LeRoy Neiman

popular name: Vincent van Gogh

date_of_death: July 29, 1890

age: 37

cause_of_death: Suicide - Gunshot wound

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers, contain few signs of the vivid colour that distinguished his later work. In 1886, he moved to Paris where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed he created a new approach to still life and landscape. His paintings grew brighter as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the South of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include series of olive trees, wheat fields and sunflowers. During his lifetime van Gogh was not commercially successful and, struggling with severe depression and poverty, committed suicide at the age of 37. He was laid to rest at Auvers-Sur-Oise Communal Cemetery in Auvers-Sur-Oise, Val-d'Oise, France.

popular name: Siné

date_of_death: May 5, 2016

age: 87

cause_of_death: Surgery for lung cancer

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Siné was a controversial French cartoonist and caricaturist whose early successes in this arena led him into the fields as a book illustrator and designer of posters, stage decors, animated cartoons and publicity films. Siné began his professional career as a retoucher for pornographic magazines and published his first cartoon in France Dimanche in 1952 which won the Black Humour Award for his cartoon collection 'Complainte sans Paroles' in 1955. Siné became especially famous for his wordplay cartoons about cats. Until 1962, he made political cartoons for L'Express, some of which were refused or caused heavy criticism. He subsequently published his anti-colonial, anti-zionist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical worldviews in his own publication, Siné Massacre. Siné's anarchistic and anti-colonial cartoons have caused controversy on several occasions during his career, especially during the Algerian war. He was fired from Charlie-Hebdo in 2008, following a antisemitic cartoon on Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, the wife of Jean Sarkozy. In August of 2008 he announced his own satirical weekly, called Siné Hebdo, launched with his wife Catherine Sinet and about 15 contributors. The publication ran until April 2010, but was continued as Siné Mensuel in September 2011. Siné has additionally made many drawings for books about jazz music, as well as CD covers. Upon his death, he was laid to rest at Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris, France.

popular name: Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun

date_of_death: March 30, 1842

age: 86

cause_of_death: Ill health due to stroke

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was one of the great portrait artists in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, easily the equal of Quentin de La Tour or Jean Baptiste Greuze. Born into relatively modest circumstances, she firmly established herself in society’s upper crust. After earning the favours of the king and his family, she became the official artist of Queen Marie Antoinette. One of the most successful women artists (unusually so for her time), particularly noted for her portraits of women, her father and first teacher, Louis Vigée, was a noted portraitist who worked chiefly in pastels. Her great opportunity came in 1779 when she was summoned to Versailles to paint a portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette. The two women became friends, and in subsequent years Vigée-Lebrun painted more than 20 portraits of Marie-Antoinette in a great variety of poses and costumes. She also painted a great number of self-portraits, in the style of various artists whose work she admired. During her 60+ years as an artist, Le Brun created 660 portraits and 200 landscapes. In addition to many works in private collections, her paintings are owned by major museums such as the Louvre in Paris, Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, National Gallery in London, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and many other collections in Europe and the United States. Since 1999 the record price for an original Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun at auction is $7,185,900 USD for Portrait of Muhammad Dervish Khan (full-length holding his sword in a landscape).