The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (Penguin Classics)

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During his lifetime he did not receive even a fraction of the recognition his work deserved (though if he had lived a little longer it likely would have). The power was kept alive sometimes by a fiery, consuming enthusiasm and sometimes by the cold steel of will and duty. The colour of the tree, the colour of his table, the colour of the grass, the colour of the sun, the colour of someone's coat… He does not discuss compositions or arrangements or drawing. Now and then the editor will insert snippets of Van Gogh's life and circumstances at the time of the letter so that we have a good context for the letter we are reading. The obscure genius ahead of his time, toiling in solitude, tortured by personal demons, driven by a creativity that sometimes spilled over into madness—and so on.

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.Van Gogh and his troubled life is one of those subjects that appeals to one's deepest feelings; to one's heart rather than one's head.

To any who get the chance, I highly recommend this paired experience, for the letters and the paintings are mutually enriching. His letters are very revealing and much more enlightening than the usual 'life of the artist' offering. For much of his adult life he was lonely and pushed to learn as much as he could about the world around and about his craft.

Most of all, however, these letters are immensely valuable for they give a good insight into the artistic view of the painter.

On a summer day in July he walked into a wheat field where he was painting and shot himself in the chest. It is interesting to read his letters from this stage of his life as he seems to be quite fundamentalist, however as it turns out that theology wasn’t down his alley either, so he decided to become a missionary to the Dutch miners. Most of them are addressed to his brother Theo, but there are a few to painter friends, such as Anton van Rappard and Émile Bernard. They were meant to give Theo or an artist friend an idea of what he was working on, or of what a drawing or painting looked like.

His knowledge of art history is equally impressive, as he, for example, compares Shakespeare’s and Rembrandt’s understanding of human nature. The Chair takes the daily object from his bedroom; van Gogh also painted Gauguin’s Chair as the title suggests. Whatever the reason is, I enjoyed viewing them and forming my own interpretations, even though my idea of the painting vastly contradicted the idea of its author. I'll send you another, better drawing of it than this croquis from memory; the house to the left is pink, with green shutters; the one that's shaded by a tree, that's the restaurant where I go to eat supper every day. The way he described experiencing and coming to terms with his condition also sounded surprisingly contemporary to me.