Anne Clark Amor
Badly Soiled in the Struggle for Life
The Love of Many Things: A Life of Vincent Van Gogh
By David Sweetman
Hodder & Stoughton 381pp £17.95 order from our bookshop
‘I don’t even dream of exhibiting my work. The idea leaves me absolutely cold…I think a certain popularity the least desirable thing of all,’ wrote Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo in 1882. His work was unsellable in his lifetime, and embarrassed friends to whom he gave his pictures scarcely knew what to do with them. His doctor used one of them to mend a chicken coop, from which he later retrieved it. Now that van Gogh’s pictures command astronomical prices in the international art market, it is inevitable that the centenary of his death should be celebrated by several new biographies.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Sabotage became so prevalent that bankers even created their own terms – ‘asymmetric information’, ‘lack of financial literacy’, ‘the principal-agent dilemma’ – to describe how they might turn a dime from customers’ gullibility or ignorance.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/master-criminals-of-the-universe
'Unlike much that was extracted from India, these paintings were not plunder, and those who created them were properly remunerated and often received due credit.'
@PParkerWriting on 'Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/artists-for-hire
‘"I feel", Lowell told Hardwick ... "as if I were pulled apart and thinning into mist, or rather being torn apart and still preferring that state to making a decision."'
Richard Davenport-Hines on the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/yours-unfaithfully-2