All language subtitles for Great Art Series 2 2of5 Vincent van Gogh 1080p ITV

Welcome to Great Art.
For the past few years,

we've been filming the biggest
exhibitions in the world

about some of the greatest artists
and art in history.

Not only do we record
these landmark shows,

but we also secure privileged access

behind the scenes of the galleries
and museums concerned.

We then use the exhibition
as a springboard,

to take a broader look
at these artists.

A short while ago,
the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam

decided to re-hang its entire
and unparalleled collection.

They felt it was time to re-visit
the biography of Vincent van Gogh,

which was somewhat in danger
of being over-mythologised.

And his passion for learning
from both his artistic predecessors

and his contemporaries,
somewhat overlooked.

We were given extensive access
to the museum

and its archives, a treat in itself.

But also giving us a chance
to take a fresh look

at one of history's
most iconoclastic,

revolutionary, passionate,
and popular artists.

(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)

VINCENT: "My dear brother.

The painter's household
with its great and petty fixations,

with its calamities,

with its sorrows and griefs,

it has a certain goodwill
in its faith, a certain sincerity,

a certain genuinely human quality.

And I ask, "What most makes me
a human being?"

Zola says, "I, an artist,

I want to live life to the full,

want to live without ulterior
motive.

Naive as a child, no, not as a
child,

as an artist, with goodwill,

just as life unfolds,
so I will find something in it.

So I'll do my best in it.""

There were a number of
reasons why we felt that a re-hang,

a new presentation of the permanent
collection was necessary.

We felt that the previous
presentation had some shortcomings,

particularly with regards
to the person of the artist.

When we first started out,

we asked ourselves the question,
"What is the importance of van Gogh?

Why is he still appealing
to so many people?

What is it in his art

that appeals to our emotions so
much?

What did he want to say
with his art?"

Van Gogh is a phenomenon,

um, so I think people,
when they enter the museum,

will already have an idea
about van Gogh.

and they probably will have his most
important paintings in their heads,

or they know about his troubled
life.

So it's really a challenge for us

to have them look
beyond the Sunflowers,

to have them look beyond the
suicide.

I think the re-hanging makes it
clear that he was not an isolated
genius

who just fell from Heaven,
and, you know, just was.

He was an artist who developed,

who took lots of cues
from the artistic world around him.

He lived and worked in a context,
within a network of other artists.

Um, he exchanged ideas with them,

he was inspired greatly, by also
earlier generations of artists.

And, of course, then subsequent
generations were also inspired by
him.

and we also want to show van Gogh
in that sort of continuum.

The man and the artist are one.

It's not two separate identities.

It's the art of one
of the greatest artists of all time,

and to put the focus back on the art

by giving more attention
to the miss, as well.

Um, that sounds contradictory,

but I think it really helps
in understanding,

um, what makes van Gogh
so important and special.

Vincent's brother, Theo,
was an art dealer in Paris,

and he supported Vincent
all his life.

and so when Vincent died,

Theo owned over 450 paintings,

and many hundreds
of drawings by Vincent.

And after the death
of Vincent and Theo,

and his mother, as well,

my grandfather inherited
the entire collection.

And in the '30s,

he decided to bring
half of his collection

to the Municipal Museum of Art,
the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

And the other half,
he had in his home,

hanging on the walls,

and in, as we say, nowadays,
a walk-in closet.

200 paintings by Vincent van Gogh,

500 drawings,
and Vincent's letters to Theo,

and also many hundreds
of contemporaries,

like Paul Gauguin, Emile Bernard,

and he had the idea
together with his mother,

to keep the collection together.

and to get the collection accessible
for...well, for everybody.

And the museum, the van Gogh Museum
in Amsterdam, opened in 1973.

(CHATTERING)

After Theo's death,

his widow, Jo,
started to read the letters

Vincent wrote to his brother, Theo.

And while reading them, she noticed

they were of huge importance
to art history.

Because Vincent and Theo had a very
close relationship, very intimate,

and Vincent, uh, already wrote
letters to his brother,

before he became an artist.

The letters are, of course,
an enormous treasure for us,

because, in the letters,
van Gogh talks so much

about, um, his becoming an artist,

what moved him, what inspired him.

