Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Vincent Willem van Gogh ( Dutch: ( ); 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include,, and, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive that contributed to the foundations of. His suicide at 37 followed years of mental illness and poverty.

Born into an upper-middle-class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet and thoughtful. As a young man he worked as an art dealer, often travelling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion, and spent time as a missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881, having moved back home with his parents. His younger brother supported him financially, and the two kept up a. His early works, mostly and depictions of, contain few signs of the vivid colour that distinguished his later work. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the, including and, who were reacting against the sensibility.

As his work developed he created a new approach to still lifes and. His paintings grew brighter in colour as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in in the south of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include series of, and. Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor, when in a rage, he severed part of his own left ear.

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He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period. After he discharged himself and moved to the in near Paris, he came under the care of the doctor. His depression continued and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver. He died from his injuries two days later.

Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime, and was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the public imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius, the artist 'where discourses on madness and creativity converge'. His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his painting style came to be incorporated by the and. He attained widespread critical, commercial and popular success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter, whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the.

Vincent van Gogh in 1873, when he worked at the 's gallery in; (pictured right, in 1878) was a life-long supporter and friend to his brother. The most comprehensive primary source on Van Gogh is the correspondence between him and his younger brother,. Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Vincent's thoughts and theories of art, are recorded in the hundreds of letters they exchanged from 1872 until 1890. Theo van Gogh was an art dealer and provided his brother with financial and emotional support, and access to influential people on the contemporary art scene. Theo kept all of Vincent's letters to him; Vincent kept few of the letters he received. After both had died, Theo's widow arranged for the publication of some of their letters.

A few appeared in 1906 and 1913; the majority were published in 1914. Vincent's letters are eloquent and expressive and have been described as having a 'diary-like intimacy', and read in parts like autobiography.

The translator wrote that their publication adds a 'fresh dimension to the understanding of Van Gogh's artistic achievement, an understanding granted us by virtually no other painter'. There are more than 600 letters from Vincent to Theo and around 40 from Theo to Vincent.

There are 22 to his sister, 58 to the painter, 22 to as well as individual letters to, and the critic. Nemetschek Allplan Rapidshare Download more. Some are illustrated with. Many are undated, but art historians have been able to place most in chronological order. Problems in transcription and dating remain, mainly with those posted from Arles. While there Vincent wrote around 200 letters in Dutch, French and English. There is a gap in the record when he lived in Paris as the brothers lived together and had no need to correspond. See also: Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in, in the predominantly Catholic province of in the southern Netherlands.

He was the oldest surviving child of Theodorus van Gogh, a minister of the, and Anna Cornelia Carbentus. Van Gogh was given the name of his grandfather, and of a brother stillborn exactly a year before his birth. Vincent was a common name in the Van Gogh family: his grandfather, Vincent (1789–1874), who received a degree in theology at the in 1811, had six sons, three of whom became art dealers.

This Vincent may have been named after his own great-uncle, a sculptor (1729–1802). Van Gogh's mother came from a prosperous family in, and his father was the youngest son of a minister. The two met when Anna's younger sister, Cornelia, married Theodorus's older brother Vincent (Cent). Van Gogh's parents married in May 1851 and moved to Zundert.

His brother Theo was born on 1 May 1857. There was another brother, Cor, and three sisters: Elisabeth, Anna, and (known as 'Wil'). In later life Van Gogh remained in touch only with Willemina and Theo. Van Gogh's mother was a rigid and religious woman who emphasised the importance of family to the point of claustrophobia for those around her.

Theodorus's salary was modest, but the Church supplied the family with a house, a maid, two cooks, a gardener, a carriage and horse, and Anna instilled in the children a duty to uphold the family's high social position. Kee Vos-Stricker with her son Jan c. 1879–80 Van Gogh returned to Etten in April 1881 for an extended stay with his parents. He continued to draw, often using his neighbours as subjects. In August 1881, his recently widowed cousin, Cornelia 'Kee' Vos-Stricker, daughter of his mother's older sister Willemina and Johannes Stricker, arrived for a visit.

