Van Gogh then began to alternate between fits of madness and lucidity and was sent to the asylum in Saint-Remy for treatment. Mind you, as we come to the end of his life, his output literally goes through the roof (though for a while he was not allowed to paint, namely because he would have psychotic attacks and attempt to swallow his paints), but before his death he was literally painting one painting a day (sometimes two). Not long after that he takes in a woman named Sien, a former prostitute, and his letters are filled with his dreams of family life. Van Gogh is often given an aura of a mad genius, whose hallucinations and fits gave rise to the intense colors and patterning of his paintings and drawings.

In 1906 Bruno Cassirer published a small volume of selected letters of Vincent's to Theo van Gogh, translated into German. The letters reveal a very different personality fighting all his life against mental illness to perform some of the greatest art the world has seen. This selection of letters is a perfect antidote to the alienating effect of ubiquitous reproduced images. His gorgeous use of colors, stunning textures and haunting self-portraits have captured my heart for most of my life, and, after seeing endless quotes from his letters written to his brother on Tumblr, I decided to pick up this collection, and this has quickly become some of my favorite pieces of writing that I have ever had the pleasure of reading.I feel a greater appreciation for Vincent’s work and am grateful for the opportunity to get to know an artist whose work has touched countless lives long after he walked this earth.

There may be a great fire in your soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself by it, all that passers-by can see is a little smoke coming out of the chimney and they walk on. However, there is theology, and that can actually be pretty dull and boring at times – while I enjoy philosophy and discussing theology, I discovered going down the road of formally studying it simply didn’t create the same desire in me than simply casually reading about it and chatting with my friends (or even writing posts on the internet), so I can relate to Vincent in that regards. It has been a fascinating process to be able to follow how he gradually discovered his painting vocation, which happened relatively late. His first major work was 1885's The Potato Eaters, from a time when his palette mainly consisted of sombre earth tones and showed no sign of the vivid colouration that distinguished his later paintings.

For whatever reason, one particular passage Van Gogh wrote about death and the stars in the sky made a lasting impression on me. The son of a pastor, brought up in a religious and cultured atmosphere, Vincent was highly emotional and lacked self-confidence. But it is absolutely essential to be able to draw the proportions correctly and to position the objects fairly confidently before you start. Within two years both brothers were dead: Vincent as the result of a gunshot wound, and Theo from illness. Vincent often wrote the colours on his black-and-white sketches, to give an idea of the colour of the painting.