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.