He was thrilled and took long walks with her. Kee was seven years older than he was, and had an eight-year-old son. Van Gogh surprised everyone by declaring his love to her and proposing marriage. Dyndns Updater Download Free there. She refused with the words 'No, nay, never' (' nooit, neen, nimmer'). After Kee returned to Amsterdam, Van Gogh went to The Hague to try to sell paintings and to meet with his second cousin,.

Mauve was the successful artist Van Gogh longed to be. Mauve invited him to return in a few months, and suggested he spend the intervening time working in and; Van Gogh went back to Etten and followed this advice. Late in November 1881, Van Gogh wrote a letter to Johannes Stricker, one which he described to Theo as an attack. Within days he left for Amsterdam. Kee would not meet him, and her parents wrote that his 'persistence is disgusting'. In despair, he held his left hand in the flame of a lamp, with the words: 'Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the flame.'

He did not recall the event well, but later assumed that his uncle had blown out the flame. Kee's father made it clear that her refusal should be heeded and that the two would not marry, largely because of Van Gogh's inability to support himself. Mauve took Van Gogh on as a student and introduced him to watercolour, which he worked on for the next month before returning home for Christmas. He quarrelled with his father, refusing to attend church, and left for The Hague. Within a month Van Gogh and Mauve fell out, possibly over the viability of drawing from. Van Gogh could afford to hire only people from the street as models, a practice of which Mauve seems to have disapproved. In June Van Gogh suffered a bout of and spent three weeks in hospital.

Soon after, he first painted in oils, bought with money borrowed from Theo. He liked the medium, and spread the paint liberally, scraping from the canvas and working back with the brush. He wrote that he was surprised at how good the results were. Rooftops, View from the Atelier The Hague, 1882, private collection By March 1882, Mauve appears to have gone cold towards Van Gogh, and stopped replying to his letters. He had learned of Van Gogh's new domestic arrangement with an alcoholic prostitute, (1850–1904), and her young daughter.

Van Gogh had met Sien towards the end of January 1882, when she had a five-year-old daughter and was pregnant. She had previously borne two children who died, but Van Gogh was unaware of this; on 2 July, she gave birth to a baby boy, Willem. When Van Gogh's father discovered the details of their relationship, he put pressure on his son to abandon Sien and her two children.

Vincent at first defied him, and considered moving the family out of the city, but in late 1883, he left Sien and the children. Poverty may have pushed Sien back into prostitution; the home became less happy and Van Gogh may have felt family life was irreconcilable with his artistic development. Sien gave her daughter to her mother, and baby Willem to her brother. Willem remembered visiting when he was about 12, when an uncle tried to persuade Sien to marry to legitimise the child. He believed Van Gogh was his father, but the timing of his birth makes this unlikely.

Sien drowned herself in the in 1904. In September 1883, Van Gogh moved to in the northern Netherlands. In December, driven by loneliness, he went to live with his parents, then in, North Brabant.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam In Nuenen, Van Gogh focused on painting and drawing. Working outside and very quickly, he completed sketches and and.

From August 1884, Margot Begemann, a neighbour's daughter ten years his senior, joined him on his forays; she fell in love and he reciprocated, though less enthusiastically. They wanted to marry, but neither side of their families were in favour. Margot was distraught and took an overdose of, but survived after Van Gogh rushed her to a nearby hospital. On 26 March 1885, his father died of a heart attack. Van Gogh painted several groups of in 1885.

During his two-year stay in Nuenen, he completed numerous drawings and watercolours, and nearly 200 oil paintings. His palette consisted mainly of sombre earth tones, particularly dark brown, and showed no sign of the vivid colours that distinguish his later work. There was interest from a dealer in Paris early in 1885. Theo asked Vincent if he had paintings ready to exhibit. In May, Van Gogh responded with his first major work,, and a series of ' which were the culmination of several years of work. When he complained that Theo was not making enough effort to sell his paintings in Paris, his brother responded that they were too dark, and not in keeping with the bright style of Impressionism. In August his work was publicly exhibited for the first time, in the shop windows of the dealer Leurs in The Hague.

