It only took van Gogh a mere twenty-seven years to realize what his true calling was. Unfortunately for his present day aficionados, van Gogh’s decision to take up art as a profession came just ten years before his tragic death. Previous to becoming an artist, the very religious van Gogh wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a preacher. 
He did not, but held a similar position as an evangelist, preaching the Word of God to poor workers while living among them. Much of his inspiration in his early days as an artist stemmed from his eye-opening and humbling experience of getting to know these modest people on a much more intense level than most people could ever be subjected to. The fact that he lived among these people he drew and painted for years, as one of them and not a superior, allowed him to see them in a different light and enabled him to learn everything about them and their lifestyle.
In 1876, van Gogh entered a school in Ramsgate, England, to learn how to be a preacher. There, he was given duties to perform, but was not paid in any form other than food and housing (Barrielle 24). He was then selected to become an assistant preacher at another school. He became so involved in his work that his health was brushed to the side; he was always going to church, translated The Bible into other languages, and would commonly spend his days alone and became depressed. As time moved forward, van Gogh eventually entered the Flemish School of Evangelism to the Poor, which progressed into his moving to the Borinage, a mining area in Belgium (Barrielle 28). According to Cliff Edwards, van Gogh saw human “limit situations” as a way to God, (Edwards 21). Thus, during his stay in The Borinage, van Gogh not only preached to the peasants, but eventually gave up a nicer place of residence to sleep in a small hut in a bed of straw and gave away his possessions in order to experience what it was like to live as a peasant, and help them as well. However, the school was not pleased with his doings and did not allow him to continue his job after several months. Van Gogh was again depressed, but soon realized his calling as an artist and continued to live among the peasants (Barrielle 32). Instead of preaching to them, though, van Gogh spent years drawing and painting them; these studies culminated into The Potato Eaters.