Extremes of joy and suffering

The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters
Royal Academy, until 18 April
Sponsored by BNY Mellon

From time to time we need to remind ourselves of the astonishing fact that Vincent van Gogh (1853–90) produced more than 800 paintings and 1,200 drawings in a mere ten-year career. He also wrote letters, of a depth and originality that qualify them as literature in their own right. So much to offer the world, such a sense of discovery and originality, yet he took his own life while still in his thirties. For decades, Van Gogh has been the artistic god of the self-taught and the misunderstood, making a particular appeal to the adolescent mind. I remember devouring my first book on him in an unusually quiet school dormitory during an influenza epidemic. Very soon I had graduated to the Fontana paperback of his letters and was quoting with approval such observations as: ‘I am a passionate creature, destined to do a number of more or less stupid things which later on I will have more or less to regret.’