the best van gogh biography

An expert’s guide to Vincent van Gogh: five must-read books on the Dutch artist

All you ever needed to know about the artist, from the story of the ear incident to the definitive biography and best picture book—selected by van gogh specialist martin bailey.

Vincent van Gogh's Self-Portrait as a Painter (1888) Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

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“Van Gogh’s letters are by far the most interesting of any artist”

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It can be hard to know where to begin when reading up on an artist as famous and revered as Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), especially with so many myths surrounding his relatively short life and career. “There have probably been more books published on Van Gogh than any other modern painter, except for Picasso,” says Martin Bailey, a leading Van Gogh expert and senior correspondent for The Art Newspaper . “But of course, Picasso’s artistic career spanned over 70 years, while Van Gogh’s was only a decade.”

Bailey has written a series of books on Van Gogh including The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh's Masterpiece (2013) and  Living with Vincent van Gogh: The Homes & Landscapes that Shaped the Artist (2019). He has curated Van Gogh exhibitions at the Barbican Art Gallery and National Gallery of Scotland, and was the co-curator of Tate Britain’s 2019 show Van Gogh and Britain . His weekly blog Adventures with Van Gogh is published every Friday.

Below, Bailey has selected five books that he recommends to anyone wanting to learn all about Vincent van Gogh.

Vincent van Gogh, The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated

Vincent van Gogh, The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated edition (2009) edited by Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker

“Van Gogh’s letters are by far the most interesting of any artist. This six-volume set with 2,164 pages and 4,300 illustrations includes the texts of 927 letters, accompanied by detailed annotations. The publication resulted from a 15-year research project by Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. It is currently out of print, but let’s hope that Thames & Hudson reprints this superlative edition. For those wanting something more manageable, a new abridged version has just been published, Vincent van Gogh: A Life in Letters . And the full letters are also online , with a user-friendly search facility (this is great for research, but for those wanting to read and savour the letters in sequence, books are better).”

Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Paintings

Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Paintings (2020) by Ingo Walther and Rainer Metzger

“For the art, the place to go is Taschen’s massive compilation of the paintings, with 871 illustrations (nearly all in colour). But it is best for the images, rather than the text. With 752 pages, it is great value for money, but even cheaper is an earlier edition published as a smaller-format paperback. Sadly, the scholarly, illustrated catalogues raisonnés on Van Gogh by Jacob-Baart de la Faille (1928, 1938, 1970) and Jan Hulsker (1977, 1996) are now dated.”

Van Gogh: The Life (2011)

Van Gogh: The Life (2011) by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

“Another doorstopper, at 953 pages, it is the definitive biography. Two American writers have dug deep, providing a highly detailed and stimulating account of the artist’s entire life (with 28,000 footnotes available online). I add a personal proviso: I disagree with their appendix that argues that Van Gogh was shot by a local teenager, in my view it was suicide that ended his life.”

On the Verge of Insanity: Van Gogh and his Illness

On the Verge of Insanity: Van Gogh and his Illness (2016) by Nienke Bakker, Louis van Tilborgh and Laura Prins

“Much of the most interesting and innovative writing on Van Gogh now appears in exhibition catalogues. This one responds to the universal fascination with the artist’s astonishing personal story, including the ear incident and his early death. A lot of sensationalist material has been written on both issues, but four years ago the Van Gogh Museum set out to examine Van Gogh’s health in a serious, yet accessible exhibition.”

Van Gogh & Japan

Van Gogh & Japan (2018) by Louis van Tilborgh, Nienke Bakker, Cornelia Homburg, Tsukasa Kōdera and Chris Uhlenbeck

“Another exhibition catalogue from the Van Gogh Museum. This visually stunning show and book examine the impact of Japanese prints on Van Gogh’s work. We are now so accustomed to seeing images of global art, but to 19th century European eyes Japan represented an exotic tradition that proved highly stimulating for the avant-garde. The Japanese, in turn, became great lovers of Van Gogh as early as the 1920s. It is an exhilarating experience to look at Japan through Van Gogh’s eyes. Fresh research on this topic adds another dimension to the artist's story.”

And c oming soon…

“An English edition is due next year of Hans Luijten’s magnificent biography of Jo van Gogh-Bonger, Vincent’s sister-in-law. The book breaks new ground in explaining her role in the development of the artist’s rise to fame.”

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Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was one of the world’s greatest artists, with paintings such as ‘Starry Night’ and ‘Sunflowers,’ though he was unknown until after his death.

(1853-1890)

Who Was Vincent van Gogh?

Vincent van Gogh was a post-Impressionist painter whose work — notable for its beauty, emotion and color — highly influenced 20th-century art. He struggled with mental illness and remained poor and virtually unknown throughout his life.

Early Life and Family

Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, Netherlands. Van Gogh’s father, Theodorus van Gogh, was an austere country minister, and his mother, Anna Cornelia Carbentus, was a moody artist whose love of nature, drawing and watercolors was transferred to her son.

Van Gogh was born exactly one year after his parents' first son, also named Vincent, was stillborn. At a young age — with his name and birthdate already etched on his dead brother's headstone — van Gogh was melancholy.

Theo van Gogh

The eldest of six living children, van Gogh had two younger brothers (Theo, who worked as an art dealer and supported his older brother’s art, and Cor) and three younger sisters (Anna, Elizabeth and Willemien).

Theo van Gogh would later play an important role in his older brother's life as a confidant, supporter and art dealer.

Early Life and Education

At age 15, van Gogh's family was struggling financially, and he was forced to leave school and go to work. He got a job at his Uncle Cornelis' art dealership, Goupil & Cie., a firm of art dealers in The Hague. By this time, van Gogh was fluent in French, German and English, as well as his native Dutch.

He also fell in love 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.

Life as a Preacher

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.

The same thing happened at the Church of Belgium: 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.

Finding Solace in Art

In the fall of 1880, van Gogh decided to move to Brussels and become an artist. Though he had no formal art training, his brother Theo offered to support van Gogh financially.

He began taking lessons on his own, studying books like Travaux des champs by Jean-François Millet and Cours de dessin by Charles Bargue.

Van Gogh's art helped him stay emotionally balanced. In 1885, he began work on what is considered to be his first masterpiece, "Potato Eaters." Theo, who by this time living in Paris, believed the painting would not be well-received in the French capital, where Impressionism had become the trend.

Nevertheless, van Gogh decided to move to Paris, and showed up at Theo's house uninvited. In March 1886, Theo welcomed his brother into his small apartment.

In Paris, van Gogh first saw Impressionist art, and he was inspired by the color and light. He began studying with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , Camille Pissarro and others.

To save money, he and his friends posed for each other instead of hiring models. Van Gogh was passionate, and he argued with other painters about their works, alienating those who became tired of his bickering.

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Van Gogh's love life was nothing short of disastrous: He was attracted to women in trouble, thinking he could help them. When he fell in love with his recently widowed cousin, Kate, she was repulsed and fled to her home in Amsterdam.

Van Gogh then moved to The Hague and fell in love with Clasina Maria Hoornik, an alcoholic prostitute. She became his companion, mistress and model.

When Hoornik went back to prostitution, van Gogh became utterly depressed. In 1882, his family threatened to cut off his money unless he left Hoornik and The Hague.

Van Gogh left in mid-September of that year to travel to Drenthe, a somewhat desolate district in the Netherlands. For the next six weeks, he lived a nomadic life, moving throughout the region while drawing and painting the landscape and its people.

Van Gogh became influenced by Japanese art and began studying Eastern philosophy to enhance his art and life. He dreamed of traveling there, but was told by Toulouse-Lautrec that the light in the village of Arles was just like the light in Japan.

In February 1888, van Gogh boarded a train to the south of France. He moved into a now-famous "yellow house" and spent his money on paint rather than food.

Vincent van Gogh completed more than 2,100 works, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings and sketches.

Several of his paintings now rank among the most expensive in the world; "Irises" sold for a record $53.9 million, and his "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" sold for $82.5 million. A few of van Gogh’s most well-known artworks include:

'Starry Night'

Van Gogh painted "The Starry Night" in the asylum where he was staying in Saint-Rémy, France, in 1889, the year before his death. “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big,” he wrote to his brother Theo.

A combination of imagination, memory, emotion and observation, the oil painting on canvas depicts an expressive swirling night sky and a sleeping village, with a large flame-like cypress, thought to represent the bridge between life and death, looming in the foreground. The painting is currently housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY.

'Sunflowers'

Van Gogh painted two series of sunflowers in Arles, France: four between August and September 1888 and one in January 1889; the versions and replicas are debated among art historians.

The oil paintings on canvas, which depict wilting yellow sunflowers in a vase, are now displayed at museums in London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Munich and Philadelphia.

In 1889, after entering an asylum in Saint-Rémy, France, van Gogh began painting Irises, working from the plants and flowers he found in the asylum's garden. Critics believe the painting was influenced by Japanese woodblock prints.

French critic Octave Mirbeau, the painting's first owner and an early supporter of Van Gogh, remarked, "How well he has understood the exquisite nature of flowers!"

'Self-Portrait'

Over the course of 10 years, van Gogh created more than 43 self-portraits as both paintings and drawings. "I am looking for a deeper likeness than that obtained by a photographer," he wrote to his sister.

"People say, and I am willing to believe it, that it is hard to know yourself. But it is not easy to paint yourself, either. The portraits painted by Rembrandt are more than a view of nature, they are more like a revelation,” he later wrote to his brother.

Van Gogh's self-portraits are now displayed in museums around the world, including in Washington, D.C., Paris, New York and Amsterdam.

Van Gogh's Ear

In December 1888, van Gogh was living on coffee, bread and absinthe in Arles, France, and he found himself feeling sick and strange.

Before long, it became apparent that in addition to suffering from physical illness, his psychological health was declining. Around this time, he is known to have sipped on turpentine and eaten paint.

His brother Theo was worried, and he offered Paul Gauguin money to go watch over Vincent in Arles. Within a month, van Gogh and Gauguin were arguing constantly, and one night, Gauguin walked out. Van Gogh followed him, and when Gauguin turned around, he saw van Gogh holding a razor in his hand.

Hours later, van Gogh went to the local brothel and paid for a prostitute named Rachel. With blood pouring from his hand, he offered her his ear, asking her to "keep this object carefully."

The police found van Gogh in his room the next morning, and admitted him to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital. Theo arrived on Christmas Day to see van Gogh, who was weak from blood loss and having violent seizures.

The doctors assured Theo that his brother would live and would be taken good care of, and on January 7, 1889, van Gogh was released from the hospital.

He remained, however, alone and depressed. For hope, he turned to painting and nature, but could not find peace and was hospitalized again. He would paint at the yellow house during the day and return to the hospital at night.

Van Gogh decided to move to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence after the people of Arles signed a petition saying that he was dangerous.

On May 8, 1889, he began painting in the hospital gardens. In November 1889, he was invited to exhibit his paintings in Brussels. He sent six paintings, including "Irises" and "Starry Night."

On January 31, 1890, Theo and his wife, Johanna, gave birth to a boy and named him Vincent Willem van Gogh after Theo's brother. Around this time, Theo sold van Gogh's "The Red Vineyards" painting for 400 francs.

Also around this time, Dr. Paul Gachet, who lived in Auvers, about 20 miles north of Paris, agreed to take van Gogh as his patient. Van Gogh moved to Auvers and rented a room.

On July 27, 1890, Vincent van Gogh went out to paint in the morning carrying a loaded pistol and shot himself in the chest, but the bullet did not kill him. He was found bleeding in his room.

Van Gogh was distraught about his future because, in May of that year, his brother Theo had visited and spoke to him about needing to be stricter with his finances. Van Gogh took that to mean Theo was no longer interested in selling his art.

Van Gogh was taken to a nearby hospital and his doctors sent for Theo, who arrived to find his brother sitting up in bed and smoking a pipe. They spent the next couple of days talking together, and then van Gogh asked Theo to take him home.

On July 29, 1890, Vincent van Gogh died in the arms of his brother Theo. He was only 37 years old.

Theo, who was suffering from syphilis and weakened by his brother's death, died six months after his brother in a Dutch asylum. He was buried in Utrecht, but in 1914 Theo's wife, Johanna, who was a dedicated supporter of van Gogh's works, had Theo's body reburied in the Auvers cemetery next to Vincent.

Theo's wife Johanna then collected as many of van Gogh's paintings as she could, but discovered that many had been destroyed or lost, as van Gogh's own mother had thrown away crates full of his art.

On March 17, 1901, 71 of van Gogh's paintings were displayed at a show in Paris, and his fame grew enormously. His mother lived long enough to see her son hailed as an artistic genius. Today, Vincent van Gogh is considered one of the greatest artists in human history.

Van Gogh Museum

In 1973, the Van Gogh Museum opened its doors in Amsterdam to make the works of Vincent van Gogh accessible to the public. The museum houses more than 200 van Gogh paintings, 500 drawings and 750 written documents including letters to Vincent’s brother Theo. It features self-portraits, “The Potato Eaters,” “The Bedroom” and “Sunflowers.”

In September 2013, the museum discovered and unveiled a van Gogh painting of a landscape entitled "Sunset at Montmajour.” Before coming under the possession of the Van Gogh Museum, a Norwegian industrialist owned the painting and stored it away in his attic, having thought that it wasn't authentic.

The painting is believed to have been created by van Gogh in 1888 — around the same time that his artwork "Sunflowers" was made — just two years before his death.

Watch "Vincent Van Gogh: A Stroke of Genius" on HISTORY Vault

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Vincent van Gogh
• Birth Year: 1853
• Birth date: March 30, 1853
• Birth City: Zundert
• Birth Country: Netherlands
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Vincent van Gogh was one of the world’s greatest artists, with paintings such as ‘Starry Night’ and ‘Sunflowers,’ though he was unknown until after his death.
• Astrological Sign: Aries
• Brussels Academy
• Nacionalities
• Interesting Facts
• Some of van Gogh's most famous works include "Starry Night," "Irises," and "Sunflowers."
• In a moment of instability, Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear and offered it to a prostitute.
• Van Gogh died in France at age 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
• Death Year: 1890
• Death date: July 29, 1890
• Death City: Auvers-sur-Oise
• Death Country: France

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Vincent van Gogh Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/artists/vincent-van-gogh
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 4, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• As for me, I am rather often uneasy in my mind, because I think that my life has not been calm enough; all those bitter disappointments, adversities, changes keep me from developing fully and naturally in my artistic career.
• I am a fanatic! I feel a power within me…a fire that I may not quench, but must keep ablaze.
• I get very cross when people tell me that it is dangerous to put out to sea. There is safety in the very heart of danger.
• I want to paint what I feel, and feel what I paint.
• As my work is, so am I.
• The love of art is the undoing of true love.
• When one has fire within oneself, one cannot keep bottling [it] up—better to burn than to burst. What is in will out.
• For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
• I do not say that my work is good, but it's the least bad that I can do. All the rest, relations with people, is very secondary, because I have no talent for that. I can't help it.
• What is wrought in sorrow lives for all time.
• What I draw, I see clearly. In these [drawings] I can talk with enthusiasm. I have found a voice.
• Enjoy yourself too much rather than too little, and don't take art or love too seriously.
• But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.

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Vincent van gogh (1853–1890).

Road in Etten

Vincent van Gogh

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Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat (obverse: The Potato Peeler)

The Potato Peeler (reverse: Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat)

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Department of European Paintings , The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2004 (originally published) March 2010 (last revised)

Vincent van Gogh, the eldest son of a Dutch Reformed minister and a bookseller’s daughter, pursued various vocations, including that of an art dealer and clergyman, before deciding to become an artist at the age of twenty-seven. Over the course of his decade-long career (1880–90), he produced nearly 900 paintings and more than 1,100 works on paper. Ironically, in 1890, he modestly assessed his artistic legacy as of “very secondary” importance.

Largely self-taught, Van Gogh gained his footing as an artist by zealously copying prints and studying nineteenth-century drawing manuals and lesson books, such as Charles Bargue’s Exercises au fusain and cours de dessin . He felt that it was necessary to master black and white before working with color, and first concentrated on learning the rudiments of figure drawing and rendering landscapes in correct perspective. In 1882, he moved from his parents’ home in Etten to the Hague, where he received some formal instruction from his cousin, Anton Mauve, a leading Hague School artist. That same year, he executed his first independent works in watercolor and ventured into oil painting; he also enjoyed his first earnings as an artist: his uncle, the art dealer Cornelis Marinus van Gogh, commissioned two sets of drawings of Hague townscapes for which Van Gogh chose to depict such everyday sites as views of the railway station, gasworks, and nursery gardens ( 1972.118.281 ).

