The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (Penguin Classics)

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However, sometimes I wonder what might has been, because by the end of his life, his skill as an artist was starting to become known among the critics.

But it is absolutely essential to be able to draw the proportions correctly and to position the objects fairly confidently before you start.He was deeply religious as a younger man and aspired to be a pastor and from 1879 worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium where he sketched people from the local community. He says in an early letter, when he is discovering his aptitude to draw and paint: "I feel a power in me which I must develop, a fire that I may not quench, but must keep ablaze, though I do not know to what result it will lead me, and shouldn't wonder if it were a gloomy one. Like with Field with Irises near Arles: he wrote the colours ‘blue’, ‘grey-green’, ‘yellow’ and ‘purple’ on the sketch. He persists in trying to woo his cousin even in the face of his whole family (including Kee herself) discouraging him. He had a bad relationship with his parents and often quarrelled with his brother, Theo, who was his closest confidant.

People don't just admire Van Gogh, they love him, and this fine selection of letters make clear the qualities that make up this great painter. I suspected that more than this bright colours, always welcome in dingy lodgings, it was the legend grown out of the morbid aspect of his supposed suicide that explained the ubiquity of his art. He decided to go south to Arles where he hoped his friends would join him and help found a school of art. One of the best ways to read this book is to follow his paintings as he talks about them (as I was doing with the updates).So instead of giving in to despair I chose active melancholy, in so far as I was capable of activity, in other words I chose the kind of melancholy that hopes, that strives and that seeks, in preference to the melancholy that despairs numbly and in distress. In my twenties, I read about the different periods of art and famous artists and later, started visiting art galleries. After years of anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness he died aged 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The letters reveal a very different personality fighting all his life against mental illness to perform some of the greatest art the world has seen.

An extremely prolific painter with works mainly done in a post-impressionist/neo-impressionist style, some of the works more pointillist than others, Van Gogh's works all seem to have a unique touch of expressionism to them - his style was very distinct and uniquely his own. In a fit of epilepsy, van Gogh pursued his friend with an open razor, was stopped by Gauguin, but ended up cutting a portion of his ear lobe off.

His knowledge of art history is equally impressive, as he, for example, compares Shakespeare’s and Rembrandt’s understanding of human nature. Be warned, most of what you'll read is about money, painting supplies, and what he happened to be working on at the moment and when he expected to finish, but he will occasionally talk about his philosophies on art and his personal thoughts and troubles.