The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters at Royal Academy of Arts on artrepublic.com

The focus of this exhibition is the artist’s remarkable correspondence. Over 35 original letters, rarely exhibited to the public due to their fragility, are on display, together with around 65 paintings and 30 drawings that express the principal themes to be found within the correspondence. 

Born in Zundert in the southern Netherlands in 1853, Van Gogh was the second of six children of a Protestant pastor. In his early adult life, he worked for a firm of art-dealers in The Hague and London, before becoming a missionary worker. His career as an artist began only in 1880, when he was 27. During his ten-year artistic career, which his suicide cut tragically short in 1890, Van Gogh’s output was prodigious: largely self-taught, he produced over 800 paintings and 1,200 drawings.

Van Gogh was a compulsive and eloquent correspondent. The majority of his letters were written to his brother Theo, an art-dealer who supported Vincent throughout his difficult artistic career. Vincent also wrote to other family members, including his sister Wilhelmina. Other artists, notably Anton van Rappard, Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, were also, at different phases of Vincent’s life, recipients of his letters. The originality of his ideas about art, nature and literature, combined with his deep understanding of these subjects, make Van Gogh’s letters much more than a personal expression of feelings: they attain the status of great literature. In reading the letters one encounters not only a sensitive, determined and exceptionally hardworking man, but also someone possessed of a powerful intellect; this exhibition will challenge the view that Van Gogh was an erratic genius by allowing the viewer a rare insight into his artistic process through the intimate medium of his correspondence. Together the letters create a ‘self-portrait’, and reveal the ways in which Van Gogh defined himself as an artist and as a human being.

Taking the letters as its starting point, The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters will view the paintings and drawings from the perspective of the correspondence. The letter sketches that Van Gogh frequently used to show a work in progress or a completed work are a fascinating part of the correspondence, and many will be shown alongside the paintings or drawings on which they are based.

Highlights of the exhibition will include Self-portrait as an Artist (1888) and The Yellow House (1888) from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Still-life: Drawing Board with Onions (1889) from the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; Vincent’s Chair with His Pipe (1888) from the National Gallery, London; and Entrance to the Public Park in Arles (1888) from the Phillips Collection, Washington DC. 

OPENING HOURS: Daily 10.00 – 18.00

Image Credits:

Vincent van Gogh, Self-portrait as an Artist, January 1888 ,Oil on canvas, 65.2 x 50.2 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Vincent van Gogh , Letter 252 from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh: Pollard Willow, c. 1 Aug 1882 , Letter , 13.8 x 13.4 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Vincent van Gogh, Still-life around a Plate of Onions, early January 1889, Oil on canvas, 49.6 x 64.4 cm, Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands