Vincent was buried in Auvers, in the little cemetery behind a stately Gothic church he had painted. Artists, family, and friends gathered for the funeral. In his eulogy on the hill of the cemetery, with the blue sky and the wheat fields beyond, Dr. Gachet said through his tears, “He was an honest man and a great artist. He had only two goals, humanity and art.”
Theo, broken with grief, wrote this poignant letter to his mother after Vincent's funeral: “One cannot write how grieved one is nor find any comfort. It is a grief that will last and which I certainly will never forget as long as I live; the only thing one might say is that he himself has the rest he was longing for.… Life was such a burden to him; but now, as often happens, everyone is in praise of his talents.… Oh Mother, he was my own, own brother.”
SHORTLY AFTER VINCENT'S DEATH, Theo moved to a larger apartment in his building so that he could mount a memorial show of his brother's paintings. But within six months, Theo's mental and physical health deteriorated to such a degree that his wife, Jo, brought him back to Holland, where, riddled with a progressive, chronic disease, he died in a clinic. Theo was buried beside his brother in the little cemetery in Auvers-sur-Oise.
Jo's brother suggested she throw the paintings out and get on with her life. The other members of the van Gogh family had no interest or faith in Vincent's art. But Jo refused to abandon the work that had meant so much to her husband and his brother. Through her determined efforts the paintings and drawings, as well as the letters, survived. She organized exhibitions and wrote a biography of her soon-to-be-celebrated brother-in-law. Painstakingly she catalogued more than 680 letters and arranged to have them published. Within ten years the success that had eluded him in life came posthumously, with exhibitions of his work, critical praise, and buyers from all over Europe and the United States clamoring for his paintings.
A hundred years after his death, Still Life with Sunflowers, painted in Arles, sold at auction for $29.9 million. The poster of Vincent's sunflowers is one of the most popular reproduce tions in the world, thus making Vincent's wish come true that it might “brighten the rooms of working people.” Portrait of Dr. Paul Gachety painted in Auvers a few short months before his suicide, was auctioned for a record-beating $82.5 million. His story has been the subject of a Hollywood movie, a best-selling novel, and countless art books. Would Vincent have been pleased? It's hard to know what the reaction of such a complicated man might have been, but one thing is certain: He had foreseen that after his death his paintings would find an admiring audience.
Fate did not grant Vincent a wife, children, good health, wealth, or charm. But he was given another gift—the ability to see deeply into nature, to put on canvas his own ardent soul. His feeling for the rhythms of life, his sympathy for his fellow man, his yearning for love, and his understanding that what mattered was not worldly success but spirituality and a passion for work all poured into his painting… On this work he would be judged and found great. His legacy to us is not only powerful, vibrant paintings but also articulate, poetic letters. Through these we can relive his story, the story of Vincent, the consummate artist.
1853 On March 30 Vincent Willem van Gogh is born in Groot-Zundert, a town in the southern Netherlands.
1857 Theodorus van Gogh (Theo) is born.
1869 Vincent apprentices at Goupil et Cie, art dealers in The Hague.
1875 Vincent is transferred to Goupil's branch in Paris. The Reverend Theodorus van Gogh is transferred to a small congregation in Etten.
1876 Vincent is dismissed from Goupil and travels to England, where lie works as a teacher in Ramsgate and Isleworth.
1877 Vincent returns to the Netherlands and works in a bookstore in Dordrecht for four months. To prepare for the ministry, he moves to Amsterdam.
1878 Vincent goes to Brussels to take a course for evangelists. He volunteers for a mission in the Borinage, a coal mining district in Belgium.
1881 Vincent moves back into his parents' home in Etten and falls in love with his widowed cousin Kee Vos-Stricker.
1882 The Reverend Theodorus van Gogh moves to another parsonage in Nuenen. Vincent moves to The Hague to study art.
1882-83 Vincent lives in The Hague with Sien Hoornik and her children.
1883 Vincent works in Drenthe for four months.
1883-85 Vincent lives in his parents' home and then by himself in his studio in Nuenen.
