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Vincent van Gogh: Matters of Identity

Marije Vellekoop author Yves Vasseur author Sjraar van Heugten editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Yale University Press

Published:26th Jan '21

Should be back in stock very soon

Vincent van Gogh: Matters of Identity cover

The revelation of a misidentified face in a photograph—once thought to be Vincent, now known to be Theo van Gogh—leads to a novelesque story of revised art history

Full of surprising anecdotes, this book tells the story of the discovery in 2018 that one of only two known photographs of Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) is, in fact, of his brother, Theo. The detective-style narrative continues from there to Samuel Delsaut, who found two drawings attributed to Van Gogh in 1958. The archives of the Delsaut family revealed details casting doubt on the authenticity of these drawings, along with abundant correspondence between Samuel’s son and the son of Dr. Paul Gachet, who cared for Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise. A real-life lesson in historical criticism, this book, beautifully illustrated with reproductions of Van Gogh’s work, has resonance with our contemporary predicament distinguishing information from rumor, journalism from propaganda.

Distributed for Mercatorfonds

“Solves the mystery of Van Gogh’s lost harmonium portrait”—Martin Bailey, Art Newspaper

ISBN: 9780300257687

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

160 pages