He treated a tree the same as a human being… You can see emotion in Van Gogh’s handwriting: doubt, anger. You can see in both his art and writing that he looked at the world as if everything was alive and aware.

If you read the published letters, he might say, ‘The deep gray sky… But if you look at the handwritten letter, you see he added ‘gray’ and then ‘deep’.

In 1994 he was hired as a researcher and spent the next 15 years on that work, observing: “He worked them very carefully. Hans Luijten heard that the Van Gogh Museum was working on a new edition of the letters in Vincent’s correspondence. Peat diggers in the dunes – May 1883 (347) Three years after her husband’s death, Jo wrote in her diary: “As well as the child, he has left me another task – Vincent’s work – getting it seen and appreciated as much as possible.” Jo was left with more than 400 paintings by Vincent Van Gogh, with which she covered the walls of her home, and his letters. Less than three months later, Theo was dead, the victim of the syphilis he’d contracted in Paris brothels. A few weeks later, Vincent shot himself dead. Unsettled by his brother’s state of mind, Theo sought medical advice, placing him in the care of Dr Paul Gachee in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise to the north of Paris. Jo met Vincent in Paris, when he paid the married couple a visit. He read Walt Whitman, whose work was especially popular in France, and interpreted the poet as equating “the great starry firmament” with “God and eternity.” The written word shaped and helped shape Vincent’s paintings: He tried to put it into words for Theo: “In the blue depth the stars were sparkling, greenish, yellow, white, pink, more brilliant, more emeralds, lapis lazuli, rubies, sapphires.” He became fixated on the idea of painting such a sky. Vincent had been fascinated by the night sky in Arles. One day a canvas arrived that showed a shift in style. Jo recognised that his letters were part of the art. Jo and Theo’s Paris apartment was crammed with Vincent’s work, shipped to Theo in the hope he would find buyers for them.

Russell Shorto has written a fabulous essay on Gogh-Bonger’s key part in raising Vincent Van Gogh from someone who sold only ahandful of paintings in his lifetime to one of the world’s most revered and prized artist. Before we get to them, a word about Jo van Gogh-Bonger (4 October 1862 – 2 September 1925), the painter’s sister-in-law married to the his younger bother, the Paris-based art dealer Theo Van Gogh ( – 25 January 1891), who was instrumental in opening the world’s eyes to his genius. All 902 letters written and received by Vincent van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) are housed at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

The van gogh letters