The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Although Van Gogh’s mental health issues are occasionally glimpsed in earlier sections, these final chapters offer particularly focused insight into that aspect of the artist’s existence. Following his violent episodes in Arles, it was no longer an option for Van Gogh to ignore his own mental health, and in the final 14 months of his life, the letters bear witness to the fact that he was now facing this issue head-on: “I like to think that once you know what it is, once you are conscious of your condition, and of being subject to attacks,” he observed, “then you can do something to prevent your being taken unawares by the anguish or the terror” (605). In earlier periods of his life, Van Gogh had shrugged off the seriousness of the illness in his letters to Theo. Now, he was addressing the issue with unprecedented frankness.

The exhausted tone that began in the later letters from Arles is carried through in the Saint-Rèmy letters, highlighting the physical burden that Van Gogh’s psychological condition must have placed on him. “During the attacks I feel cowardly in the face of the pain and suffering—more cowardly than is justified,” he explained to his brother, “and perhaps it is this moral cowardice itself, which previously I had no desire to cure, that now makes me eat for two, work hard, and limit my relations with the other patients for fear of falling ill again” (624-625). Recovery was, in itself, a new form of work for Van Gogh to take on, and yet another drain on his already limited energy. The letters from Theo to Van Gogh in these final months reveal that he was also highly aware of his brother’s fragile energy reserves, as he expressed anxiety about what might happen if Vincent experienced burnout: “I am always frightened when you work like one possessed, for that is bound to sap your strength” (633).

Nevertheless, despite the clear decline in Van Gogh’s health, and therefore quality of life, there are several concurrent positive trends in the letters from Saint-Rèmy and Auvers-sur-Oise, reflecting the endurance of Van Gogh’s Relationship with the Arts. First, Van Gogh’s ability to consistently produce high-quality paintings seemed to have reached new heights by the time he arrived at Saint-Rèmy, as De Leeuw asserts, “In addition to the series of enclosed fields, he also painted The Reaper, The Starry Night and the ‘bottle-green’ Cypresses” (609). In Auvers-sur-Oise, too, he produced a remarkable 74 canvases in just 10 weeks. At the same time, critics were beginning to take notice of his work, as is evidenced by the sale of his first painting, and by the exchange of letters with critic Albert Aurier. 

After years of receiving little to no recognition, Van Gogh’s astonishment over Aurier’s positive review of his paintings is palpable. In his letter to the critic, he strikes a tone of humility and gratitude, writing, “Thank you very much for your article […] which surprised me […] I admire it very much as a work of art in itself, it seems to me that you paint with words […] I encounter my canvases anew in your article, but better than they are in reality” (651). Compared to Van Gogh’s previously fraught relationship with the arts establishment in Paris, this overwhelmingly positive interaction with Aurier signaled hope for a better future.

The trajectory of Van Gogh’s final months, therefore, emerges as paradoxical: Productive and depleted, hopeful and sad. In these self-contradictions, it is implied that Van Gogh’s death was not nearly as inevitable as some modern accounts have made it out to be. Indeed, Van Gogh’s discussions of death by suicide are particularly illuminating in this regard, as he told Theo, “I don’t know if my zeal is anything other than what I said, it is like that of someone who means to commit suicide, but then struggles for the shore because he finds the water too cold” (627), making it clear that he had within himself a real drive to keep living. Though the exact circumstances of his death remain murky (it has long been presumed that Van Gogh died by suicide, but this was never definitively proven), what is clear from the final letters is that Van Gogh was actively trying to confront and treat his illness in the hope that he would be able to go on painting.