Genre: Nonfiction—Art History
Completed: 5 December 2017
Summary & Review:
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is home to some 200 paintings, 500 drawings, and 800 letters of the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh. Dozens of his most important paintings in the collection are reproduced in full color in this large gallery guide, along with accompanying text about the paintings and brief biography of the artist. Also, many works owned by the museum by contemporaries of Van Gogh are included in a final section of the book.
I haven’t studied Van Gogh too closely. I never ended up taking an art history class during my major that covered 19th century European artists, so most of what I know about Van Gogh is from my survey classes and from my mother who loves Impressionism and the artists inspired by it. Many people think that Van Gogh was completely unappreciated during his life, but that isn’t really the case. His work was accepted into many major exhibitions and he received favorable reviews by contemporary art critics. He was also friends with the other important artists of the time like Gauguin. Thus, his life wasn’t tragic due to lack of recognition, but simply due to mental health issues resulting in his suicide at a young age.
The book was a nice presentation of the Van Gogh Museum’s collection. While I wasn’t blown away by the museum when we visited it, I did somewhat enjoy this book.
Rating: 5.0
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