Vincent van Gogh: Painted with Words: The Letters to mile Bernard

Van Gogh's 22 letters to Émile Bernard, a fellow artist whom Van Gogh met in Paris, are significant in helping us understand the great masterpieces he would paint later, after his move to Arles. Since Bernard's side of the correspondence is lost, he plays the foil to the older, more experienced van Gogh, who elaborates on a philosophy of painting (“in the end it's a question of expressing oneself powerfully”), on the work he hopes to do (“A starry sky, for example, well—it's a thing that I should like to try to do, just as in the daytime I'll try to paint a green meadow studded with dandelions”) and on the influences of other great painters like Vermeer and Rembrandt. This lavish and complete presentation, published in association with New York's Morgan Library & Museum and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, brings together color facsimiles of the letters, English translations alongside French transcriptions, notes and color reproductions of paintings mentioned in the correspondence and other complementary material. The volume creates an entire and delightful world around this highly readable correspondence—the kind of fine and exhaustive treatment it deserves. (Oct.)