Van Gogh’s admiration for the Barbizon artists, in particular Jean-François Millet, influenced his decision to paint rural life. In the winter of 1884–85, while living with his parents in Nuenen, he painted more than forty studies of peasant heads, which culminated in his first multifigured, large-scale composition ( The Potato Eaters , Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam); in this gritty portrayal of a peasant family at mealtime, Van Gogh wrote that he sought to express that they “have tilled the earth themselves with the same hands they are putting in the dish.” Its dark palette and coarse application of paint typify works from the artist’s Nuenen period ( 67.187.70b ;  1984.393 ).

Interested in honing his skills as a figure painter, Van Gogh left the Netherlands in late 1885 to study at the Antwerp Academy in Belgium. Three months later, he departed for Paris, where he lived with his brother Theo, an art dealer with the firm of Boussod, Valadon et Cie, and for a time attended classes at Fernand Cormon’s studio. Van Gogh’s style underwent a major transformation during his two-year stay in Paris (February 1886–February 1888). There he saw the work of the Impressionists first-hand and also witnessed the latest innovations by the Neo-Impressionists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. In response, Van Gogh lightened his palette and experimented with the broken brushstrokes of the Impressionists as well as the pointillist touch of the Neo-Impressionists, as evidenced in the handling of his Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat ( 67.187.70a ), which was painted in the summer of 1887 on the reverse of an earlier peasant study ( 67.187.70b ). In Paris, he executed more than twenty self-portraits that reflect his ongoing exploration of complementary color contrasts and a bolder style.

In February 1888, Van Gogh departed Paris for the south of France, hoping to establish a community of artists in Arles. Captivated by the clarity of light and the vibrant colors of the Provençal spring, Van Gogh produced fourteen paintings of orchards in less than a month, painting outdoors and varying his style and technique. The composition and calligraphic handling of The Flowering Orchard ( 56.13 ) suggest the influence of Japanese prints , which Van Gogh collected. The artist’s debt to ukiyo-e prints is also apparent in the reed pen drawings he made in Arles, distinguished by their great verve and linear invention ( 48.190.1 ). In August, he painted the still lifes Oleanders ( 62.24 ) and Shoes ( 1992.374 ); each work resonates with the artist’s personal symbolism. For Van Gogh, oleanders were joyous and life-affirming (much like the sunflower); he reinforced their significance with the compositional prominence accorded to Émile Zola’s 1884 novel La joie de vivre . The still life of unlaced shoes, which Van Gogh had apparently hung in Paul Gauguin ‘s “yellow room” at Arles, suggested, to Gauguin, the artist himself—he saw them as emblematic of Van Gogh’s itinerant existence.

Gauguin joined Van Gogh in Arles in October and abruptly departed in late December 1888, a move precipitated by Van Gogh’s breakdown, during which he cut off part of his left ear with a razor. Upon his return from the hospital in January, he resumed working on a portrait of the wife of the postmaster Joseph Roulin; although he painted all the members of the Roulin family, Van Gogh produced five versions of Madame Roulin as La Berceuse , shown holding the rope that rocks her newborn daughter’s cradle ( 1996.435 ). He envisioned her portrait as the central panel of a triptych, flanked by paintings of sunflowers. For Van Gogh, her image transcended portraiture, symbolically resonating as a modern Madonna; of its palette, which ranges from ocher to vermilion and malachite, Van Gogh expressed his desire that it “sing a lullaby with color,” underscoring the expressive role of color in his art.

Fearing another breakdown, Van Gogh voluntarily entered the asylum at nearby Saint-Rémy in May 1889, where, over the course of the next year, he painted some 150 canvases. His initial confinement to the grounds of the hospital is reflected in his imagery, from his depictions of its corridors ( 48.190.2 ) to the irises and lilacs of its walled garden, visible from the window of the spare room he was allotted to use as a studio. Venturing beyond the grounds of the hospital, he painted the surrounding countryside, devoting series to its olive groves ( 1998.325.1 ) and cypresses, which he saw as characteristic of Provence. In June, he produced two paintings of cypresses, rendered in thick, impastoed layers of paint ( 49.30 ; Cypresses , Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo), likening the form of a cypress to an Egyptian obelisk in a letter to his brother Theo. These evocative trees figure prominently in a landscape, produced the same month ( 1993.132 ). Van Gogh regarded this work, with its sun-drenched wheat field undulating in the wind, as one of his “best” summer canvases. At Saint-Rémy, he also painted copies of works by such artists as Delacroix, Rembrandt , and Millet, using black-and-white photographs and prints. In fall and winter 1889–90, he executed twenty-one copies after Millet ( 64.165.2 ); he described his copies as “interpretations” or “translations,” comparing his role as an artist to that of a musician playing music written by another composer. During his last week at the asylum, he extended his repertoire of still life by painting four bouquets of Irises ( 58.187 ) and Roses ( 1993.400.5 ) as a final series comparable to the sunflower decoration he made earlier in Arles.

After a year at Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh left, in May 1890, to settle in Auvers-sur-Oise, where he was near his brother Theo in Paris and under the care of Dr. Paul Gachet, a homeopathic physician and amateur painter. In just over two months, Van Gogh averaged a painting a day; however, on July 27, 1890, he shot himself in the chest in a wheat field; he died two days later. His artistic legacy is preserved in the paintings and drawings he left behind, as well as in his voluminous correspondence, primarily with Theo, which lays bare his working methods and artistic intentions and serves as a reminder of his brother’s pivotal role as a mainstay of support throughout his career.

By the time of his death in 1890, Van Gogh’s work had begun to attract critical attention. His paintings were featured at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris between 1888 and 1890 and with Les XX in Brussels in 1890. As Gauguin wrote to him, his recent works, on view at the Indépendants in Paris, were regarded by many artists as “the most remarkable” in the show; and one of his paintings sold from the 1890 exhibition in Brussels. In January 1890, the critic Albert Aurier published the first full-length article on Van Gogh, aligning his art with the nascent Symbolist movement and highlighting the originality and intensity of his artistic vision. By the outbreak of World War I, with the discovery of his genius by the Fauves and German Expressionists, Vincent van Gogh had already come to be regarded as a vanguard figure in the history of modern art.

Department of European Paintings. “Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gogh/hd_gogh.htm (originally published October 2004, last revised March 2010)

Further Reading

Brooks, David. Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Works . CD-ROM. Sharon, Mass.: Barewalls Publications, 2002.

Dorn, Roland, et al. Van Gogh Face to Face: The Portraits . New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000.

Druick, Douglas W., et al. Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South . Exhibition catalogue. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001.

Ives, Colta, et al. Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings . Exhibition catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005. See on MetPublications

Kendall, Richard. Van Gogh's Van Gogh's: Masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam . Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1998.

The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh . 3 vols. Boston: Bullfinch Press, 2000.

Pickvance, Ronald. Van Gogh in Arles . New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984. See on MetPublications

Pickvance, Ronald. Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and Auvers . New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986. See on MetPublications

Selected and edited by Ronald de Leeuw. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh . London: Penguin, 2006.

Stein, Susan Alyson, ed. Van Gogh: A Retrospective . New York: New Line Books, 2006.

Stolwijk, Chris, and Richard Thomson. Theo van Gogh . Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 1999.

Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. Online resource.

Additional Essays by Department of European Paintings

• Department of European Paintings. “ The Rediscovery of Classical Antiquity .” (October 2002)
• Department of European Paintings. “ Architecture in Renaissance Italy .” (October 2002)
• Department of European Paintings. “ Titian (ca. 1485/90?–1576) .” (October 2003)
• Department of European Paintings. “ The Papacy and the Vatican Palace .” (October 2002)

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Biography of Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh received a fragmentary education: one year at the village school in Zundert, two years at a boarding school in Zevenbergen, and eighteen months at a high school in Tilburg. At sixteen he began working at the Hague gallery of the French art dealers Goupil et Cie., in which his uncle Vincent was a partner. His brother Theo, who was born 1 May 1857, later worked for the same firm. In 1873 Goupil's transferred Vincent to London, and two years later they moved him to Paris, where he lost all ambition to become an art dealer. Instead, he immersed himself in religion, threw out his modern, worldly book, and became "daffy with piety", in the words of his sister Elisabeth. He took little interest in his work, and was dismissed from his job at the beginning of 1876.

Van Gogh then took a post as an assistant teacher in England, but, disappointed by the lack of prospects, returned to Holland at the end of the year. He now decided to follow in his father's footsteps and become a clergyman. Although disturbed by his fanaticism and odd behavior, his parents agreed to pay for the private lessons he would need to gain admission to the university. This proved to be another false start. Van Gogh abandoned the lessons, and after brief training as an evangelist went to the Borinage coal-mining region in the south of Belgium. His ministry among the miners led him to identify deeply with the workers and their families. In 1897, however, his appointment was not renewed, and his parents despaired, regarding him as a social misfit. In an unguarded moment, his father even spoke of committing him to a mental asylum.

Vincent, too, was at his wits' end, and after a long period of solitary soul-searching in the Borinage he decided to follow Theo's advice and become an artist. His earlier desire to help his fellowman was an evangelist gradually developed into an urge, as he later wrote, to leave mankind "some memento in the form of drawings of paintings - not made to please any particular movement, but to express a sincere human feeling."

His parents could not go along with this latest change of course, and financial responsibility for Vincent passed to his brother Theo, who was now working in the Paris gallery of Boussod, Valadon et Cie., the successor to Goupil's. It was because of Theo's loyal support that Van Gogh later came to regard his oeuvre as the fruits of his brother's efforts on his behalf. A lengthy correspondence between the two brothers (which began in August 1872) would continue until the last days of Vincent's life.

When Van Gogh decided to become an artist, no one, not even himself, suspected that he had extraordinary gifts. His evolution from an inept but impassioned novice into a truly original master was remarkably rapid. He eventually proved to have an exceptional feel for bold, harmonious color effects, and an infallible instinct for choosing simple but memorable compositions.

In order to prepare for his new career, Van Gogh went to Brussels to study at the academy, but left after only nine months. There he got to know Anthon van Rappard, who was to be his most important artist friend during his Dutch period.

In April 1881, Van Gogh went to live with his parents in Etten in North Brabant, where he set himself the task of learning how to draw. He experimented endlessly with all sorts of drawing materials, and concentrated on mastering technical aspects of his craft like perspective, anatomy, and physiognomy. Most of his subjects were taken from peasant life.

At the end of 1881 he moved to The Hague, and there, too, he concentrated mainly on drawing. At first he took lessons from Anton Mauve, his cousin by marriage, but the two soon fell out, partly because Mauve was scandalized by Vincent's relationship with Sien Hoornik, a pregnant prostitute who already had an illegitimate child. Van Gogh made a few paintings while in The Hague , but drawing was his main passion. In order to achieve his ambition of becoming a figure painter, he drew from the live model whenever he could.

In September 1883 he decided to break off the relationship with Sien and follow in the footsteps of artists like Van Rappard and Mauve by trying his luck in the picturesque eastern province of Drenthe, which was fairly inaccessible in those days. After three months, however, a lack of both drawing materials and models forced him to leave. He decided once again to move in with his parents, who were now living in the North Brabant village of Nuenen, near Eindhoven.

In Nuenen, Van Gogh first began painting regularly, modeling himself chiefly on the French painter Jean-Francois Millet (1814 - 1875), who was famous throughout Europe for his scenes of the harsh life of peasants. Van Gogh set to work with an iron will, depicting the life of the villagers and humble workers. he made numerous scenes of weavers. In May 1884, he moved into rooms he had rented from the sacristan of local Catholic church, one of which he used as his studio.

At the end of 1884 he began painting and drawing a major series of heads and work-roughened peasant hands in preparation for a large and complex figure piece that he was planning. In April 1885 this period of study came to fruition in the masterpiece of his Dutch period, The Potato Eaters

In the summer of that year, he made a large number of drawings of the peasants working in the fields. The supply of models dried up, however, when the local priest forbade his parishioners to pose for the vicar's son. He turned to painting landscape instead, inspired in part by a visit to recently opened Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

I feel - a failure. That's it as far as I'm concerned - I feel that this is the destiny that I accept, that will never change. ”

He nevertheless continued working hard during his two months in Auvers, producing dozens of paintings and drawings. On 27 July 1890, Vincent van Gogh was shot in the stomach, and passed away in the early morning of 29 July 1890 in his room at the Auberge Ravoux in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise. Although official history maintains that Van Gogh committed suicide, the latest research reveals that Van Gogh's death might be caused by an accident.

Theo, who had stored the bulk of Vincent's work in Paris, died six months later. His widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger (1862 - 1925), returned to Holland with the collection, and dedicated herself to getting her brother-in-law the recognition he deserved. In 1914, with his fame assured, she published Vincent van Gogh's letters between the two brothers.

The Starry Night

Café terrace at night, vincent van gogh's letters, van gogh self portrait, the starry night over the rhone, wheatfield with crows, the night cafe, the potato eaters, the yellow house, almond blossom, the church at auvers, at eternity's gate by vincent van gogh, portrait of dr. gachet, portrait of the postman joseph roulin by vincent van gogh, self portrait with bandaged ear.

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Van Gogh: The Life Paperback – December 4, 2012

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (December 4, 2012)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 976 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0375758976
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0375758973
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.68 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.1 x 1.62 x 9.1 inches
• #80 in Biographies of Artists, Architects & Photographers (Books)
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• #189 in Individual Artists (Books)

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About the author

Steven w. naifeh.

Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh are graduates of Harvard Law School.

Mr. Naifeh, who has written for art periodicals and has lectured at numerous museums including the National Gallery of Art, studied art history at Princeton and did his graduate work at the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University.

Together they have written many books on art and other subjects, including four New York Times bestsellers. Their biography Jackson Pollock: An American Saga won the Pulitzer Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It also inspired the Academy Award-winning 2000 film Pollock starring Ed Harris and Marcia Gay Harden as well as John Updike's novel Seek My Face.

Naifeh and Smith have been profiled in The New Yorker, The New York Times, USA Today, and People, and have appeared on 60 Minutes, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose, and the Today show.

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Biography Online

Vincent Van Gogh Biography

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890)

Vincent Van Gogh was an artist of exceptional talent. Influenced by impressionist painters of the period, he developed his own instinctive, spontaneous style. Van Gogh became one of the most celebrated artists of the twentieth century and played a key role in the development of modern art.

“What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion.”

– Vincent Van Gogh (Letter to Theo, July 1882)

Short Biography Vincent Van Gogh

He was born in Groot-Zundert, a small town in Holland in March 1853. His father was a Protestant pastor and he had three uncles who were art dealers.

Despite disliking formal training, he studied art in both Brussels and Paris. His first attempts at art were not indicative of his later talent. In the beginning, he was a clumsy drawer and, when studying at one art academy, he was put back a year because of his perceived lack of ability to draw. His early pictures appear rather basic and do not show any sign of his later art. However, he worked hard and sought to improve his technique. Yet these early difficulties always stayed with Van Gogh and throughout his life, he was bothered with a sense of inadequacy. In a letter to his brother, he described his early efforts as mere ‘scribbles.’

He became absorbed in art and would prioritise it over more mundane matters. Van Gogh struggled to hold down a regular job. For example, he lost his position as an art dealer after quarrelling with a customer. He also had short-lived jobs as a supply teacher and priest. Not holding a regular job, he relied on financial help from his close brother Theo. Theo was generous to his brother throughout his life – often sending money and painting materials.

With his brothers financial backing, in 1888 Van Gogh travelled to Arles in the south of France, where he continued his painting – often outside – another feature of the impressionist movement. This was a prolific period for Van Gogh; he could paint up to five paintings per week and he enjoyed walking in the countryside and getting inspiration from nature – such as the corn harvest. He drew everything from nature, portraits of friends, everyday objects and the vast night sky.

Straw Harvest

Living in Paris (1886-88) he had been influenced by the new impressionist painters, such as Monet and Renoir, and their interest in light. However, he soon developed his own unique style of powerful, brush strokes – often using warm reds, oranges and yellows. Simple brush strokes which created strong and arresting images.

Van Gogh was driven by an inner urge to express the art he felt within. He wrote that he felt an artistic power within, which moved him to work very hard.

“Believe me, I work, I drudge, I grind all day long and I do so with pleasure, but I should get very much discouraged if I could not go on working as hard or even harder.. .I feel, Theo, that there is a power within me, and I do what I can to bring it out and free it.”

– Van Gogh, (Letter to Theo 1982)

Van Gogh lived from moment to moment and was never financially secure. He put his whole life into art and neglected other aspects of his life – such as his health, appearance and financial security. During his lifetime, he sold only one painting – ironic since now Van Gogh’s paintings are some of the most expensive in the world.

“What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came.”