1884 Vincent has an ill-fated romance with Margo Begemann.
1885 Vincent's father dies suddenly. Vincent moves to Antwerp to study art.
1886 Vincent attends the Antwerp Academy of Fine Art for two months and then moves to Paris to live with Theo.
1886-88 Vincent works at Corman's studio for several months. He meets many young artists in Paris, such as Emile Bernard and Paul Signac.
1888 Vincent moves to Arles, a town in the south of France, in February. Paul Gauguin comes to live with him in October. Theo becomes engaged to Johanna (Jo) Bonger. Vincent cuts off his earlobe and is sent to a hospital in Arles.
1889 Theo and Jo are married in April. Vincent admits himself to an insane asylum in St.-Rémy in May.
1890 Jo and Theo become parents of a son, Vincent Willem, in January. In May Vincent moves to Auvers-sur-Oise, not far from Paris. On July 27 Vincent shoots himself, and he dies on July 29, at the age of thirty-seven. In September Theo mounts a memorial exhibition of his brother's work in their apartment in Paris. Theo becomes both mentally and physically ill, and Jo takes him to a clinic in Holland.
1891 Theo dies at the age of thirty-four in a clinic in Holland.
Some museums where you will find paintings by Vincent van Gogh:
Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam, the Netherlands The works from the estate of the van Gogh family are preserved here, having been kept for many years by Theo van Gogh's widow, Mrs. J. van Gogh-Bonger, and her son, Dr. Vincent W. van Gogh. Despite the fact that she had to keep a boardinghouse to support herself and her young son when she returned to Hoiland after her husband's death, Jo van Gogh-Bonger devoted her life to keeping Vincent's legacy alive. This group of letters, Japanese prints collected by the artist, his drawings, and his paintings is the largest collection of his works and is administered by the Vincent van Gogh Foundation.
Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, the Netherlands This once private collection, now open to the public amid acres of gardens and woods, includes some of van Gogh's greatest works.
Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Chicago Art Institute
Cleveland Museum of Art
Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Norton Simon Art Foundation, Los Angeles
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Saint Louis Art Museum
EMILE BERNARD (1868-1941): A poet as well as a painter, Bernard was a prodigy on the Parisian scene at age eighteen. He painted with both Gauguin and Vincent, but he is now best known for having written a book about Vincent.
PAUL CÉZANNE (1839-1906): A painter who also worked in the south of France (in Aix-en-Provence). Vincent claimed that some of his shaky forms must be a result of painting in the mis-tral. Like Vincent, Cézanne wanted to penetrate beyond the reality of nature, but to Cézanne what lay beyond were the abstract forms of the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone.
EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917): Degas refused to paint outdoors, as the other Impressionists did, claiming that “art is not a sport.” His sharply cropped pictures, original use of space, and paintings of contemporary subject matter—ballet dancers and horse racing—made him one of the Impressionists even though he broke with them over color.
CHARLES DICKENS (1812-70): An English novelist who wrote many famous books, including A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and A Tale of Two Cities, that dealt with the suffering of the poor and the social injustices
of his era. Vincent, who had great sympathy for the poor, found Dickens's themes important and his stories moving.
FLEMISH: A term used to describe the people, language, and styles of northern Belgium.
FRANC: A French monetary unit.
PAUL GAUGUIN (1848-1903): A painter who was the central figure of a movement called Symbolism, which explored the spiritual nature of art. Gauguin's flat planes of color outlined in black were influenced by stained glass and folk art. He was a flamboyant figure who went to Brittany to live among the peasants and later to Tahiti to paint the natives, whose simplicity and faith he tried to capture in his paintings.
GUILDER: A Dutch monetary unit.
THE HAGUE: The capital of the province of South Holland.
HAGUE SCHOOL (1860-1900): A group of artists, including Anton Mauve, who painted Dutch landscapes in an idealized style with a strong sense of the light of this northern region.
FRANS HALS (1581?–1666): A great seventeenth-century portrait painter from Antwerp. Vincent spent hours studying his works in the museum in Amsterdam.
IMPRESSIONISM: A movement originated in France in the 1850s by a group of artists who were interested in exploring the scientific effects of light and movement and in representing impressions of the moment in their paintings. They celebrated the everyday pleasures of middle-class life, especially through scenes of leisure activities.
EDOUARD MANET (1832-83): A French artist who was more interested in the structure of painting than its expressive content. His followers were called Impressionists, but he disliked the term.
