Letters. 1872-1886

The significance of Van Gogh's confessional letters as one of the brightest self-portraits of the artist is hard to overestimate. An outcast of society, an outcast of art, an outcast of personal happiness, Vincent shares his most precious thoughts: intimate reflections on creativity and destiny, love and faith, life and death. Van Gogh's epistolary legacy, belonging to the Dutch period of his work, allows us to trace the unique path of the self-taught artist to the heights of mastery, to recognize him as a great worker of the brush and a great reader. By depicting full of quiet beauty scenes of peasant life, the artist eagerly absorbs the surrounding reality of his native land and reveals essential sides of the phenomenon of his creativity: a subtle understanding of nature and deep psychological insight. The rich illustrative array of the book includes drawings, lithographs, and paintings by Van Gogh and serves as a metaphor for the inner dialogue recorded in correspondence with his brother and friends. The edition also uses works by Dutch and French masters who influenced the artist, such as Rembrandt, Jozef Israëls, Jean-François Millet, Charles-François Daubigny, as well as 19th-century photographs that recreate the atmosphere of the era.