Learning About Vincent

During the past few weeks, I've gotten pretty far into the life of Vincent Van Gogh. I never realized before, though, just how sad he was.

I knew that Van Gogh had suffered from mental illness (growing up, my first exposure to Van Gogh and his art was my 3rd grade art teacher showing us one of his paintings and then telling us about the time that he had cut off his ear in order to impress a girl - she failed to mention that it was much more complicated than that, but I suppose you can't tell small children at Catholic school that the ear was delivered to a brothel), but I don't think I ever realized just how much he felt rejected by his family and the society around him. These early chapters of the biography have been painful to read. They radiate sadness and a constant sense of alienation from those whom he considered his closest friends. It doesn't really help that Vincent's mother and father, the two people to whom he constantly turned in moments of doubt and despair, considered him a chronic disappointment as the family's oldest son, and did all that they could to disown him and save face without actually disowning him.

Van Gogh was the eldest son of a Dutch preacher and his wife, who lived in a rural area of the Netherlands. Van Gogh was different from his brothers and sisters even growing up, wandering the areas around his childhood home alone. Not completing his childhood education, Van Gogh spent his young adulthood and the early years of his adult life wandering through Europe in a succession of jobs that put him into touch with art but did not fully satisfy his desires to prove himself. At the point that I've reached, Van Gogh is beginning to discover his talent for art, but his family is attempting to commit him to an insane asylum.

I've never once read a biography before where the subject's sorrow bled so freely through the pages. Vincent's sadness from the constant rebuffs of his family make the biography, although beautifully written, makes the biography slow going. That being said, I am enjoying it immensely, and look forward to the next chapters.

Book Announcement!

I'm beginning an amazing book about Vincent Van Gogh that I've been wanting to read for a while now.

This image does not do the book justice - it's literally gorgeous

It's called Van Gogh: The Life. I've been lusting after this book since it was published a few years ago, and now I have a copy. Huzzah!

So my goals for this book are to a) learn more about Van Gogh (because, despite my love of his artwork and that one Doctor Who episode that he was the focus of, I know absolutely nothing about him) and b) find some more amazing and inspiring quotes from him to post around my room.

I've made it through a couple of chapters already, but my goal to keep up with the awesome Van Gogh quotes is to underline them all in purple. And not really to mark anything else in the book.

I'd also like to try and blog along with this book, so we'll see how that goes.

Please feel free to check out my last liveblog of a book on my tumblr page - I liveblogged my three day read of Donna Tartt's The Secret History (and how much it absolutely blew my mind).

I'm so excited to share this biography with everyone (if there is anyone who reads this besides me and occasionally my family) - it combines my love of literature with my love of history, which is my goal for this blog.