His letters expose, to me, a man just as much trapped within the limits of his social background as any of us. This reading still ends in tragedy, for sure, but sees a man driven by the same desires and impulses as anyone else.

My own reading of the letters, as a sociologist, suggests a much more down-to-earth view of van Gogh’s life and his decisions than the popular narratives might have us believe. These articles mark the 50th anniversary of Amsterdam’s pioneering gallery and explore evolving cultural perceptions of one of the world’s most famous artists. This article is part of our Van Gogh Museum at 50 series. This includes Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s mammoth biography published over ten years ago, which staked many large claims about van Gogh’s state of mind on relatively thin evidence. Psychologists and biographers have long pored over these letters to come up with various explanations for van Gogh’s life, some of them confirming or fuelling the popular images. Today they’re available online for free via the Van Gogh Museum’s website. He wrote hundreds during his lifetime and they were preserved and published by his family after his death. The most important element of this material is undoubtedly van Gogh’s letters. Historians and sociologists of art are fortunate when considering these questions compared to, say, those interested in the makings of Leonardo da Vinci or Rembrandt, because of the sheer volume of biographical material available on van Gogh.

We know he came to art in his late 20s, after a stint in the art trade and training for the clergy, but were these ventures undermined by his artistic temperament or mere stepping stones to the inevitable goal of expressive painting?

The letters van gogh