The Stranger

A new look at van Gogh's life--and death

Nimatallah/Art Resource, NY

Self-Portrait by van Gogh

In 1876, when Vincent van Gogh was in the grip of a religious mania (feverish obsessions were a constant in his life), he gave his first sermon as an itinerant preacher. He quoted Psalms: "I am a stranger in this world." That was another of van Gogh's constants--miserable estrangement. Those two conditions are motifs in any telling of his story, but they have never been laid out as cogently and thoroughly as in Van Gogh: The Life. Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, whose 1989 biography of Jackson Pollock won the Pulitzer Prize, have written this generation's definitive portrait of the...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!