Before he was an artist, Vincent van Gogh was an evangelist. It is not the best-documented period of his well-examined life, but in many ways, it was the turning point in his career. At age 25, hoping to become a preacher like his father, van Gogh volunteered to become a pastor in a poor mining village in southwestern Belgium, in an area known as the Borinage. When he left two years later, at the age of 27, he was no longer a pastor but an aspiring artist.

Source: New York Times