Van Gogh [antikvár]

"There is something within mc —what can it be ?" That was what Van Gogh was trying to find out in the years of heartbreak and failure which he devoted to the service of a crucl and hostile society. Only at the age of 27, in the depths of winter, among the poorest workers in the world—the miners of the Borinagc— did he discover his true vocation. He turned to painting becausc religion had failed him, but the Biblical story of the asccnt of man "out of the shadows into the light" might be taken as an allegory of his own progress from the northern mists into the bright sunshine of the Midi: The successive stages of this brilliant and mclancholy pilgrimage, which ended in the tragedy of Auvers-sur-Oise, arc dearly marked and form a series of logical steps in the development of Van Gogh's art. His stay in Provence—^"the great period," as it has been rightly called—is the climax, "I want to sec this brighter sun at last"—that was Van Gogh's avowed reason for going to Aries, and there, in a few months (from 21st February, 1888 until 9th May, 1889), he produced, "like a painting-