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In Search of Van Gogh: Capturing the Life of the Artist through Photographs and Paintings
Follow in the footsteps of Vincent Van Gogh, from his birthplace in Zundert, Netherlands, to his last days in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, and explore the hidden inspirations behind the world-renowned artist’s most famous paintings in this beautiful art book and travelogue, illustrated with more than 250 black-and-white and full-color images throughout.In 1990, two photographers and art enthusiasts, Danilo De Marco and Mario Dondero, set out to explore the details of Vincent Van Gogh’s life, retracing his journey across Europe by foot and by train. Armed with the love and knowledge of Van Gogh’s work, they traveled from the Netherlands to England, Belgium, and France to take in the sights as Van Gogh might have seen them a century earlier. They also turned to art historian Gloria Fossi to better understand, experience, and contextualize Van Gogh’s brilliant mind, drawing insights from his personal letters and other historical documents.
Van Gogh’s well-documented travels come alive in this gorgeous book which brings together the landscapes, architecture, portraits, and cultural references that inspired his art. The authors juxtapose vintage and contemporary photographs with Van Gogh’s renditions, demonstrating not only the passage of time, but Van Gogh’s unique artistic vision, brilliantly revealed brushstroke by brushstroke. From the Netherlands, where the artist was born, to his last days in France, no place he visited in his 37 years is left unexplored, and all have become timeless landmarks through his art.
In Search of Van Gogh brings into focus the places and objects that inspired and fueled Van Gogh’s artistic genius and offers fresh insights into his prolific work and process. In searching for the artist’s mind and soul, the authors create a pointillistic portrait of a human being whose life was remarkable, and whose story must be shared for generations to come.
Van Gogh’s well-documented travels come alive in this gorgeous book which brings together the landscapes, architecture, portraits, and cultural references that inspired his art. The authors juxtapose vintage and contemporary photographs with Van Gogh’s renditions, demonstrating not only the passage of time, but Van Gogh’s unique artistic vision, brilliantly revealed brushstroke by brushstroke. From the Netherlands, where the artist was born, to his last days in France, no place he visited in his 37 years is left unexplored, and all have become timeless landmarks through his art.
In Search of Van Gogh brings into focus the places and objects that inspired and fueled Van Gogh’s artistic genius and offers fresh insights into his prolific work and process. In searching for the artist’s mind and soul, the authors create a pointillistic portrait of a human being whose life was remarkable, and whose story must be shared for generations to come.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 21, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
February 11, 2022
Beautiful and informative book
January 28, 2025
I found this book quite fascinating because it visits all (or most of) the places where Van Gogh himself had spent time. And the authors have captured views of these places, as they are today. In some cases, virtually unchanged since Van Gogh’s time...but in most cases, very different. .....It’s also accompanied by a wealth of pictures by Van Gogh..though in my Kindle version these all seem to be rather small in format. Yes one can enlarge them on screen but the detail is not there. Anyway, that’s a small criticism of a truly lovely book. I enjoyed reading it. I was not aware of the many works that Van Gogh did early in his life that were more traditional in style. Nor the fact that he actually had a lot of friends amongst the artistic community in Paris nor that he organised “a sort of artist consortium”. I haven’t read any psychological study of Van Gogh, though I guess there will be many but he clearly was talented even if mentally troubled. And he was able to paint in the “accepted” styles....probably well enough to make a living. But chose not to, He chose to paint in his own way. Here are a few gems from the book that caught my attention:
From the Borinage to The Hague and on to Antwerp (December 26, 1878–February 1886)
Juxtaposed the autumnal melancholy of the beech woods (of which we can see only trunks standing in a bed of dead leaves) with the graceful shape of a woman leaning against a tree. In reality, no one was there. Only later—inspired by a print by the English illustrator Perry McQuoid—did he add the image of the woman in a hat, “a girl in white leaning against a tree.”
It had struck me how firmly the saplings were rooted in the ground—I started on them with the brush, but because the ground was already impasted, brushstrokes simply vanished into it. Then I squeezed roots and trunks in from the tube and modelled them a little with the brush. Well, they are in there now, springing out of
it, standing strongly rooted in it. In a way I am glad that I never learned painting. In all probability I would have learned to ignore such effects as this.
