Van Gogh 232 Illustrations , 48 in Colour

Vincent Van Gogh was twenty-seven years old before he knew he was an artist. In this absorbing study, A.M. and Renilde Hammacher demonstrate that all the evidence of his life that remains - his letters, the pictures and prints that he owned, his own works - embodies a coherent pattern of ideas and obsessions which runs from his youth to the tragic end of his career. His ecstatic experience of nature, his idealistic rejection of conventional society, his identification with the poor, even specific images - such as the empty chair he saw in an engraving of Charles Dicken's study - haunt his letters throughout his life and reappear in his paintings and drawings. The essential documents of his heroic existence are marshalled and interpreted here with sustained skill and insight.