A Life of Vincent van Gogh
Almond Blossom
The working life of Vincent van Gogh · 1853–1890
In the churchyard at Groot-Zundert there is a headstone with his name on it and a date a year before he was born. He was a picture dealer, then a preacher, and at twenty-seven he sat down at a table to learn to draw; ten years after that, his brother’s widow had two hundred of his paintings and was advised to clear them off.
This is that life told as the record tells it: the picture trade, the pulpit, the coal country, the years of teaching his own hand, Paris, the yellow house at Arles, the walled field at Saint-Rémy and seventy days at Auvers. Where nobody wrote something down, the book says so rather than guess. Written to be read straight through, or a chapter at a time.
