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Paperback – 145 x 115 mm – 192 pages

Eighty-seven colour illustrations

ISBN 9781843681557

Vincent van Gogh’s short, passionate life was driven by an almost unimaginable creative energy that eventually overwhelmed him. The outlines of his story – the early strivings in Holland and Paris, the revelatory impact of the move to Provence, the attacks of madness that led ineluctably to his suicide – are almost as familiar as the paintings. Yet it is more than possible that neither the paintings nor Van Gogh’s story would have survived at all if it had not been for his remarkable sister in law, Jo van Gogh-Bonger.

After Vincent’s death and that of her husband, his brother Theo, Jo devoted her life to preserving and exhibiting the paintings, and editing the letters. It is in her short and unaccountably neglected biography that we can come closest to Vincent the man.

Jo van Gogh-Bonger’s Memoir is introduced here by Martin Gayford, author of The Yellow House, and is illustrated with 87 pages of reproductions of Van Gogh’s greatest paintings and drawings.

Jo van Gogh-Bonger (1862-1925) teacher, translator and pioneer socialist, married Van Gogh’s brother Theo in 1889. After the death of both brothers the following year she devoted herself to promoting Vincent’s art and writings, organizing major exhibitions, and editing the letters. Her son Vincent-Willem continued the work at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.