The woman who made Van Gogh famous (day, painter, American)

[Cida]

Historian Russell Shorto, who I think is of a Dutch background himself, wrote this long story, which was one of the most-read. It's interesting how things can hang in the balance, and be widely known, or not.


The Woman Who Made van Gogh
Neglected by art history for decades, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, the painter’s sister-in-law, is finally being recognized as the force who opened the world’s eyes to his genius.
Then, in the spring of 1890, news: Vincent was coming to Paris. Jo expected an enfeebled mental patient. Instead, she was confronted by the physical embodiment of the spirit that animated the canvases that covered their walls. “Before me was a sturdy, broad-shouldered man with a healthy color, a cheerful look in his eyes and something very resolute in his appearance,” she wrote in her journal.
The very first entry in the diary — which turned out to be a collection of simple lined notebooks of the kind used by schoolchildren — intrigued Luijten. Jo started it when she was 17, five years before she met Theo. A young woman of that era could look forward to only very narrow options in life, yet here she wrote, “I would think it dreadful to have to say at the end of my life, ‘I’ve actually lived for nothing, I have achieved nothing great or noble.’” “That, to me, was actually very exciting,” Luijten says. It was a clue: She was not content to follow her family’s maxim after all.
https://gratefulamericanfoundation.c...made-van-gogh/

[twinkletwinkle22]

Thanks for the link and story about Jo Van Gogh-Bonger. Quite a woman and it's very likely Vincent Van Gogh would not be as well known as he is today without her persistence of putting him in the right places and talking to the right people. Such an important artist, probably at the top of my list of "best of the best" although Monet and Matisse sit there too.

Imagine marrying Theo Van Gogh, having a baby and in under 2 years both Vincent and Theo are dead and you are a young person trying to survive with your young child. And yet she believed so much in Vincent's great artistry that she spent her life convincing other people about it. And even came to the US and spent a couple years doing the same thing because the US art world was behind where Europe was in recognizing Vincent Van Gogh.

Just amazing.

[JassiB]

Wow. Thankyou for Sharing this.