ANTON MAUVE (1838-88): Vincent's cousin, a Dutch painter of landscapes and still lifes, who briefly taught Vincent.
JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET (1814-75): A French painter who lived in the village of Barbizon near Paris. His lovingly painted scenes of peasant life influenced Vincent's art, and Vincent made many copies of Millet's paintings, both to learn and to “console” himself.
CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926): Impressionism took its name from one of Monet's paintings—Impression: Sunrise. He dedicated his life to painting his immediate visual observations of light and color in nature, working in the open air. Early in his career he had to beg his friends for money to buy bread for his children, but eventually his paintings of water lilies, haystacks, gardens, and other sun-drenched scenes gained him a wide following.
CAMILLE PISSARRO (1830-1903): A painter who was the white-bearded father figure to many young artists, helping, among others, Vincent, Cézanne, and Gauguin. Pissarro's son Lucien, also a painter, was a friend of Vincent's in Paris.
POST-IMPRESSIONISTS: A term later used by critics to identify Vincent van Gogh and the other artists of his generation who were trying to go beyond the Impressionists to put emotion back into their painting through strong color, shape, or line.
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN (1606-69): The greatest genius of Dutch art in the seventeenth century, whose use of light and expressive content Vincent admired. He is the only artist who painted more self-portraits than Vincent.
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (1841-1919): Renoir's happy disposition is evident in his paintings, both the early Impressionist works, in which the subject matter often was people having a good time, and his later round and rosy nudes, painted in a more classical style.
GEORGES SEURAT (1859-91): Seurat finished only seven paintings in ten years, canvases that brilliantly demonstrate Pointillism, which used dots of color to produce an optical effect on the canvas.
PAUL SIGNAC (1863-1935): A Pointillist, like his friend and mentor Georges Seurat.
HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (1864-1901): Toulouse-Lautrec painted Parisian nightlife with a satirical and unsentimental eye, from the viewpoint of what he self-mockingly called “elbow height” in reference to his own short stature.
JAN VERMEER (1632-75): A Chitch painter of everyday life in the seventeenth century, known for his magical use of light. His serene mosaics of colored surfaces have a distinctly modern quality.
The four published versions of the letters of Vincent van Gogh we consulted are listed in the bibliography. However, in these notes we keyed all the letters to The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, published by Little, Brown in 1958.
CL = Complete Letters, vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3. All letters are from Vincent to Theo unless otherwise noted.
V and T = Vincent and Theo van Gogh: A Dual Biography by Jan Hulsker.
VGSP = Van Gogh—A Self Portrait, selected by W. H. Auden.
TL = The World of van Gogh, 1835-1890 by Robert Wallace.
VGMM = Van Gogh by Melissa McQuillan.
VVGRM = Vincent van Gogh by Evert van Uitert et al.
VGSRA = Van Gogh in St.-Rémy and Auvers by Ronald Pickvance.
Prologue
Pages 1 to 3. Most of the thoughts and descriptive phrases in the logue are taken from Vincents letters to Theo. Whole days outside with a little bread: CL, vol. 2, Letter 509, p. 610; Plains as beautiful and infinite as the sea: CL, vol. 2, Letter 509, p. 610; Everywhere now there is old gold, bronze, copper: CL, vol. 2, Letter 497, p. 583; Emerald green, Prussian blue, crimson lake: CL, vol. 2, Letter 475, p. 543; The labor of balancing six essential col-ors: CL, vol. 2, Letter 507, p. 606; Like an actor on the stage in a difficult part: CL, vol. 2, Letter 507, p. 606; Spanish flies, gold and green: CL, vol. 2, Letter 506, p. 602; Grasshoppers sing loud as a frog: CL, vol. 2, Letter 502; Eaten by mosquitoes: Letter 509, CL, vol. 2, p. 609.
A Brabant Boy, 1853-75
Pages 5 to 6. Replacement child theory: Albert J. Lubin, psychologist (Stranger on the Earth, 1972) builds a strong case, using circumstantial evidence and contemporary psychological theories, that Vincent's problems were caused by his position in the van Gogh family as a replacement for his dead brother.
