"Dear Theo." Hundreds of letters begin that way. Vincent van Gogh wrote to his younger brother, Theo, an art dealer in Paris, for most of his adult life. More than 650 of those letters survive, along with others to family and friends, and many of them are illustrated with little sketches of the paintings he was working on.
Today they're considered one of the great correspondences in history. You can read them in full, with the original sketches, on the website of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
What's in them
Almost everything. He describes the colors he's mixing, the books he's reading, the landscapes he walks through, the people he meets. He talks about money, often, because Theo supported him for years. He shares his doubts, his loneliness, his hopes for an artists' community in the south of France, his love for Japanese prints.
And he describes the world like a painter, even in words. Night skies, wheat fields, the yellow of a house in Arles: his letters are full of images that later became paintings.
A brotherhood on paper
The letters show a relationship of extraordinary loyalty. Theo believed in Vincent when almost nobody else did. Vincent, in return, poured out his whole inner life to his brother.
When Vincent died in July 1890, Theo was devastated. He died only six months later. Theo's widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, preserved the letters and the paintings, and worked tirelessly to make Vincent's work known. Without her, and without those letters, we might know far less about him.
What his letters teach us
- Describe what you see. Van Gogh's letters are moving because they're specific: this color, this tree, this light. - Share the doubts as well as the joys. Honesty is what makes a correspondence intimate. - Draw a little. Even a clumsy sketch in a letter makes it personal. - Write to the person who believes in you. Everyone has a Theo. Write to yours.
Letters worth keeping
The Letter & Magazine subscription brings a letter and a postcard to your mailbox every month, with a meditation, a story about art and the occasional sketch, plus a seasonal issue of "(meditating) On Art". Letters to keep in a box, the way Jo kept Vincent's.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi