A widowed first cousin, Kee; a prostitute named Slen; shy, spinsterish Margot Bergemann; the seventeen-year-old peasant girl Stien de Groot - to all of them Vincent van Gogh would declare his love. In none of them would he find the wife to seal the emotional bond that he so perfectly imagined and ardently desired. In the artist's correspondence to his brother Theo, to his aggrieved mother, his loyal sister Wil, and his devoted sister-in-law Johanna, Vincent opened his heart. In this penetrating book Derek Fell focuses on van Gogh's letters to these three steadfast women he called his sisters, and in poignantly documenting the artist's emotional decline examines Vincent's interior life and the downward course of his journey into madness.

Author Biography

Pennsylvania-based Derek Fell is an art historian, garden photographer and author with over one million copies of his books in print. He has written on Renoir's, Cezanne's and Van Gogh's gardens. He sheds light here on the passions that at once commanded Vincent's genius and tormented his heart. Many illustrations are included in this revealing life of the artist, as seen through the lens of his loves and losses.