He refers to hundreds and hundreds
of works of art,

to literature, to music, to
religion,

um, all the sort of sources
of inspiration that he used.

The letters are also
extremely well-written,

so it's really a joy to read them.

And you really get
a very comprehensive

picture of who he was,
as a personality,

his trials and tribulations,
his joys and fears.

Um, so, in that sense,
the letters are an essential aspect

of our understanding
of van Gogh, the person,

and also of van Gogh, as an artist.

It is important, of course,

being the van Gogh Museum,
that's what it says on the can,

so you expect when you enter
to encounter van Gogh.

And we did that
in a rather drastic way,

by presenting him,

just with a sort of series
of self-portraits.

12 self-portraits in one room,

so you really come
eye-to-eye with van Gogh,

and it has an immediately
a strong impact,

and then you enter the story,
as it were.

"My dear brother, people say,

and I'm quite willing to believe it,

that it's difficult to know oneself.
(MATCH IGNITES)

But it's not easy
to paint oneself either.

Thus, I'm working on two portraits
of myself, at the moment,

for want of another one,

because it's more than time
that I did a bit of figure-work."

His face in itself, of course,
is an icon.

Everyone knows his face.

Maybe they figure
there might be an ear missing,

but, of course, there's not, uh,
and, for him, of course,

in the first place,
they were just practice,

but, of course,
it's also a sort of artistic,

and maybe even
psychological research.

I paint self-portraits,

and I've known a lot
of other artists who do,

and we do it because, for a start,

the models are always there,
it's for free.

And those are the paintings
in any gallery,

I think it's the faces that people
instinctively look towards,

because we are always programmed

to be looking for other people.
(LAUGHS)

I don't think you could surmise that
by painting himself all the time,

he was engrossed in the idea
of his own identity,

or the trauma that we might imagine

he was exploring about himself.

I think he was just, uh,

he was just painting the model
that he knew best.

It's a bit funny to
talk about van Gogh

because, actually, he wanted
to be named as Vincent,

and we know him as van Gogh.

Uh, but he signed his pictures
all with 'Vincent,'

partly because he didn't
like the family name.

partly, perhaps,
this is also tradition

with great masters,
so Rembrandt is also a first name.

Van Gogh's personality was,
of course,

the personality of a driven man,
and a man obsessed.

Somebody who wanted
to achieve something in life, um,

partly that I tend to think had
something to do with his character.

It was a man who was easily...

who had emotions, strong emotions.

I mean, if you would go out with him
and go to the pub,

you would have,
within five or ten minutes...

well, not fighting,

but perhaps fighting with words,
which he certainly would,

uh, because he would immediately try
to convince you of his opinions.

Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853,

in the rural Dutch village
of Zundert,

near the border with Belgium.

He was the eldest son
in a family of six children,

and his father was the local
Protestant preacher.

Vincent attended a boarding school,

where he was well-educated,
learning several languages.

From an early age,
Vincent loved nature,

and being surrounded
by the natural world.

He would often go on long walks,

exploring the rural landscape
around him.

He also loved to read.

And this was the normal thing
in the 19th century.

If you belonged to the middle class,
you read.

And especially in a Protestant
family where the word is very
important,

you did read,
so the whole family did read books,

like we watch television nowadays.

But in the case of van Gogh,
this really grew

into "you have to read
to develop yourselves,

and to learn about yourself."

And that's what he did.

Vincent's father
decided that his eldest son

should be an apprentice at
Goupil & Co.,

an art dealership
partly founded by van Gogh's uncle,

also called Vincent.

Goupil was a very big firm,

with showrooms and offices
across Europe.

During this period, Vincent
became exposed to the art market,

visiting many galleries and museums.

He was quick to formulate his own
opinions on what appealed to him,

and started
communicating his thoughts
through letters with hisfamily,

and, particularly,
with his younger brother, Theo,

who had also joined Goupil.

Vincent was transferred
to Goupil's offices in London.

He moved into lodgings
in Brixton, South London,

and spent his time reading,
taking long walks,

and visiting museums.

Vincent became increasingly
disillusioned with his work,

but found solace
in reading and writing,

particularly religious texts.

The van Gogh that we know
was being born in London,

because he simply realised,
I think, at the time,

that he had to look
for something else.

