The Letters of a Post-Impressionist

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh refers to a collection of 903 surviving letters written (820) or received (83) by Vincent van Gogh. More than 650 of these were from Vincent to his brother Theo. The collection also includes letters van Gogh wrote to his sister Wil and other relatives, as well as between artists such as Paul Gauguin, Anthon van Rappard and Emile Bernard. Vincent's sister-in-law and wife to his brother Theo, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, spent many years after her husband's death in 1891 compiling the letters, which were first published in 1914. Arnold Pomerans, editor of a 1966 selection of the letters, wrote that Theo "was the kind of man who saved even the smallest scrap of paper," and it is to this trait that we owe the 663 letters from Vincent. By contrast Vincent infrequently kept letters sent him and just 84 have survived, of which 39 were from Theo. Nevertheless, it is to these letters between the brothers that we owe much of what we know today about Vincent van Gogh. Indeed, the only period where we are relatively uninformed is the Parisian period when they shared an apartment and had no need to correspond. The letters effectively play much the same role in shedding light on the art of the period as those between the de Goncourt brothers did for literature

About the Author :
Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in the town of Groot- Zundert in Brabant, a region of The Netherlands close to the Belgian border. He was the oldest child of Theodorus van Gogh (1822-85), a pastor in the Dutch Reformed Community, and Anna Cornelia Carbentus (1819-1907). Vincent was born exactly one year after the first Vincent Willem had been stillborn to Anna Carbentus on March 30, 1852. There is little or no evidence that Vincent knew very much about this would-be older brother, but certainly some psychoanalytical biographers have worked themselves into a Freudian frenzy about the coincidence of these birthdays and about Vincent's torturous psychological struggle as the "replacement child" for his parents. Vincent was to have five siblings: two brothers, Theodorus (Theo) (1857-91), who would become his favorite family member as well as his closest and most devoted friend, patron, and artistic agent, and the much younger Cornelius Vincent (1867-1900); and three sisters, Anna Cornelia (1855-1930), Elisabeth (Lies) Huberta (1859-1936), and Willemina (Wil) Jacoba (1862-1941), his favorite sister, who shared Vincent's psychological ailments late in her life. Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art.