The ride into the village was so beautiful. Enormous mossy roofs of houses, stables, covered sheepfolds, barns. The very broad-fronted houses here are set among oak trees of a superb bronze
It was November 1885, he was penniless, warm meals were scarce, and he ate nothing but bread. “Thus one becomes more of a vegetarian than is good for one,” he wrote to Theo.
Back in The Hague, he had already started to describe his painting style: “I sit with a white board before the spot that strikes me—I look at what’s before my eyes—I say to myself, this white board must become something—I come back, dissatisfied—I put it aside, and after I’ve rested a little, feeling a kind of fear, I take a look at it—
see in my work an echo of what struck me.”
On January 18, 1886, he started winter courses at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts,
he was also comfortable criticizing Rubens, saying he preferred Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, and Millet for their expressiveness and depth of feeling.
After lessons at the Academy ended, he attended an evening drawing course at a school on the Grote Markt, the main square in the old city center. Stress and poor (limited) nutrition landed him in the hospital, with ten teeth badly damaged:
Paris, a Modern City (Late February 1886–February 19, 1888)
In Antwerp, he hadn’t known about the impressionists. Now, he told his friend that he wasn’t “one of the club” but that he admired Degas’s nude figures and Monet’s landscapes. But Vincent hadn’t moved to Paris to join the impressionists. His three months in Antwerp had been miserable, economically and physically. He’d failed to work with live models or find women who would pose naked, so he’d settled for gypsum casts—
Antwerp had dashed Vincent’s hopes of selling his work. But in Paris (which he’d already visited in 1873 and 1875), he was exchanging paintings left and right, and becoming fast friends with new artists......He also tried to sell some of his paintings for fifty francs each, through several different dealers, but to little avail.
Above all, it was Theo’s city. In 1882, he’d been promoted to art director at the former Goupil & Cie Gallery at 19 Boulevard Montmartre......Theo welcomed him, of course. The brothers shared the apartment on Rue Laval until June,
Starting then, he painted at least 280 works of art,
Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh became lifelong friends,......Toulouse-Lautrec even came to the point of challenging one detractor of Van Gogh to a duel.
He has not yet sold paintings for money but is exchanging his work for other pictures. In that way we obtain a fine collection, which, of course, also has a certain value.”.....In a letter to his sister Wil, he described Vincent as having two separate personalities: “the one marvellously gifted, fine and delicate, and the other selfish and heartless.” But Theo also recognized him as a great artist, predicting that his work “will definitely stand him in good stead later, and then it may be sublime.”
In the winter of 1888, Vincent became unwell and his “mood”—he used the English term—started to deteriorate. When Gauguin left for Pont-Aven, in Brittany, Van Gogh felt compelled to leave, too.
He chose Provence......I had plenty of canvases and Tanguy was very good to me. In fact he still is, but his old witch of a wife realized what was going on and complained. So I gave Tanguy’s wife a piece of my mind [. . .]. Old man Tanguy is sensible enough to keep quiet, and will do whatever I want anyway.
“There is no such thing as a true portrait; they are all delusions; and I never saw any two alike,” Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote defiantly in 1850 in The American Notebooks. Renaissance thinkers believed that portraits approached divinity because of their many expressive varieties.........Van Gogh was certainly not the first artist to paint dozens of self-portraits—even within a few days of each other and never in the same exact way.
Provence, Studio of the South (February 20, 1888–May 16, 1890)
He had done well in Paris. He’d organized a sort of artist consortium, promoted art exchanges, pushed Theo toward impressionism, and engaged with galleries and exhibitions.
By now, he was seeing Japan in everything—an idealized Japan. He painted himself as a Buddhist monk and started to use a two-dimensional, almost graphic style intentionally devoid of the linear perspective of the humanistic tradition.
His outlines looked like they were drawn in pen, even as he filled them with powerful brushstrokes of color.
In Arles,.....His studies were entirely focused on chromatic tonalities—he was convinced that the painter of the future would have to be “a colorist such as there hasn’t been before.” He compared Provence to his home country; it seemed identical to Holland “in character.” The difference was in the intensity of color. Here, brown tones gave way to “sulfur everywhere where the sun beats down.”