He liked art,
but I don't think he liked

really what he was doing,
within the firm.

In 1875, Vincent was transferred

to Goupil's head office in Paris,

to improve a lacklustre
attitude to his work.

The plan failed,
and Vincent left Goupil and Co.,

having decided his path lay
with helping the disadvantaged.

"My dear Theo,

not a day goes by
without praying to God,

and without speaking of God.

Not only praying,
but also admitting to it.

Not only speaking,
but also holding fast to praying.

Oh, Lord, join us intimately
to one another,

and let our love for Thee
make that bond ever stronger."

He wanted to do something
with religion, wanted to preach.

And he thought, "You don't need
an academic degree

to be a minister."

But you know the Gospel very well,
by heart, like he almost did, um,

and you care for people, then you
can also preach the Word of God.

Um, he decided,
or it was more or less decided

within the family, that he would go

to a short course in Brussels,

in Belgium,
for the Protestant church,

to be trained, more or less,
as a preacher, an evangelist.

And after that, um,
he decided to go to the Borinage.

It was a difficult region,
the south of Belgium,

French-speaking, but French-speaking
with a heavy accent.

Quite difficult to understand
from the beginning,

as he said in his letters.

Um, but he wanted to be there,
it was a mining country.

"It's a sombre place.

And at first sight,
everything around it

has something dismal
and deathly about it.

The workers there are usually
people,

emaciated and pale, owing to fever.

Who look exhausted and haggard,

weather-beaten and prematurely old.

Later, I'll try and make
a sketch of it,

to give you an idea of it."

This is one of the earliest drawings
that we have in the collection.

It's from 1879, when van Gogh
was staying in Belgium,

in the Borinage, the mining region.

And what we see here is a coal mine,

with a little person standing here,

and some kind of animal in the
field.

It's er, it's a bit naive,
it's not yet as developed

as when he was really starting out
as a draftsman.

He's...he's experimenting
with pencil, and watercolour,

but this was before
he decided to become an artist.

Vincent's time in
the Borinage village of Petit-Wasmes

was full of self-sacrifice,

and dedication
to the small mining community.

But after six months, he lost
his position as an evangelist,

largely due to his poor skills
at delivering sermons.

From that moment on,
almost for a year,

we don't know really
what he actually did.

He didn't write any letters any more
to his brother, Theo.

We have some information
from letters of his parents to Theo,

where they talk about Vincent, and
they only have concern about him,

what he's going to do with his life.

When Theo and Vincent
started writing to each other again,

Vincent's despair
and wretched situation

were all too apparent.

Theo was now working
in the Paris office of Goupil & Co.,

and he thought
it might help his brother

if he considered a new path,
as an artist.

Van Gogh started
as an artist in 1880.

He was living in the Netherlands,

and he would stay there
for the next five years.

So the first half of his career,

he spent in the Netherlands,
what we call the Dutch period.

He was moving around
in the Netherlands.

He was living
in The Hague for a while,

where he took lessons
with Anton Mauve,

a well-known Hague school painter,
and he was also family of van Gogh,

so it was easy to get some training
with this established artist.

Van Gogh didn't take
traditional schooling,

he only went for a very brief period
to the academy,

when he started out as an artist,

and then decided that he would learn

his...being an artist by himself.

He used a lot of handbooks,

and he looked at other artists
intensely also,

during these five years in Holland.

We always tend to think that van
Gogh was an avant-garde artist,

but, in fact, if you look upon him,
he was quite old-fashioned.

Drawing remains
the main thing for an artist.

So he started that way,
he started the traditional way

of how you become an artist
in the 19th century.

You start with drawing.

Vincent kept working
on his technique in The Hague,

though finding willing models
was proving hard.

After setting up a studio
in his lodgings,

Vincent met a prostitute called
Clasina Maria Hoornik, known as Sien,

who was pregnant and living rough
with a four-year-old child.

He decided to invite her
to live with him.

The arrangement was kept secret
from the family,

as Vincent was using money
sent by Theo to support them both.

Vincent cared greatly
for Sien and her children.

They became part
of his domestic life,

and the subject of many
drawings and studies.

When Vincent's relationship
with Sien was discovered,

his family, including Theo,
put pressure on him to finish,

which he did with great sadness

and after a long period
of contemplation.

