The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh is an epistolary compilation by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), originally published in 1914 by his brother’s widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. The letters provide some of the most intimate insights into an individual artist’s thoughts, feelings, and ideas in the history of art, allowing both scholars and the general public to interpret Van Gogh’s paintings through a more biographical lens. Comprised of over 900 individual letters either written or received by Van Gogh, the collection spans from roughly 1872, when the artist was in his late teens, to shortly before his death, thereby covering the entire second half of his life.

This guide uses the Penguin eBook edition, edited by Ronald de Leeuw and translated by Arnold Pomerans.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain discussions of mental illness, self-harm, death by suicide, and sex work.

Summary

The surviving collection of letters picks up in 1872, as young Van Gogh is attempting to build a career as an art dealer. His uncle, also named Vincent, was a partner at Goupil & Cie, one of Europe’s best-known art firms, and had recommended Van Gogh to the position. Van Gogh wrote to his younger brother, Theo, who also began work for Goupil & Cie, about his experiences working for the firm in both London and Paris. He was an avid consumer of both art and literature, and found his time in these cultural epicenters highly enriching. However, a blossoming obsession with religion led to him growing increasingly cynical about the art trade. He was eventually fired from his job in 1876.

Following his stint at Goupil & Cie, Van Gogh turned his ambitions to religious life, hoping to follow in the footsteps of his father, who was a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. Between 1876 and 1878, his letters to Theo grew increasingly intensive in their religiosity. He received his first post as a Methodist preacher’s assistant while living in Isleworth, and expressed great enthusiasm about the job to Theo. His family, however, had little faith that his work in England would lead to long-term stability, and demanded that he come back home to the Netherlands. The family installed him as a bookseller in Dordrecht, but his religious interests were encouraged by that city’s Calvinist atmosphere, and he began to plan for a career in the clergy. He moved to Amsterdam in 1877 to begin formal theological training under the supervision of another uncle, but quickly grew disenchanted with the stuffiness of academic religion, and failed his state exam.

In 1878, Van Gogh moved to the Borinage in Belgium, where he had secured a position as a lay preacher. Amidst the region’s peasant miners, he began to feel artistic inspiration, and wrote to Theo that he was spending more and more time drawing what he saw. When he was informed that his preaching position would not be renewed, he informed Theo of his intentions to pursue an art career, describing it as another expression of his devotion to God. Despite his newfound sense of purpose, Van Gogh’s family continued to disapprove, and his father threatened to send him to an asylum.

After moving back into the home of his parents in Etten, Van Gogh informed Theo that he had fallen in love with Kee Vos, a widowed cousin. Kee firmly rejected him, but Van Gogh believed that she would eventually give in to his pursuit of her. The entire family was upset about Van Gogh’s unyielding behavior towards Kee, and this tension eventually led to an estrangement between him and his parents. As a result of this separation, he moved in with Anton Mauve, a cousin through marriage and prominent painter of The Hague School, who offered him his first formal painting training. As he realized that a relationship with Kee would not be possible, Van Gogh blamed his uncle and father, both ministers, and turned his back on organized religion.

Shortly after giving up hope of marrying Kee, Van Gogh became romantically linked to Sien Hoornik, a pregnant sex worker who had been modeling for him. This affair scandalized his family yet again, and also caused him to have a falling out with Mauve, who kicked him out of the house in The Hague. As pressure mounted on him to turn his art profitable, he nevertheless chafed at advice that he should focus on cultivating a commercial style, and conveyed his frustrations with this pressure, and with the family’s disapproval, to Theo. He also expressed his fears that Theo would withdraw his financial support.

In 1882, Sien gave birth to a son, and Van Gogh moved the family into a larger house, clearly viewing himself as taking on the role of father and husband. They enjoyed a prolonged period of peace, but a couple years later, the relationship with Sien was falling apart, and Van Gogh moved on his own to Drenthe to paint peasant life there. Even though his identity as an artist was forming more clearly, Van Gogh was more keenly aware of his financial reliance on Theo, and even accused his brother of using his financial power to encourage the separation with Sien. In 1884, the brothers finally formalized their relationship as artist and dealer through a contract: Theo’s financial support would be considered payment for Van Gogh’s works moving forward, and all paintings sent to Theo would be considered his property. This formal arrangement granted Van Gogh a modicum of stability, and allowed him to move out of his parents’ home, where he had been staying for a time.

After a brief time in Antwerp, Van Gogh moved in with Theo in Paris. The Paris years were some of the most crucial in his career, but because the brothers were living together, they are some of the most sparse in the epistolary record. During this time, Van Gogh became acquainted for the first time with the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, and implemented some of their techniques in his work. These new relationships and influences revolutionized his subsequent work. However, living together with Theo proved difficult, and in 1888 he moved to Arles in the south of France, with hopes of establishing an artists’ collective there.

Van Gogh had immense trouble persuading fellow artists with his dreams of an Arles collective, but he nevertheless set himself to painting nearly everything he saw in Arles. Influenced by the Post-Impressionists, his canvases became more and more colorful, and he produced some of his most famous works in this time period. Things came to a notoriously violent end with the arrival of Paul Gauguin, when tensions between the two men resulted in Van Gogh experiencing a mental health break and attacking Gauguin with a razor before cutting off his own ear. In the weeks afterwards, the people of Arles successfully petitioned to have Van Gogh leave the city, and Theo arranged to have Van Gogh admitted to the nearby asylum at Saint-Rèmy to receive treatment.

In spite of his declining mental health, the Saint-Rèmy period also proved to be a highly productive one, and back in Paris, Van Gogh was even beginning to gain some recognition in exhibitions and by critics. His letters to Theo conveyed his shock at this shift, and his fears that his health would eventually stop him from painting altogether. During multiple attacks, he had tried to ingest paint and turpentine, leading doctors to ban him from painting for days at a time. 

Frustrated with this mode of care, Van Gogh eventually left Saint-Rèmy for the Auvers-sur-Oise, where a doctor recommended by some colleagues lived and worked. He spent his last weeks there, painting a remarkable number of canvases, before dying of a gunshot wound (presumed by many to be self-inflicted) on July 29th, 1890.