Van Gogh. A Dream of the Sun

Vincent Willem Van Gogh (1853–1890) lived a very short life, but his creative life was even shorter — only the last ten years were devoted to painting. A hungry, almost destitute existence, filled with solitude and contempt from others, titanic... labor, and selfless pursuit of calling, turned in the 20th century into worldwide interest and recognition. During his lifetime, Van Gogh sold only one painting — for just 400 francs, and almost 100 years later, at an auction in New York, one of his canvases was purchased for nearly 100 million dollars. The biography of the artist, written by a French philosopher and writer, is based on correspondence with his brother Theo, as well as memories and testimonies of contemporaries; the book details Van Gogh’s mental illness — the author, avoiding an unequivocal interpretation of the issue, relies on the diagnoses of the doctors who treated the artist, as well as on the hypotheses of modern psychiatrists.