The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (Penguin Classics)

Product Information

Like with Field with Irises near Arles: he wrote the colours ‘blue’, ‘grey-green’, ‘yellow’ and ‘purple’ on the sketch. Vincent Willem van Gogh, for whom color was the chief symbol of expression, was born in Groot-Zundert, Holland. Personal letters seem to be so much more profitable to me as a reader than fiction, or even a biography. What the letters do is that they give us a insight into Vincent’s thoughts and feelings, as he did pour out his souls in these letters.

It seemed to me that you were suffering, like me, from seeing our youth go up in smoke - but if it throws out new growth in one's work, then nothing is lost, for the capacity to work is another form of youth. He was a highly intelligent, sensitive man who read deeply and poured all his emotions into the letters. I know when I started on GR I didn’t always review my book selections because I was trying to list hundreds of volumes (and I still forgot to list many I’d read). Mind you, as we come to the end of his life, his output literally goes through the roof (though for a while he was not allowed to paint, namely because he would have psychotic attacks and attempt to swallow his paints), but before his death he was literally painting one painting a day (sometimes two). In May of 1890, he seemed much better and went to live in Auvers-sur-Oise under the watchful eye of Dr.Late that summer, van Gogh had completed his second group of Sunflower paintings, among his most iconic paintings, two of which decorated Gauguin's room, as well as his famous painting The Yellow House depicting the house they shared. Margaret Drabble describes the letters from Drenthe as "heart-breaking", as he struggled to come to terms with the "darkness of his hereditary subject matter", the bleak poverty and meanness of Dutch peasant life. What comes across clearly, whether he is discussing art or whatever else, is the profound intensity with which he approached anything he undertook and the passion with which he defended his ideas.

The colour of the tree, the colour of his table, the colour of the grass, the colour of the sun, the colour of someone's coat… He does not discuss compositions or arrangements or drawing. At some point, the constant practice of his craft would have allowed him to paint pictures that would sell. If even before he drew and painted he would send accounts of his visual impressions, once he began producing paintings, at a very fast rate, he would send textual versions of his painterly renditions.Vincent van Gogh was born to upper middle class parents and spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers before travelling to The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught in England at Isleworth and Ramsgate. He also talks of the lonely life of an artist but maintains that an isolated and solitary life is needed for a devoted artist.

I first began my reading of these letters as a way to learn more about the art process, the way to creation coming from the mind of such a gifted artist such as Vincent Van Gogh. Well, near the end of his life, when he was in St Remy, and in the asylum, you do start to see more portraits (such as the doctor and the postman), but in most cases he is stuck painting landscapes and still lifes (and a number of self portraits as well). But for Van Gogh this was a plodding daily reality of struggle and failure, with no audience and no guarantee of ultimate success.Art is something which, though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from a man's soul. Nevertheless, it is to these letters between the brothers that is owed much of what is known today about Vincent van Gogh.