Belinda Thomson

The best of van Gogh's eternally popular paintings, gathered together in one magnificently produced volume.Nearly 120 years after his death, Vincent van Gogh and his work continue to exert a powerful fascination. This book offers the reader a selection of the artist's most unforgettable canvases as well as some lesser-known examples, many drawn from the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It explores the works in the context of van Gogh's short but brilliant career, in which frequent spells of isolation did not preclude lively engagement with his artistic peers and the ideas of his time.Van Gogh's brush was guided by a remarkable, restless, and wide-ranging intelligence that found another outlet in the continuous stream of letters written to family and friends. The artist's correspondence—one of the most important archival resources of nineteenth-century art—provides the narrative thread around which this study develops. Belinda Thomson considers van Gogh as a cosmopolitan figure who combined in his art experiences and traditions absorbed in his native Netherlands and in Victorian England, and then succeeded in assimilating and making his mark on the practice of painting in France at one of its richest periods. 170 color illustrations.

Paul Gauguin achieved a high public profile during his lifetime, and was one of the first artists of his generation to achieve international recognition. But his prominence has always had as much to do with the dramatic events of his life - his self-imposed exile on a remote South Sea island, his turbulent relationships with his peers - as with the appeal of his art. Belinda Thomson gives a comprehensive and accessible account of the life and work of one of the most original artists of the late nineteenth century. Gauguin's work - painting, sculpture, prints and ceramics - is discussed in the light of his public persona, his relations with his contemporaries, his exhibitions and their critical reception. His private world, beliefs and aspirations are revealed through his extensive cache of journals, letters and other writings. Fully updated throughout, drawing on the insights of thirty years of scholarship since its first edition, Thomson's text remains the best introduction to this controversial and often contradictory artist.