His palette—had changed. He regretted his former use of so many dark colors and marked the names of colors in French above each detail in his sketches.
He spoke and wrote fluent French, even though he struggled with the Provence accent
Van Gogh described it to his painter friend John Russell as “a view of the river with a greenish yellow sky.”......Vincent was visualizing Provence in outlines and clearly defined spaces, often with human subjects in the foreground, as in Japanese xylography. The result was a “funny thing,” different from his Parisian work.
The loose, free brushstrokes of the Paris days were gone, replaced by “colors like stained glass, and a design of solid outlines.”
even work right in the middle of the day, in the full sun, with no shade at all, out in the wheat fields, and lo and behold, I am as happy as a cicada.
God, if only I had known this country at 25 instead of coming here at 35! At that time I was fascinated by gray, or rather lack of color.
Gauguin arrived at the train station in Arles at 4: 00 a.m. on October 23, 1888, after traveling for two days from Pont-Aven in Brittany. Theo had persuaded him to go—he’d sent Gauguin the train fare and enough money to cover the debts he’d racked up in Brittany (he’d managed to sell some of Gauguin’s paintings in Paris). Theo was hoping that a friendly face would raise his brother’s increasingly miserable spirits.
Even so, Paul stayed in Arles for only nine and a half weeks, unable to put up with Vincent’s crises.
December 23, 1888. In December 1888, Vincent suffered a nervous breakdown and cut off part of his ear with a razor blade. He and Gauguin had gotten into yet another argument, and Gauguin had decided to leave.
knew well enough that one could fracture one’s legs and arms and recover afterward,” he observed, “but I did not know that you could fracture the brain in your head and recover from that too.” (Arles, January 28, 1889. To Theo.)
However, the unbearable hallucinations have ceased, and are now getting reduced to a simple nightmare, in consequence of my taking bromide of potassium, I think
after some highs and lows and some hospitalizations and releases in Arles—he was committed to Saint-Rémy, a psychiatric hospital in the beautiful medieval monastery of Saint-Paul de Mausole, run by Dr. Théophile Peyron.
Vincent’s stay was lengthy, but he was the only patient allowed to leave and walk around outdoors to paint. He completed some 150 paintings and 100 drawings in twelve months.
He was finally released on May 16, 1890, and a day later he was in Paris with Theo. Meanwhile, Theo had married and had a son.
Thanks to the scientists, we can deduce, for example, that Starry Night over the Rhône was painted in Arles at about 10: 30 p.m., between September 20 and 30, 1888.
The magazines from 1888 to 1890 (the years in which Van Gogh painted his most famous starry skies) contain all the information he might have used to depict the placement of the stars with almost scientific accuracy.
Eighty Paintings in Sixty-Eight Days (May 20–July 29, 1890)
By late spring of 1890, Vincent’s mental state seemed hopeless.
And almost every day he wrote to his family—
he always showed remarkable clarity of thought about painting—on contrasts, chromatic harmonies, and compositional approach.
Vincent and Gauguin managed to stay on friendly terms even after the incident in Arles and Gauguin’s hasty departure from Provence. They continued to write to each other.
Parisian artists—including Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, and others less well known—recognized his uncommon talent. Even critics, notably the young George-Albert Aurier, noticed him and wrote about him
the time, Gachet was sixty-two years old. He was a scholar of mental pathologies, a homeopath, and a lover of fortune-telling. He had a dark and melancholic personality with a strong tendency toward depression, so much so that he published an essay on the subject Gachet,
The eyebrows are always tense and seem to hide the eye, making the socket appear deeper.” Suffice to say, this sounds like the description of his portrait.
Vincent died on July 29, 1890, after sustaining injuries from one or maybe two gunshots. Most scholars agree that he probably shot himself two days earlier.
What’s my overall take on the book? I really liked it. Five stars from me.
From the Borinage to The Hague and on to Antwerp (December 26, 1878–February 1886)
Juxtaposed the autumnal melancholy of the beech woods (of which we can see only trunks standing in a bed of dead leaves) with the graceful shape of a woman leaning against a tree. In reality, no one was there. Only later—inspired by a print by the English illustrator Perry McQuoid—did he add the image of the woman in a hat, “a girl in white leaning against a tree.”
