A Fire in His Soul: Van Gogh, Paris, and the Making of an Artist

"A thorough exploration of Vincent's journey to become an artist with a strong, distinctive vision."

Miles J. Unger brings Vincent Van Gogh vividly to life with this exhaustive biography of his development as a painter. Unger is intent on correcting popular conceptions of the artist as a tormented loner.

"He was the incarnation of the solitary genius, the purity of his vision guaranteed by the distance he put between himself and the cosmopolitan centers that devoured innocence and rewarded superficiality. Throughout his life he suffered from neglect, misunderstanding, and even hostility, but in death he suffered an equally insidious form of erasure as a troubled man was resurrected as a secular saint, a man of sorrows, his life a sacrament and his suicide a sacrifice to redeem our corrupt age. Even the paintings, for all their familiarity, have been bled of substance, their quirkiness, wild brilliance, and assertive presence diminished as they metamorphize into precious relics preserved behind glass in the temple of the museum. . . ."

Unger tears down this slick romanticization and replaces it with a thorough exploration of Vincent's journey to become an artist with a strong, distinctive vision. It's a difficult path, but one made easier by the artists he meets along the way, the painting he learns from looking at the work of others, the crucial years he spends in Paris. He starts out as a "provincial rube," not particularly skilled in drawing or painting, only to become "one of history's greatest visionaries."

"It was not, as legend would have it, a process that took place on some lonely heath or provincial village, but in the heart of the world's most cosmopolitan and culturally adventurous city; a transformation, moreover, that depended as much on interactions with his fellow artists as on his own internal resources."

The pages that follow describe these interactions, quoting generously from Vincent's letters. Step by step, Unger takes us from Vincent, the itinerant preacher to Vincent, the artist, starting by studying famous artists from Millet to Rembrandt, joining studios and going to art schools.

"Keenly aware that he'd started late and was far behind his peers, Van Gogh south out more experienced artists. 'How is one supposed to learn to draw unless someone shows you?' he asked."

But his most important education came once he joined Theo in Paris.

"Here in the French capital art was as much about polemic as it was about the nuts and bolts of picture-making . . . Here painting, sculpture, and literature were treated as serious business. . . ."

Theo helps his brother join an important studio, only to have Vincent ultimately leave, feeling frustrated by what he considered "drudgery." He wanted to follow his own path, meeting with artists he felt could teach him something, painters like Toulouse Lautrec and Paul Signac.

"In two short years he got a crash course in modernism that for others took a lifetime. His eagerness to belong allowed him to grow more rapidly than if he'd taken a more dogmatic approach."

By learning directly from those he admired rather than in a more structured, didactic setting, Vincent made major discoveries, finding the artistic language he'd been looking for.

The Van Gogh letters also provide the narrative for the central relationship in Vincent's life, that with his younger brother Theo, who worked for an art dealer. It's well known that Theo supported his brother financially, encouraging his artistic explorations. What Unger shows, and which will be new information to many readers, is what Vincent gave Theo in return. Through Vincent, Theo met struggling but talented artists who would prove to be important additions to his gallery, among them Lautrec and Paul Gauguin. Theo's choices put his small gallery on the map: "the Parisian art world took notice."

"Witnessing Vincent's transformation in turn transformed the way Theo regarded his own profession. Vincent's more bohemian lifestyle inevitably penetrated his more upscale world. The older brother's success among the radicals encouraged the younger to expand his horizons. Theo began to look at Vincent differently, not as a brilliant but erratic and hopelessly impractical figure, but as an accomplished artist who was earning the respect of people he respected."

Now artists wanted to be friends with Vincent so he would help them get into Theo's gallery. Gauguin wrote to Vincent, asking for "a brief word from you on this subject." And Vincent was happy to oblige.

Vincent not only learned a lot from his artist friends, he also gave a lot back to them, despite being notoriously difficult and opinionated. He tried desperately to create a community out of their various personalities, even arranging a group exhibition, artists of the "Petit Boulevard," in contrast to the senior impressionist painters of the "Grand Boulevard."

"I believe that the first condition for success is to put aside petty jealousies. It's only unity that makes strength. It's well worth sacrificing selfishness, the 'each man for himself,' in the common interest."

Unfortunately, Vincent's fears were realized, with clashing egos causing divisiveness and problems. In the end, the show wasn't the "show of unity" Vincent had hoped for and not a single critic came to review it.

This is not the image most have of Vincent Van Gogh, someone working to unite fighting personalities, someone with a deep conviction of what art can and should mean. The portrait Unger paints in this book will be a much-needed revelation, a much truer picture of who this ever-evolving artist was.

Unger has clearly done an impressive amount of research, relying not only on the well-known letters between Vincent and his brother Theo, but a host of other material from the period, starting with early reviews of Vincent's work to later recognition of his stature. Specialists and the general public will all get a lot from this book, an essential addition to any art history library.