Letters
Van Gogh did not keep a diary. The biographical record is his correspondence — over nine hundred surviving letters, written in Dutch and French between 1872 and his death in 1890. Scholars treat the thread to his brother Theo as a de-facto journal: often several letters a week, intimate, and continuous across most of his adult life.
At a glance
- Surviving letters
- 902
- By Vincent
- 819
- To Theo
- 658
- Years
- 1872–1890
Recipients
- Theo van Gogh brother — the largest single thread (~658)
- Wilhelmina van Gogh sister — the second-largest, mostly French
- Anthon van Rappard painter friend — Dutch period
- Émile Bernard painter — Arles years, French
- Paul Gauguin painter — surrounding the Arles cohabitation
- Albert Aurier critic — replies to the 1890 Mercure essay
- John Russell painter — Australian friend from Paris
- Others family, dealers, occasional correspondents
Language
Vincent wrote in Dutch through his early years — to Theo, to family, to his Dutch painter friend Anthon van Rappard. From around 1886, when he moved to Paris and immersed himself in the French art world, he switched mostly to French — for the late letters to Theo and Wil as well as for the entire correspondence with Bernard, Gauguin, and Aurier. The corpus is bilingual; everything else (German, English) is essentially absent.
Sources & licensing
Vincent's words are public domain worldwide — he died in 1890, copyright expired in 1960. Modern English translations and scholarly editorial apparatus are separately copyrighted; this project ships only the original Dutch and French. The corpus on disk is sourced from:
- DBNL — Brieven aan zijn broeder (Bonger 1914) — three-volume Dutch edition by Vincent's sister-in-law, the first full publication of the Theo letters. Used as the primary text body.
- vangoghletters.org TEI/XML — the 2009 scholarly edition (Van Gogh Museum + Huygens Institute), used as a structured per-letter index across all 902 letters and all recipients.
- Gallica BnF — Lettres à Émile Bernard (1911) — the French Bernard letters as published by Bernard himself in 1911.
Read the letters
A per-letter reader — browse by date, by recipient, search by phrase — is the next step. Not yet wired.
Open the reader (coming soon)