The Letters of Vincent van Gogh: A Critical Study

In The Letters of Vincent van Gogh, Grant examines recurring themes and motifs in the artist’s life and how his circumstances may have affected what he wrote. Each of the book’s three sections deals with a major theme in Van Gogh’s writings and how it evolved through the years. There are frequent references to the artist’s views on art and the different movements he was exposed to, which would make this an excellent resource for a secondary school fine arts class. Grant also contextualizes Van Gogh’s metaphorical language in the reality of his circumstances regarding his mental and physical well-being, and discusses such issues as the artist’s fraught relationship with his parents and his time spent in a mental asylum. The book paints van Gogh as a complicated yet sensitive man who grappled with difficult ideas but never truly found the answers he was seeking.

Supplementary Resources: Athabasca University Press is an open access publisher. An open access version of this resource can be found here.