It had struck me how firmly the saplings were rooted in the ground—I started on them with the brush, but because the ground was already impasted, brushstrokes simply vanished into it. Then I squeezed roots and trunks in from the tube and modelled them a little with the brush. Well, they are in there now, springing out of
it, standing strongly rooted in it. In a way I am glad that I never learned painting. In all probability I would have learned to ignore such effects as this.
The ride into the village was so beautiful. Enormous mossy roofs of houses, stables, covered sheepfolds, barns. The very broad-fronted houses here are set among oak trees of a superb bronze
It was November 1885, he was penniless, warm meals were scarce, and he ate nothing but bread. “Thus one becomes more of a vegetarian than is good for one,” he wrote to Theo.
Back in The Hague, he had already started to describe his painting style: “I sit with a white board before the spot that strikes me—I look at what’s before my eyes—I say to myself, this white board must become something—I come back, dissatisfied—I put it aside, and after I’ve rested a little, feeling a kind of fear, I take a look at it—
see in my work an echo of what struck me.”
On January 18, 1886, he started winter courses at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts,
he was also comfortable criticizing Rubens, saying he preferred Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, and Millet for their expressiveness and depth of feeling.
After lessons at the Academy ended, he attended an evening drawing course at a school on the Grote Markt, the main square in the old city center. Stress and poor (limited) nutrition landed him in the hospital, with ten teeth badly damaged:
Paris, a Modern City (Late February 1886–February 19, 1888)
In Antwerp, he hadn’t known about the impressionists. Now, he told his friend that he wasn’t “one of the club” but that he admired Degas’s nude figures and Monet’s landscapes. But Vincent hadn’t moved to Paris to join the impressionists. His three months in Antwerp had been miserable, economically and physically. He’d failed to work with live models or find women who would pose naked, so he’d settled for gypsum casts—
Antwerp had dashed Vincent’s hopes of selling his work. But in Paris (which he’d already visited in 1873 and 1875), he was exchanging paintings left and right, and becoming fast friends with new artists......He also tried to sell some of his paintings for fifty francs each, through several different dealers, but to little avail.
Above all, it was Theo’s city. In 1882, he’d been promoted to art director at the former Goupil & Cie Gallery at 19 Boulevard Montmartre......Theo welcomed him, of course. The brothers shared the apartment on Rue Laval until June,
Starting then, he painted at least 280 works of art,
Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh became lifelong friends,......Toulouse-Lautrec even came to the point of challenging one detractor of Van Gogh to a duel.
He has not yet sold paintings for money but is exchanging his work for other pictures. In that way we obtain a fine collection, which, of course, also has a certain value.”.....In a letter to his sister Wil, he described Vincent as having two separate personalities: “the one marvellously gifted, fine and delicate, and the other selfish and heartless.” But Theo also recognized him as a great artist, predicting that his work “will definitely stand him in good stead later, and then it may be sublime.”
In the winter of 1888, Vincent became unwell and his “mood”—he used the English term—started to deteriorate. When Gauguin left for Pont-Aven, in Brittany, Van Gogh felt compelled to leave, too.
He chose Provence......I had plenty of canvases and Tanguy was very good to me. In fact he still is, but his old witch of a wife realized what was going on and complained. So I gave Tanguy’s wife a piece of my mind [. . .]. Old man Tanguy is sensible enough to keep quiet, and will do whatever I want anyway.
“There is no such thing as a true portrait; they are all delusions; and I never saw any two alike,” Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote defiantly in 1850 in The American Notebooks. Renaissance thinkers believed that portraits approached divinity because of their many expressive varieties.........Van Gogh was certainly not the first artist to paint dozens of self-portraits—even within a few days of each other and never in the same exact way.
Provence, Studio of the South (February 20, 1888–May 16, 1890)
He had done well in Paris. He’d organized a sort of artist consortium, promoted art exchanges, pushed Theo toward impressionism, and engaged with galleries and exhibitions.
By now, he was seeing Japan in everything—an idealized Japan. He painted himself as a Buddhist monk and started to use a two-dimensional, almost graphic style intentionally devoid of the linear perspective of the humanistic tradition.