He was 30, and it was the first time

he felt he had a family
of his own to care for.

Vincent left The Hague,
and travelled North,

to the flatlands of Drenthe.

Here, he lived a frugal life,

and captured the landscape on paper,

until he eventually moved back
to the family home,

which was now located
in the Dutch village of Nuenen.

He was considered
by locals as eccentric,

a loner, strange.

But nothing would deter him
from walking into the countryside

with his artist materials,

endlessly attempting
to capture rural life.

It's interesting to see
that he always had this crude,

sort of bold way of drawing.

In the beginning, he was trying
to fight against it.

And then, at some point,
he understood

that this whole expressiveness
that just keeps pouring out

of his chalk or his pencil

was just his strongest asset,
in a sense.

And he learned how to use it
in a very strong way.

So I think his marks in his drawings

helped him also to paint,

because he figures out,

what is his mark? What is his style?

When van Gogh started as an artist,

he admired the French landscape
tradition greatly,

especially as it was
painted by Daubigny

in a very personal, not sentimental,
but more realistic mood,

but very personal
and very free in his brushwork.

And this, of course, was also

the ambition of van Gogh,
when he started as an artist.

So these French landscape painters

like Daubigny, like Millet,
were his great models.

So, looking at all these great
French landscape painters,

he...he tried to convey
the same, er, mood

of...of human versus nature.

"My dear Theo,
one would be wrong to my mind,

to give a peasant painting
a certain conventional smoothness.

If a peasant painting smells
of bacon, smoke, potato steam,

fine, that's not unhealthy.

If a stable smelled of manure,

very well,
that's what a stable's for.

If the field has an odour
of ripe wheat or potatoes

or of guano and manure,

that's really healthy,
particularly for city folk.

They get something useful
out of paintings like this.

But a peasant painting
mustn't become perfumed."

He was really
focusing very hard on this,

reading about it,
writing about it to Theo,

by making a lot of studies
of peasant hats, for example,

and, finally, his most ambitious
work, The Potato Eaters.

The play between light and dark,

the chiaroscuro, is so important
in this painting,

that makes it into,
technically and stylistically,

a very well-achieved painting.

This new way
of...of presenting the peasant

in a very stark and very...

well, almost expressive manner,

um, was pretty radical.

The people that you see
are not happy or sad,

they're just very tired
from this intense work,

and, for van Gogh,
it was something beautiful

that people worked hard,
he worked hard himself,

and, of course,
that's also something religious.

You work very hard, and you will
reap what you put in the ground.

Vincent believed The Potato Eaters

to be his greatest
accomplishment so far,

and showed it to both
Theo and Van Rappard,

but was met with an unenthusiastic
response from Theo,

and harsh criticism from Van Rappard.

Infuriated, he headed for Antwerp

to explore new ideas
and seek academic training.

In Antwerp, he first of all
went to the museums,

he discovered the Rubens,
for instance, the beautiful
colours of Rubens.

and especially
the brushwork of Rubens.

From now on,
when he would look at art,

he would always look
at how they were made.

Before he was a painter,
he would go to a museum,

and only talk about the images
he saw, and their sentiment.

But now he would only talk
about how they were made,

how the brushwork was. He wanted to
learn something from the old
masters.

After a short time in Antwerp,

he decided to head for Paris
to be with his brother

and search out new inspiration.

In the late 19th century,
Paris was the centre of modern art,

and Montmartre was the centre
of artistic freedom.

The establishment lived elsewhere,
but the hill of Montmartre

was a place for young artists
and radical thought.

Vincent not only moved there
to be closer to Theo,

an increasingly successful
art dealer,

but also to involve himself
with a like-minded community,

that thrived in this multitude
of colourful bars,

burlesque theatres,
and bohemian cafes.

On arrival in Paris,
Vincent attended classes

at the studio of a well-known painter
called Fernand Cormon.

Young artists were left
to work in groups,

receiving advice once in a while
from the established Cormon.

Although Vincent was disappointed
with the level of tuition,

his time at the studio introduced him
to other young artists

who later became close friends.

Emile Bernard, John Russell,
and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec,

who introduced him to
the hedonistic world of Montmartre,

and engaged him in the artistic
dialogue he craved so much.

