The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh is a collection of 903 surviving letters written (820) or received (83) by Vincent van Gogh.^[1] More than 650 of these were from Vincent to his brother Theo.^[2] The collection also includes letters van Gogh wrote to his sister Wil and other relatives, as well as between artists such as Paul Gauguin, Anthon van Rappard, and Émile Bernard.^[3]

Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, the wife of Vincent's brother Theo, spent many years after her husband's death in 1891 compiling the letters, which were first published in 1914. Arnold Pomerans, editor of a 1966 selection of the letters, wrote that Theo "was the kind of man who saved even the smallest scrap of paper", and it is to this trait that the public owes the 663 letters from Vincent.

By contrast, Vincent infrequently kept letters sent to him and just 84 have survived, of which 39 were from Theo.^[4][5] Nevertheless, it is to these letters between the brothers that is owed much of what is known today about Vincent van Gogh. The only two periods when the public is relatively uninformed are the Parisian period, during which they shared an apartment and had no need to correspond, and a one-year gap in the correspondence from 1879 to 1880, when they had temporarily fallen out over Vincent's career choice.

The letters effectively play much the same role in shedding light on the art of the period as those between the de Goncourt brothers do for literature.^[6]