Michael Peppiatt
All About Vincent
Van Gogh: The Life
By Steven Naifeh & Gregory White Smith
Profile Books 953pp £30 order from our bookshop
Vincent Van Gogh is the biographer’s dream. The hauntingly expressive paintings and the tragic life from which they grew are illuminated throughout by the hundreds of vivid letters the artist wrote, describing in poignant detail the miseries, spiritual quest and occasional splendour of his footloose existence. Small wonder then that Van Gogh has attracted a vast range of commentary, from (to cite a handful) the inspired rant of Artaud’s Van Gogh le suicidé de la société through Bruce Bernard’s quirkily revealing Vincent by Himself to Martin Gayford’s graphic vignette The Yellow House.
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