One of his became pregnant in September 1885; Van Gogh was accused of forcing himself upon her, and the village priest forbade parishioners to model for him. Peasant Woman Digging, or Woman with a Spade, Seen from Behind, 1885., Toronto He moved to Antwerp that November, and rented a room above a paint dealer's shop in the rue des Images ( Lange Beeldekensstraat). He lived in poverty and ate poorly, preferring to spend the money Theo sent on painting materials and models. Bread, coffee and became his staple diet. In February 1886 he wrote to Theo that he could only remember eating six hot meals since the previous May. His teeth became loose and painful. In Antwerp he applied himself to the study of and spent time in museums—particularly studying the work of – and broadened his palette to include, and.

Van Gogh bought Japanese woodcuts in the docklands, later incorporating elements of their style into the background of some of his paintings. He was drinking heavily again, and was hospitalised between February and March 1886, when he was possibly also treated for. After his recovery, and despite his antipathy towards academic teaching, he took the higher-level admission exams at the in Antwerp, and in January 1886 matriculated in painting and drawing. He became ill and run down by overwork, poor diet and excessive smoking.

He started to attend drawing classes after plaster models at the Antwerp Academy on 18 January 1886. He quickly got into trouble with, the director of the Academy and teacher of a painting class, because of his unconventional painting style. Van Gogh had also clashed with the instructor of the drawing class. Van Gogh finally started to attend the drawing classes after antique plaster models given.

Soon Siberdt and van Gogh came into conflict when the latter did not comply with Siberdt's requirement that drawings express the contour and concentrate on the line. When van Gogh was required to draw the during a drawing class, he produced the limbless, naked torso of a Flemish peasant woman. Siberdt regarded this as defiance against his artistic guidance and made corrections to van Gogh's drawing with his crayon so vigorously that he tore the paper. Van Gogh then flew into a violent rage and shouted at Siberdt: 'You clearly do not know what a young woman is like, God damn it! A woman must have hips, buttocks, a pelvis in which she can carry a baby!'

According to some accounts this was the last time van Gogh attended classes at the Academy and he left later for Paris. On 31 March 1886, which was about a month after the confrontation with Siberdt, the teachers of the Academy decided that 17 students, including van Gogh, had to repeat a year. The story that van Gogh was expelled from the Academy by Siberdt is therefore unfounded. Portrait of Vincent van Gogh, 1887, pastel drawing, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Van Gogh moved to Paris in March 1886 where he shared Theo's rue Laval apartment in, and studied at 's studio. In June the brothers took a larger flat at 54. In Paris, Vincent painted,, views of,, and along the. In 1885 in Antwerp he had become interested in Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and had used them to decorate the walls of his studio; while in Paris he collected hundreds of them.

He tried his hand at, tracing a figure from a reproduction on the cover of the magazine Paris Illustre, (1887), after, which he then graphically enlarged in a painting. After seeing the portrait of at the Galerie Delareybarette, Van Gogh adopted a brighter palette and a bolder attack, particularly in paintings such as his (1888). Two years later, Vincent and Theo paid for the publication of a book on Monticelli paintings, and Vincent bought some of Monticelli's works to add to his collection. Van Gogh learned about 's from Theo. He worked at the studio in April and May 1886, where he frequented the circle of the Australian artist, and met fellow students, and – who painted a portrait of him in pastel. They met at 's paint shop, (which was, at that time, the only place where 's paintings were displayed). In 1886, two large exhibitions were staged there, showing and for the first time, and bringing attention to and Paul Signac.

Theo kept a stock of Impressionist paintings in his gallery on boulevard Montmartre, but Van Gogh was slow to acknowledge the new developments in art. Conflicts arose between the brothers. At the end of 1886 Theo found living with Vincent to be 'almost unbearable'. By early 1887, they were again at peace, and Vincent had moved to, a northwestern suburb of Paris, where he got to know Signac. He adopted elements of Pointillism, a technique in which a multitude of small coloured dots are applied to the canvas so that when seen from a distance they create an optical blend of hues.

