The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (Penguin Classics)

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Another thing that I noticed was that most of his famous paintings are actually in the major galleries around the world, including the MOMA and the d’Orsay (I would love to see Starry Night, but I doubt I will ever make it to New York to do so). It was interesting to read his opinions, criticism, analysis, and admiration of their works and find out about personal relationships with those he was acquainted with.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. I may not have had much more access to his artistic thoughts, but I'm able to process his work in a much wider context than I was before. Well, straight out I can say that this book isn’t the easiest of reads, namely because it is a collection of letters between Vincent and his brother Theo. The widespread and popular realisation of his significance in the history of modern art did not begin until his adoption by the Fauves and German Expressionists in the mid-1910s. In this Penguin Classics edition, the letters are selected and edited by Ronald de Leeuw, and translated by Arnold Pomerans in Penguin Classics.

there is something of Rembrandt in Shakespeare, something of Correggio in Michelet and something of Delacroix in V. Through these letters, Van Gogh expresses in detail his perspective of contemporary and past renowned painters and their works. Vincent and his brother must have had one of those very special relationships, because after Vincent died, he brother didn’t last all that long, and he died leaving behind his wife Jo and his son Vincent.

And indeed he kept the blaze of that power throughout his short life even when gloominess was all there was. The man was authentic, and that is all one might hope to become in such a short and often confusing life we are all faced with. But for Van Gogh this was a plodding daily reality of struggle and failure, with no audience and no guarantee of ultimate success. He was currently working on the painting, which was to become one of his first complex compositions with multiple figures, and illustrated the letter with a sketch of the work, writing "See, this is what the composition has now become.In reality their relationship was always fraught, and by the end of the year they had parted for good, van Gogh himself hospitalised following a breakdown in which he had mutilated one of his ears.

Theo ‘was the kind of man who saved even the smallest scrap of paper’, and it is to this trait that the public owes the 663 letters from Vincent. He never achieved commercial success during his lifetime, most of which was lived in poverty, and he was often severely depressed, leading to self-mutilation and eventually suicide at age thirty-seven.Most of them are addressed to his brother, Theo, who worked as an art dealer in Paris and who supported Vincent financially. Although he drew as a child, he did not paint until his late twenties; most of his best-known works were completed during the last two years of his life.

He being a post-impressionist, he wanted the impressionists to break the barriers and expand their horizons. Vincent often wrote the colours on his black-and-white sketches, to give an idea of the colour of the painting. But the letters selected (mostly to Van Gogh's brother Theo) tell a fairly complete story of Van Gogh's inner life. Reading his Letters I feel that he could not have disapproved, since he himself was addicted to reading biographies of other painters, those he admired, hoping to find a guide to his own path as a painter. During his lifetime he did not receive even a fraction of the recognition his work deserved (though if he had lived a little longer it likely would have).Most of all, however, these letters are immensely valuable for they give a good insight into the artistic view of the painter. Whatever the reason is, I enjoyed viewing them and forming my own interpretations, even though my idea of the painting vastly contradicted the idea of its author. Next, I don't think it will astonish you greatly if I tell you that our discussions are tending to deal with the terrific subject of an association of certain painters. Van Gogh's spiritual and theological thought and convictions are revealed in his letters throughout his life. Van Gogh never really had any money, which meant that he rarely, if ever, had the opportunity to paint people (you needed money, and friends, to paint portraits).