Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers by Deborah Heiligman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars informative, suspenseful, absorbing, and moving--but oh, the present tense and short sentences! To write Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers (2017), Deborah Heiligman read the letters between the brothers and their family members and friends and spent years researching and thinking about her subjects until she was ready to write her book. And it is excellent: informative, absorbing, suspenseful, and moving. Heiligman tells the story in fourteen parts called Galleries, beginning with a Threshold and an Entresol and ending with an Exit, as if in reading her book we are walking through an exhibition of Vincent's paintings and the life that produced them. The Galleries range from Beginnings (1852-1872), move through topics like Missteps, Stumbles (1875-1879), The Quest (1880-1882), An Expanded Palette (1885-1887), and A Sense of the Finite (1890) and end with Remains (1890-1891). Each Gallery is made up of multiple chapters with titles like The Rose and the Thorn, Vincent and Theo Walking, Sorrow, Uncle Vincent’s Paintings, A Happy Visit, and Theo Alone. There are plenty of epigraphs from letters. Each Gallery begins with a two-page monochrome reproduction of a relevant sketch or a painting by Vincent. In the middle of the book, there is a set of eleven color reproductions of important paintings. After the book come useful appendices: People (family, friends, colleagues); Vincent and Theo's Journey (a chronology); Author’s Note (why and how Heiligman wrote the book); a Bibliography (books and articles); Endnotes (supplemental information and citations of letters); and Index. Through the course of the book, Heiligman provides many interesting details about Vincent’s family, childhood, failed attempts to become an art dealer and a missionary, painstaking efforts to learn how to become a painter, early dark sober works, discovery of vibrant color, artistic theories, techniques, and media, struggle with mental illness, friendships with other artists, relationship with Theo, and so on. As for Theo, there are interesting details on his successful career as an art dealer in the Netherlands and Paris, his relationship with his beloved (but difficult) older brother, his long pursuit of an initially uninterested woman and eventual marriage to her, his syphilis, and so on. If, as Heiligman says before her book begins, “The world would not have Vincent without Theo,” she also demonstrates that the world would not have Theo without his wife Jo. Not only did Theo support Vincent financially and emotionally and believe in his art and make possible the many paintings by his brother that we love today, but his wife Jo indispensably supported Theo in his support of Vincent and also believed in his art. I had known nothing about her before reading this book. In Vincent’s watercolor painting of a windmill near the Hague, two male figures face each other, one looking taller than the other but also slumped, rumpled, and importunate, and although it rarely shows up in books about Van Gogh, according to Heiligman it should be one of his most famous works. In their letters, the brothers mentioned meeting at that windmill and drinking milk there and talking, and the author’s analysis and description of that encounter and of the painting and of its significance to the relationship between the brothers and her belief that “it makes sense to see the men as Vincent and Theo,” make reading this book worthwhile. I learned many other interesting things from this book. For example-- --Vincent’s difficult childhood, including his awareness that a year before he was born his mother gave birth to a stillborn son who was also called Vincent, and his tendency to destroy his youthful attempts at art if his family praised them. --Vincent’s guilt over being such a financial burden on his brother, and Theo’s saintly generosity and assurances, as in one letter that's excerpted for an epigraph to a chapter: “Your work and... brotherly affection... is worth more than all the money I'll ever possess.” --it’s possible that just as Van Gogh perhaps did not cut off his own ear (did Gauguin do it, and Van Gogh cover up for him?), Van Gogh did not shoot himself (did a boy playing with a gun do it?). -- Theo suffered from syphilis and died horribly from it barely one year after his brother’s death. That Theo accomplished as much as he did for his brother and for the world of art while declining in health is miraculous. That he managed to avoid giving the disease to his wife is as well. Chapter 101, Vincent’s Paintings, is remarkable. For it Heiligman selects some titles from the almost 150 paintings he made during a year in an asylum and arranges them in a two-page spread. The selected titles swirl around the pages like the clouds in the sky in the famous Starry Night painting, and the title of that painting appears on the two-page spread larger than those of the other titles and is placed in the center of a swirl just like the moon in the original painting. Another remarkable chapter is 120, Vincent’s Brother, January 25, 1891, which consists of but two potent paragraphs of one sentence each: Vincent died in Theo’s arms. Theo dies alone. The main flaw I find in the book is that Heiligman writes in the currently trendy style of so much young adult American literature: present tense (which feels affected in a biography) and short sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. I'm not against those things per se, but I do think they are overused in too many books these days and in this one in particular. The 409-page book consists of 121 chapters. The extreme brevity of Chapter 120 increases the tragic power of its contents, but because there are similarly short sentences and paragraphs everywhere in the book, the emotional impact of that chapter and of short sentences and paragraphs anywhere else in the book are attenuated. There are MANY places like the following: Vincent and Gauguin are both prolific, and Theo is having success selling Gauguin’s work. Soon, Vincent is sure, Theo will sell more of his, too. The brothers’ hard work is paying off. Vincent is realizing his dream of the studio in the South. Although he and Gauguin are not the easiest of companions and the arguments continue, it all really does seem to be working. Until it isn't. Anyway, I learned from this book so many interesting things about Vincent and his paintings, Theo, Jo, love, and the art world of the late 19th century in Europe. View all my reviews
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