![]() Van Gogh was an avid reader, and his letters reflect his literary pursuits as well as a uniquely authentic literary style. In these letters, van Gogh wrote more about his techniques, his use of color, and his theories. īeginning in 1888 and ending a year later, van Gogh wrote 22 letters to Émile Bernard in which the tone is different from those to Theo. When he moved to London, and later to Paris, he began to add more personal information. At that time Vincent was not yet developed as a letter writer – he was factual, but not introspective. The first letter was written when Vincent was 19 and begins, "My dear Theo". Of the letters Vincent received from Theo, only 39 survive. Of the 844 surviving letters that van Gogh wrote, 663 were written to Theo, 9 to Theo and Jo. In 1906 Bruno Cassirer published a small volume of selected letters of Vincent's to Theo van Gogh, translated into German. Paul Cassirer first established a market for van Gogh, and then, with the assistance of Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, controlled market prices. In the last days of December 1901, running through January 1902, Bruno Cassirer and his cousin Paul Cassirer organized the first van Gogh exhibition in Berlin, Germany. The project consists of a complete annotated collection of letters written by and to Vincent. Jan Hulsker suggested, in 1987, that the letters be organized in date order, and undertaking that began in 1994 when the Van Gogh Letter Project was initiated by the Van Gogh Museum. That first edition consisted of three volumes, and was followed in 1952–1954 by a four-volume edition that included additional letters. ![]() Johanna began the task of completing the collection, which was published in full in January 1914. Within two years both brothers were dead: Vincent as the result of a gunshot wound, and Theo from illness. Theo van Gogh's wife, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, devoted many years to compiling the letters about which she wrote: "When as Theo's young wife I entered in 1889, our flat in the Cité Pigalle in Paris, I found at the bottom of a small desk a drawer full of letters from Vincent". ![]() Vincent (left), photographed in 1873, Theo (middle) in 1878, and Johanna in 1889. The letters effectively play much the same role in shedding light on the art of the period as those between the de Goncourt brothers do for literature. The only two periods when the public is relatively uninformed are the Parisian period, during which they shared an apartment and had no need to correspond, and a one-year gap in the correspondence from 1879 to 1880, when they had temporarily fallen out over Vincent's career choice. Nevertheless, it is to these letters between the brothers that is owed much of what is known today about Vincent van Gogh. 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 the public owes the 663 letters from Vincent.īy contrast, Vincent infrequently kept letters sent to him and just 84 have survived, of which 39 were from Theo. Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, the wife of Vincent's brother Theo, spent many years after her husband's death in 1891 compiling the letters, which were first published in 1914. 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 Émile Bernard. ![]() More than 650 of these were from Vincent to his brother Theo. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh is a collection of 903 surviving letters written (820) or received (83) by Vincent van Gogh. I've painted it on a fairly large canvas, and as the sketch is now, I believe there's life in it." He was currently working on the painting, which was to become one of his first complex compositions with multiple figures, and illustrated the letter with a sketch of the work, writing "See, this is what the composition has now become. Collection of letters written and received by Vincent van Gogh In April 1885, Vincent wrote his brother about his first masterpiece, The Potato Eaters.
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