– Van Gogh, Letter to Theo ( July 1880 )

Cafe Terrace at Night 1888 ( Kröller-Müller Museum)

“When I have a terrible need of — shall I say the word — religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.”

– Vincent Van Gogh

In Arles, he had a brief, if unsuccessful, period of time with the artist Gauguin. Van Gogh’s intensity and mental imbalance made him difficult to live with. At the end of the two weeks, Van Gogh approached Gauguin with a razor blade. Gauguin fled back to Paris, and Van Gogh later cut off the lower part of his ear with the blade.

This action was symptomatic of his increasing mental imbalance. He was later committed to a lunatic asylum where he would spend time on and off until his death in 1890. At the best of times, Van Gogh had an emotional intensity that flipped between madness and genius. He himself wrote:

“Sometimes moods of indescribable anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and fatality of circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant.”

Vase with 12 Sunflowers,  1888

It was during these last two years of his life that Van Gogh was at his most productive as a painter. He developed a style of painting that was quick and rapid – leaving no time for contemplation and thought. He painted with quick movements of the brush and drew increasingly avant-garde style shapes – foreshadowing modern art and its abstract style. He felt an overwhelming need and desire to paint.

“The work is an absolute necessity for me . I can’t put it off, I don’t care for anything but the work; that is to say, the pleasure in something else ceases at once and I become melancholy when I can’t go on with my work. Then I feel like a weaver who sees that his threads are tangled, and the pattern he had on the loom is gone to hell, and all his thought and exertion is lost.”

In 1890, a series of bad news affected his mental equilibrium and one day in July, whilst painting, he shot himself in the chest. He died two days later from his wound.

Yellow House

The religion of Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh was critical of formalised religion and was often scathing of clerics in the Christian church, but he denied he was an atheist, believing in God and love.

“That God of the clergymen, He is for me as dead as a doornail. But am I an atheist for all that? The clergymen consider me as such — be it so; but I love, and how could I feel love if I did not live, and if others did not live, and then, if we live, there is something mysterious in that.”

– Van Gogh

Van Gogh saw his painting as a spiritual pursuit. He wrote of great paintings, that the artist had hidden an aspect of God in the painting.

“Try to grasp the essence of what the great artists, the serious masters, say in their masterpieces, and you will again find God in them. One man has written or said it in a book, another in a painting.”

“I think that everything that is really good and beautiful, the inner, moral, spiritual and sublime beauty in men and their works, comes from God, and everything that is bad and evil in the works of men and in men is not from God, and God does not approve of it. But I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things.”

– Vincent Van Gogh

Citation:  Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Vincent Van Gogh”, Oxford,  www.biographyonline.net. Published 23 May 2014. Last Updated 3 February 2020.

Van Gogh – His Life and Works

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Vincent van Gogh: The Biography

• Vincent van Gogh

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Follow the troubled path to creative genius of Dutch art's favourite son in this extensive Van Gogh biography, which tracks his family life, the key periods of his development and also the artist's that influenced his own unique style.

"It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done." (Read more quotes here)

Vincent van Gogh is arguably one of the most brilliant artists who amassed tremendous accolades while others perceiving him as the 'mad' artist. He created artistic works, simple by nature but uniquely tormented the soul. Most of his works were merely perceived as basic manifestations of a man who was troubled in the head. Even though this might not be far from the truth, his works have inspired many great artists and to date, his works remain unique in their own ways.

Family Life

Vincent van Gogh was born Vincent Willem van Gogh on March 30th 1853 in the small town of Groot-Zundert, a region in Brabant that was near the Belgian border in Netherlands. Vincent was a son to Anna Cornelia Carbentus (1819–1907) and Theodorus van Gogh (1822–85)-Reverend of the protestant church. Vincent had two brothers-Cornelius Vincent (1867–1900) and Theo (1857–91) and three sisters - Willemina (Wil) Jacoba (1862–1941), Anna Cornelia (1855–1930) and Elisabeth Huberta (1859–1936).

A greater part of a younger Vincent was spent quiet since he was a calm and collected young boy who had seemingly no interest or ties to the artistic world. Vincent's sister, Elisabeth, regarded him as a sensitive and serious young boy who often preferred to be by himself rather than spending time with his family. As a young boy, he wore clothes and behaved in ways that made him appear strange when compared to his peers from a very young age.

School Life

In the general run of things, Vincent was a good student in school. He attended a village school just in his locality to pursue his academics and parsonage for religious education between the years of 1861 and 1864. Afterwards, from 1864 to 1866 he moved to a boarding school in Zevenbergen where he pursued French, English and German just before he transferred to another school in Tilburg. He was not to stay long in the school because of probable financial constraints that his middle-class family could not afford.

After his rather sketchy period of education, a 16-year old Vincent was sent to a gallery in Hague to work as a junior clerk on July 30, 1869. The gallery, Goupil and Company, was an internal corporation that specialised in the 18th and 19th century art, photographic prints, reproductions and contemporary works.

Mental Health Troubles

From his early life, Vincent was not like any other young boy. What followed were years of troubles and tribulations but there have been seemingly no consensus on the certainty of his health status. There have been numerous hypotheses that have been advanced by different scholars concerning what he was suffering from including:

• Lead poisoning: Vincent often used lead-based paint as his painting medium. This is the reason why some scholars still argue that he might have suffered from lead poisoning because of his continued exposure to paint. At some point, Dr. Peyron said that in one of his occasional attacks, he tried poisoning himself by drinking paint, which caused his retinas to swell. This is one of the symptoms of lead poisoning. The effect is that one starts to see light in form of halos, clearly evidenced in some of his works like The Starry Night.
• Bipolar disorder: Van Gogh had two extreme and competing personalities, that which loved art and the other religion. This was a clear condition since this enthusiasm levels concerning these two interests that were often followed by exhaustion and incidences of depression.
• Temporal lobe disorder: In his everyday life, Van Gogh used to experience seizures which Dr. Peyron and Dr. Felix Rey attributed to temporal lobe disorder. His prolonged use of absinthe, an infamous toxic alcoholic drink, aggravated his brain lesion, a condition which he was born with that also caused his epileptic condition.
• Hypergraphia: Vincent wrote a collection of over 800 letters over his lifetime since hypergraphia is a condition that is said to be symptomised by one feeling the need to continuously write something and specialists link it to epilepsy and mania.
• Sunstroke: In his time, he loved Realism painting and that means he spend most of his time outdoors while in the South of France. In his letters, he claims that his bad stomach, cases of nausea and episodes of hostility were as a result of the effects of sunstroke.

Early Training

Vincent van Gogh, in the fall of 1880, moved to Brussels on his quest to become an artist. By this time, he had no formal education in the field of art but his brother Theo came to his aid and supported him financially to further his dream. As committed as he was, a young Vincent first began with studying on his own embracing such books as Cours de dessin by Charles Bargue and Travaux des champs written by by Jean-François Millet . He drew great inspiration from these books even in his early works.

Art was an escape for him because they seemingly played an instrumental role in helping him stay emotionally afloat and balanced. Later in 1885, he broke ground and started working on Potato Eaters , which is still being considered as his first masterpiece. His brother Theo, who by the time was living in Paris, was strongly convicted that Vincent's art would not get proper accolades in Paris since the French capital dwellers had increasingly embraced Impressionism.

In 1886, Vincent packed his things and showed up on Theo's house in the French capital uninvited and he was welcomed in the small apartment. This is where he came to first experienced Impressionist art that had him fascinated especially by how artists used colour and light to create impressive pieces. This motivated him to begin studying with Camille Pissarro and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec among other great names.

Since money was quite a challenge, Vincent and his friends posed for each other and painted themselves instead of hiring models, an endeavour that they could not afford. He was a passionate young painter and always engaged in critiques with other painters but at the same time in stayed away from anyone who seemed tired of his constant bickering.

Career Development

In just a span of a decade (1880-1890), Vincent had achieved what many other artists had not achieved in their entire lives, starting from just drawings and water colours in the first four years of his career. He often liked working by himself but the difficulty of self-training soon caught up with him and he started perceiving the need for seeking guidance from other experienced players in the industry. That is he ended up working with Anton Mauve, a renowned Dutch landscape painter in 1881.

In the summer of 1882, Vincent started visiting museums where he met other great artists, which enabled to expand his knowledge extensively while experimenting with oil paints. However, when 1883, he developed the urge to be alone with peasants and nature and this journey led him to an isolated northern Netherlands town of Drenthe. This small town was largely frequented by the likes of Mauve and he spend three months there till the time he thought of going back home, Nuenen.

For the greater part of 1884 and 1885, Van Gogh spent his time in Nuenen which saw him improve his craft, becoming bolder and more assured. He specialised in painting landscape, figure and still life. He derived his inspirations for his artworks from the daily lives of peasants and the hardships they were passing through. This period saw him improve his techniques and his understanding of the possibilities of painting rapidly grew.

Van Gogh studied Hals, which helped him cultivate the freshness of a visual impression which he incorporated with what he picked up from Eugène Delacroix and Paolo Veronese. These two painters inspired him to use colour to express an object by itself, which further made him embrace Peter Paul Rubens works with enthusiasm that led him to suddenly leaving for Antwerp, Belgium where he could study Rubens' works. Apart from just learning the decisiveness effect resulting from combining colours, he also learned a lot about Impressionist painting and Japanese prints. These were more than he even learned while attending an academy he had enrolled in Antwerp.

His impatience of rules being dictated to him led to him leaving for Paris to join his brother Theo. By this time, he was ready to for lessons from Camille, Henri and Georges Seurat who were a group of Impressionist artists between 1886 and February 1888. This learning period led to the discovery of his own style of brushworks with his palette full of colour, less traditional vision and lighter tones. In 1887, he was painting in much more paintings in pure colours and his Impressionist style crystallised in early 1888. His masterpieces Self-Portrait in Front of the Easel and Portrait of Père Tanguy were as a result of his Impressionist style plus other Parisian suburbs landscape paintings.

February 1888, Vincent grew tired of the city life and Arles, Southern France, "to look at nature under a brighter sky." The following 12 month of his career were full of paintings depicting blossoming fruit trees, self-portraits, views of the towns and portraits of Roulin the postman among other friends, landscapes and sunflowers . His style grew more instinctive and spontaneous from his traditional styles with great intensity and speed. His hopes of forming a separate Impressionist group in Arles with Henri, Gauguin and others fell into shambles since most of their ideas temperamentally incompatible and opposing. However, in the span of two months, they were able to learn and influence each other. The highlight of this falling out was Vincent snapping under the strain and argued with Gauguin and sources have claimed that he chases him around with a razor and ended up cutting the lower half of his own left ear in the Eve of Christmas, 1888.

Van Gogh returned home two weeks later to continue his work where he created works like La Berceuse (Woman Rocking a Cradle; Augustine-Alix Pellicot Roulin, 1851-1930) and Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe plus many other still lifes . His mental illness caught up with him again and finally asked to be temporarily shut up in a Saint-Rémy-de-Provence asylum to be under medical supervision. After 12 months of horror and recurrent haunting attacks, he produced great works such as The Starry Night , Cypresses , Les Alpilles, Trees , Garden of the Asylum among others.

This marked the end of his career mostly because he was oppressed by homesickness. This made him leave for home in 1890 since he longed to see his brother Theo. He feared that he could eventually become unable to overcome his loneliness and chose to take his own life by shooting himself but did not die immediately. He remained stubborn even when interrogated by the police saying "I shot myself... I only hope I haven’t botched it" and "What I have done is nobody else's business. I am free to do what I like with my own body." Unfortunately, he passed away just two days later.

Catalogue of Vincent van Gogh's Paintings

Below are some of notable artworks by Vincent van Gogh, an overview of his greatest highlights and achievements:

• The Potato Eaters (1885)
• The Courtesan (after Eisen) (1887)
• Café Terrace At Night (1888)
• Fourteen Sunflowers in a Vase (1888)
• The Bedroom (1889)
• Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889)
• Starry Night (1889)
• Church at Auvers (1890)
• Paul-Ferdinand Gachet (1890)

Legacy: Paintings Related to his Work

Vincent's style of work was not unique, other great names also painted using styles similar to Van Gogh’s. Here are some of the most notable works related to his work.

Boulevard des Capucines (1873)

This is a painting by Claude Monet which captures the hustle of Parisian life as he sees it from his friend's studio. His style is similar to Van Gogh because his speed and intensity were similar, utilising short and quick brushstrokes creating an impression of people in the French capital.

The Wave (1870)

A painting by Gustave Courbet which was clearly influenced by the early Japanese prints and he was arguably one of the first to embrace this style, just like Vincent van Gogh. He seemingly takes cue from the Easter prints in this painting showing viewers a slice of water that is closed off from the view of the large space. This painting is a general representation of Courbet's style of art that were seemingly composed of broken patches especially in the light and dark segments. This style was embraced by Van Gogh in his early stages of painting.

The Execution of Emperor Maximilian (1867-68)

Painted by Édouard Manet aiming to express the shock experienced by French men by the execution of Maximilian of Austria on June 19, 1867. As a painter he strove to record all contemporary events and he did this by utilising Romanticism and muted tones to bring out a scene that was distinctly somber. Vincent also made use of muted tones in his paintings to arouse the feelings in his paintings, a style that made many critics perceive him as a troubled painter.

Inspirations

Painters vincent van gogh derived inspiration from.

His move to the French capital in 1886 had a lasting effect on his work as a painter. His Impressionism and Post-Impressionism styles were greatly influenced by individuals like Pissarro , Gauguin, Bernard and Monet. His close ties with Gaugin was his greatest inspiration since their first meet in 1887. The painter greatly influenced Vincent's style of painting and the themes in their paintings were oddly similar. Aprt from Gauguin, Jean-François Millet Gruchy was another source of inspiration to Vincent. Millet's work as a missionary and identifying with people of the lower class made Vincent derive great admiration. His early depictions of peasants in paintings inspired Vincent's earliest works as a painter. Other artist who profoundly inspired him were Rousseau, Rembrandt, Daumier and Delacroix.

Painters Vincent van Gogh Inspired

Van Gogh unique brushwork technique was widely received and inspired a lot of great painters who followed in his footsteps. Such artists like Matisse , Derain, Bacon, Gauguin and Pollock adopted some of Vincent's artistic elements in their works. Even after his death, he inspired many artists who adopted his brushwork techniques and seemingly depicted similar subject matters to Van Gogh's paintings. These artists included Maurice de Vlaminck, de Kooning and Paul Klee .

Considered as one of the greatest artists to come out of Netherlands part from Rembrandt and still remains one of the world's greatest Post-Impressionist painters till today. He remains an iconic painter despite his troubled life, a condition that played a crucial role in conveying his spiritual and emotional state characterised by densely laden canvas and unique brushstrokes.

"It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures." Vincent van Gogh

Article Author

Tom Gurney in an art history expert. He received a BSc (Hons) degree from Salford University, UK, and has also studied famous artists and art movements for over 20 years. Tom has also published a number of books related to art history and continues to contribute to a number of different art websites. You can read more on Tom Gurney here.

5 Books About Vincent Van Gogh for His 165th Birthday

S.W. Sondheimer

When not prying Legos and gaming dice out of her feet, S.W. Sondheimer is a registered nurse at the Department of Therapeutic Misadventures, a herder of genetic descendants, cosplayer, and a fiction and (someday) comics writer. She is a Yinzer by way of New England and Oregon and lives in the glorious 'Burgh with her husband, 2 smaller people, 2 cats, a fish, and a snail. She occasionally tries to grow plants, drinks double-caffeine coffee, and has a habit of rooting for the underdog. It is possible she has a book/comic book problem but has no intention of doing anything about either. Twitter: @SWSondheimer

View All posts by S.W. Sondheimer

Born March 30th, 1853 in Zundert, The Netherlands, Vincent Van Gogh took his first breath in the wake of an impossible legacy, lived a tortured life, and died before he had an opportunity to see the world acknowledge his genius. For all of that, his 37 years have proven a gift to humanity and, in acknowledgment of his 165th birthday, I wanted to share his life, work, and words with all of you, with these books about Vincent Van Gogh.

Van Gogh: The Life  by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White-Smith

Now considered the definitive biography of Van Gogh, written in partnership with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Naifeh and White-Smith had access to materials no previous biographer had the opportunity to study. They have made the larger-than-life Vincent human and accessible without diminishing the historical and artistic presence of Van Gogh one whit.

Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers  by Deborah Heiligman

While I’ve understood the  concept of “creative non-fiction” intellectually for some time, I’ll admit I never quite understood how it could be successfully executed until reading Heiligman’s lovely, if tragic, biography of the Van Gogh brothers. Based on the letters between Vincent and Theo, Heiligman creates vignettes carefully grounded in the words of the men themselves while allowing for a certain amount of closely researched narrative. The effect is the literary equivalent to one of the moving photographs from Harry Potter and just as magical. Geared toward young adults, it’s an excellent introduction to the artists and his family while also being thoroughly engaging for adults with foreknowledge of the subject.

