Van Gogh's Letters: The Mind of the Artist in Paintings and Drawings, 1872-1878

Vincent Van Gogh wrote hundreds of letters to his brother Theo, as well as to family members and fellow artists including Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard. In many of them he described, in painstaking detail and beautiful prose, the progress of his work. Few artists' letters are as self-revelatory as Vincent Van Gogh's, and the selection included here, spanning the whole of his artistic career, sheds light on every facet of the life and work of this complex and tortured man. Engaging candidly and movingly with his religious struggles, his ill-fated search for love, his intense relationship with his brother Theo and his attacks of mental illness, the letters contradict the popular image of Van Gogh as an anti-social madman and a martyr to art, showing instead that he was capable of great emotional and spiritual depths.