. Later on that day, Van Gogh cut off his own ear and presented it to a prostitute as a gift, and was later hospitalized and released shortly after. Due to this incident, Van Gogh's dream of becoming part of the artistic community was broken. Vincent was put in an Asylum shortly after. Here, Van Gogh could not produce many works of art, for long periods of time without suffering from a relapse. However, Van Gogh created "Starry Night"." The painting which became one of his most popular works of art. Later on, Van Gogh felt like his life was worthless, and had nothing left to live for, so he tried to commit suicide on July 27th, 1890, by shooting himself in the chest.