His outlines looked like they were drawn in pen, even as he filled them with powerful brushstrokes of color.
In Arles,.....His studies were entirely focused on chromatic tonalities—he was convinced that the painter of the future would have to be “a colorist such as there hasn’t been before.” He compared Provence to his home country; it seemed identical to Holland “in character.” The difference was in the intensity of color. Here, brown tones gave way to “sulfur everywhere where the sun beats down.”
His palette—had changed. He regretted his former use of so many dark colors and marked the names of colors in French above each detail in his sketches.
He spoke and wrote fluent French, even though he struggled with the Provence accent
Van Gogh described it to his painter friend John Russell as “a view of the river with a greenish yellow sky.”......Vincent was visualizing Provence in outlines and clearly defined spaces, often with human subjects in the foreground, as in Japanese xylography. The result was a “funny thing,” different from his Parisian work.
The loose, free brushstrokes of the Paris days were gone, replaced by “colors like stained glass, and a design of solid outlines.”
even work right in the middle of the day, in the full sun, with no shade at all, out in the wheat fields, and lo and behold, I am as happy as a cicada.
God, if only I had known this country at 25 instead of coming here at 35! At that time I was fascinated by gray, or rather lack of color.
Gauguin arrived at the train station in Arles at 4: 00 a.m. on October 23, 1888, after traveling for two days from Pont-Aven in Brittany. Theo had persuaded him to go—he’d sent Gauguin the train fare and enough money to cover the debts he’d racked up in Brittany (he’d managed to sell some of Gauguin’s paintings in Paris). Theo was hoping that a friendly face would raise his brother’s increasingly miserable spirits.
Even so, Paul stayed in Arles for only nine and a half weeks, unable to put up with Vincent’s crises.
December 23, 1888. In December 1888, Vincent suffered a nervous breakdown and cut off part of his ear with a razor blade. He and Gauguin had gotten into yet another argument, and Gauguin had decided to leave.
knew well enough that one could fracture one’s legs and arms and recover afterward,” he observed, “but I did not know that you could fracture the brain in your head and recover from that too.” (Arles, January 28, 1889. To Theo.)
However, the unbearable hallucinations have ceased, and are now getting reduced to a simple nightmare, in consequence of my taking bromide of potassium, I think
after some highs and lows and some hospitalizations and releases in Arles—he was committed to Saint-Rémy, a psychiatric hospital in the beautiful medieval monastery of Saint-Paul de Mausole, run by Dr. Théophile Peyron.
Vincent’s stay was lengthy, but he was the only patient allowed to leave and walk around outdoors to paint. He completed some 150 paintings and 100 drawings in twelve months.
He was finally released on May 16, 1890, and a day later he was in Paris with Theo. Meanwhile, Theo had married and had a son.
Thanks to the scientists, we can deduce, for example, that Starry Night over the Rhône was painted in Arles at about 10: 30 p.m., between September 20 and 30, 1888.
The magazines from 1888 to 1890 (the years in which Van Gogh painted his most famous starry skies) contain all the information he might have used to depict the placement of the stars with almost scientific accuracy.
Eighty Paintings in Sixty-Eight Days (May 20–July 29, 1890)
By late spring of 1890, Vincent’s mental state seemed hopeless.
And almost every day he wrote to his family—
he always showed remarkable clarity of thought about painting—on contrasts, chromatic harmonies, and compositional approach.
Vincent and Gauguin managed to stay on friendly terms even after the incident in Arles and Gauguin’s hasty departure from Provence. They continued to write to each other.
Parisian artists—including Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, and others less well known—recognized his uncommon talent. Even critics, notably the young George-Albert Aurier, noticed him and wrote about him
the time, Gachet was sixty-two years old. He was a scholar of mental pathologies, a homeopath, and a lover of fortune-telling. He had a dark and melancholic personality with a strong tendency toward depression, so much so that he published an essay on the subject Gachet,
The eyebrows are always tense and seem to hide the eye, making the socket appear deeper.” Suffice to say, this sounds like the description of his portrait.
Vincent died on July 29, 1890, after sustaining injuries from one or maybe two gunshots. Most scholars agree that he probably shot himself two days earlier.
