Letters from the 辛勝する／優位: 先頭 Gogh's poignant story 明らかにする／漏らすd through his 令状ing

By Victoria Moore for MailOnline
Updated: 11:10 BST, 23 January 2010

Self-portrait: 先頭 Gogh

Mind-blowing hallucinations. Epileptic fits. Suicidal despair. 先頭 Gogh's 猛烈な／残忍な, 渦巻くing brushstrokes are often said to be the work of a madman. But a major new 展示, based on his letters, 明らかにする／漏らすs a far more poignant story.

Underneath a cornflower blue sky, fields of wheat 炎 in eyeball-（海，煙などが）飲み込むing shades of yellow and primrose. に向かって the horizon, a cluster of roofs and spires disappears into rolling lilac hills and in the foreground? -? まっただ中に a powerful 集まり of 独特の, 渦巻くing 小衝突-一打／打撃s? -? a 孤独な 人物／姿／数字 作品 刻々と with his scythe.

The colours are so 激しい, the 見通し so rich, and yet the scene is so 平和的な it seems to have been painted by someone with a tremendous, 殺到するing capacity for life.

But as anyone who goes to see the 絵 in the 王室の 学院's new 先頭 Gogh 展示, which opens today, will realise, there is a much darker 味方する to it.

Wheat Fields With Reaper was one of Vincent 先頭 Gogh's very last 作品 of art, 完全にするd just two months after he left the sanctity of a mental 亡命 in the south of フラン and just a few days before he would take his own life.

For anyone 法外なd, as the artist was, in biblical imagery, the reaper has a haunting significance. A year earlier, while working on a 類似の 収穫 picture, 先頭 Gogh had written to his brother, Theo: 'I then saw in this reaper a vague 人物／姿／数字 struggling like a devil in the 十分な heat of the day to reach the end of his toil. I then saw the image of death in it, in this sense that humanity would be the wheat 存在 得るd.'

Emotional 衝撃: 先頭 Gogh's bold masterpiece The Sower

Those words 証明するd a grim foreshadowing. 先頭 Gogh painted Wheat Fields With Reaper in July 1890, somewhere 近づく Auvers, on the 郊外s of Paris.

On the 27th of that month, in a field of gently undulating wheat? -? perhaps even in the same one he had so recently painted? -? he committed 自殺 by 狙撃 himself in the chest, dying two days later in a tiny attic room with Theo at his 味方する.

The interplay between the mental anguish of the artist and his creative genius has long fascinated those who love his work, and the 王室の 学院's The Real 先頭 Gogh: The Artist And His Letters 申し込む／申し出s a fascinating new insight into this 複雑にするd man.

This is a formidable 請け負うing that is sure to draw 抱擁する （人が）群がるs. Five years in the making, and the first major 先頭 Gogh 展示 in London for more than 40 years, it 含むs around 65 絵s and 30 製図／抽選s from galleries and 私的な collections 世界的な. But what's really exciting 利益／興味 are the 35 letters? -? all written by 先頭

Poignant: 先頭 Gogh's sketch of his 絵, The Sower, in a letter to his brother Theo

Gogh, most of them to Theo? -? 展示（する）d と一緒に the 絵s, which 供給する an insight into the painter's mind and help to redefine him.

'The general 見解（をとる） of 先頭 Gogh is 堅固に coloured by the events of his life,' says curator Ann Dumas. 'Such as the enormous 不平等 between his 欠如（する） of success during his lifetime and the 抱擁する prices people now 支払う／賃金 for his work. The fact that he 削減（する） off his ear. His mental illness. His 自殺.

'All this has fed into the notion of him as a tormented genius who painted in a frenzy and scarcely sold a picture in his life.

'In the letters, though, we discover a very different man and a very different artist? -? someone who was 高度に educated, self-taught but very 井戸／弁護士席 read, and very cultivated.

'A man who 絶えず 始める，決める himself new challenges? -? to master 製図／抽選, then watercolour, then 視野? -? and who, from the moment in 1880 he decided to be an artist, was committed, hard working and 絶対 unrelenting in his 追跡 of his goals.'

