In June of 1873, Vincent van Gogh worked a the Groupil Gallery in London.
There, he fell in love with English culture and with his landlady’s daughter, Eugenie Loyer. When she rejected his marriage proposal, van Gogh suffered a breakdown. He threw away all his books except for the Bible, and devoted his life to God.
He became angry with people at work, telling customers not to buy the “worthless art,” and was eventually fired from the Gallary.
Van Gogh then taught in a Methodist boys’ school, and also preached to the congregation.
Although raised in a religious family, it wasn’t until this time that he seriously began to consider devoting his life to the church. Hoping to become a minister, he prepared to take the entrance exam to the School of Theology in Amsterdam. After a year of studying diligently, he refused to take the Latin exams, calling Latin a “dead language” of poor people, and was subsequently denied entrance.
In the winter of 1878, van Gogh volunteered to move to an impoverished coal mine in the south of Belgium, a place where preachers were usually sent as punishment.
He preached and ministered to the sick, and also drew pictures of the miners and their families, who called him “Christ of the Coal Mines.” The evangelical committees were not as pleased. They disagreed with van Gogh’s lifestyle, which had begun to take on a tone of martyrdom.
They refused to renew van Gogh’s contract, and he was forced to find another occupation.