The style stresses the ability of – including blue and orange – to form vibrant contrasts. : Portrait of Vincent van Gogh, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam When Gauguin agreed to visit Arles in 1888, Van Gogh hoped for friendship, and the realisation of his idea of an artists' collective. While waiting, in August he painted. When Boch visited again, Van Gogh painted a portrait of him, as well as the study The Poet Against a Starry Sky. In preparation for Gauguin's visit, Van Gogh bought two beds on advice from the station's postal supervisor, whose portrait he painted.

On 17 September he spent his first night in the still sparsely furnished Yellow House. When Gauguin consented to work and live in Arles with him, Van Gogh started to work on the, probably the most ambitious effort he ever undertook. He completed two chair paintings: Van Gogh's Chair and Gauguin's Chair. After much pleading from Van Gogh, Gauguin arrived in Arles on 23 October, and in November the two painted together. Gauguin depicted Van Gogh in his; Van Gogh painted pictures from memory, following Gauguin's suggestion. Among these 'imaginative' paintings is. Their first joint outdoor venture was at the, when they produced the pendants.

The single painting Gauguin completed during his visit was. Van Gogh and Gauguin visited in December 1888, where they saw works by and in the.

Their relationship began to deteriorate; Van Gogh admired Gauguin and wanted to be treated as his equal, but Gauguin was arrogant and domineering, which frustrated Van Gogh. They often quarrelled; Van Gogh increasingly feared that Gauguin was going to desert him, and the situation, which Van Gogh described as one of 'excessive tension', rapidly headed towards crisis point. 1888., Paris Van Gogh drew, and painted with while at school, but only a few examples survive and the authorship of some has been challenged. When he took up art as an adult, he began at an elementary level.

In early 1882, his uncle, Cornelis Marinus, owner of a well-known gallery of contemporary art in Amsterdam, asked for drawings of The Hague. Van Gogh's work did not live up to expectations. Marinus offered a second commission, specifying the subject matter in detail, but was again disappointed with the result. Van Gogh persevered; he experimented with lighting in his studio using variable shutters, and with different drawing materials.

For more than a year he worked on single figures – highly elaborate studies in black and white, which at the time gained him only criticism. Later, they were recognised as early masterpieces. In August 1882 Theo gave Vincent money to buy materials for working. Vincent wrote that he could now 'go on painting with new vigour'.

From early 1883 he worked on multi-figure compositions. He had some of them photographed, but when his brother remarked that they lacked liveliness and freshness, he destroyed them and turned to oil painting.

Van Gogh turned to well-known artists like and, and received technical advice from them, as well as from painters like and, both of the Hague School's second generation. When he moved to Nuenen after the period in Drenthe he began several large paintings but destroyed most of them. The Potato Eaters and its companion pieces are the only ones to have survived. Following a visit to the, Van Gogh wrote of his admiration for the quick, economical brushwork of the, especially and. He was aware that many of his faults were due to lack of experience and technical expertise, so in November 1885 he travelled to Antwerp and later Paris to learn and develop his skills. 1889., New York Theo criticised The Potato Eaters for its dark palette, which he thought unsuitable for a modern style.

During Van Gogh's stay in Paris between 1886 and 1887, he tried to master a new, lighter palette. His (1887) shows his success with the brighter palette, and is evidence of an evolving personal style.

's treatise on colour interested him greatly, and led him to work with complementary colours. Van Gogh came to believe that the effect of colour went beyond the descriptive; he said that 'colour expresses something in itself'. According to Hughes, Van Gogh perceived colour as having a 'psychological and moral weight', as exemplified in the garish reds and greens of, a work he wanted to 'express the terrible passions of humanity'. Yellow meant the most to him, because it symbolised emotional truth. He used yellow as a symbol for sunlight, life, and God. Van Gogh strove to be a painter of rural life and nature, and during his first summer in Arles he used his new palette to paint landscapes and traditional rural life. His belief that a power existed behind the natural led him to try to capture a sense of that power, or the essence of nature in his art, sometimes through the use of symbols.