Oddly, many of the most famous of 先頭 Gogh's 作品 were produced during his year-long stay at the psychiatric hospital at Saint Remy. He went there in May 1889, soon after 'the ear 出来事/事件' when, に引き続いて a 激怒（する）ing argument with fellow artist Paul Gauguin and caught up in the first of his epileptic-like attacks, 先頭 Gogh used a かみそり to slice off his left ear 高く弓形に打ち返す, which he then 現在のd to a 売春婦.

'As far as I know, the doctor here is inclined to consider what I've had as an attack of epileptic nature,' 先頭 Gogh wrote in one of the first letters from the clinic to Theo.

He had also been 苦しむing from hallucinations. During these crises, he said, he heard 'sounds and strange 発言する／表明するs . . . [that] cannot but 脅す you beyond 手段. . .

'There's one person here who has been shouting and always talking, like me, for a fortnight. He thinks he hears 発言する／表明するs and words in the echo of the 回廊（地帯）s, probably because the auditory 神経 is sick and too 極度の慎重さを要する, and with me it was both the sight and the 審理，公聴会 at the same time.'

Enthralling: A gallery 労働者 with 先頭 Gogh's 議長，司会を務める, 1888-1889, at the preview of The Real 先頭 Gogh: The Artist and His Letters at the 王室の 学院 London

Vivid: A 訪問者 admires 先頭 Gogh's The Postman Joseph Roulin (L), and Lullaby: Augustine Roulin 激しく揺するing a Cradle

Many scholars today believe that, 同様に as epilepsy, 先頭 Gogh was also struggling with bipolar syndrome. If true, it might account for the 明らかに 高くする，増すd nature of his senses that enabled him to transform an everyday scene into a vibrant canvas.

先頭 Gogh 設立する the proximity of 'other mad people' strangely 安心させるing.

Sleeping in a room with 妨げる／法廷，弁護士業s at the window? -? through which he relished watching the sun rise each morning? -? he would take long baths twice a week and ate food he compared with the sort you would find 'in a cockroach-ridden restaurant in Paris, or a 搭乗 school'.

Another sketch for brother Theo

During the day, he 始める，決める up his easel in the grounds of the 亡命 and painted. You would never guess, looking at some of the 作品 from this period, the anguish that lay not far behind them? -? bowlfuls of white roses, 始める，決める against an eau-de-nil background; the famous Irises picture, which he painted of flowers growing in the hospital garden; glorious depictions of olive groves and nearby mountains made when the doctor 裁判官d him 井戸／弁護士席 enough to make small excursions.

They are beautiful and mesmeric, with colours that seem to pierce your 注目する，もくろむs.

Those 猛烈な／残忍な, 渦巻くing brushstrokes are often 解釈する／通訳するd as the 生産（高） of a 乱すd mind. But perhaps they were 現実に a 一時的休止，執行延期 from it.

'During the periods when he was very depressed, or 苦しむing an attack, 先頭 Gogh didn't work,' points out Ann Dumas. 'He 令状s about feeling a little
bit better, 井戸／弁護士席 enough to start 製図／抽選 again.'

When he felt very bad, 先頭 Gogh's precious colours became, やめる literally, a 毒（薬）. On one occasion during his stint at St Remy, he crammed pigments into his mouth and washed them 負かす／撃墜する with turpentine in an 試みる／企てる to kill himself. His doctor's 公式文書，認めるs tell us he also 選ぶd up filthy things from the ground and tried to eat them.

先頭 Gogh's family had always worried about their gifted but troubled eldest son. Born in 1853 in the southern Netherlands, Vincent 先頭 Gogh was the first of six children born to a Protestant 牧師, the Reverend Theodorus 先頭 Gogh, and his wife, Anna Cornelia.

Vincent took his first 職業 at the age of 16, working as an 見習い工 for an international art 売買業者 based in the Hague. There, he began collecting engravings and prints, but the work did not 控訴 him and in 1876 he was asked to leave.

He spent the next few years moving with restless 不満 from one 職業 to another, working for a short period as a teacher in England; doing a stint in a bookshop organised for him by his anxious parents; beginning then abandoning theological 熟考する／考慮するs; and finally becoming an evangelical preacher in a 採掘 community in Belgium.?