Vincent  by Barbara Stok

Though presented in graphic novel format, this account of Van Gogh’s time in Provence is frank and intense, covering subjects ranging from the artist’s battles with mental illness to his sometimes painfully obsessive relationships (both romantic and sexual), to his tumultuous interactions with fellow artists such as Paul Gaugin. Simple, gorgeous, and sometimes visually shocking, this is an affecting portrayal of Van Gogh that touched and surprised me, as well as, at one point, bringing me to tears. Proceed carefully if you’re particularly sensitive to color shifts and visual portrayal of mental illness.

Vincent Van Gogh: A Self-Portrait in Art and Letters  by H. Anna Suh

As she did with Da Vinci, Suh has chronologically matched Van Gogh’s paintings with snippets of his letters, allowing insight into what Vincent was thinking and feeling, and what was occurring in his life, as he created his works. The text and art are printed side by side, allowing the reader/viewer to experience them simultaneously, giving her the sensation of standing beside Vincent, or perhaps Theo, listening as the artist or his best beloved family member lectures on the genesis of each work. The book is oversized, which presents more detail in each of the lovely reproductions and a more intense viewing experience.

Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings  by Ingo F. Walther and Rainer Metzger

Few artists are as honest about their growing pains as Van Gogh was. He struggled to find his style and palette, craving recognition while, at the same time, expressing openly how much he still had to learn and how hard he worked to create. While some of his self-deprecation was certainly due to depression and anxiety, there is so much more to Vincent than his mental illness, as there is to all creators who wrestle with altered neurochemistry and circumstance, and paging through his work, through his progression, not only gives insight into the man himself, but hope to creators of all sorts.

So, happy birthday, Vincent. Though you’ll never know how much your work has meant to us, we will continue to celebrate it, and you.

[Ed. Note: The post has been fixed to reflect that it’s Van Gogh’s 165th birthday]

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5 Books About Van Gogh You Have to Read

Errika Gerakiti 26 June 2023 min Read

Vincent Van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA.

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Vincent van Gogh is one of those artists whose reputation precedes them. The tormented child of the art, the cursed artist, the genius, the weird, or the eccentric are only a few of the labels that are used to describe him. Today, Van Gogh is one of the most famous and most loved painters worldwide. Here, we suggest five books about this artist. These are great reads if you are interested in learning about the personal life of the artist, but also how he viewed his life and his artistic evolution.

1. The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles

From October to December 1888, Van Gogh and Gauguin lived under the same roof in Arles, a French suburb. They had an exceptionally creative time together. They gave each other feedback and made some of their most distinguished works. However, Van Gogh bent under the pressure of cohabitation, and the crisis of his mental illness became very severe. He fought with Gauguin which is how he came to mutilate himself.

The author of this book is Martin Gayford, who is a well-known art critic. One might expect that he would use stilted language, but that is not the case. The Yellow House is pure literature. It gets inside Van Gogh’s psyche and makes you understand all about his state of mind. If you read this book, you will either fall in love with Van Gogh, or you will want to hug him and tell him that he’s not alone. In our opinion, it is one of the best books about Van Gogh.

You can check this book here .

2. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

What is a better way to learn about Van Gogh than reading his personal letters? This next book that we recommend is a selection of them. The letters narrate his personal story and artistic evolution. You will read about his relationship with religion, his unsuccessful effort to find love, and how he coped with the attacks of his mental illness. Aside from the popular belief that Van Gogh was a madman, this book proves he had great emotional and spiritual depth.

Also, the Penguin Classics’ edition links the letters to biographical details and gives insights into the events of his life. It is a very interesting book drawing every art historian and everyone who loves Van Gogh.

3. Van Gogh: Complete Works

Taschen is famous for its artistic series, and this book is a great addition. It is a catalog of Van Gogh’s 871 paintings , all in color! It also provides a detailed monograph on his life. In addition, it shows how the artist was so much more than his depression and anxiety and how he struggled for recognition.

You can check this catalogue here .

Barbara Stok created a graphic novel that narrates Van Gogh’s life in Arles. The illustrations are beautiful and vivid; however, the art is sometimes shocking when depicting his mental illness. Nevertheless, it is moving and will bring you to tears.

You can check this graphic novel here .

5. Van Gogh: The Life

Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith cooperated closely with the Van Gogh Museum for this book. Van Gogh: The Life brings to light previously unknown information about the artist’s life, his relationship with his brother Theo, and the mysterious circumstances under which he committed suicide. In addition, the book is a New York Times bestseller and nominated one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and the BookReporter.

• Van Gogh Museum
• Vincent van Gogh

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Errika Gerakiti

Errika has a Master's degree in curatorial practices. She has been a writer for DailyArt Magazine since 2019 and loves sharing what she loves: weird, unusual art, female artists, and contemporary creations.

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Further Reading

The literature on Vincent van Gogh is both wide and deep. For readers interested in learning more about certain periods of his life, dimensions of his personality, aspects of his oeuvre, or developments in his career, the sheer volume of resources can be overwhelming and off-putting. To encourage reader curiosity and facilitate the pursuit of specific lines of inquiry, we offer the following annotated bibliography. This list is designed to supplement and, to some extent, distill both the “Selected Bibliography” printed in the book and the chapter-by-chapter listings of additional sources, which accompany the online notes. Our purpose is to focus on those works that we have found particularly helpful (or, in some cases, essential), and that we think would be good places for readers to start learning more about topics in Van Gogh’s life and art that are of special interest to them.

Collections of Primary Sources

Below, we list important sources for further information about specific periods in Vincent’s life. There are also some volumes that collect primary-source materials (i.e., first-hand accounts) from throughout Vincent’s life. By far the most important of these is Susan Alyson Stein’s Van Gogh: A Retrospective (1986). Because it covers so much territory and selects its sources judiciously, Stein’s book is an indispensable resource and a necessary corrective to Vincent’s sometimes evasive and occasionally misleading letters. Another collection that provides important “outside” perspectives on Van Gogh is Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov’s excellent Van Gogh in Perspective (1973).

Van Gogh’s Letters

The best and most obvious place to begin is with Vincent van Gogh’s own letters. Together, they form a work of such extraordinary importance that it has stood for almost a century as a major literary achievement independent of Van Gogh’s stature and accomplishment as an artist. The recent retranslation by Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, and Nienke Bakker, Vincent van Gogh: The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition (1999), not only provides more precise translations than the long-standard English translation by Vincent’s sister-in-law, Johanna Bonger (see below), it also provides an unparalleled wealth of illustrations and annotations that are both hugely helpful to the modern reader and a model of scholarship for the ages. This massive six-volume work has rightly been named “the book of the decade” by The Guardian .

In his article, “The Van Gogh Letters Project: New Findings and Old” (1997-1998), editor Leo Jansen offers a fascinating overview of the vast, fifteen-year project that produced this monumental work of scholarship involving dozens of translators, scholars, editors, and others. The Complete Letters , which is available in Dutch and French printed editions as well, has also been reconceived, expanded, and greatly enhanced in an online edition: a stunningly beautiful and technologically cutting-edge scholarly resource, www.vangoghletters.org/vg/ . No subject lends itself better to the unlimited interconnectedness of the internet than Van Gogh’s exhaustively visual and allusive letters, and the Complete Letters site takes full advantage of the web’s capacity to provide vast amounts of supplementary information at the flick of a finger. Moreover, the site is open to the public and access is free.

Johanna Bonger’s early English translation of Van Gogh’s letters is still available as the Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh (Third Edition, 2000), both in bookstores and in many of the libraries of the English-speaking world. Her translations remain of great interest not only because so much of the scholarly literature until recently has been based on them but because she was a talented translator who knew Vincent personally and could literally hear his voice when she read his words. She also shared the same cultural background as Vincent; brought the same Victorian values and mindset to her translating; and, as Theo’s wife, had access to information and perspectives that could help her put Vincent’s words into the context of their period.

Bonger’s Dutch editions of the letters, Verzamelde brieven van Vincent van Gogh (edited with the assistance of Vincent’s nephew, V. W. van Gogh; 1954); and Van Gogh door Van Gogh: De brieven als commentaar op zijn werk (1973), although long crucial to Van Gogh studies, have been largely superseded by the more careful dating and organization of Vincent’s letters that informs the new Complete Letters .

Van Gogh’s Life

Primary accounts.

Several people who knew Vincent as an adult wrote accounts of him. The most reliable of these are the contemporary descriptions, often included in letters, which were not written with an eye toward posterity. The correspondence of Camille Pissarro and his son Lucien, Camille Pissarro: Letters to His Son Lucien (edited by John Rewald and Lucien Pissarro and translated by Lionel Abel; 1945), contains some such references to Van Gogh. It is more generally useful as an unscreened window onto the complex and highly charged world of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

Posthumous recollections of Van Gogh are, in general, less trustworthy — even those that were recorded soon after his death. This is because his celebrity, especially after his presumed suicide, soared immediately, distorting and inflating memories as it rose ever higher. Stein (see above) collects many of these later recollections. A good rule for assessing their reliability is that the less the witnesses knew about Vincent’s celebrity, the more credibility they should be given. The first-hand accounts that date from Vincent’s earlier life (in Nuenen and Antwerp, for example) are less likely to suffer from such hagiographic distortions.

Unfortunately, the least trustworthy of the contemporary accounts are those by fellow artists who came to know Vincent after he moved to Paris in 1886. Émile Bernard wrote many articles about Van Gogh that played an important part in developing the mythology around the artist. The two most important of these are “Les hommes d’aujourd’hui,” published in Les Hommes d’Aujourd’hui in 1890, and “Vincent van Gogh,” published in L’Écho de Paris in 1891. Bernard’s “Souvenirs sur Van Gogh” (“Memories of Van Gogh”), published in L’Amour de l’Art 5 in December 1924, could have been an important contribution to the Van Gogh literature by a contemporary who knew him. Instead, like Bernard’s other works on the subject of Van Gogh, it is a combination of dubious recollection, outright invention, and self-inflation that renders it almost completely unreliable.

Paul Gauguin also recorded a number of reminiscences about his encounters with Vincent: including, most famously, in the Yellow House. Unlike Bernard, however, he never collected these memories into dedicated books or articles but instead spread them through his writings, especially Avant et après ( Before and After ; 1903; 1923). Later scholars have collected his letters to Vincent (and Theo) into volumes (see below). Gauguin’s surprising (and uncharacteristic) diffidence in this regard arose from his belief that Vincent’s insanity and “suicide” (followed soon after by his brother’s death in an asylum) would reflect badly on him and his art. Thus, he did not wish to underscore his closeness to the Van Gogh brothers at the time of their deaths. Subsequently, when his predictions about posterity’s view of Van Gogh proved wrong and the latter’s star rose higher than his, Gauguin made various, vain efforts to claim credit for Vincent’s distinctive artistic vision. Unfortunately, his later biographical comments about Vincent were all deeply stained by this belated attempt to co-opt his former colleague’s celebrity.

General Biographies

Both Jan Hulsker and Marc Edo Tralbaut devoted much of their intellectual lives to studying Van Gogh, and the early literature is at times dominated by their work. Theirs are the first “modern” biographies of Van Gogh: the first to escape the swoon of romanticizing and mythologizing that plagued earlier efforts like Julius Meier-Graefe’s Vincent Van Gogh; a Biographical Study (1936) and Irving Stone’s infamously fictionalized Lust for Life (1934).

Hulsker’s Vincent and Theo: A Dual Biography (1985) and Tralbaut’s Vincent van Gogh (1969), together with their many articles on Van Gogh, remain important sources on the artist’s life. As the Dutch Minister for Culture, a founder of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and a friend of the Van Gogh family, Hulsker was for many years the historian with the best access to important unpublished primary source material. Using this access, Hulsker helped fill in some critical gaps in Van Gogh’s story. For example, he first published the letters that the Postman Joseph Roulin and the Reverend Salles exchanged with Theo during Vincent’s confinements in Arles and Saint-Rémy. (“Vincent’s Stay in the Hospitals at Arles and St.-Rémy: Unpublished Letters from the Postman Joseph Roulin and the Reverend Salles to Theo van Gogh,” published in 1971 with a translation by J. van Hattum). Unfortunately, the same insider status that permitted him such extraordinary access also restricted his view of Vincent, about whom he could hardly ever bring himself to say a negative word. His copious scholarship on the artist is marred by strained justifications of Vincent’s often odious behavior and pre-emptive acquittals of his family for their contributory role in his troubled life.

Tralbaut not only wrote a full-fledged biography of Van Gogh (the work from 1969), he diligently tracked down documentary evidence that helped fill gaps in the record, especially for the years that Vincent spent in the Borinage, Brussels, and Antwerp – the Belgian Tralbaut’s home territory.

Biographies of Theo

Theo van Gogh, 1857-1891: Art Dealer, Collector and Brother of Vincent (1999), by Chris Stolwijk and Richard Thomson, with a contribution by Sjraar van Heugten, is clearly the definitive book on Theo. It is especially good on Theo’s work at Goupil (later, Boussod & Valadon). In particular, it corrects the inflating effect of Vincent’s celebrity on Theo’s reputation as a champion of the new art – both his brother’s and others’. Stolwijk also wrote an excellent article on Theo’s early years, “‘Our Crown and Our Honour and Our Joy’: Theo van Gogh’s Early Years” (1997-98), as well as the definitive account of the Goupil firm, in which Theo spent his entire adult life: Un marchand avisé ( A Dealer Notified ; translated by Jeanne Bouniort in 1999). Essential reading for anyone interested in Theo van Gogh (or Vincent) is Brief Happiness: The Correspondence of Theo van Gogh and Jo Bonger , edited by Leo Jansen and Jan Robert (1999). These previously unpublished letters, dating from 1887 to 1890, not only cover a critical period in Vincent’s life (including his self-mutilation, repeated institutionalizations, and death), they also present an unparalleled insight into Theo’s complex personality, into his relationship with Johanna Bonger, and especially into the decisive impact that their relationship had on the final, fatal turns in Vincent’s life.

Periods in Van Gogh’s Life

A library of excellent books is available for readers who wish to know more about specific periods in Van Gogh’s life and/or work. In our opinion, these are among the leaders. For Vincent’s childhood, Benno J. Stokvis stands out as a rich source of primary materials. In his short book Nasporingen omtrent Vincent van Gogh in Brabant ( Investigations Regarding Vincent van Gogh in Brabant ; 1926) and in his article “Nieuwe nasporingen omtrent Vincent van Gogh in Brabant,” (“New Investigations Regarding Vincent van Gogh in Brabant”; 1927) Stokvis reports his early interviews with people who had known the Van Goghs during their years in Brabant, and these two works remain essential resources for research into Vincent’s youth. Han van Crimpen edited a similar compendium of early reminiscences: Friends Remember Vincent (1912).

Of all Vincent’s siblings, only one wrote a memoir of her brother: Elisabeth Huberta du Quesne-Van Gogh (“Lies”). Her account of their shared childhood, Personal Recollections of Vincent van Gogh (1910; reprint translated by Katharine S. Dreier with a foreword by Arthur S. Dove, 1913), is notorious for its errors, embellishments, and excesses, especially in regard to Vincent’s later life and art. But it remains, in our view, both a helpful aid in reconstructing the artist’s childhood years and an insight into the family’s perspective on Vincent’s troubled life after he left home.

While not technically a first-hand account, Jo Bonger’s Memoir , which was appended to her translation of his letters, draws upon the memories and perspective of her husband, Vincent’s brother Theo. She also had access to other family members, including Vincent’s mother and sisters, as well as to family correspondence dating from long before she entered Theo’s life. Her Memoir is the earliest (and in some cases the only) account of Vincent’s youth to benefit from these sources. However, because some of the key players in her memoir were still alive at the time she wrote it, Bonger’s account is often least informative where the reader’s curiosity is most aroused.

By all measures, the best account of Vincent’s childhood years is also the most recent: Vincent van Gogh en zijn geboorteplaats: Als een boer van Zundert by Frank Kools ( Vincent van Gogh and his Birthplace: As a Farmer from Zundert ; 1990). Kools’s book is filled with astonishing original research, especially on Dorus van Gogh’s role as a preacher and (Protestant) community leader, and it refuses to succumb to legend. Another classic work on Vincent’s youth remains Jan Meyers’s De jonge Vincent ( The Young Vincent , 1989).

