A year later his brother Theo, an art dealer, enabled him to study in Paris, where he met Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Seurat, who became very important influences on his work. After an unsuccessful love affair with his cousin he returned to Holland and in 1885 he painted his first masterpiece, The Potato Eaters, a haunting scene of domestic poverty. He became an assistant with an international firm of art-dealers and in 1881 he went to Brussels to study art. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.Ībout the Author Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853-1890) was born in Holland.

With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. This edition includes the drawings that originally illustrated the letters. The letters are linked by explanatory biographical passages, revealing Van Gogh's inner journey as well as the outer facts of his life.

Above all, they stand as an intense personal narrative of artistic development and a unique account of the process of creation. 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. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.' 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. The Times (London) 'Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. 4 facsimile letters.īook Synopsis 'If ever there was any doubt that Van Gogh's letters belong beside those great classics of artistic self-revelation, Cellini's autobiography and Delacroix's journal, this excellent edition dispels it.' Ronald de Leeuw's notes provide informative links between the letters.

About the Book This volume reinstates a large number of passages omitted from earlier editions of Van Gogh's letters and includes, whenever possible, the wonderful pen-and-ink sketches Van Gogh added to his written messages.

The van gogh letters