Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum is featuring a new exhibit which pairs a selection of the artist’s letters to his brother, paired with pictures discussed and in some cases sketched in the letters. The exhibit will run for three months.
The museum owns a large number of the 820 known letters Vincent wrote to his brother Theo, a Paris art dealer who provided financial support for Vincent’s work. The letters are rarely shown because they are fragile and sensitive to sunlight.
In the letters, Van Gogh described his work, his expenses, his mental state and family, often accompanied by sketches of paintings he was working on; the exhibit pairs the letters with the pictures, including some borrowed for the exhibition. Along with the exhibition, the museum has created podcasts, an online anthology and a new print edition of 76 of his letters.
Ironically, the exhibition is presented in English and Dutch, but a third of the letters, and all of the later ones, were written in French, the language he used most often after moving to France.
