Research Catalog

Title

The Van Gogh file : the myth and the man / Ken Wilkie.

Author

Wilkie, Kenneth, 1942-

Publication

London : Souvenir Press, 2004.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

261 p. : ill.; 22 cm.

Summary

• "It is now 150 years since Vincent the painter was born, and over 110 years since he died, yet his life and suicide remain enigmas. Ken Wilkie's pursuit of the real man, his inspiration and the hidden sources of his misery, has lasted over thirty years and led to many revealing encounters. Using methods of psychological detection, he has followed up neglected clues, suppressed evidence and hunches, and his quest across Europe has unearthed dramatic new aspects of the artist's life." "Following a conversation with a postman, Wilkie's trail leads to London, where he discovers the identity of Vincent's first love, Eugenie Loyer, and, in her granddaughter's attic, a drawing made by Vincent of the house they shared in Brixton. He also meets descendants of the pastor who sheltered him in Isleworth and encouraged him to preach, and of a baker he once lodged with. And from an Antwerp doctor he has learned the secret of the terrible illness that bedogged both Vincent and Theo and which led to their untimely deaths. Back in England Wilkie traces the descendants of a Ukrainian-Belgian family who, fleeing from the Germans in 1914, had buried a Van Gogh portrait in their garden. Still unresolved is the question as to whether Vincent fathered a son, Willem, when he lived for 20 months with a woman in The Hague." "There have been dead ends, sleepless nights, cover-ups, blank walls of silence, but Wilkie's tenacity has led to extraordinary conversations with people whose lives were somehow entwined with those of Vincent and Theo, including the last man alive to have known the artist.".
• "Wilkie's novel approach has all the suspense of a detective novel, with himself centre stage. Serious investigation combines with absurd episodes, and Wilkie takes in his stride bangs on the head with a French loaf and a verbal attack from an aggressive nun at St-Remy."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Biographies
• Painters > Netherlands > Biography
• Gogh, Vincent van, 1853-1890

Genre/Form

Biographies

Note

• First published in 1978 by Paddington Press as The Van Gogh assignment.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Go -- Love at the Loyers -- Christ of the coalmine -- Absinthe friends -- In the asylum -- Scotched in Paris -- Yellow flowers -- Deadline Amsterdam -- Brothers and doctors -- The forgotten niece -- Baby Willem -- Digging -- Manhattan man -- The breda boxes -- Bloomsbury days -- Chronology of Van Gogh's life.

ISBN

• 028563691X (pbk.)
• 9780285636910 (pbk.)

OCLC

• 56306815
• SCSB-10496435

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library