Vincent van Gogh revolutionized portrait painting, decisively influencing its course in the 20th century. Here, for the first time, all his great portraits are collected together, each one beautifully reproduced and set in context by leading scholars.
The story begins with the relatively unknown body of vivid drawings produced in The Hague when he was a young man. It continues with van Gogh’s time in Paris, where the influence of Impressionism, Japanese Art and contemporaries like Gauguin led him to produce some of his most famous images. It culminates with the masterpieces created in Arles, St.-Rémy and Auvers at the time of the artist’s devastating breakdown.
Each essay focuses on particular groups of work, shedding new light on van Gogh’s aims and methods. The result is a wholly original way of looking at van Gogh — an unprecedented and wonderfully revealing view of his enduring achievement as an artist.