It is 1882. Vincent Van Gogh is twenty-seven years old and living in the Hague. He has been pursuing a career as an artist for two years, after various well meant but abortive attempts to establish himself as an evangelical preacher ministering to the poor in rural Holland. Too  excitable, too volatile, not cut out for the job, the church fathers had said. He had been asked to leave. He is calmer now, less prone to the wild mood-swings that have plagued him in the past. But life as an art student has not been going altogether smoothly.

There is tension in the family. His father, the Reverend Theodorus Van Gogh, is bitterly disappointed with him for leaving the priesthood. And now young Vincent has scandalised his friends and family by moving his pregnant model, a prostitute named Sien Hoornik, into his house. There have been ramifications. His teacher, the Hague school painter Anthon Mauve, wants nothing to do with him any more.
 
Despite the difficulties, Van Gogh is convinced that he is on the right path. If Mauve is going to be such a prude, he will teach himself the rudiments of art. He makes his own perspective frame from four pieces of wood and a mesh of strings, and draws a picture of it in a letter to his beloved brother Theo. “I’ve found my work,” he writes, “ something which I live for heart and soul ... I have a certain faith in art, a certain trust that it’s a powerful current that drives a person.”

Coming from almost anyone else in his position, it would be pretentious guff. But what wonderful art he has indeed been creating: darkly atmospheric landscapes, capturing the lonely feel of the marshlands surrounding the city; men and horses ploughing...

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