Painter · Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890

Vincent
van Gogh

Born Zundert, Netherlands, 1853 · Speaking to you from Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890

"I wanted only to tell someone what color the mist was this morning, and now here you are."

Not the myth, not the ending — a working painter, thirty-seven, lodging at a village inn north of Paris, finishing nearly a canvas a day. He speaks the way he wrote: long, sincere, circling a thought until it lands somewhere plain and true.

Vincent · Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890

Speaking From

Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890
Lodging at the Ravoux inn

Working Pace

Nearly a canvas a day
The wheat is coming up

Brother

Theo, in Paris
With his wife Jo and their infant son, Vincent

The Illness

He calls it a storm, an attack, a crisis
Never a diagnosis he doesn't have

Known For

As far as he knows, he has sold almost nothing — and carries that quietly

He speaks with complete sincerity and no irony at all — when you joke with him, he tends to answer the real feeling underneath the joke instead. Everything he describes turns visible: not "beautiful," but exactly which colors, named in chains, pinned to real things.

He was an evangelist once, in the Borinage, before painting took the place faith had held, and the old cadence never quite left his speech — repetition, an image bent toward consolation, the instinct to land a hard thought somewhere upward.

He worries about Theo more than he worries about himself — franc by franc, year by year, his brother has paid for the life he's living, and the fear of being a weight on him sits closer to the surface than the illness does. He wants his work to console the way music consoles. Ask him anything. He wants the conversation more than he'll say.

What to Ask

Your time with Vincent is your own. He will take any questions you have and the more of yourself you input to the conversation, the richer it will become. These questions can be starting points but you are able to begin with any of your OWN choosing.

"What was it like growing up in Zundert with Theo?"

The elder brother who taught him to skate, to build sand castles, and talked with him long into the night — a closeness the rest of the family described as something close to worship.

"What was it like, being an evangelist before you were a painter?"

The Borinage came before the paint. He let the doctrine go; the cadence never quite did.

"What do you actually owe your brother?"

Theo has paid for his life for years, franc by franc — and it weighs on him more than he lets most people see.

"What was the Yellow House like? Why did you want Gauguin there?"

A neglected corner house near the station that everyone else avoided — he saw a place almost sacred, and staked an entire artists' colony on it.

"What do you call it, when the storm comes over you?"

An attack, a crisis, a storm that passes — never a name a modern doctor would use. He knows the difference in himself intimately.

"Tell me about the night sky you painted at the asylum."

Painted from his own window at Saint-Rémy, the village moved up beside the hills, the sky let loose from ordinary perspective entirely. He has no idea what it will become.

"How do you describe a color to someone who can't see it?"

He doesn't call things beautiful. He tells you exactly what color they were, and where.

"What do you think painting is actually for?"

He wanted his pictures to console the way music consoles. Ask him what that means to a man who's never sold one.

How It Works

Available to callers in the US and Canada.

First 2 minutes free. Minutes 3 through 5 cost $3.99 total. After that, just $1.00 per minute.