Van Gogh’s years in England have been superbly charted by Martin Bailey in both articles and books, including especially Van Gogh in England: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (with an essay by Debora Silverman; 1992) and Young Vincent: The Story of Van Gogh’s Years in England (1990). Ronald Pickvance’s English Influences on Vincent van Gogh (1974-75) is essential in understanding how Van Gogh’s preoccupation with religion during his time in England had such an important (if delayed) impact on his later career as an artist. Journalist Ken Wilkie’s In Search of Van Gogh (1978) later uncovered some important missing details about Van Gogh’s time in England, especially his relationship with Ursula and Eugenie Loyer.

For their vivid portraits of London during the time Vincent was there (one in words, one in images), we especially enjoyed Hippolyte Taine’s Notes on England (1860-70), and Eric De Maré’s Victorian London Revealed: Gustave Doré’s Metropolis (2001).

For the years Vincent spent in Amsterdam, the most helpful guide is Reindert Groot’s and Sjoerd de Vries’s 1990 Vincent Van Gogh in Amsterdam , which also includes some wonderful and rare illustrations of the people and places that defined his time there. Vincent stayed in Brussels twice: once in 1878 when he studied at a missionary school there. The definitive source on this brief and sad period in Vincent’s life is De Vlaamse Opleidingsshuuol van Nicolaas de Jonge en Zijn Opvolgers : 1875-1926 ( The Flemish School of Nicolaas the Younger and His Successors: 1825-1926 ; 1978) by W. Lutjeharms. It is primarily an account of the evangelical community in Belgium at the time – a community that Vincent tried unsuccessfully to join, leading him, ultimately, into the wilderness of the Borinage. Pierre Secrétan-Rollier wrote the essential work on Van Gogh’s dramatic years in the Black Country, Van Gogh chez les gueules noires: l’homme de l’espoir ( Van Gogh among the Miners: A Man of Hope ; 1977), which is supplemented by Luis Piérard’s La vie tragique de Vincent van Gogh ( The Tragic Life of Vincent van Gogh ; translated by Herbert Garland; 1925) and Visage de la Wallonie ( The Face of Wallonia ; 1980) along with René Dejollier’s Charbonages en Wallonie, 1345-1984 ( The Coal Mines of Wallonia ; 1988).

Van Gogh’s years in The Hague are documented extremely ably by Michiel van der Mast and Charles Dumas in Van Gogh en Den Haag (1990). This is the period in which Vincent first dedicated himself to art (as an illustrator), and the indispensable resource on the art of this period is the first volume of the Van Gogh Museum’s catalogue raisonné: Vincent van Gogh Drawings, Volume 1 (The Early Years, 1880-1883) , by Sjraar van Heugten (1996). Because this is also the period in which Vincent met and moved into his apartment the prostitute Sien Hoornik, we also found useful the leading survey of prostitution in Holland at the time, Het mysterie van de verdwenen bordelen: Prostitutie in Nederland in de negentiende eeuw ( The Mystery of the Vanished Bordellos: Prostitution in the Netherlands in the Nineteenth Century ; 1998); by Martin Bossenbroek and Jan H. Kompagnie. At his brother’s urging, Vincent abandoned Sien and left The Hague for the province of Drenthe in September 1883. He spent only three months in this remote and hostile region, but those months were crucial to his life and his career. Fortunately, Wout Dijk and Meent van der Sluis have written an extraordinarily detailed book, De Drentse tijd van Vincent van Gogh ( Vincent van Gogh’s Time in Drenthe ; 2001), about Vincent’s brief but traumatic interlude in the region.

Vincent left Drenthe to rejoin his parents in Nuenen for two years (1883-1885). It was in Nuenen that he began to paint consistently and seriously. For the best information on Vincent’s art during these years, again the best resource is the Van Gogh Museum’s catalogue raisonné: in this case, Volume 2 ( Nuenen , 1883-1885), by Sjraar van Heugten (1997). Ton de Brouwer’s Van Gogh en Nuenen is a critical source of information for Van Gogh’s life in Nuenen. Van Gogh in Brabant: Paintings and Drawings from Etten and Neunen (translated by Patricia Wardle; 1988) by Trudy van Spaandonk, Antoinette Wildenberg, and Ank Mulder-Koenen covers a broader range of Vincent’s life and work in Brabant (including his earlier brief stays in Etten), but also has excellent material on his time in Nuenen. The same is true of Griselda Pollock’s article: “Labour – Modern and Rural: The Contradictions of Representing Handloom Weavers in Brabant in 1884” (1987) and Carol Zemel’s article “The ‘Spook’ in the Machine: Van Gogh’s Pictures of Weavers in Brabant” (1985). Both of the latter sources add a great deal to the study of a particular subject (weavers) that preoccupied Van Gogh during much of his stay in Nuenen.

For more on Van Gogh’s brief (four-month) stay in Antwerp, the most focused and informative source is the latest installment of the Van Gogh Museum’s catalogue raisonné of its collection: Vincent van Gogh Drawings, Volume 3, Antwerp & Paris, 1885-1888 , by Marije Vellekoop and Sjraar van Heugten (2001); and the corresponding paintings volume from the same series: Vincent van Gogh Pantings, Volume 2, Antwerp & Paris (1885-1888) , by Ella Hendriks and Louis van Tilborgh (see below). Tralbaut also dedicates considerable attention to this period in his general biography (see above). Also revealing are the reminiscences of Vincent’s classmates at the Antwerp Academy (Victor Hageman, Van Gogh in Antwerp (an interview with Louis Piérard in 1914); and Richard Baseleer, Vincent Van Gogh in zijn Antwerpse Periode ( Vincent van Gogh in his Antwerp Period ), both of which are reprinted in Susan Alyson Stein’s Van Gogh: A Retrospective .

Vincent’s move to Paris in 1886 and the two years he spent living there with Theo present an entirely different challenge to scholars because the letters between the brothers virtually stopped. For a long time, this meant that little was known about this crucial period when Vincent first encountered the Impressionists as well as the other revolutionary painters of his era. Fortunately, Françoise Cachin and Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov stepped into the breach. Their joint book on the subject, Van Gogh à Paris (1988), as well as Welsh-Ovcharov’s Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period (1976) and Vincent van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism (1981) pioneered the understanding of Vincent’s years in Paris. These three books are the crucial starting point for any understanding of or inquiry into the two years when Vincent’s art underwent its most important transformation.

More recent and more detailed information on specific paintings, along with some extraordinarily well-researched biographical material, is available in the relevant volume of the Van Gogh Museum’s ongoing catalogue raisonné series: Vincent van Gogh Paintings, Volume 2, Antwerp and Paris (1885-1888) by Ella Hendriks and Louis van Tilborgh, with the assistance of Margriet van Eikema Hommes and Monique Hageman.

Two other books that are useful to understanding Vincent’s Paris years are A Painter’s Pilgrimage through Fifty Years (1939) by A.S.A. Hartick (a British artist who knew Van Gogh in Paris), and Vincent van Gogh (1923) by Gustave Coquiot, who interviewed some of the people who knew Van Gogh in Paris. Other stand-outs in the literature on Van Gogh’s stay in Paris, or that help provide a context for understanding it, are: Frédéric Destremau’s “L’atelier Cormon (1882-1887),” published in the Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art Français (1996); Sven Lövgren, Genesis of Modernism: Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and French Symbolism of the 1880s (1971); Mariel Oberthur’s Cafés and Cabarets of Montmartre (1984); Jerrold Seigel’s Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life: 1830-1930 (1986); and Canvases and Careers: Institutional Change in the French Painting World by Harrison C. White and Cynthia A. White (1965).

In 1888, Vincent moved from Paris to Provence in southern France where he stayed first in Arles and then at an asylum in nearby Saint-Rémy. In May 1890, he moved one final time, to the picturesque village of Auvers near Paris. He died three months later. Because these two years (1888-1890) were not only his last, but also his most productive, and because he created many of his greatest masterpieces during these years, there is a vast literature on this brief period. The starting point for any research in any of the three places is Ronald Pickvance’s pair of exhibition catalogues, Van Gogh in Arles (1984) and Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and Auvers (1986). Pickvance provides day-by-day accounts of Van Gogh’s time in each place as well as individual analyses of many of the great works that he created while there.

Van Gogh’s time specifically in Arles is explored in more depth and with wonderful insights in two other books: Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art , by Debora Silverman; and Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South by Douglas Druick and Peter Zegers. The latter is a particularly comprehensive and authoritative account of Vincent’s time in Arles, especially his famous stay in the Yellow House with Gauguin in 1888, which ended in his infamous self-mutilation. But both books are absolutely essential reading for this critical period in the artist’s life. For more general background on Provence, we recommend La Provence de van Gogh (1981) by Jean-Paul Clébert and Pierre Richard and The Lion of Arles: A Portrait of Mistral and His Circle (1964) by Tudor Edwards.

Among the primary documents from this period, by far the most important (other than surviving letters by both Vincent and Theo) is “Les isolés” (“The Isolated Ones”), the article by critic G.-Albert Aurier published in Mercure de France in 1890 that launched Van Gogh’s celebrity, sprang him from the insane asylum, and, paradoxically, put him on an inescapable trajectory toward death. For more on Aurier, who played such a brief but fateful role in Van Gogh’s life, we recommend Oeuvres Posthumes ( Posthumous Works ), a collection of his works published in 1893, and Patricia Townley Mathews’s 1984 dissertation, “G.-Albert Aurier’s Symbolist Art Criticism and Theory.”

Van Gogh’s Art

Catalogues raisonnés.

J. B. de la Faille’s Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Works on Paper, Catalogue Raisonné (1992) and Jan Hulsker’s The New Complete Van Gogh: Paintings, Drawings, Sketches (1996) remain the two most comprehensive catalogue raisonnés of the artist’s oeuvre. To scholars, they are essential to identifying Van Gogh’s works.

Less comprehensive but more informative, current, and scholarly than de la Faille or Hulsker is the multi-volume catalogues raisonné of its own collection that the Van Gogh Museum has been gradually producing over the last fifteen years. So far, there are four volumes on Van Gogh’s drawings: the first two (1996, 1997) by Museum curator Sjraar van Heugten, the third by Van Heugten and Marije Vellekoop (2001), and the fourth by Vellekoop and Ella Hendriks (2007). There are also two volumes on the Museum’s paintings, the first ( The Dutch Period, 1881-1885 ) by curator Louis van Tilborgh and Marije Vellekoop, the second ( Antwerp & Paris, 1885-1888 ) by Van Tilborgh and Ella Hendriks. Based on years of brilliant, patient scholarship, and absolutely definitive, these volumes include information on the history, media, and conservation of the works featured, and constitute literally the last word on the incomparable holdings of the Van Gogh Museum.

For the less scholarly aficionado – for those who just want to see good, vivid reproductions of Vincent’s paintings, the internet provides a perfect medium. The website of the Van Gogh Museum ( www.vangoghmuseum.nl ) offers beautiful, high resolution images of its treasures which allow the user to follow every twist and turn of Vincent’s amazing brushwork. The Museum’s site, however, is limited to the images in the Museum’s collection. For a more comprehensive online gallery, the Canadian Van Gogh scholar, David Brooks, has put together an extraordinarily thorough catalogue of images at www.vggallery.com . Brooks’s images are so good and his supplementary information (including exhibition histories) so conscientious that his site has received the endorsement of the Van Gogh Museum.

The second largest collection of Van Gogh works is held by the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands ( http://kmm.nl ). It, too, has published a multi-volume catalogue of its holdings, including an excellent volume by Jos ten Berge, Teio Meedenddorp, Aukje Vergeest, and Robert Verhoogt: The Paintings of Vincent van Gogh in the Collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum (2003); and a companion volume of works on paper: Drawings and Prints by Vincent van Gogh in the Collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum (2009) by Teio Meedendorp.

Overviews of Van Gogh’s Art

Anyone who hasn’t read John Rewald’s The History of Impressionism (1946) and Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin (1956) (which also appeared in several revised editions) is missing not just majestic overviews of these great movements in art, but also one of the great art historical experiences in life. The sections on Van Gogh in the latter book are among the most elegantly written and moving works in the entire Van Gogh literature. Rewald commanded not only an astonishingly synthetic mind, but also an extraordinarily prolific pen, and all of his sizeable oeuvre remains at the summit of art history even decades after it was written.

Especially vital to an understanding of the art of the period in which Van Gogh was working is Rewald’s Studies in Post-Impressionism (edited by Irene and Frances Weitzenhoffer) (1986). We also wish to pay homage to Meyer Schapiro’s Vincent van Gogh (1983), which so often captures the essence of the artist’s work, and to Robert L. Herbert’s Impressionism: Art, Leisure and Parisian Society (1988), which adds so importantly to an understanding of the movement that Rewald pioneered.

Exhibition Catalogues and Sources on Specific Works of Art

There have been many great Van Gogh exhibitions (and accompanying catalogues) over the years, but it is fair to single out a few for special recognition (beyond those mentioned elsewhere on this list). First among these is the recent magnificent exhibition and catalogue of Van Gogh’s drawings, Vincent van Gogh: Drawings (2005), by Colta Ives, Susan Alyson Stein, Sjraar van Heugten, and Marije Vellekoop. Another that deserves special mention Cornelia Homburg’s study of Van Gogh’s frequent resort to copying, The Copy Turns Original: Vincent van Gogh and a New Approach to Traditional Artistic Practice (1986). Homburg focuses her acute eye on the remarkable number of images that Van Gogh returned to again and again in his oeuvre. Cornelia Homburg’s exhibition, Vincent van Gogh and the Painters of the Petit Boulevard , is also a major contribution to Van Gogh scholarship.

We also recommend Art in the Age of Van Gogh: Dutch Paintings from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (1999), by Griselda Pollock and Alana Chong; Catalogue of the Van Gogh Museum’s Collection of Japanese Prints (1991), by Charlotte van Rappard-Boon, Willem van Gulik, and Keiko Bremen-Ito; Vincent van Gogh in zijn Hollandse jaren: Kijk op stad enland door Van Gogh en zijn tijdgenoten: 1870-1890 (Vincent van Gogh in his Dutch Years: A Look at City and Country by Van Gogh and his Contemporaries: 1870-1980 ; 1981), by Griselda Pollock; Van Gogh Face to Face: The Portraits (2000), with contributions by Roland Dorn, George S. Keyes, Joseph J. Rishel, George T. M. Shackelford (with Katherine Sachs); and Lauren Soth; The Real Van Gogh – The Artist and His Letters (2010), by Ann Dumas, Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, and Nienke Bakker; Vincent van Gogh: The Paintings and the Drawings (2003), by Evert van Uitert, Louis van Tilborgh and Sjraar van Heugten; Vincent’s Choice: The Musée Imaginaire of Van Gogh (2003), by Chris Stolwijk et al.; Vincent van Gogh and Expressionism by Jill Lloyd; and Van Gogh à Arles: Dessins: 1888-1889 (2003), by Alain Amiel and Anne Clergue, published by the Fondation Vincent van Gogh.

Any contribution by the scholar and Museum curator Louis van Tilborgh is worth reading for anyone interested in Van Gogh’s art. His article, written with Ella Hendriks, on Vincent’s sunflower paintings, “The Tokyo ‘Sunflowers’: A Genuine Repetition by Van Gogh or a Schuffenecker Forgery?” (2001) is a marvel of art history and detective work. He has also written the definitive scholarship on another of Van Gogh’s iconic images. The Potato Eaters by Vincent van Gogh : Cahier Vincent 5 (1993), which Van Tilborgh edited, includes articles by Dieuwertje Dekkers, Sjraar van Heugten, Ijsbrand Hummelen, and Cornelia Peres, as well as by Van Tilborgh himself. It is clearly the definitive work on a painting that is crucial to understanding both Van Gogh’s life and his art. Van Tilborgh also edited (with Cornelia Peres and Michael Hoyle) A Closer Look: Technical and Art-Historical Studies on Works by van Gogh and Gauguin: Cahier Vincent 3 (1991), a fascinating look at the conservation of Van Gogh’s works, and how the efforts of conservators add so vitally to the understanding of his art.

Biographies of Artists Other than Van Gogh and Sources on Their Art

It would take too much space to address the vast literature on the many artists who crossed Van Gogh’s path, either in reality or in his imagination. But a few artists had such a profound impact on his life, or his art, that it is impossible to know him completely without knowing them. One of those, of course, is Paul Gauguin — both because of the importance of their brief, tumultuous cohabitation in Arles in 1888 and because of each artist’s influence on the other’s work. The literature on Gauguin, is understandably, voluminous. Among the highlights are Belinda Thompson’s Gauguin (1987), David Sweetman’s Paul Gauguin: A Life (1995), and Nancy Mowll Mathews’s extraordinary and revealing Paul Gauguin: An Erotic Life (2001).

