Van Gogh

Előszó

Van Gogh's life, üke his work, is now part of a myth; he is in fact generally placed among the last few heroes of the romantic world to be haunted by an implacable curse. The signs of a singular destiny have been looked for in the most trivial particulars, the most banal aspects of his life, which was much like any other life, if undeniably more unfortunate and more intense. His origins have been minutely examined: his father, Theodorus van Gogh (1822- 85), was the incumbent of the parish of Groot-Zundert, in the Dutch province of Brabant, where Vincent was born, on 30 March 1853, into a family of clergymen and goldsmiths. People have tried to gather, from a fairly uninspiring childhood, signs of what could have förmed Van Gogh. Everything has contributed to the myth; and thus has helped to ruin for ever any chance of getting close to one of the most disconcerting and genuine figures in modern art, a man who was exceptionally aware of the actual problems of his time, both historically and culturally, and - which explains nearly all the eccentricities of his life - acutely sensitive to the social crisis of the moment. His life, from childhood to adolescence, was absolutely ordinary. At sixteen he was employed by Goupil (a well-known art dealer for whom several of his relations had already worked, and who was later to employ his brother Theo) at The Hague, and in 1873 he was transferred to London, where he was to have his first disappointment in love. Ursula Leeger, his landlady's daughter, turnéd down his offer of marriage. This precipitated the second stage in his life: a search for a purpose to his own existence: which resulted initially in a sense of religious vocation. From now on he was to be dogged by failure: at the entrance examinations for the faculty of theology at Amsterdam University, and at the school of practical evangelism in Brussels (1878). Then came his violent experience as preacher among the miners in Borinage, the most squalid of mining villages (the Belgian Vissza