The Impressionists
like Monet and Pissarro

were already more or less
established
by the time that van Gogh arrived,

and their heydays were in the 1870s,

so there was this new generation
of...of young men

who wanted to change
and revolutionise the art world.

Shortly after Vincent arrived
in Paris,

the brothers moved to
a larger apartment,

54 Rue Lepic.

Van Gogh had a small room there
which he used as a studio,

and went outside to paint,
to just set up his easel and paint

the landscape which was still
quite rural in Montmartre.

On the hill, there were mills
and allotments, little gardens,

not yet as many apartment buildings
as there are today.

So, he was basically painting
everything that he came across.

Street scenes,
the view from his window,

but also still lifes in his studio,

when he couldn't go outside to
paint. And of course the many
self-portraits

of which we have several on view
here in the museum.

I think it's impossible to
understand what was happening

to van Gogh's palette and technique
when he moved to Paris

without seeing the contexts
that he worked,

and it was such a...a great change

from what he was doing in Holland.

Of course,
it didn't happen overnight,

but it went really quickly.

Then in that time,
his colour had changed dramatically.

It became very bright and very pure.

He used pure colours
in his paintings.

His brushstroke changed.
He was very much influenced

by the Pointillists who were
painting in short stripes and dots.

The woman that we see on the
portrait is Agostina Segatori.

She was the owner of a bar
in Montmartre,

which was called Le Tambourin,
a bar where artists frequently came,

and van Gogh, at some point,
he had a relationship with Agostina,

and he also exhibited in her bar.

He hung his own paintings
on the wall,

and he even organised an exhibition

of Japanese prints
from his own collection.

The portrait of Agostina Segatori
is hanging

next to a portrait
by Toulouse-Lautrec,

painted in the same time,
same year, actually. 1887.

And we have hung
those two paintings together

because they show a similar subject,
a similar composition,

of a woman sitting at a cafe table,
which was, again,

a very modern subject at the time.

Another important thing he
discovered in Paris were Japanese
prints.

There was this rage about
Japanese art in Paris at that time.

Some of his artworks are direct
translations of these prints.

He really copied them in colour
in his own way.

But also, the way that they made
cropped compositions,

or they used a very stark
perspective

are also reflected in van Gogh's
art.

Paris was too overwhelming
in the end for van Gogh.

It was too much visual noise,
too much things going on.

And he needed to step away
from it all,

and to be physically removed

from the centre of the world,
basically.

So, he decided to leave.

He longed for a warmer climate,

and he was also anxious to discover
the colours of the south,

of the strong light
and the effect that

that would have on the countryside,

on the landscape, such as the land
that he knew from the Japanese
print.

So, when he arrived in Arles, he was
really hoping to find a new utopia.

"My dear Theo, during the journey,

I thought at least as much about you
as about the new country I was in.

But I tell myself that you'll
perhaps come here as often yourself
later on.

It seems to be almost impossible
to be able to work in Paris

unless you have a refuge
in which you recover

and regain your peace of mind
and self-composure.

Without that, you'll be bound to go
utterly mental.

Arles doesn't seem any bigger than
Montmartre.

Before reaching Tarascon, I noticed
some magnificent scenery.

Huge yellow rocks, oddly jumbled
together in the most imposing
shapes.

In the small valleys
between these rocks,

there are rows of little round trees
with olive green,

or grey-green foliage,
which could well be lemon trees."

He always went out early in the
morning with all his painting gear.

And he often painted
and drew a subject

from various angles
and in series of works.

I think that, for me,
painting is all about light.

And as an artist, you've got to
notice it and scrutinise it

because it shapes the world
around us every day,

and most of the time,
we don't give it a second thought.

And it might well be an overcast
day, where everything feels

a lot more muted
and softer and cooler,

and the shadows aren't so extreme,
and you're searching

for the difference between areas
of a building that are

supposedly closer to the sun
than those that are away from it,

or it might be a blazing hot
Mediterranean day,

when the sun is really shaping
and sculpting

in combination
with rich, dark shadows.

So, he's experiencing the weather,
the temperature, the wind.

He's gauging all of that.

And when you get into the zone
as a painter, and you're out there,

that energy becomes almost hypnotic.