Gauguin’s own writings are full of self-importance and self-invention, but all the more interesting for it. In addition to Avant et après (1903) (translated by Van Wyck Brooks in 1923 as Intimate Journals), there are several collections of his letters: Lettres de Paul Gauguin à Émile Bernard, 1888-1891 (1954); Paul Gauguin: 45 Lettres à Vincent, Théo et Jo van Gogh , edited by Douglas Cooper in 1983; Paul Gauguin et Vincent van Gogh, 1887-1888: Lettres retrouvées, sources ignores (Rediscovered Letters and Previously Unknown Sources) , edited by Victor Merlhès in 1989; Correspondence de Paul Gauguin: Documents, Témoignages (The Correspondence of Paul Gauguin: Documents and Testimonies) , edited by Victor Merlhès in 1984; and The Writings of a Savage: Paul Gauguin ; and Paul Gauguin: Letters to His Wife and Friends , edited by Maurice Malingue and translated by Henry J. Stenning in 1946.

Two key books on Émile Bernard are Émile Bernard, 1861-1941: A Pioneer of Modern Art (1990), by Mary Anne Steven, Caroline Boyle-Turner, Roland Dorn, Vojtech Jirat-Wasiutynski, and Christiaan Vogelaa; and Émile Bernard (1868-1941): The Theme of Bordellos and Prostitutes in Turn-of-the-Century French Art (1988) by Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov and Philip Dennis Cate.

Lautrec mon ami (My Friend Lautrec, 1992), a memoir of the artist by his friend François Gauzi, gives a wonderful account of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s colorful life and reaps a harvest of information about life in the atelier Cormon, where Lautrec and Van Gogh briefly overlapped. Another of Vincent’s Cormon classmate was the Australian painter John Peter Russell. The two essential guides to Russell’s life and art are Ann Galbally’s The Art of John Peter Russell (1977) and Elizabeth Salter’s The Lost Impressionist: A Biography of John Peter Russell (1976).

In the early part of Van Gogh’s career, three figures stand out as important to his artistic project: one as a true friend and the other two as powerful models. The friend was Anthon van Rappard, who, it is fair to say, was not only Vincent’s best friend, but his only friend in a lifetime of searching for companionship. Despite Van Rappard’s unique (and artistically influential) place in Van Gogh’s life and work, the literature on him is thin. The only real source is Anthon van Rappard: Companion and Correspondent of Vincent van Gogh: His Life and All His Work (1974) by Jaap W. Brouwer, Jan Laurens Siesling, and Jacques Vis. The two more distant but more influential artists in Vincent’s formative artistic years were the Anglo-German artist Hubert Herkomer, and the provincial Frenchman, Jean-François Millet. The former is best represented in Herkomer: A Victorian Artist (1999) by Lee MacCormick Edwards — an extremely useful book on a once-influential but now largely forgotten artist. The literature on Millet, still a recognized giant of nineteenth-century art, is larger. For more on Millet’s tremendous influence on Van Gogh, we recommend Griselda Pollock’s dissertation, “Van Gogh and Dutch Art: A Study in Van Gogh’s Notion of the Modern” (1980) and Van Gogh and Millet (1988) by Louis van Tilborgh, Sjraar van Heugten, and Philip Conisbee. It is also helpful to read Alfred Sensier’s hagiographic biography La Vie et l’Oeuvre de J.-F. Mille t ( The Life and Work of J.-F. Millet ; 1881). Only through this book (despite its manifest flaws) and the artist’s work (mostly in reproduction), did Van Gogh know one of his greatest artistic heroes.

Among the many works on artists of particular importance to Van Gogh, we would recommend in particular: Ary Scheffer bewonderd door Van Gogh: Tentoonstelling bij gelegenheid van het honderdste sterfjaar Vincent van Gogh ( Ary Scheffe Admired by Van Gogh: Exhibition on the Occasion of the Hundredth Anniversary of Van Goghs’ Death ; 1990), by L.J.I. Ewals; Jules Breton: Painter of Peasant Life (1990), by Annette Bourrut Lacouture; Paul Signac, 1863-1935 (2003) by Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon et al.; and Cézanne to Van Gogh: The Collection of Doctor Gachet (1999) by Anne Distel and Susan Alyson Stein. There are numerous books about The Hague School in which Vincent’s eye was trained early and which he learned about from one of the School’s great masters, Anton Mauve. The leading sources are: The Hague School: Dutch Masters of the 19th Century (1983), by Ronald de Leeuw, John Sillevis, and Charles Dumas; De Haagse School en de jonge Van Gogh ( The Hague School and the Young Van Gogh ; 1996), by Fred Leeman and John Sillevas; and De Haagse School ( The Hague School ; 1997), by Hans Janssen and Wim van Sinderen with contributions by Jeroen Kapelle.

Van Gogh himself loved biographies of artists and it is interesting to see the kinds of biographical profiles that he was accustomed to reading. In addition to the Sensier book on Millet (see above), he read collections of biographical essays such as Charles M. Blanc’s Les artistes de mon temps ( The Artists of my Time ; 1876); as well as works of criticism that incorporated biographical material, such as Les maitres d’autrefois: Belgique Hollande ( The Old Master of Belgium and Holland ; 1876), by Eugène Fromentin, and L’art au dix-huitième siècle: Watteau, Boucher, Chardin, La Tour, Greuze, Fragonard (French XVIII Century Painters Watteau, Boucher, Chardin, La Tour, Greuze, Fragonard ; 1856-1875), by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. Georges Michel, a little-known master of French landscape painting in the first half of the nineteenth century, was a particular favorite of both Van Gogh brothers, and Alfred Sensier also wrote a small book about Michel, Étude sur Georges Michel (A Study of Georges Michel ; 1873), that was among Vincent’s best-loved works of art biography.

Topics in Van Gogh Scholarship

Despite the great (and continuous) outpouring of books and articles, there are still some topics on Van Gogh’s work and life that are either in flux or inexhaustibly interesting, or both. We have tried to list a few of the more irresistible invitations to further inquiry below.

Van Gogh’s Reading

As we hope our biography makes clear, Van Gogh was a voracious reader. He not only read many books, he often read them more than once. It would take too much space to list only the books and articles that we know he read – and, besides, that Herculean job has already been done with admirable thoroughness by Fieke Pabst, the Van Gogh Museum Archivist, and Evert van Uitert in “A Literary Life, with a List of Books and Periodicals Read by Van Gogh,” published in 1987. This marvelous feat of scholarship involved literary detective work of the highest order, as Vincent’s letters sometimes give only a garbled line or two – in Dutch, English, French, or German – to hint at the books, poems, and journals he was continuously reading. Still, because allusions to his reading are not always identified as such, and he does not always quote directly from his sources, but only adopts their arguments or their tropes or sometimes just their perspectives, there are always new influences to be found.

The subject of Van Gogh’s reading can be approached not just as a treasure hunt through his letters, but also as an invaluable insight into his thinking, and thence into his art. Sadly, some of Van Gogh’s favorite authors, such as Jules Michelet, the heroic and prolific writer on both nature and history (plus a few love manuals) is nowhere to be found in the curricula of most English-speaking schools. In a world that has grown far more Anglo-centric since Vincent’s time, the same can be said, to a lesser extent, about Taine, Zola, Maupassant, and the Goncourt brothers, all of whom were giants of Van Gogh’s literary world. (Balzac and Hugo have survived somewhat better in the American academic curricula). Of course, some of Vincent’s favorite works were written in English as well: Shakespeare, Dickens, and Eliot among British authors; Harriet Beecher Stowe and Walt Whitman among American. But the same fate that has befallen his French favorites have also removed many of his favorite German authors — Goethe, Heine, and Uhland – from reading lists in many schools outside Germany.

Reading the books and poetry that Van Gogh read has been one of the great unexpected pleasures of the decade we spent preparing this biography. It is astonishing, and not a little depressing, to find how much beauty and wisdom has been lost – or at least neglected – in the hundred years since Vincent died. For those who have the time, we highly recommend following Vincent’s tracks through the great literature of his era. One good place to start is Fieke Pabst’s wonderful book on the poetry Van Gogh loved enough to transcribe: Vincent van Gogh’s Poetry Albums: Cahier Vincent 1 (1888).

Van Gogh’s View on Family, Women, and Relationships

For a broad view of the place of women in Van Gogh’s world, we recommend Michelle Perrot’s A History of Private Life, Volume IV: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War (translated by Arthur Goldhammer; 1990); and Eugen Weber’s France, Fin de Siècle (1986). The most important contemporary insight into views of women in the era (views that Vincent shared) can be found in two of Vincent’s favorite books: La femme ( Woman ; 1860), and L’amour ( Love ; 1859), both by Jules Michelet. On the more sensitive (and pertinent to Van Gogh) issue of prostitution and its place in a particularly libertine era, a very helpful source is Alain Corbin’s Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850 (translated by Alan Sheridan; 1990).

For a more modern perspective on Van Gogh’s views on women, see Griselda Pollock’s Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and Histories of Art (1988), and Carol M. Zemel’s Van Gogh’s Progress: Utopia, Modernity, and Late Nineteenth-Century Art (1997). Also see Zemel’s article “Sorrowing Women, Rescuing Men: Van Gogh’s Images of Women and Family” (1987). All of these are extremely important contributions to the feminist literature on Van Gogh. Zemel’s research on the family of Sien Hoornik triumphs in bringing to light a subject that would have otherwise remained completely obscured — the century-old lives of just another impoverished family — had it not been for Sien’s relationship with Vincent van Gogh.

Peter Gay’s epically brilliant series of books on The Bourgeois Experience Victoria to Freud address the subjects of sex and sensuality, but also much more about the society in which Vincent van Gogh and every other educated person of his generation lived: Education of the Senses (1984), The Tender Passion (1986), The Cultivation of Hatred (1993), The Naked Heart (1995), and Pleasure Wars (1998).

Van Gogh and Religion

Tsukasa Kôdera’s Vincent van Gogh: Christianity versus Natur e (1990) is a thorough account of Van Gogh’s turn from religion to nature as the central sustaining force in his life and obsessive subject of his art. Kôdera’s article on “Van Gogh and the Dutch Theological Culture of the Nineteenth Century,” published in Vincent van Gogh: International Symposium in Tokyo in 1988, also illuminates this thesis. To understand the evangelical strain in both Vincent’s religion and his art, an indispensable piece is the work already mentioned by W. Lutjeharms, De Vlaamse Opleidingsshuuol van Nicolaas de Jonge en Zijn Opvolgers: 1875-1926 , about Van Gogh’s time in an evangelical school in Brussels.

Van Gogh’s Social and Political Views

There are several important works on Van Gogh’s relationships with workers and peasants, including Monica Juneja’s “The Peasant Image and Agrarian Change: Representations of Rural Society in Nineteenth-Century French Painting from Millet to Van Gogh” (1988) and Griselda Pollock’s “Stark Encounters: Modern Life and Urban Work in Van Gogh’s Drawings of the Hague, 1881-1883” (1993). For a full-out hagiographic accounts of Vincent as labor hero (and martyr), see Louis Piérard’s La vie tragique de Vincent van Gogh and Pierre Secrétan-Rollier’s Van Gogh chez les gueules noires: L’homme de l’espoir . Robert L. Herbert’s “The Image of the Peasant in Nineteenth Century French Art from Millet to Gauguin” (1970) and Eugenia Herbert’s The Artist and Social Reform: France and Belgium, 1885-1898 (1961) provide extremely important additional context for understanding the roles of peasant and worker in European art of Van Gogh’s era.

Van Gogh’s Medical and Psychiatric Problems

Our understanding of Van Gogh’s medical problems, and especially his psychiatric challenges, owes a great deal to the brilliant work of the French psychiatrist Henri Gastaut, in particular his article “Mémoires Originaux: La maladie de Vincent van Gogh envisageé a la lumière des conceptions nouvelles sur l’élepsie psychomotrice” (“Original Memories: The Illness of Vincent van Gogh Understood in Light of New Theories about Psychomotor Epilepsy”) published in Annales Medico-Psychologiques in 1956. (The interested reader is urged to pursue Gastaut’s many other articles on the topic of epilepsy, especially the ones devoted specifically to Van Gogh.) Charles Mauron’s Van Gogh: Études psychocritiques ( Van Gogh: Psycho-Critical Studies ; 1976) is also full of acute insights into Van Gogh’s mental difficulties, and is especially eloquent on the subject of his complicated relationship with his brother Theo. Also extremely helpful and more recent is Psychiatric Aspects of Epilepsy (1984), edited by Dietrich Blumer; Aspects of Epilepsy and Psychiatry (1986), edited by Michael R. Trimble and Tom G. Bolwig; and Epilepsy and Related Disorders (1986) by William Gordon Lennox and Margaret A. Lennox.

The literature on self-mutilation includes Karl A. Menninger’s early “A Psychoanalytic Study of the Significance of Self-Mutilations” (1935) as well as Barent W. Walsh and Paul M. Rosen’s more recent Self-Mutilation: Theory, Research, and Treatment (1988).

For historical context on attitudes towards mental illness and the treatment of the mental diseases like epilepsy in the nineteenth century, see both Inheriting Madness: Professionalization and Psychiatric Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century France (1991) by Ian R. Dowbiggin; and The Invisible Plague: The Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the Present (2002) by E. Fuller Torrey and Judy Miller.

Two doctors reported some important medical information on Van Gogh in the first part of the twentieth century. Edgar Leroy, who supervised the asylum in Saint-Rémy after Van Gogh left it, surveyed the records on Van Gogh’s stay there in “Le Séjour de Vincent van Gogh à l’Asile de Saint-Rémy-de-Provence” (Vincent van Gogh’s Stay in the Asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence”; 1926). Dr. Victor Doiteau recorded early interviews with Dr. Paul Gachet and with René Secrétan in: “La curieuse figure de Docteur Gachet” (“The Curious Figure of Doctor Gachet”; 1923) and “Deux ‘copains’ de Van Gogh, inconnus: Les frères Gaston et René Secrétan, Vincent, tel qu’ils l’ont vu” (“Two Unknown Pals of Van Gogh: The Brothers Gaston and René Secrétan, Vincent as They Saw Him”; 1957) But new information on Vincent’s mental condition continues to be found. In “The Illness of Vincent van Gogh: A Previously Unknown Diagnosis,” published in 2003 in the Van Gogh Museum Journal , Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, and Erik Fokke report on their important discovery that Van Gogh’s had visited an “alienist” in The Hague in 1879. For a Freudian interpretation of the artist, see Alfred J. Lubin’s Stranger on the Earth: A Psychological Biography of Vincent van Gogh (1972); and, in a similar vein, Humberto Nagera’s helpful analysis, Vincent van Gogh: A Psychological Study (1967).

Purchase Books and Materials from this Section on Further Reading on Van Gogh

Below are links to some of the major online stores from which you can purchase many of the books and other materials that are listed in our section on Further Reading. Some of these books are still in print and can readily be purchased. Others are no longer in print, but even among these items, online stores sometime offer out-of-print copies for purchase, sometimes at very reasonable prices.

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10 Best Novels About Vincent Van Gogh

• Post date 28/02/2022
• Post categories In Pretty Things

I love reading novels about Vincent Van Gogh because he is my favourite painter of all time. I love impressionism the most; it gives me great pleasure looking at impressionist paintings, and I have a good collection of Van Gogh paintings at my house (replicas, of course!). But, Vincent Van Gogh wasn’t just a great painter; he was a great man as well. His short life is extraordinary, and his death is still a curiosity among many. So reading novels about Vincent Van Gogh is always a pleasure.

On this list of novels about Vincent Van Gogh there are only ten books because although there are loads of non-fciton books about him, there aren’t much novels about Vincent Van Gogh. I’ve read many of them and I must say they all made me love Vincent Van Gogh a lot more. I hope you’ll find a book to your liking and explore more about Vincent Van Gogh. If you like reading about art in general, you may like this as well: Books About Art & Artists . Enjoy!

• Novels About Vincent Van Gogh

Let Me Tell You About A Man I Knew – Susan Fletcher

A much-loved book among novels about vincent Van Gogh. Provence, May 1889. The hospital of Saint-Paul-de Mausole is home to the mentally ill. An old monastery, it sits at the foot of Les Alpilles mountains amongst wheat fields, herbs and olive groves. For years, the fragile have come here and lived quietly, found rest behind the shutters and high, sun-baked walls.

Tales of the new arrival – his savagery, his paintings, his copper-red hair – are quick to find the warden’s wife. From her small white cottage, Jeanne Trabuc watches him – how he sets his easel amongst the trees, the irises and the fields of wheat, and paints in the heat of the day.

Jeanne knows the rules; she knows not to approach the patients at Saint-Paul. But this man – paint-smelling, dirty, troubled and intense – is, she thinks, worth talking to. So ignoring her husband’s wishes, the dangers and despite the word  mad , Jeanne climbs over the hospital wall. She will find that the painter will change all their lives.