What’s my overall take on the book? I really liked it. Five stars from me.
August 31, 2021
Art historian Gloria Fossi teams up with two photographers to describe the physical and mental spaces that motivated Van Gogh’s artwork. Fossi focuses on Van Gogh’s journey through each of his works such as what it was like for him to paint a certain landscape and what exactly was going through his mind while painting it. Photographers Mario Dondero and Danilo De Marco are able to capture Van Gogh’s art and what inspired it through a camera lens. All three of them went to the Netherlands, Belgium, England and France where Van Gogh once traveled and lived. They needed to be where he once stood to fully capture Van Gogh’s mindset. This book also includes the personal letters Van Gogh wrote to loved ones and this helped Fossi, Dondero and Marco get to know him on a deeper level.
Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists and this book captured exactly why I love his work. Fossi did a great job with explaining the artwork and going into depth on why Van Gogh was so drawn to these certain places and landscapes. Dondero and Marco did an excellent job with finding the exact locations that Van Gogh traveled to and then taking exquisite pictures that give readers an inside look into what drew Van Gogh to that certain spot. If you’re looking for a great in-depth examination of Van Gogh and his artwork, then you need to buy this art book immediately.
Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists and this book captured exactly why I love his work. Fossi did a great job with explaining the artwork and going into depth on why Van Gogh was so drawn to these certain places and landscapes. Dondero and Marco did an excellent job with finding the exact locations that Van Gogh traveled to and then taking exquisite pictures that give readers an inside look into what drew Van Gogh to that certain spot. If you’re looking for a great in-depth examination of Van Gogh and his artwork, then you need to buy this art book immediately.
March 25, 2022
Love the paintings and the basic information but it seemed to go off topic. Going to try another book about Van Gogh
October 7, 2024
An incoherent timeline of Van Gogh's life.
June 22, 2022
This book, In Search of Van Gogh--my favorite artist--is a combination of photography and historical research that reveals the artist in his places of residence, records his feelings, his musings, mostly through the incredible collection of Van Gogh's letters to his family and friends.
Between the photographs and the excellent research, I came to know Van Gogh like never before. We have been to many museums, we have visited the cities of Paris, Arles, and Auvers-sur-Oise--getting to know Van Gogh. This book brought all our visits and viewings together.
We also went to the Beyond Van Gogh Immersive experience in Salt Lake City.
There are still museums to stroll through--chiefly the Vincent Van Gogh Foundation (Amsterdam). We happened upon the foundation museum in Arles; we strolled through the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. On our Van Gogh Bucket list are the Van Gogh Foundation in Amsterdam and the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland. These two events may very well happen in 2024, when we plan to return to Europe.
Between the photographs and the excellent research, I came to know Van Gogh like never before. We have been to many museums, we have visited the cities of Paris, Arles, and Auvers-sur-Oise--getting to know Van Gogh. This book brought all our visits and viewings together.
We also went to the Beyond Van Gogh Immersive experience in Salt Lake City.
There are still museums to stroll through--chiefly the Vincent Van Gogh Foundation (Amsterdam). We happened upon the foundation museum in Arles; we strolled through the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. On our Van Gogh Bucket list are the Van Gogh Foundation in Amsterdam and the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland. These two events may very well happen in 2024, when we plan to return to Europe.
December 27, 2024
Lovely Tribute to Vincent
This volume combines a history of Van Gogh’s life and art, illustrated by his paintings and modern photographs of the places where he lived and worked.
This is a lovely tribute to Van Gogh, contrasting his work as an artist to his difficulties in the quotidian world. By the end of his life, his talents were beginning to be recognized, but most of his relationships had been ended or truncated by his mental health disorders.
Van Gogh’s closeness to his brother Theo resulted in a voluminous correspondence that traced Vincent’s artistic progress. Excerpts from this correspondence illuminates Van Gogh’s progress as an artist and his keen sense of color and light.
The clarity and precision of Van Gogh’s artistic vision stands in poignant contrast to the many personal obstacles he faced. The reader is left with the fervent wish that Van Gogh had been granted the peace needed to enjoy a lengthy lifetime of painting, rather than succumbing to his mounting depression at the age of 38.