You're painting and you're
responding to what's happening in
front of you,

you're mixing pigments
in your palette,

and maybe you drop your brush
and you get some earth

on the brush,
and it mixes into the colour.

You become at one
with this whole experience.

And you can almost get into
a kind of weird trance.

More than being a landscape painter,

he wanted to be
a painter of portraits.

And this is something that he really
started to do

in a very serious way in Provence.

He asked people from the town
to pose for him,

such as an old woman of Arles.

All kinds of portraits
of ordinary people,

everyday people, everyday life.

Such were the things that he wanted
to paint, and draw in Arles.

When van Gogh was living in Arles,
he started to have this dream

about an artist colony, and he hoped
that other artists would join him.

And they could work together,
share their materials together,

discuss art, and together they would

make better art,
and become better artists.

One of these artists was Gauguin,
and he came in the end.

In preparation of Gauguin's arrival,
van Gogh started a campaign

of painting canvasses as kind of
decoration for his yellow house.

And he started to make
specific paintings

that would hang in
Gauguin's bedroom,

and it was a very beautiful series

of nowadays icons
of van Gogh's work.

Gauguin and van Gogh worked and lived
together for two months in Arles.

They drank and ate together
and painted the same models

side by side in the yellow house.

Unfortunately,
it didn't end that well.

As most people know,
it ended with the famous incident

that van Gogh cut off
part of his ear.

They had a huge argument,

probably also about art
and what modern art should be about.

Their characters
didn't go well together.

Gauguin left Arles, and van Gogh
was hospitalised for a longer period

to...to, um, well,
recover from his ear injury.

The paintings of the sunflowers
and his bedroom

were very important to Vincent.

They reflected the ambitions
that he set himself while in Arles.

Critics of the day
and observers of the avant-garde

recognised that the sunflowers were
something completely new and unique.

These paintings may have become icons
after van Gogh's death,

but they'd always been
very important,

not only to Vincent
but also to his brother Theo

and to other artists from his circle,
like Gauguin.

Van Gogh was
an incredibly creative person,

and tried out many
different techniques,

and experimented with things
that he'd picked up along the way,

but combining them in his own
personal approach.

And what we see is that he often
experimented with extremes.

So, first painting were very dilute
oil paint, for example,

and then switching just a month
later to using thick, creamy,

what we call impaste,
a very strongly textured paint.

Though he was using
basically the same materials

for these different approaches, um,

we do have to adjust our technique
of treating paintings

according to the, you know,
the build-up of the layers

and the way that the paint
is applied.

So, this is an example
of a painting that I'm restoring.

It's a view of Arles with irises
in the foreground,

painted in May 1888.

And what you can see,
what I'm actually doing is

reversing the restoration
carried out by my predecessor.

Apparently, the conservator
who worked on the painting in 1927

found this transition
very disturbing,

so he applied retouches to soften

this transition,
to blend it into each other,

even though, as in this case,
van Gogh did not

intend his French paintings
to be varnished

because he preferred a modern
matte surface.

After recovering from his ordeal
in hospital,

Vincent went back to his studio
in his yellow house

and realised his dream of an artistic
brotherhood had been shattered.

The episode of the cutting of the ear

was the start of a very difficult
period in his life,

blighted by seizures
and bouts of illness.

Van Gogh stayed a little longer
in Arles, in and out of hospital,

and finally, he decided that he
needed to get away from Arles.

And he committed himself

to an asylum in Saint-Remy,
not far from Arles.

He stayed there for a long time, and
he was treated for what he called

his, well, lunacy or his illness,
his moments of depression.

We'll never know exactly
what his illness was.

The doctor wrote down that he had
a type of epilepsy,

so it was close to some kind of
madness in the eyes of many people.

Painting is a difficult, troubling,

and enormously frustrating activity.

Every day, when I stand
in front of my canvas,

I will expose the gap between

what I want to achieve
and what I can achieve,

And the greatest artists in history

have been possessed by the need to
create art and it exhausts them.

And it's real. That bit is real.

Painting takes it out of you,

if you're doing it as a conviction,
as a passion.

Um, and that's no lie.
(CHUCKLES) That's for real.

In Saint-Remy,
in spite of his illness,

he created a lot of works
that are considered his best works.

It's amazing how he managed to
recover every time

and to continue to really develop
his work,

his way of painting,
his way of drawing.