Let Me Tell You About A Man I Knew is a beautiful novel about the repercussions of longing, of loneliness and of passion for life. But it’s also about love – and how it alters over time. A gem among novels about vincent Van Gogh.

The Season of Migration – Nellie Hermann

Though Vincent van Gogh is one of the most popular painters of all time, we know very little about a ten-month period in the painter’s youth when he and his brother, Theo, broke off all contact. In  The Season of Migration , Nellie Hermann conjures this period in a profoundly imaginative, original, and heartbreaking vision of Van Gogh’s early years, before he became the artist we know today among novels about Vincent Van Gogh.

In December 1878, Vincent van Gogh arrives in the coal-mining village of Petit Wasmes in the Borinage region of Belgium, a blasted and hopeless landscape of hovels and slag heaps and mining machinery. Not yet the artist he is destined to become, Vincent arrives as an ersatz preacher, barely sanctioned by church authorities but ordained in his own mind and heart by a desperate and mistaken spiritual vocation. But what Vincent experiences in the Borinage will change him. Coming to preach a useless gospel he thought he knew and believed, he learns about love, suffering, and beauty, ultimately coming to see the world anew and finding the divine not in religion but in our fallen human world.

In startlingly beautiful and powerful language, Hermann transforms our understanding of Van Gogh and the redemptive power of art among novels about Vincent Van Gogh.

Sunflowers – Sheramy Bundrick

A love story among novels about Vincent Van Gogh. A young prostitute seeking temporary refuge from the brothel, Rachel awakens in a beautiful garden in Arles to discover she is being sketched by a red-haired man in a yellow straw hat. This is no ordinary artist but the eccentric painter Vincent van Gogh—and their meeting marks the beginning of a remarkable relationship. He arrives at their first assignation at No. 1, Rue du Bout d’Arles, with a bouquet of wildflowers and a request to paint her—and before long, a deep, intense attachment grows between Rachel and the gifted, tormented soul.

But the sanctuary Rachel seeks from her own troubled past cannot be found here, for demons war within Vincent’s heart and mind. And one shocking act will expose the harsh, inescapable truth about the artist she has grown to love more than life.

Leaving Van Gogh – Carol Wallace

In this riveting novel, Carol Wallace brilliantly navigates the mysteries surrounding the master artist’s death, relying on meticulous research to paint an indelible portrait of Van Gogh’s final days—and the friendship that may or may not have destroyed him. Telling Van Gogh’s story from an utterly new perspective—that of his personal physician, Dr. Gachet, specialist in mental illness and great lover of the arts—Wallace allows us to view the legendary painter as we’ve never seen him before.  In our narrator’s eyes, Van Gogh is an irresistible puzzle, a man whose mind, plagued by demons, poses the most potentially rewarding challenge of Gachet’s career. One of my faves among novels about Vincent Van Gogh.

Finding Vincent – Les Furnanz

Vincent van Gogh committed suicide in 1890, and his brother, Theo, died soon thereafter. His widow, Johanna, was left with many paintings and the desire for Vincent’s recognition. In this historical novel, Johanna hires Armand Roulin, painted by Vincent in Arles, to research the artists and villages of France where Vincent lived. Along the way he becomes attracted to a young woman in Auvers, also painted by Vincent. Join Armand as he travels in the steps of Vincent and meets Dr. Gachet, Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissaro, and other renown artists who worked with Vincent. This novella is a great follow-on to Irving Stone’s classic, “Lust for Life” among novels about Vincent Van Gogh.

The Last Van Gogh – Alyson Richman

Summer, 1890. Van Gogh arrives at Auvers-sur-Oise, a bucolic French village that lures city artists to the country. It is here that twenty-year-old Maurguerite Gachet has grown up, attending to her father and brother ever since her mother’s death. And it is here that Vincent Van Gogh will spend his last summer, under the care of Doctor Gachet – homeopathic doctor, dilettante painter, and collector.

In these last days of his life, Van Gogh will create over 70 paintings, two of them portraits of Marguerite Gachet. But little does he know that, while capturing Marguerite and her garden on canvas, he will also capture her heart. Both a love story and historical novel,  The Last Van Gogh  recreates the final months of Vincent’s life – and the tragic relationship between a young girl brimming with hope and an artist teetering on despair. An evocative one among novels about Vincent Van Gogh.

Lust For Life – Irving Stone

“Vincent is not dead. He will never die. His love, his genius, the great beauty he has created will go on forever, enriching the world… He was a colossus… a great painter… a great philosopher… a martyr to his love of art. “

One of the most popular novels about Vincent Van Gogh. Walking down the streets of Paris the young Vincent Van Gogh didn’t feel like he belonged. Battling poverty, repeated heartbreak and familial obligation, Van Gogh was a man plagued by his own creative urge but with no outlet to express it. Until the day he picked up a paintbrush.

Written with raw insight and emotion, follow the artist through his tormented life, struggling against critical discouragement and mental turmoil and bare witness to his creative journey from a struggling artist to one of the world’s most celebrated artists. My favourite one among novels about Vincent Van Gogh.

In the Full Light of the Sun – Clare Clark

Hedonistic and politically turbulent, Berlin in the 1920s is a city of seedy night clubs and sumptuous art galleries. It is home to millionaires and mobs storming bakeries for rationed bread. These disparate Berlins collide when Emmeline, a young art student; Julius, an art expert; and a mysterious dealer named Rachmann all find themselves caught up in the astonishing discovery of thirty-two previously unknown paintings by Vincent van Gogh.

In the Full Light of the Sun  explores the trio’s complex relationships and motivations, their hopes, their vanities, and their self-delusions—for the paintings are fakes and they are in their own ways complicit. Theirs is a cautionary tale about of the aspirations of the new Germany and a generation determined to put the humiliations of the past behind them. An interesting one among novels about Vincent Van Gogh.

Vincent – Barbara Stok

The turbulent life of Vincent van Gogh is a constant source of inspiration and intrigue for artists and art lovers. In this beautiful graphic biography, artist and writer Barbara Stok documents the brief and intense period of creativity Van Gogh spent in Arles, Provence. Away from Paris, Van Gogh falls in love with the landscape and light of the south of France. He dreams of setting up an artists’ studio in Arles – somewhere for him and his friends to paint together.

But attacks of mental illness leave the painter confused and disorientated. When his friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin refuses to reside permanently at the Yellow House, Van Gogh cuts off part of his ear. The most notorious event of art history has happened – and Van Gogh’s dreams are left in tatters. However, throughout this period of intense emotion and hardship, Vincent’s brother Theo stands by him, offering constant and unconditional support. Stok has succeeded in breathing new life into one of the most fascinating episodes of art history. A beautiful graphic novel among novels about Vincent Van Gogh.

Vincent Van Gogh – Jennifer Veall

A children’s book among novels about Vincent Van Gogh. Vincent van Gogh was born in the Netherlands and today is one of the world’s best-loved painters. But during his lifetime, Van Gogh struggled to find fame and fortune through his art, making very little money from his paintings, which now sell for millions of dollars.

This book tells the story of Van Gogh’s life through his own artworks, and shows how he came to create some of the most famous paintings in the world, including the  Sunflowers  and  Starry Night . Learn about the importance of brotherly love, his struggle to find the right path and the lasting impact he had on the history of art in this book that brings his work to life.  A Van Gogh masterpiece is featured on every spread. This art story also includes a closer look at 10 of Van Gogh’s masterpieces at the back.

Check out my other lists about books!

• 10 Uplifting Books
• Great Novels by Poets
• Feel-Good Cozy Mystery Series
• Summer Books – 20 Sexy Novels
• Autumn Books – 20 Cozy Novels
• Winter Books- 20 Atmospheric Novels
• Spring Books – 20 Lovely Novels
• 20 Captivating Gothic Books
• Japanese Books Under 200 Pages
• 20 Best Campus and Academic Novels
• 25 Intriguing Dark Academia Books
• 20 Literary Romance Novels
• 20 Best Food Culture and Food History Books
• Comforting Food Memoirs
• Top 5 Haiku Books
• 15 Best Eco-fiction Novels
• Perfect Christmas Books
• 20 Best Turkish Books
• Standalone Fantasy Books
• Fantasy Book Series
• Novels Based on Mythology and Legends
• Tarot Books to Learn From
• Books About Astrology
• Books About Esotericism
• Books for Book Clubs
• Magical Realism Books
• Mindfulness Books
• Captivating Reincarnation Books
• Remarkable Break-Up Novels
• Books for Travel Lovers
• Brilliant Mythology Books
• Egyptian Mythology Books
• Train Journey Books
• Books Set in Museums
• Books Set in Hotels
• Books Set on Islands
• Books Set in Forests
• Novels Set in Ancient Egypt
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• Novels Under 100 Pages
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• Novels About Older Woman, Younger Man Relationships
• Novels About Fortune Telling
• Novels About Translators and Interpreters
• Novels About Books
• Best Books About Books
• Novels About Leonardo da Vinci
• Books About Picasso
• Novels About Marriage
• Novels About Food
• Novels About Writers
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• Books About Witches
• Books About Divorce
• Novels About Ernest Hemingway
• Best Books About Birds
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• Exciting Thriller Novels of All Time
• Books on Art and Creativity
• Mind-Expanding Philosophy Books
• Historical Fiction Novels
• Beautiful Poetry Collections
• Powerful Books About Peace
• Beautiful Romance Novels

Are there any novels about Vincent Van Gogh you’d like to add to this list? Would you please share in the comments section below?

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Van Gogh Biography

Vincent Van Gogh was born near Brabant in Southern Holland on March 30, 1853, the oldest son of a Dutch minister, he grew to become one of the most well known and influential artists of the 19 th century.  Van Gogh tried his hand at several different vocations including working for Goupil & Co., an art dealer, at the age of 16 with his 4 years younger brother Theo, teaching as an assistant in Ramsgate, and acting as a layman preacher in a poor coal mining district in Belgium, before finally deciding to become an artist at the age of twenty-seven.  His early works are dark portraying downtrodden city dwellers as well as Dutch peasants at work. 

Van Gogh’s relationship with his younger brother, Theo, was well documented in the vast number of letters the brothers sent each other.  Van Gogh’s letters to his brother and to other artists provide insight into the life of the painter. 

In 1886, Van Gogh moved to Paris where he lived with his brother, now the manager of Goupil’s, who financially supported the artist.  In Paris Van Gogh became familiar with the work of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists.  He befriended Pissarro , Monet , and Gauguin .  Van Gogh began to lighten his color palette and experimented with different shorter brushstrokes.  His works changed from peasant workers to images of Paris, portraits, self-portraits, and images of flowers. 

In 1888, at the age of 35, Van Gogh moved from Paris to Arles where he had dreams of starting a community of artists.  Theo continued to support him financially and tried to sell his artwork.  Fellow artist Paul Gauguin joined him for a short time however, the two frequently had disagreements and Gauguin soon left.  Van Gogh threatened Gauguin with a razor and ended up cutting off a portion of his own ear.  Struggling with fits of madness Van Gogh spent time in an asylum in Arles and then in Saint Remy.

Van Gogh spent much time in the asylum at Saint Remy though it was later believed that he suffered from epilepsy.  While there he painted some 150 paintings.  Upon his release in 1890 he went to Auvers-sur-Oise where he was under the care of physician and painter, Dr. Paul Gachet.  In two months Van Gogh was averaging a painting a day.  At the age of 37, Van Gogh attempted suicide, while in a wheat field he shot himself in the chest.  He died two days later with his brother at his side.  Six months later Theo died as well and was buried next to his brother in the small church at Auvers-sur-Oise.

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Vincent Van Gogh: The Humble Genius

Vincent van Gogh was one of the greatest artists of all time, but he just didn’t know it. Despite his struggles with mental illness, he still produced some of the greatest work that anyone has ever seen. While we all know about his famous paintings, few people know the intimate details of the man’s life. On today’s Biographics, we will delve into the passionate life of Vincent Van Gogh.

Early Life 

It’s impossible to live up to the dead. But this is how Vincent Van Gogh began his life in a small village called Groot-Zundert in The Netherlands in 1853. His parents, Anna Cornelia Carbentus and Theodorus van Gogh, had a son who was stillborn, who they named Vincent Willem Van Gogh. One year later, they had a second son, and gave their new baby the same name. Growing up, Vincent would walk with his mother and see his own name engraved on this dead brother’s tombstone. His mother seemed to be traumatized by the death of her first child, and she was never afraid to tell the stories of how she lost him. In her mind, the “real” Vincent was this perfect little angel in Heaven, and no one could possibly compare to him.

Both his father and grandfather were ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church, so it was a very strict household to be raised in. Anna and Theodorus went on to have two more boys, and three girls. Anna was most likely suffering from depression, because she was never very loving or affectionate with any of her children. She never gave them love or praise, which made Vincent try his best to be “deserving” of the love he craved. Anna was an amateur artist, so she took her children into the fields and instructed them all to draw in their sketchbooks. Vincent loved to do this, and would even carefully take bugs and plants home with him so that he could finish drawing later.

Vincent was forced to leave school at a very young age. They needed him to work as soon as possible. Luckily for him, though, his uncle was an art dealer at a firm called Goupil & Cie. This was obviously the best kind of apprenticeship that Vincent van Gogh could have ever had. He was surrounded by amazing works of art, and part of his job was visiting museums to learn about the other great masters. He taught learned to read and speak French, German, and English fluently so that he could sell art to clients all over Europe.

His brother, Theo, was also made to work for the same art dealership. After completing his apprenticeship, Vincent was transferred to one of the branches of the art dealership in London. 

When he was 20 years old, he moved into a boarding house owned by a widow name Sarah-Ursula Loyer. Her daughter, Eugenie, was 19 years old. Vincent wrote to his family that he was very happy in the Loyer house. He wrote that he loved the hustle and bustle of London, and he did the gardening and other chores to help the ladies around the house.

Now, this is where the story gets tricky. Historians tell this story in different ways , depending on the evidence they find. Some believe Vincent fell in love with the daughter, Eugenie, since they were only a year apart. Others believe that he was actually in love with the mother, which would be far more scandalous. This has intrigued people for years, and there was even a play written about it called Vincent in Brixton , where they theorize that he fell in love with both of them.

Either way, he proposed marriage to one of them, only to learn that they were engaged to another man. Vincent was shocked, and tried to convince her to marry him instead. He began to argue, asking what was wrong with him. Their argument was so intense, he was kicked out of the boarding house, and told to never come back. 

A Religious Calling

From age 20 to 23, Vincent started to read the Bible every single day, and he put himself at a high standard of piety. Customers visiting the Goupil & Cie gallery were told not to buy the artwork. Obviously, this is the exact opposite of what Vincent should have been doing at his job. So, he was fired. He decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a minister, and he found a job teaching at a Methodist school for boys. 

He applied to the School of Theology in Amsterdam. The school required everyone to pass Latin exams. If he did not study enough, he would punish himself by skipping meals or sleeping outside. Considering that he was already fluent in several Latin-based languages, Vincent should have been able to pass the test quite easily. Van Gogh strongly disagreed with this policy of forcing people to study a dead language. He tried to argue his case with the admissions board, and refused to take the exam out of solidarity. 

Vincent Van Gogh did not care so much about which church he belonged to. He just wanted to preach the Bible to the poor. So he went to the Evangelical Church of Belgium, and he was denied, as well. In 1878, he approached the church and volunteered to go to the coal mining towns in Brussels, Belgium . Most ordained ministers did not want to go there, because it was one of the poorest and dirtiest communities in the country. But these are the people that Van Gogh wanted to help. 

While he lived there, he began to sketch the peasants while they were at work in the coal mines.

The church had given him a comfortable house to live in. But there was a local woman who was very sick, and could no longer work. She could not afford to pay her rent, and had become homeless. Vincent van Gogh took pity on her, and gave the woman his house. He decided to go live in one of the coal mining shacks, instead. There was no furniture in the shack, and he was forced to sleep on the bare wooden floor with a blanket. The locals called him “The Christ of the Coal Mines.” Even though the common people loved him, the church committee was humiliated. They did not want someone who was living in squalor to represent their religion. So they decided to fire him. 

Learning to Paint

Without any real job skills to speak of, Vincent decided that the one thing he truly loved to do was paint. Instead of preaching about God and the passion he felt for the world, he painted his emotions, instead. Now 27 years old, Vincent wrote a letter to his younger brother Theo explaining that he wanted to become an artist. 