His renditions of the sower, at first copied from, reflect Van Gogh's religious beliefs: the sower as Christ sowing life beneath the hot sun. These were themes and motifs he returned to often to rework and develop. His paintings of flowers are filled with symbolism, but rather than use traditional Christian he made up his own, where life is lived under the sun and work is an allegory of life. In Arles, having gained confidence after painting spring blossoms and learning to capture bright sunlight, he was ready to paint The Sower. 1888., St Petersburg Van Gogh stayed within what he called the 'guise of reality', and was critical of overly stylised works. He wrote afterwards that the abstraction of Starry Night had gone too far and that reality had 'receded too far in the background'. Hughes describes it as a moment of extreme visionary ecstasy: the stars are in a great whirl, reminiscent of 's, the movement in the heaven above is reflected by the movement of the cypress on the earth below, and the painter's vision is 'translated into a thick, emphatic plasma of paint'.

Between 1885 and his death in 1890, Van Gogh appears to have been building an oeuvre, a collection that reflected his personal vision, and could be commercially successful. He was influenced by Blanc's definition of style, that a true painting required optimal use of colour, perspective and brushstrokes. Van Gogh applied the word 'purposeful' to paintings he thought he had mastered, as opposed to those he thought of as studies. He painted many series of studies; most of which were still lifes, many executed as colour experiments or as gifts to friends. The work in Arles contributed considerably to his oeuvre: those he thought the most important from that time were The Sower, Night Cafe, and Starry Night.

With their broad brushstrokes, inventive perspectives, colours, contours and designs, these paintings represent the style he sought. Major series.

November 1888. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Van Gogh's stylistic developments are usually linked to the periods he spent living in different places across Europe.

He was inclined to immerse himself in local cultures and lighting conditions, although he maintained a highly individual visual outlook throughout. His evolution as an artist was slow, and he was aware of his painterly limitations. He moved home often, perhaps to expose himself to new visual stimuli, and through exposure develop his technical skill. Art historian Melissa McQuillan believes the moves also reflect later stylistic changes, and that Van Gogh used the moves to avoid conflict, and as a coping mechanism for when the idealistic artist was faced with the realities of his then current situation. See also:,, and The portraits gave Van Gogh his best opportunity to earn. He believed they were 'the only thing in painting that moves me deeply and that gives me a sense of the infinite.' He wrote to his sister that he wished to paint portraits that would endure, and that he would use colour to capture their emotions and character rather than aiming for photographic realism.

Those closest to Van Gogh are mostly absent from his portraits; he rarely painted Theo, Van Rappard or Bernard. The portraits of his mother were from photographs. In December 1888 he painted La Berceuse – a figure that he thought as good as his sunflowers. It has a limited palette, varied brushstrokes and simple contours.

It appears to be a culmination of portraits of the Roulin family completed in Arles between November and December. The portraits show a shift in style from the fluid, restrained brushstrokes and even surface of Portrait of the Postman to the frenetic style, rough surface, broad brushstrokes and use of a palette knife in Madame Roulin with Baby. Still Life: Vase with Fourteen Sunflowers, August 1888., London Van Gogh painted several landscapes with flowers, including roses,,, and. Some reflect his interests in the language of colour, and also in Japanese. There are two series of dying sunflowers. The first was painted in Paris in 1887 and shows flowers lying on the ground.

The second set was completed a year later in Arles, and is of bouquets in a vase positioned in early morning light. Both are built from, which, according to the London National Gallery, evoke the 'texture of the seed-heads'. In these series, Van Gogh was not preoccupied by his usual interest in filling his paintings with subjectivity and emotion; rather the two series are intended to display his technical skill and working methods to Gauguin, who was about to visit. The 1888 paintings were created during a rare period of optimism for the artist. Vincent wrote to Theo in August 1888, 'I'm painting with the gusto of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won't surprise you when it's a question of painting large sunflowers.

If I carry out this plan there'll be a dozen or so panels. The whole thing will therefore be a symphony in blue and yellow. I work on it all these mornings, from sunrise. Because the flowers wilt quickly and it's a matter of doing the whole thing in one go.' The sunflowers were painted to decorate the walls in anticipation of Gauguin's visit, and Van Gogh placed individual works around the in Arles. Gauguin was deeply impressed and later acquired two of the Paris versions. After Gauguin's departure, Van Gogh imagined the two major versions of the sunflowers as wings of the Berceuse Triptych, and included them in his.

