Van Gogh's Letters

Letter 902 from Vincent to Theo van Gogh - the last letter he ever wrote his brother

Just in from seeing the current Van Gogh exhibition at the Royal Academy with my parents. Though I usually steer well clear of anything that smacks of Impressionism at the Royal Academy - since the crowds at those shows are legendary - my mother likes to get in touch with her Dutch roots when anything Netherlandish comes on, and I wanted to see the exhibition since reading a review of the latest edited volume of Van Gogh's letters in the LRB. (My father lasted about 20 minutes in the exhibition - which was, admittedly and expectedly, absolutely packed - and K went to see the Paul Sandby show of 18th-century watercolours, 'Picturing Britain', instead!)

Van Gogh was an inveterate letter-writer - after an exhausting day of painting, he would sit down and write screeds of correspondence, most often to his brother Theo, to whom he wrote nearly 1000 letters. These would describe in detail the paintings he was in the process of making, regularly including sketches or studies, with indications of how he intended to colour them... His philosophy of painting and the gradual deterioration of his mental state plays out in the pages of these letters, and the exhibition nicely brought together the finished oils themselves with pen and ink sketches or studies - which were often beautiful in their own right, occasionally more so than the paintings - with the letters, sympathetically mounted so you could see both sides, and with selected quotations from the letters on the labels, serving to elucidate the art.

It was nicely done, though huge. And as usual at the RA (I find) very little wider context. So no explanation, for example, of why Van Gogh suddenly switches from Dutch to French in his correspondence with his brother. And not arranged particularly chronologically - except for the last room, which contains the landscapes he painted when he was in the mental asylum in Auvers-sur-Oise, in the last months of his life. You're just expected to know the key events and moments of Van Gogh's career, which I don't - perhaps the result of not having come to any of the RA's previous Impressionist exhibitions.

My overriding impression was of the tragedy of Van Gogh's life. He had such a close relationship with his brother - they died within a year of each other. Theo was not only his main source of finance, but his main advocate and guide in the development of his artistic career - keeping him informed of developments in Paris, as Van Gogh taught himself to paint in the area round The Hague. Van Gogh was obviously hyper-sensitised to colour and his surroundings, I presume a consequence of his mental illness - something I had not really noticed before, perhaps from never having seen so many of his art works together in one place. Amazingly, in the last 70 days of his life, he painted more than 70 canvases. He was obviously working at such a frenzied peak of activity that ultimately it was too much for him to sustain, and he shot himself.

But it was the love and closeness that the two brothers had for each other that really came through for me - and perhaps mainly because I had read the LRB review, since there was not too much about this in the text panels. All the letters have been fully edited, translated and published - a small investment of £325, or you can view everything online in facsimile (for free!) here.