Deprived of finer speech, my chief utterance while reading van Gogh’s letters was: “Oh, this is brilliant... this is brilliant... brilliant...” It isn’t as often as one would like that one’s reading matter is of such quality as to interrupt one’s respiration, and even less often that form, substance and function come together so satisfyingly as they have in the latest, and finest, edition of the great artist’s collected letters.
Vincent’s letters (the informal is surely allowable) are no secret. They’ve been in circulation for more than a century. The credit for that, as for the amazing PR job that rocketed him to fame so soon after his death, belongs to Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, the widow of Vincent’s younger brother Theo, who died soon after his brother did. The two are buried together in the cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise, a suburb of Paris. The graves of the two men, at the instance of Theo’s beloved wife, wear a shared blanket of ivy, binding them together in death as in life.
About 900 letters from 1872 to 1890 survive which were either written by or addressed to Vincent, of which the vast majority, about 700, were exchanged between the brothers. Theo was Vincent’s rock. For most of the artist’s painting years, i.e., the last decade of his life (he shot himself at 37), Theo regularly sent his brother money and painting materials. Because Vincent had no close friends, nor any real lover, he poured out his thoughts and accounts of his work and troubles in the letters to Theo.
As several reviewers have said, there is no better artistic autobiography in existence. The letters are unpolished and often messy documents, yet tumbling with ideas and emotions. They reveal the range of Vincent’s reading (astonishingly broad) and how he taught himself to understand as well as do art (by hard work; he wasn’t a born talent).
Some 242 letters contain simple sketches (“croquis”) by which Vincent showed Theo how he was progressing. Many offer a glimpse into the process that led to a painting — including some of van Gogh’s most famous, like The Potato Eaters (1885).
Indeed, so important are the letters that they helped create van Gogh’s reputation as an artist, no less, one might hazard, than his art. They are memorable partly because they are so readable — Vincent’s words are as vigorous as his paintings. But so far we have not had a truly complete and accurate collection. Theo’s widow had a set published, but of course some material was excised and the whole was cleaned up to read well. In 1958 an English translation from the original Dutch and French was published, but it was similarly flawed.
Now, after 15 years of labour, experts from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which has the largest collection of his artwork and most of the letters, with the support of the Huygens Institute have contextualised the letters with a framework of incredibly substantial research. Vincent van Gogh — The Letters (Thames & Hudson, £325) shows each letter, full size, surrounded by the details one needs to fully understand the words. This includes notes on every individual, book and event mentioned and images of any painting referred to. One gets a virtual picture of the components of van Gogh’s thinking at that moment — gets inside his head, so to speak.
The editors (Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, Nienke Bakker) and the Museum, with great generosity of spirit, have made the entire book available online, free, at Vangoghletters.org. It is the best-designed website I have seen for years, beautiful and easy to negotiate. Reading Vincent there is what took my breath away.