Theo was still working at the art dealership. He knew that Vincent was truly talented, and he encouraged him to pursue his dream. He even offered to financially support his endeavors to become an artist. They had an agreement that Theo would send Vincent 50 Francs a month for his basic living expenses. Vincent would then send a certain number of paintings to Theo, who was allowed to keep any profits that he may have had made from selling his brother’s paintings in the gallery. He was incredibly grateful for the opportunity, and would forego eating meals in favor of buying more paint and canvases. Back then, no one knew the dangers of lead paint, so he would use his mouth to wet his paint brush, which would have contributed to serious health issues. 

Even though he resolved to become a painter, Vincent still had to push through his depression and self-doubt. He once wrote, “If you hear a voice within you said ‘I cannot paint,’ then by all means, paint, and that voice will be silenced.” 

That same year, Vincent fell in love with the wrong person a second time. His older first cousin named Kee Vos-Stricker had just lost her husband, and was still mourning his death. Vincent proclaimed his love, and proposed to marry her, promising to make her happy. Not surprisingly, Kee left his home, and fled to her parent’s house in Amsterdam. But Vincent wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, and followed her there. Vincent confronted his Aunt and Uncle, begging to speak with Kee, because he thought that he could still convince her to become his wife. He claimed that he didn’t need long at all to accomplish this, and put his hand over the gas flame, saying that he promised he would stop talking when he couldn’t stand the burning of his flesh anymore. They quickly blew out the flame and they told him it was time to leave.

Vincent moved to The Hague, which was the center of the Dutch art movement at the time. At age 28, he completed his first oil painting, and sent it to Theo. While living there, he met a prostitute named Clasina Maria Hoornik, who was also called “Sien” . She was an alcoholic suffering from syphilis and a raising four-year-old daughter. Sien was also pregnant with another man’s child when she met Vincent, so she could not work as a lady of the night. Yet again, his heart went out to women who were suffering, and he fell in love with her. He wrote to his brother Theo that he enjoyed feeling like he was needed. So Theo agreed to increase his monthly stipend so that Vincent could take care of her and the children financially.

Sien began modeling for him as a subject and his drawings. In a way, this was very helpful, because he could not afford to hire models. But, Surprise surprise, he caught both syphilis and gonorrhea from her. The pain was so excruciating that he had to be hospitalized. While he was in the hospital, Sien had no loyalty to Vincent. She went back to selling herself on the streets. 

Vincent van Gogh was already having issues with his mental health, but syphilis is known for causing madness. When Theo learned about this scandal, he threatened to cut off Vincent financially if he did not end his relationship. He knew that Vincent had a huge heart, and he was being taken advantage of. So he was forced to break up with her, and he left The Hague.

Life in Paris

In 1885, Vincent Van Gogh painted a piece called “The Potato Eaters” when he was 33 years old. Today it is considered one of his first masterpieces because it truly captures the emotions of these farm workers, and he had successfully captured the essence of the poor. He had hoped that his brother would be able to sell it, because it was similar to the dark paintings done by The Dutch Masters. However, it was not a popular style Paris, which is where Theo was living and selling the work. 

They would send letters back and forth, with Theo sketching out examples of Claude Monet and Henri de Toulouse LauTrec , because their work was actually selling very well. Vincent van Gogh had never heard of these men before, but he was intrigued to see the work. Once he arrived in Paris, Theo brought him to the art gallery so that he could see all of the work that he had mentioned in the letters. Vincent was blown away by the beautiful Impressionist Art Movement .

Vincent immediately understood why the style was so popular, and he swapped out his dark hues for vibrant colors. Theo also introduced him to these painters that are now famous today. Hiring a model was very expensive, so he and his friends would pose for one another so that they could practice. This is why there are so many self portraits of Vincent van Gogh. He often had no one else to model for him, so he had to look into the mirror. His postman, Joseph Roulin , often agreed to sit down and have his portrait painted, too, getting into long discussions with Van Gogh.

Most of the Impressionists would only paint on days when the weather was beautiful. They cared a lot about finding the perfect light. They understood the market very well, so they could sell their paintings and making enough to live on for months at a time. They would party and wait for inspiration to strike. Vincent van Gogh was the polar opposite. He had a very strong work ethic, and he was willing to paint every single day in order to get better at his craft. This caused him to get into a lot of debates, because he believed that none of the other artists shared the same level of passion that he did.

He once wrote , “I feel such a creative force in me: I am convinced that there will be a time when I will make something good every day, on a regular basis….I am doing my very best to make every effort because I am longing so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things mean painstaking work, disappointment, and perseverance.” 

Theo often hard to apologize on behalf of Vincent’s outbursts. The only artist in the group who actually felt inspired by Vincent’s determination was Paul Gauguin . He encouraged Vincent to loosen up, and encouraged him to start drinking a green liquor called absinthe . If you’re unaware, absinthe causes hallucinations, and it would have only contributed to more problems in Vincent’s mental health.

Always determined to improve his style, he began studying Japanese art. It was almost as if he could see the soul behind the painter, so he felt determined to read books on Buddhist philosophy. He wished that he could move there, and told the other Impressionists about it. Toulouse-LauTrec told him that the French countryside had a very similar look to the Japan, and encouraged him to move there, instead. So he traveled to a town called Arles. It truly was beautiful, and it motivated Vincent to paint even more than ever before.

Life in Arles

Once he arrived in Arles, Vincent found a yellow house with very cheap rent of just 15 frances a month. He spent most days painting in isolation, survived on a diet consisting mostly of cheap bread and coffee. At night, he would drink absinthe. They were points when he had absolutely no food, so he started to drink the turpentine paint thinner and eat paint. This began to do some serious damage to his nervous system, and his mental state was in rapid decline. 

Theo was worried about him, and paid Paul Gauguin a stipend to live and work with Vincent in Arles. When he found out that Paul was coming, Vincent filled up the house with sunflowers so that it was bright and cheerful for his best friend. He had been alone for so long, he stopped painting under the influence of the other Impressionist artists in Paris. Now the work was completely original, it was the best that it ever had been. 

At first, Paul and Vincent were getting along just fine as roommates. But since Vincent’s mental state was disintegrating, he would initiate arguments with him, and things became very uncomfortable. Theo wrote a letter to let Gauguin that a few of his paintings had been sold in Paris, and sent him several hundred francs. 

During one particularly bad fight, Paul Gaugin left the yellow house with his luggage, announcing that he was taking the train back to Paris. As he was walking down the street of Arles, Gaugin heard footsteps running behind him. When he turned around, he saw Vincent Van Gogh holding an open razor blade. The two friends froze, and stared at each other like deer caught in the headlights. In that moment, Vincent snapped out of it, and realized the insanity of what he was doing. He turned around and ran away. Paul Gauguin hurried towards the train station, and never spoke to Vincent again. 

A few hours later, Vincent showed up to the local brothel. The side of his face was bleeding. He handed one of the prostitutes an object, asking her to take good care of it. When the woman looked down into her open palm, she saw that he had handed her his own ear. 

The police showed up at Vincent’s house the next day, and they took him to the hospital so that he could be treated for the open wound where his ear used to be. When his younger brother Theo arrived, Vincent was laying in bed, and he began having seizures. He was physically weak and completely delusional. Theo wrote a letter to their mother and sisters explaining that Vincent was very sick, and he might die. He wrote that he completely blamed himself for not coming to visit Vincent sooner to check on his well-being. 

After spending two weeks in the hospital, Vincent was released. He returned to his small yellow house, and felt very much alone. Theo had waited until after Vincent’s recovery to tell him the news that he was engaged. Her name was Johanna Bonger. She was an accomplished piano player who gave public performances, and she worked at the British Museum Library. Theo and Johanna both shared a passion for the arts, and they were very happy together. Instead of being happy about the news, Vincent saw it as a sign that he would soon lose Theo’s support, and there would come a day when he no longer had time to spend with him.

Gossip spreads like wildfire in a small town. So the citizens of Arles were whispering about the ear incident. They believed that Vincent Van Gogh was a threat to himself and others. So they signed a petition saying that they wanted him to be locked in a cell in the hospital. He wrote a letter to his brother Theo asking if he could be transferred to the St. Remy asylum, which would be far more comfortable than a cell. He also sent him two large crates full of his paintings, saying i n a letter to Theo that he knew his life was a painter was probably never going to happen, and he hoped that he could become employed as a hospital orderly in the asylum, or any other job he could possibly find. 

But Theo never gave up on Vincent’s talent. He knew that the only thing that made his brother happy was painting. So he paid for two comfortable rooms side-by-side. One was used as his art studio, and the other to be used as his living quarters. The St. Remy convent and hospital had beautiful gardens, which is where Vincent where would go to spend most of his time painting. He stayed sober, and was fed three meals a day. His physical health was finally beginning to improve. 

Finally, after years of going unrecognized Vincent van Gogh received a letter from Theo saying that his paintings were going on display at an art show in Paris. One of the paintings called The Red Vineyards sold for 400 francs. This was the first time that anyone had ever paid money for one of his paintings, and it put a small dent back into reimbursing Theo for the money he had invested for so many years.  

Vincent had been afraid that marriage would come between his relationship with Theo, but it was actually the opposite. Johanna understood and supported Vincent’s art career, as well. After Theo and Johanna got married and had their first son, Vincent came to visit. He had a gift for the baby- a painting called The Blossoming Almond Tree , which represented spring, and new life.  As he helped his tiny nephew in his arms for the first time, they told him that the baby’s name was “Vincent Willem Van Gogh”. Overwhelmed by the honor, Vincent started crying tears of joy, and there truly was hope that things would get better. 

With all of Vincent’s new hope and optimism about life, Theo believed that his brother’s health may have been improving. So he helped him leave the asylum and find a place to live in the town of Auvers-sur-Oise . He chose an apartment living above a doctor named Paul Gachet , who was an amateur painter, and a huge supporter of the Impressionist movement. Theo hoped that by living with Dr. Gachet, he could live an independent life, but still be close to medical care whenever he needed. Dr. Gachet knew that Vincent had gonorrhea and syphilis, but he didn’t know about his history of mental issues.  For a while, things seems to be fine. Vincent had dinner and pleasant conversations with Gachet’s family, and painted the portraits of his new friends and neighbors. 

On July 27, 1890, Vincent received a letter from Theo where he said that he was struggling selling paintings that month. He was simply venting, and never said that he would stop helping Vincent financially. Theo even included the usual 50 francs. But even the mention of financial difficulties sent Vincent into a downward spiral of self-hatred. He felt that he was a burden on the ones he loved most, and that they would be better off without him.

Vincent found a loaded pistol, and walked out into the middle of the field before shooting himself in the chest. Bleeding and in shock, Vincent realized that he was still alive. He had barely missed his heart. He slowly stumbled back to the house, where Dr. Gachet began to operate immediately. The doctor sent a message for Theo to come on the next train.

When he arrived, Theo found his brother sitting up in bed. Vincent was covered in bandages and smoking his pipe. Theo crawled into bed next to his brother, and they stayed up all night talking about the happy memories from their childhood. As they were falling asleep, Vincent said, “This is just like when we were home. Please take me home.” Theo agreed to take him back to their little Dutch village as soon as he recovered. But it would never happen. Vincent died in his sleep, at 37 years old. They covered his coffin in bright yellow sunflowers.

Just six months later, Theo died as well, because he had secretly been suffering from syphilis, too. The brothers were buried side by side. Theo’s widow, Johanna was left with almost nothing, except their young son, and the huge collection of Vincent van Gogh‘s paintings. As she went through his crate of those so-called rejects, she found The Starry Night , which he had painted while looking out the window of the mental asylum. 

Vincent attached a letter explaining the painting ; “ Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map…Just as we take a train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. We cannot get to a star while we are alive any more than we can take the train when we are dead…To die quietly of old age would be to go there on foot.”

Johanna carefully catalogued Vincent’s work. She also collected his letters, which is why we have so much information about the kind of person he was. Johanna began to go across the continent to all the places were Vincent had lived, trying to find any of his paintings so that she could keep track of them. Many people had written Vincent off as a madman, so they had either destroyed the paintings, or gave them away. Johanna was able to catalogue over 2,100 sketches and pieces of art – 860 of which were oil paintings. And that does not including all of the ones that were lost or destroyed.

Vincent van Gogh’s mother, Anna, was still rejecting him even after his death. She burned an entire crate of her son’s work. But she lived long enough to witness just how wrong she was, and the entire world began to realize that he was truly a genius. With Johanna’s help, the paintings finally began to sell, and his lifetime of prolific work supported his family for the rest of their lives. Today, Van Gogh’s work is truly worth a fortune, and the Portrait of Dr. Gachet sold for $82.5 million. Even to this day, his paintings still fetch tens of millions of dollars. He is considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time.

Despite all of his struggles, Vincent Van Gogh spent his life with passion, and was devoted to the things he loved. And, even after attempting suicide, he still found a reason to live. “It is good to love many things. For therein lies the true strength. And whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much. And what is done in love is well done.”

https://www.vincentvangogh.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHu7-NPF55I

https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/vincent_van_gogh

https://www.sothebys.com/en/artists/vincent-van-gogh

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The 10 best movies about Vincent Van Gogh

"Self-portrait" by Vincent Van Gogh using the Pointillism technique, 1887 - WikiCommons

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1. lust for life (1956).

2. Vincent and Theo (1990)

3. The Eyes of Van Gogh (2005)

4. Loving Vincent (2017)

5. At Eternity’s Gate (2018)

6. Benedict Cumberbatch – Painted With Words

7. Tony Curran – Doctor Who

8. martin scorcese – dreams, 9. jacques dutronc – van gogh.

10. Andy Serkis – Power Of Art

Exploring 10 of van gogh’s masterpieces portrayed in movies, 1. the starry night (1889) – “moulin rouge” (1952), 2. sunflowers (1888) – “dr. zhivago” (1965), 3. the bedroom (1889) – “lust for life” (1956), 4. irises (1889) – “a beautiful mind” (2001), 5. wheatfield with crows (1890) – “doctor who” (2010 episode “vincent and the doctor”), 6. the cafe terrace at night (1888) – “cafe society” (1989), 7. self-portrait with bandaged ear (1889) – “loving vincent” (2017), 8. the potato eaters (1885) – “the theory of everything” (2014), 9. almond blossoms (1888) – “akira” (1988), 10. the church at auvers (1890) – “enter the void” (2009).

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Research Project: Biography of Jo van Gogh-Bonger

Years of research have resulted in a biography of Jo van Gogh-Bonger.

Jo van Gogh-Bonger (1862–1925) was Theo van Gogh’s wife and mother of Vincent Willem, who later founded the Van Gogh Museum. Years of research have resulted in a biography focusing on her as an individual and on her role in publicizing the importance of her brother-in-law Vincent’s life and work.

Jo was born on 4 October 1862. She studied English and worked as a teacher at a girls’ boarding school in Elburg and at a secondary school in Utrecht, also for girls. After marrying Theo, Jo went to live with him in Paris, where their son Vincent Willem was born in 1890.

Theo died less than a year later and Jo returned to the Netherlands, where she married her second husband, Johan Cohen Gosschalk. Jo was co-founder in 1905 of the Amsterdam Social-Democratic Women’s Propaganda Club, which set out to improve working-class education and women’s working conditions. She died on 2 September 1925.

Caring for the collection

Following Theo’s death, Jo came into possession of Van Gogh’s drawings, paintings and letters, along with Vincent and Theo’s collection of work by contemporaries. She set about bringing her brother-in-law’s oeuvre to the attention of the public via exhibitions and sales. She also prepared Vincent’s letters to Theo for publication in 1914, under the title Brieven aan zijn broeder (‘Letters to His Brother’).

Jo and Vincent Willem

According to Jo’s obituary in De Proletarische Vrouw on 10 September 1925: ‘She always apologized for not being more active in the [Socialist] movement. She would say that bringing her son up properly was also a good thing to do for society. “So that has been my main work.”’

Her son Vincent Willem eventually took over the task his mother had fulfilled for thirty-five years, promoting the recognition and understanding of Vincent and Theo’s work.

Jo van Gogh-Bonger in 1889

Publication

Research for the biography has drawn on numerous letters, diaries, account books and other documents, with a particular focus on the social, cultural and economic context. The biography focuses on Jo as an individual and on her role in publicizing her brother-in-law Vincent’s life and work.

The biography was published by Uitgeverij Prometheus in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum on 18 September 2019. The English translation is launched on 3 November 2022 by Bloomsbury Publishing and can be ordered at the museum's webshop .

Jo's diaries are also available as digital publication via bongerdiaries.org.

Hans Luijten (Senior Researcher): [email protected]

Order the biography

Favorite Vincent van Gogh Biographical Movie

1. Lust for Life

3. Vincent & Theo

4. Van Gogh

5. The Eyes of Van Gogh

6. The Yellow House

7. Painted with Words

8. Loving Vincent

9. At Eternity's Gate

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