The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh made his way to Antwerp, where the metropolitan atmosphere proved highly inspiring to him. During this period, his fascination with Japanese woodblocks becomes more and more evident in the letters. He wrote to Theo after taking a walk along the docks, “those docks are one huge Japonaiserie, fantastic, peculiar, unheard of” (433). 

In January, he began taking painting lessons at the Antwerp Academy, but declining health, suffering finances, and the rejection of his teachers at the Academy—who believed him to be a bad influence on other students— eventually caused him to leave the city.

In order to cut costs, Theo and Vincent made a plan to live together in Paris. Theo was initially reluctant, but ultimately, Vincent gave him no choice by showing up unexpectedly in March 1886. 

The Paris years are a notably blank span in the otherwise dense body of Van Gogh’s epistolary record, because as the brothers were living together, there was apparently no need for them to write to each other. The letters that do survive from this period from Van Gogh are in correspondence with other painters, and with his sister, Wil.

In Paris, Vincent encountered the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists for the first time.