Passage 4 Vincent Van Gogh: The Early YearsAlthough Vincent Van Gogh was one of the world's most innovative artists and left behindhundreds of famous paintings, his first choice was not art. This sensitive young man wanderedthrough life and worked in various places before he finally decided to become a painter at the age of27. These early experiences combined with his family background were unlikely preparation for theeventual development of his artistic career.   Vincent Van Gogh was born in 1853 in Zundert, a village in the south of the Netherlands. VanGogh's father was a preacher, or religious leader, in the Dutch Reformed Church. Vincent beganattending the village school at the age of 8 and later went to a boarding school where he proved tobe an excellent student of languages. However, at age 15, he suddenly returned home and nevercontinued his education.     Instead, Van Gogh took a position as a trainee at the age of 16 at Goupil & Cie, aninternational art dealer with offices in the Hague. Four years later, he was transferred to thecompany's London offices, where he developed a deep appreciation for the paintings and drawingshe saw in the city's museums. However, Van Gogh gradually began to lose interest in his work andbecame more and more focused on religion. This inhibited his ability to do a good job. Thecompany he worked for sent him to Paris several times, but his job performance continued to getworse until they let him go in 1876. At this point, Van Gogh decided to become a minister like hisfather and he joined a boarding school outside of London as a teacher and assistant preacher.    A year later, Van Gogh gave in to his parents’ wishes to return to the Netherlands, butremained devoted to religion. Even though he did not have the required formal preparation, hestarted work as a minister for the poor. Finally, in 1880, he decided to combine his interest inreligion with his desire to become a painter. He said, “To try to understand the real significance ofwhat the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God; one manwrote or told it in a book; another, in a picture.” Living on a subsidy from his beloved brother Theo,Van Gogh managed to complete his first paintings in 1882 at the age of 29.    During the next six years, the artist spent time in the Netherlands, Belgium and Paris. Finally,in 1888, exhausted by the intensity of the art world in Paris, he moved to Arles in the South ofFrance to recover. There, he entered the most productive two-year period of his life. The paintingsfrom this period are full of aggressive brush work and bold colors. Although he was fighting seriousdepression at the time, Van Gogh produced an amazing number of beautiful paintings before hekilled himself at the age of 37.
45. The reading is mainly about ____.
(A) how Van Gogh's family influenced his development as an artist
(B) Van Gogh's educational background in the arts
(C) how Van Gogh's work as a teacher affected his artistic abilities
(D) Van Gogh's unconventional route to becoming an artist