Customer Reviews

The Complete Van Gogh

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This book attempts to include a reproduction of every work ever done by Van Gough. This is ambitious. It is useful for finding reproductions of sketches for final works. Most of the sketches are reproduced in two inch tall black and white in the margins of the book. More detailed sketches and final works are reproduced larger. When applicable reproductions are in color. All of the reproductions are high quality and limited to one page - no two page spreads where the pic gets cut in half by the binding. This book is a bit large to fit nicely on a shelf at 10 x 14 inches. This tells you that the maximum width for a reproduction is going to be about 8.5 inches. It is the book to check if you want to find a copy of an obscure work by Van Gough, or see sketches and drawings to follow the artistic process for a particular work.

Jan Hulsker (the author currently unlisted by amazon) has also tried to provide dates for as many of Van Gough's letters as possible. These letters are published in the 1953 four volume compilation of letters by DW van Gough. They are quoted frequently but not reproduced here. The text and pictures are arranged chronologically. The goal is to present as much data as coherently as possible. It possible to read through this, but it is a bit dry, and I don't recommend it unless you are hard core. If you are doing in depth scholarly research on Van Gough then you will want to take a look at this book.

University libraries should have a copy of this. You will have a book about Van Gough anyway. So why not the complete works?

People who like Van Gough's work will like this one. If it isn't available don't be sad. He is a popular artist and it will be easy to find a good book to please you.


Chapters:

Preface
Note on the Captions
Canvas Sizes
Van Gough's Course before 1881

Etten/ April - December 1881
The Hague/ January 1882 - September 1883
Drenthe/ September - December 1883
Nuenen/ December 1883 - November 1885
Antwerp/ November 1885 - February 1886
Paris/ March 1886 - February 1888
Arles/ February 1888 - May 1889
Saint-Remy/ May 1889 - May 1890
Auvers-sur-Oise/ May - July 1890

Notes
Concordance of De la Faille and Hulsker Numbers
List of Colorplates
Picture Credits
Selected Bibliography
Biographical Chronology
Index