The Irises, for example, he'd done
at the end of his days in Saint-Remy

and during this period, he created
an amazing amount of masterpieces.

"My dear Theo, I have a wheat field,
very yellow and very bright,

perhaps the brightest canvas
I've done.

The cypresses still preoccupy me.

I'd like to do something with them
like the canvasses of the
sunflowers,

because it astonishes me that no-one
has yet done them as I see them.

It's beautiful as regards
lines and proportions,

like an Egyptian obelisk,

and the green has such
a distinguished quality.

To do nature here, as everywhere,

one must really be here
for a long time."

He made beautiful close-ups
of undergrowth

or butterflies, roses in the garden,

He painted the view of his window.

On the fields stood olive groves
around the asylum.

But he also asked Theo to send him
several of his favourite artworks,

such as paintings by Millet,
Delacroix, Rembrandt in print.

So, he received his black and white
prints from Theo,

and he started copying them
like he did before

when he started out as an artist.

After a year in the asylum,
van Gogh was feeling stronger,

and was anxious to move,
to get away from the institutional

atmosphere of Saint-Remy.

It was time to move back north
and be closer to Theo,

who had by this time,
married Jo Bonger

and had a child named Vincent Willem.

Although Vincent was keen
to be closer to his brother,

Paris was considered too much
for his fragile state of mind.

So, he asked Theo to find him
a location close to Paris

with a doctor who could keep
an eye on him.

Theo made inquiries, and through
the painter Camille Pissarro,

found a homoeopathic doctor
called Paul Gachet

in the rural village
of Auvers-sur-Oise,

just to the north of the capital.

Gachet was both a well-known doctor
and a well-known collector,

and would keep an eye on Vincent,
while offering his companionship

as one who understood artists
and the art world.

When Vincent went to Auvers,
one of the first letters
he wrote to Theo in Paris

is quite a remarkable thing he said

is that he felt that his whole life
had been a failure,

that he was a failure as a painter.

We know that van Gogh really thought
that ambition was gone in his life,

he was still working, but he was
more working like a madman.

But why are you working
like a madman?

You're working like a madman because
you want to push certain thoughts

out of your mind which you do not
want to think about.

Vincent was at a very low point.

Illness, despair,
and an uncertain future

weighed heavy on his mind.

In the afternoon
of July the 27th, 1890,

Vincent left his lodgings
and disappeared into the countryside.

On his return that evening,
he was evidently in great pain.

He confessed to having shot himself
in the chest,

and Dr Gachet was called
to tend the wound.

Theo arrived in haste the next day.

Vincent lay in some agony,

but still managed to smoke his pipe
and talk with Theo,

until the following day,
he fell into unconsciousness

and died on the 29th of July
in his brother's arms.

"I want to die like this."

Many people have thought,
because of that fear

that's been expressed
in this picture,

that it also was his last picture

and it's been described as such.
It wasn't.

But people are right to think
in the interpretation of the picture

that there is a kind of fearness
in it.

The idea that you're being
overwhelmed by something

which you cannot do anything about,
and will threaten you.

That's the idea of the picture.

Tree Roots is his last picture.

So, that's the picture that he made
in the morning before he died.

Vincent's art wasn't appreciated
very well by the audience,

by the people during his life.

But at the end of his life,
his contemporaries, his peers,

considered him as one of
the most important,

maybe the most important artist
of the avant-garde of that time.

Van Gogh hoped to move and touch

and inspire or console
as many people as possible,

and I don't think the fact
that he's so successful now,

that his paintings belong to the
most expensive paintings in the
world,

or that we have so many visitors
at the van Gogh Museum,

that's not, um,
it's not the financial success,

it's really about some
sincere ambition

that he wanted to make
this connection,

and to be...to try to give answers

to all of our questions
about our existence, about life,

and the fact that he's still
able to make that connection

to so many people, that would have
pleased him the most.

"My dear Theo, man is not placed
on the Earth merely to be happy,

nor is he placed here
merely to be honest.

He is here to accomplish great
things through society,

to arrive at nobleness,
and to outgrow the vulgarity

in which the existence of almost
all individuals drags on.

Art is long and life is short,

and we must wait patiently while
trying to sell our skin dearly."

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