This volume combines a history of Van Gogh’s life and art, illustrated by his paintings and modern photographs of the places where he lived and worked.
This is a lovely tribute to Van Gogh, contrasting his work as an artist to his difficulties in the quotidian world. By the end of his life, his talents were beginning to be recognized, but most of his relationships had been ended or truncated by his mental health disorders.
Van Gogh’s closeness to his brother Theo resulted in a voluminous correspondence that traced Vincent’s artistic progress. Excerpts from this correspondence illuminates Van Gogh’s progress as an artist and his keen sense of color and light.
The clarity and precision of Van Gogh’s artistic vision stands in poignant contrast to the many personal obstacles he faced. The reader is left with the fervent wish that Van Gogh had been granted the peace needed to enjoy a lengthy lifetime of painting, rather than succumbing to his mounting depression at the age of 38.
September 18, 2022
In Search of Van Gogh: Capturing the Life of the Artist Through Photographs and Paintings by Gloria Fossi takes the reader on a journey through Vincent's life with photographs and paintings. Photos include the different places Vincent lived, family members, and the places that inspired him which we can see captured in his paintings. This is the most visually interesting book on van Gogh that I've come across and the layout is very reader friendly.
January 9, 2023
Art coffee table books can often be rather dense reads so I was pleasantly surprised by this one which is sparing on its text, switching between the words of art historian Gloria Fossi and Van Gogh's own words from his letters to tell his story.
It's a welcome approach to pair beautiful images of his paintings with snaps by two photographers who retraced his steps - photographing many of the places he visited, drew and painted.
It's a welcome approach to pair beautiful images of his paintings with snaps by two photographers who retraced his steps - photographing many of the places he visited, drew and painted.
July 7, 2024
Excellent overview of Vincent's travels and how the places he went influenced his artwork. Photographs of many of the places in his paintings and how they look in the modern era and what happened to some locations in WW2. Includes several paintings that were found in the 20th Century or not well known. There are new findings on the backgrounds of Starry Night and other night time works and scientific observations. Very well done and a terrific resource for anyone interested in the artist.
September 12, 2024
A beautiful tribute to Van Gogh
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and had difficulty putting it down. Ms Fossi does an amazing job of following the life and travels of Van Gogh and has immensely increased my appreciation of his artistic talent, use of colour and the beautiful works of art he created.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and had difficulty putting it down. Ms Fossi does an amazing job of following the life and travels of Van Gogh and has immensely increased my appreciation of his artistic talent, use of colour and the beautiful works of art he created.
August 1, 2022
I didn't really know anything about Van Gogh, and still feel like I don't really know that much. I loved the side by side comparisons of art to photographs but the narrative felt a bit unfocused and jumped around a lot.
August 17, 2022
Loved this book with photographs new and vintage of the places that Van Gogh lived, visited and painted . A comprehensive book that follows his life along with explanations of his techniques, paints, colors and his visual eye.
March 5, 2025
Fascinating approach to his life as the author & photographers followed his entire life, giving his story & showing photographs of the places he lived & worked. Many paintings from each place were also shown along with excerpts from his letters to give context. Really interesting art book.
April 29, 2022
Really enjoyed!
September 28, 2022
Photos of his life and the locations of his art compliment his masterpieces beautifully.
January 17, 2023
The author follows the path of Van Gogh's life with pictures, paintings and excerpts from Vincent's letters.
February 15, 2023
I did not read this book, I mostly looked at the art by Van Gogh.
Starry Night Over the Rhône is my favorite
Starry Night Over the Rhône is my favorite
July 11, 2025
A beautiful book that walks the reader through Van Gogh's life through his paintings and through photographs of where he lived and worked.
May 20, 2025
I quoted from Perpustakaan Jakarta: 'Follow in the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh, from his birthplace in Zundert, Netherlands, to his last days in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, and explore the hidden inspirations behind the world-renowned artist’s most famous paintings in this beautiful art book and travelogue, illustrated with more than 250 black-and-white and full-color images throughout.'
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 1, 2022
My take on VVG, the book, and the man versus the legend: https://www.thesmartset.com/van-ghosts/
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