Pages 6 to 7. Rosebush story and destroyed drawing story: Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, who talked to Vincent's mother, tells both of these stories in her short biography of Vincent, published as a foreword to The Complete Letters. Memoir, CL, vol. 1, p. xxi.
Pages 7 to 8. Mr. Provily's school: Vincent referred at least twice in his letters to this painful parting with his parents, at greatest length in Letter 82a. CL, voL 1, p. 78.
Page 8. Vincent's education: The information about Vincent's schooling is from Jan Hulsker. V and T, pp. 11-12.
Page 10. Vincent writes to thank Theo for his visit in Letter 1. CL, vol. 1, p. 1.
Page 10. Everybody liked dealing with Vincent: Mr. Tersteeg's letter to the parents is quoted by Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. Memoir, CL, vol. 1, p. xxiv.
Page 11. Love for Eugénie Lover. Johanna van Gogh-Bonger reports that the van Gogh family believed that Vincent's behavior changed when Eugénie refused to marry him. Memoir, CL, vol. 1, pp. xxiv-xxv.
Page 13. When the apple is ripe: Vincent first wrote to his brother about the firing in Letter 50. CL, vol. 1, p. 45.
Vincent in England, 1876-77
Page 15. No one of us will ever forget the view: Letter 67, CL, vol. 1, p. 57.
Page 16. The ground we walk on: Letter 63, CL, vol. 1, p. 55.
Page 16. No professions in the world: Letter 70, CL, vol. 1, p. 61.
Page 17. If their son wanted to be an evangelist: Jan Hulsker quoted this from an unpublished letter written by Mr. van Gogh to his son Theo. V and T, p. 37.
Page 17. Sorrow is better than joy: Vincent's sermon is published in full in The Complete Letters. CL, vol. 1, pp. 87-91.
Pages 17 to 18. Vincent's life at the bookstore: In 1890, in response to a newspaper article, Mr. P. C. Gorlitz, Vincent's roommate while he was working at the bookstore, wrote a letter about his friend for publication. The story about Vincent's diet, churchgoing habits, and religious texts comes from Gorlitz. VGSP, p. 37.
Pages 17 to 18. The grandson of the owner of the bookstore also was interviewed and told his father's story of Vincent's work habits. Document 94a, CL, vol. 1, p. 108.
Pages 18 to 19. Vincent's worries about school: He wrote to Theo about his anxieties in Letters 98 through 119. CL, vo
l. 1, pp. 119-163.
Page 19. Remedy for suicide: Letter 106, CL, vol. 1, p. 135.
Page 19. Vincent's appearance: Mendes da Costa wrote an article about his experience tutoring Vincent that included a description of Vincent's appearance, his habits, and his reason for leaving his studies. Document 122a, CL, vol. 1, p. 170-171.
Page 20. Oh, sir, I really don't care: In 1912, more than twenty years after Vincent's death, when his accomplishments as a painter had been recognized, a memoir published in a Brussels newspaper gave an account of Vincent in school there. Document 126a, CL, vol. 1, p. 181.
The Missionary, 1879-80
Page 21. Visit to the Marcasse: Vincent wrote a spectacular letter to his brother Theo on his trip down the mine. The descriptive phrases in the first two paragraphs are taken from that letter. Let' ter 129, CL, vol. 1, p. 186.
Page 22. The baker's wife saw him: M. Louis Pierard collected and published memories of Vincent in the Borinage, including the baker's account of his mother's meeting with Vincent. VGSP, p. 64.
Page 23. Vincent's response to advice from the family: Theo came to visit, bringing good advice from the family, and Vincent wrote to him about it. Letter 132, CL, vol. 1, p. 191.
Pages 24. Vincent's trip to Courrières: Vincent was not corresponding with Theo when he walked to Courrières, but a few months later when they were back in touch, he wrote to Theo about the trip, making a humorous story out of his arduous journey. Letter 136, CL, vol. 1, p. 204.
Pages 25 to 26. Such a man and I always think the best way to know God: Vincent wrote a long, rambling, and tremendously moving letter to Theo about the difficult lessons learned in what he re-ferred to as his molting time. Letter 133, CL, vol. 1, pp. 193-200.
Page 26. Send me what you can: Letter 134, CL, vol. 1, p. 200.
Vincent Van Gogh Page 9