VAN GOGH ON THE PAGE

Few painters do themselves a favour with their writing: it tends to be all puffed-up statements and angsty diaries. The exception is Vincent van Gogh (1853-90), who has become a kind of Platonic ideal of the artist, impoverished, misunderstood and triumphantly vindicated by posterity. His letters are tender, intelligent, even literary, vibrating with the sincerity of a man sweating for something pure, despite years of rejection and isolation.

Fragments of these letters have fetched record prices at auction, elevating Van Gogh’s intimate scribbles on translucent onionskin to the realm of saintly relics. For the past 15 years, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, together with the Huygens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Art and Sciences, has been transcribing, translating and annotating more than 900 letters, many featuring early sketches of famous paintings. This research comes to spectacular fruition with “Vincent van Gogh—The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition”, a monumental work in six volumes, and a show displaying 120 of the letters—rarely exhibited, owing to their fragility—alongside more than 340 paintings, drawings and sketches by Van Gogh and his contemporaries. Unmissable. All this and a new biography too (“Van Gogh: His Life and Work” by Tim Hilton, Harper Collins, October 29th).

Van Gogh’s Letters Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, October 9th to January 3rd; (reduced version) Royal Academy, London, from January 23rd. "Vincent van Gogh—The Letters" Thames & Hudson, October 7th

~ EMILY BOBROW