Talented: A woman 見解（をとる）s 先頭 Gogh's 'W heat Fields with Reaper'

Powerful: Guests sit in 前線 of 先頭 Gogh's Wheat Field with White Cloud (landscape from Saint Remy) during the 開始する，打ち上げる of the 展示

By 1880, when he was 27, 先頭 Gogh felt 完全に discouraged, 孤立するd and despairing. 'My torment is 非，不，無 other than this,' he wrote to Theo, 'what could I be good for, couldn't I serve and be useful in some way?'

With the support? -? both 財政上の and emotional? -? of Theo, who by now had a good position at Goupil, the art 売買業者 where 先頭 Gogh had also worked, he 充てるd himself to becoming an artist. He moved to Brussels where he could visit galleries and come into 接触する with other artists, and 始める，決める to work in earnest.

His letters show how much 成果／努力 he 注ぐd into these 熟考する／考慮するs. 先頭 Gogh was not just a prolific 特派員, he was also a fluent one? -? expressive and open, the words 宙返り／暴落するing out with 明らかな 緩和する, 絵 言葉の pictures that are every bit as vivid as his 絵s. His need to communicate is （疑いを）晴らす.

He 会談 絶えず of his 計画（する）s for his work, 論証するing that far from working in the 支配する of a sudden frenzy, he thought carefully about what he would paint. Almost always, his descriptions of a scene 含む a commentary on the colours he saw.

No 詳細（に述べる） is too small to be 含むd in his letters? -? he 令状s excitedly about a new type of pencil he has discovered and the 明言する／公表する of his stomach. He adjusts his style to his 特派員, and it's noticeable that he goes to 広大な／多数の／重要な lengths to 保護する the feelings of his family? -? even when 令状ing from St Remy? -? 絶えず 安心させるing them he is all 権利 and that they need not worry. 'I 保証する you that I'm very 井戸／弁護士席 here.'?

Minutiae: No 詳細（に述べる） was too small to be 含むd in his letters

His 関係s with women were rather more ill-裁判官d. One girlfriend, his model Sien Hoornik, a former 売春婦, 原因（となる）d a family hoo-ha when 先頭 Gogh 招待するd her and her daughter to stay in his house.

最終的に, it was not women but his brother, Theo, who 供給するd the most constant and important emotional nourishment for 先頭 Gogh.?

'Their 早期に lives ran 平行の,' says Dumas. 'Theo was just four years his junior and they were very の近くに as children; they used to go for long rambles together, both began careers in the art 貿易（する）, and both were 熱烈な about art.'

It seems 驚くべき／特命の／臨時の that an artist who produced more than 800 絵s and 1,200 製図／抽選s should have had so short a career. But 先頭 Gogh （機の）カム late to 絵, and his career was only a １０年間 long? -? by the time he left the 亡命, in May 1890, it was 近づくing its の近くに.

He had 設立する 巨大な inspiration in the 猛烈な／残忍な sunlight of the south, first at Arles, then at St Remy, but was impatient for change. 'The surroundings here are starting to 重さを計る on me more than I could 表明する? -? I need 空気／公表する, I feel 損失d by 退屈 and grief,' he wrote.

And so he moved north, closer to his family, to Auvers-sur-Oise where he 宿泊するd with Dr Paul Gachet, a homeopathic doctor and amateur painter. It was here that 先頭 Gogh would take his own life.

His last letter, written to Theo, is remarkably 上昇傾向, talking about his hopes for his work and ending: 'More soon. Look after yourself and good luck in 商売／仕事 etc.'

But there is an earlier 草案, which was never sent. This was 設立する in 先頭 Gogh's pocket on the day he 発射 himself. It is now on 陳列する，発揮する at the 王室の 学院, yellowed and 示すd with dark blotches that some have supposed may be 血 from his 弾丸 負傷させる.

This 見解／翻訳／版 is unfinished and is far いっそう少なく 肯定的な. It ends with a foreboding line that does not appear in the letter he sent.

'I 危険 my life for my own work and my 推論する／理由 has half-創立者d in it? -? very 井戸／弁護士席? -? but you're not one of the 売買業者s in men; as far as I know and can 裁判官, I think you really 行為／法令／行動する with humanity, but what can you do. . .'

Theo barely 生き延びるd him. His health 悪化するing from syphilis, he 苦しむd a mental and physical 崩壊（する） in October? -? and in January 1891 Theo, too, died.

• The Real 先頭 Gogh: The Artist And His Letters. From today until April 18, 2010, 王室の 学院 of Arts, London.

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