Today the major pieces of the series are among his best known, celebrated for the sickly connotations of the colour yellow and its tie-in with the Yellow House, the expressionism of the brush strokes, and their contrast against often dark backgrounds. The has the world's largest collection of Van Gogh artworks. Van Gogh's nephew and namesake, Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890–1978), inherited the estate after his mother's death in 1925.

During the early 1950s he arranged for the publication of a complete edition of the letters presented in four volumes and several languages. He then began negotiations with the Dutch government to subsidise a foundation to purchase and house the entire collection. Theo's son participated in planning the project in the hope that the works would be exhibited under the best possible conditions. The project began in 1963; architect was commissioned to design it, and after his death in 1964 took charge. Work progressed throughout the 1960s, with 1972 as the target for its grand opening. The opened in the in Amsterdam in 1973. It became the second most popular museum in the Netherlands, after the, regularly receiving more than 1.5 million visitors a year.

In 2015 it had a record 1.9 million; 85 percent of the visitors come from other countries. References Footnotes. • The pronunciation of 'Van Gogh' varies in both English and Dutch. Especially in British English it is or sometimes. American dictionaries list, with a silent gh, as the most common pronunciation. In the dialect of Holland, it is ( ), with a voiceless V. He grew up in Brabant, and used in his writing; if he pronounced his name with a Brabant accent it would be, with a voiced V and G and gh.

In France, where much of his work was produced, it is. • It has been suggested that being given the same name as his dead elder brother might have had a deep psychological impact on the young artist, and that elements of his art, such as the portrayal of pairs of male figures, can be traced back to this. • Hulsker suggests that Van Gogh returned to the Borinage and then back to Etten in this period. • See Jan Hulsker's speech The Borinage Episode and the Misrepresentation of Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh Symposium, 10–11 May 1990. • 'At Christmas I had a rather violent argument with Pa, and feelings ran so high that Pa said it would be better if I left home.

Well, it was said so decidedly that I actually left the same day.' In January 1882, Mauve introduced him to and lent him money to set up a studio. • The only evidence for this is from interviews with the grandson of the doctor.

For an overall review see Naifeh and Smith. • Boch's sister (1848–1936), also an artist, purchased in 1890. •, Vincent to Theo van Gogh. Arles, Sunday, 11 or Monday, 12 November 1888. • Theo and his wife, Gachet and his son, and Signac, who all saw Van Gogh after the bandages were removed, maintained that only the had been removed. According to Doiteau and Leroy, the diagonal cut removed the lobe and probably a little more. The policeman and Rey both claimed Van Gogh severed the entire; Rey repeated his account in 1930, writing a note for novelist and including a sketch of the line of the incision.

• The version intended for Ginoux is lost. It was an attempt to deliver this painting to her in Arles that precipitated his February relapse. • Artists working in black and white, e.g. For illustrated papers like or were among Van Gogh's favourites.

•, To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, on or about Tuesday, 13 October 1885.

What particularly struck me when I saw the old Dutch paintings again is that they were usually painted quickly. That these great masters like Hals, Rembrandt, – so many others – as far as possible just put it straight down – and didn't come back to it so very much. And – this, too, please – that if it worked, they left it alone.

Above all I admired hands by Rembrandt and Hals – hands that lived, but were not finished in the sense that people want to enforce nowadays. In the winter I'm going to explore various things regarding manner that I noticed in the old paintings. I saw a great deal that I needed. But this above all things – what they call – dashing off – you see that's what the old Dutch painters did famously. That – dashing off – with a few brushstrokes, they won't hear of it now – but how true the results are. • is one of the few major painters to exceed this volume of self-portraits, producing over 50, but he did so over a forty-year period. • Her husband had been the sole support of the family, and Johanna was left with only an apartment in Paris, a few items of furniture, and her brother-in-law's paintings, which at the time were 'looked upon as having no value at all'.

• In de la Faille's 1928 catalogue each of Van Gogh's works was assigned a number. These numbers preceded by the letter 'F' are frequently used when referring to a particular painting or drawing. Not all the works listed in the original catalogue are now believed to be authentic works of Van Gogh.