Every Sunday the family, clad in black and bearing flowers, set off to the little cemetery at Groot-Zundert, where they went directly from the gate to a grave marked "Vincent Wilhelm Van Gogh 1852." A single date to mark a birth and a death, for this was the grave of a child six weeks old. As the father, mother, two sons and three daughters prayed, the eldest of the boys - also called Vincent Wilhelm - stared intensely at the gravestone and the name, his brother's, that was also his own.The young Vincent Wilhelm was born on March 30, 1853, a year to the day after the death of his brother. Was his destiny to be that of an earthly replacement for the child now lying at his feet beneath the slab of gray stone? To take the place of another? Or was he himself the other whose identity he had usurped?

VAN GOGH WAS A TORMENTED SOUL, SOFT AND A REBEL AT THE SAME TIME, VERY MUCH CHARACTERIZED BY CONTRASTS, WITHDRAWALS AND BY INTENSE EXCITEMENTS; VINCENT VAN GOGH THE ARTIST WILL LIVE A PASSIONATEoADVENTURE, ONE OF AN ART- POSSESSED MAN ALWAYS ON THE VERGE OF MADNESS.ONE HAS TO BEWARE OF LEGENDS AND IN VAN GOGH"S CASE, OF ROMANTICIZED BIOGRAPHIES OR MOVIES; HERE, WE ARE TALKING OF A MAN, OF AN ARTIST, ONE OF THE WORLD"S GREATEST WITH A TRAGIC DESTINY, NOT OF A CHARACTER IN A NOVEL; A MAN, SON OF CLERGYMAN, OBSESSED BY HELPING THE POVERTY-STRICKEN AND THE DEPRIVED TO WHOM HE WISHES TO UNVEIL THE REALITY OF A MERCIFUL GOD.FAILURE FIRST MAKES VAN GOGH A REPORTER WITH A BLACK AND GREY PENCIL, OF THE HUMBLE AND OF THEIR LUGUBRIOUS SETTINGS, THEN A PAINTER; HIS WORKS STEMMED OUT OF 4 YEARS, BETWEEN 1886 AND 1890; FROM HOLLAND TO PARIS WHERE HIS PAINTING BRIGHTENED UP WITH IMPRESSIONISTIC COLOURS AND TO ARLES WHERE HIS STILL MYSTERIOUS FRIENDSHIP WITH GAUGUIN SHATTERED AGAINST THE MOST VIOLENT OF ALL OPPOSITIONS. ALL ALONG THE 150 ILLUSTRATIONS SHOWCASED IN THIS STUNNING MONOGRAPHY BY A WORLD RENOWNED ART HISTORIAN,VINCENT"S LIFE WILL APPEAR AUTHENTIC AND TRUE TO THE READER.

Introduction

Painter or pastor

Art as redemption

The Light of lle de France

Dazzled by Provence

The depths of passion

Who killed Vincent van Gogh?