Van Gogh: The Life by Stephen Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

Vincent Van Gogh is an extraordinary artist about whom everything seems to be known. His brilliant work and tragic life, combined with a paper trail of letters to his art-dealer brother, Theo, have made him a recurring subject for art historians, biographers, filmmakers, and mental health professionals since his death at a young age from a gunshot wound in 1890. So why a new version of Van Gogh's life? Two years ago, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam — which maintains a vast archive as well as an art collection — published a six-volume edition of about 900 letters, freshly translated, annotated, illustrated by 4,300 images and available online. Drawing heavily on the letters and the museum's resources, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith have written the most extensive biography of Van Gogh. A tour de force beginning with his parents' family tree and ending with speculation about who fired the deadly shot, it's an enormous achievement. So big, in fact, that the notes — about 5,000 typewritten pages — were published separately online--so do not be comforted that there are a couple of hundred pages of notes at the end of this weighty tome. They were published elsewhere. Desperate for the comfort of family and community, the rewards of an honorable career and, finally, a way of making art that would fulfill his life quest, he was so needy, demanding and unstable that he repeatedly crashed and burned. The authors' thorough probing of Van Gogh's relationships with family members, artists, business colleagues, models and Sien Hoornick, a prostitute who lived with him in the Hague, can be painful--and lengthy--to read. His journey from youthful sketches to electrically charged canvases is equally fraught with impossible dreams and self-doubt--read all about it in this well written and thorough biography.