Van Gogh (177 page)

Almond Blossom
, F
EBRUARY 1890, OIL ON CANVAS, 28 7/8 × 36 ⅛ IN
.
(photo credit i1.58)

Irises
, M
AY 1890, OIL ON CANVAS, 36 ⅛ × 28 ⅞ IN
.
(photo credit i1.59)

The Church at Auvers
, J
UNE 1890, OIL ON CANVAS, 37 × 29 ⅛ IN
.
(photo credit i1.60)

Portrait of Doctor Gachet
, J
UNE 1890, OIL ON CANVAS, 26 ¼ × 22 IN
.
(photo credit i1.61)

Daubigny’s Garden
, J
ULY 1890, OIL ON CANVAS, 19 ⅝ × 40 IN
.
(photo credit i1.62)

Tree Roots
, J
ULY 1890, OIL ON CANVAS, 19 ¾ × 39 ¼ IN
.
(photo credit i1.63)

Wheat Field with Crows
, J
ULY 1890, OIL ON CANVAS, 19 ⅞ × 39 ⅛ IN
.
(photo credit i1.64)

It was originally our intention to include in this volume a complete set of notes so that the reader could precisely identify the source of all the factual material used in the text and so that we could share additional relevant information. Our biography of Jackson Pollock included almost one hundred pages of such ancillary material, consisting in roughly equal parts of source identification and commentary.

Not long after beginning this book, however, we realized that Vincent van Gogh’s life and the vast literature it has inspired presented a far more daunting challenge for biographers bent on thorough documentation than the relatively undocumented life of Jackson Pollock. (Most of the research for that book consisted of interviews with people who had known the artist.)

There are a number of reasons for this. First and foremost, of course, are the thousands of letters that Vincent famously wrote. As invaluable as they have been to this (and every) Van Gogh biography, they also introduce a Gordian knot of research complications. The most fundamental of these, for the non-Dutch biographer at least, is translation. Until very recently, there was only one definitive English translation of Vincent’s letters: the one produced by his
sister-in-law, Theo’s wife Johanna Bonger. Her translation is the one most familiar to English speakers and the one most available in the libraries of the English-speaking world. It was Bonger’s translation that guided us through most of the writing of this book.

Recently, however, the Van Gogh Museum completed a fifteen-year project of retranslating Vincent’s letters and the result is the monumental and indisputably definitive
Complete Letters
published in 2009 and available online at
www.vangoghletters.org
.

The existence of two translations—one more modern and scholarly but the other more familiar—had a substantial impact on a set of notes that aspired to completeness. Whenever we quote a short passage from the letters (or, as we often do, a single word), we felt an obligation to provide the fuller passage in the notes in order to inform the reader of the context from which the words were taken. With two translations, one making a claim on the past, the other
a claim on the future, we felt obligated to include the contextual passages from
both
translations in our notes. This had the immediate effect of doubling their length.

A far larger problem than translation was interpretation—a problem that would have presented itself even if the letters had been originally written in English. Our biography differs from many previous biographies of Vincent van Gogh in at least this one important respect: we have not taken Vincent’s letters as a necessarily reliable record of the events of his life, or even of his thinking at any given time—at least not directly. They are not
entries in a diary or a journal, although they are often treated as such. They are not inner unburdenings intended only for their author. The corpus of Vincent’s writings
consists almost entirely of letters that he wrote to his family and friends. Of these, the overwhelming majority were addressed to his brother Theo.

Theo occupied a unique position in Vincent’s life. He was not only Vincent’s sole friend through much of their correspondence, but also his sole sponsor and sole supporter. Theirs was a complicated relationship. Theo was his successful younger brother: beloved by his family where Vincent was lamented, celebrated where Vincent was scolded, embraced where Vincent was shunned, favored (by his rich uncles, in particular) where Vincent was shut out. In our
opinion, all of the information and thoughts that Vincent shared with his brother in his letters must be viewed through these various potentially distorting prisms. At times, this requires questioning the accuracy of Vincent’s accounts, even his veracity; sometimes, it requires reading between the lines of his letters for the truth that is being hidden or conveyed indirectly: for the conspicuous silence, the pregnant non sequitur, or the evasive ellipsis (“etc.”
was a favorite), all of which he used to conceal hurt, resentment, humiliation, and setback.

As much of his heart as he poured out in his letters to Theo, Vincent hid at least as much, for fear of alienating his brother, jeopardizing his financial support, or confirming his family’s damning judgment of him. At the same time, he could wield these sensitivities as cudgels: threatening to undertake activities that would lead to fraternal disapproval or family embarrassment in order to coerce more money out of Theo, for example; or, by proposing then
abjuring some reckless course of action, to win Theo’s approval for another course that had been his intent all along. By these and a myriad of similar stratagems, Vincent used his letters to mold his brother’s opinions and craft his reactions in the minutest ways. In at least a few cases, we have concrete evidence that Vincent wrote multiple drafts of his letters and there is extensive inferential evidence that this was not an uncommon practice, especially when the
topic being discussed was important or sensitive.

On the human level, of course, it is profoundly sad that Vincent could not speak openly and spontaneously to the only person who truly cared about his inner life. For the biographer, this dance of indirection (and sometimes deception) presents a special challenge. To disregard, or even completely discredit, one of Vincent’s accounts to Theo (as we do) requires copious explanation—if for no other reason than that readers (and scholars) can follow our
reasoning and, if so inclined, dispute it. More than any other factor, it is this need to make transparent our readings of Vincent’s letters that has had an inflationary impact on the notes to this book.

We have, of course, also used notes in their other traditional capacities: (1) to bring previous biographers and academic scholars into the discussion over controversial issues in the literature; the scale of the notes is, in part, a reflection of the volume and quality of the Van Gogh scholarship that preceded us; (2) to alert readers where we have taken a position that is contrary to the canon of Van Gogh scholarship and explain, often in detail, why we take the
positions we take; (3) to expand on the text with additional information about secondary characters, locales, art-historical movements, particular artists, works of art, etc.; (4) to offer “sidebars” on interesting subjects that are touched on by the text but only tangential to the telling of Van Gogh’s story.

As a result of all these factors, the notes ballooned to roughly five thousand typewritten pages—a length unmanageable in a single-volume biography and incompatible with our intent to reach general readers as well as specialists. The compromise we struck was to separate the notes from the text and put them all online, free of cost, at
www.vangoghbiography.com
.

This solution allows anyone to browse freely through the additional material, search by keyword, or go directly to the notes for a particular page in the book. It also allows us to enrich the notes with hundreds of additional illustrations and photographs, to facilitate cross-referencing through hyperlinks, and to solicit comments from readers.

Because notes also serve another, broader purpose for the general reader—to identify the body of research that formed the basis of a book and to direct interested readers to the leading sources—we have included in this volume the bibliography that follows. In it are listed all the books, exhibition catalogues, journal articles, and articles in edited books that are cited in the text. Information on additional sources cited in the text, including archival
materials, dissertations, newspaper articles, and websites, can be found in the chapter-by-chapter bibliographies online at
www.vangoghbiography.com
. A large number of additional sources that are cited in the notes but not in the text, also appear at
www.vangoghbiography.com
.