Van Gogh Letters to Theo: 902 Letters, the 10 Most Important, and What They Say About His Greatest Paintings

Last updated: May 2026 · By Stanislav Arnautov · Berlin

Vincent van Gogh (Zundert, 1853 – Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890) wrote 902 surviving letters to multiple correspondents across 18 years of correspondence (1872–1890). Of these, 819 were written to his brother Theo van Gogh (1857–1891) — the correspondence that constitutes the primary archive. Additional letters were written to his sister Wil (Willemina), to Paul Gauguin, to Émile Bernard, to Albert Aurier, and to other artists and correspondents. The letters were preserved by Theo's wife Jo van Gogh-Bonger (1862–1925) after both Vincent and Theo's deaths (Theo died in January 1891, six months after Vincent) and published by Jo in a Dutch edition in 1914. The complete critical edition — including all letters, all annotations, all reproductions of the sketches contained in the letters — was published by the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam and Huygens Institute in 2009 and is freely available at vangoghletters.org. DeckArts reproduces Van Gogh's works on Grade-A Canadian maple from approximately $140, shipping from Berlin.

How Many Letters and to Whom

The 902 surviving Van Gogh letters break down as follows:

The languages of the letters vary: the majority are in Dutch (Van Gogh's native language), with significant portions in French (particularly during the Paris, Arles, and Saint-Rémy periods, when Van Gogh was writing from France and occasionally writing to French correspondents) and a smaller number in English (Van Gogh was fluent in English from his years in London, 1873–75). The 2009 Van Gogh Museum critical edition provides all letters in their original language with translations into Dutch and English for all non-Dutch originals.

Theo van Gogh: The Art Dealer Who Funded Everything

Theodorus van Gogh (Zundert, 1857 – Utrecht, 1891) — known as Theo — was Vincent's younger brother by four years and the person without whom Van Gogh's career as a painter would not have been financially possible. Theo worked as an art dealer at the Paris branch of the Boussod, Valadon & Cie gallery (formerly Goupil & Cie, the firm where Vincent had also worked as a young man) from 1879 until his death in 1891. He was a successful art dealer who championed Impressionist artists — selling works by Monet, Pissarro, Degas, and Gauguin — at a time when the Paris art market was still ambivalent about the Impressionist movement.

Theo sent Vincent 150 francs per month throughout most of the period from 1880 to 1890 — a steady financial support that constituted the entirety of Vincent's income as a painter. In return, Vincent sent Theo the majority of his completed paintings, which accumulated in Theo's Paris apartment and in storage. The agreement was explicit: the paintings were considered partial repayment of the financial support, and Theo hoped to eventually sell them through his gallery. He managed to sell only one Van Gogh painting during Vincent's lifetime: The Red Vineyard (1888) to Anna Boch at the Les Vingt exhibition in Brussels (January 1890) for 400 francs.

Theo was six months younger than Vincent when he died: he collapsed in October 1890, three months after Vincent's death, from what was then described as a nervous breakdown followed by physical deterioration. He died at a clinic in Utrecht in January 1891 at age 33. Jo van Gogh-Bonger, his wife of less than two years, was left with a newborn son (Vincent Willem, born 31 January 1890), an apartment full of Van Gogh's paintings, and the complete letter archive. She preserved and championed both.

What the Letters Contain: Pigments, Books, Paintings, Food

The Van Gogh letters are simultaneously the most intimate personal document of the 19th century and the most comprehensive archive of a professional painter's working practice available for any canonical Western artist. They contain:

Pigment specifications: Van Gogh named specific pigments, brands, and quantities in dozens of letters. He distinguished between chrome yellow (the most saturated warm yellow, also the most toxic), cadmium yellow (warmer, more stable, more expensive), zinc yellow (cooler, less stable), and various ochres. He described Prussian blue, ultramarine, cobalt blue, and cerulean blue as distinct colours with distinct uses. He discussed the interactions between specific pigments and the drying behaviour of different oil media. The letters are a primary source for the pigment analysis that the Van Gogh Museum's conservation team has conducted on the original works.

Books read: Van Gogh was an obsessive reader. The letters list hundreds of specific books, authors, and passages that he was reading contemporaneously with his painting practice. Dickens, Zola, Maupassant, Hugo, Tolstoy, George Eliot, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Thomas Carlyle, Jules Michelet, and many others appear across the correspondence. He frequently quoted passages directly in his letters and described how specific books were influencing his thinking about painting. The letters are a primary source for understanding Van Gogh's intellectual formation and the literary influences on his visual art.

Specific paintings described: Van Gogh described the making of specific paintings in enough detail that the Van Gogh Museum's catalogue team has used the letter descriptions to date and identify works whose provenance is otherwise unclear. The letters for the Arles period (February 1888 – May 1889) are the most densely descriptive: Van Gogh was writing to Theo frequently (sometimes multiple letters per week) and describing each painting as it was made, including its dimensions, its palette, its subject, and its intended meaning.

Food and money: The letters document Van Gogh's chronic malnutrition and financial precarity in specific, painful detail. Multiple letters describe going without food for 2–3 days because he had spent the food money on paint. He described his diet during the Arles period as primarily bread, coffee, and alcohol, with occasional restaurant meals. The letters to Theo frequently contain requests for money that are simultaneously apologetic (for needing it) and specific (for the exact amount and the exact purpose it would be used for).

10 Most Important Letters for Understanding Van Gogh

1. Letter 274 (December 1882, The Hague): "I feel a power in me that I must develop, a fire that I may not quench, but must keep ablaze." The earliest clear statement of Van Gogh's conviction about his calling as a painter.

2. Letter 533 (September 1885, Nuenen): Extended analysis of Delacroix's colour theory and its application to Van Gogh's own painting practice. The first comprehensive statement of his colour philosophy.

3. Letter 605 (August 1888, Arles): Description of the Night Café (Yale University Art Gallery): "In my picture of the Night Café I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime." Van Gogh's most explicit statement of expressive intent for a specific painting.

4. Letter 628 (October 1888, Arles): Description of the Bedroom in Arles and its complete colour programme: "The walls are pale violet. The floor is red tiles..." The most detailed colour description of any Van Gogh painting.

5. Letter 663 (November 1888, Arles): Description of the Starry Night on the Rhône (not the MoMA Starry Night — a different nocturnal painting from Arles). Van Gogh's first extended description of painting under artificial and celestial light.

6. Letter 686 (December 1888, Arles): Written immediately before the ear incident. Documents the deteriorating relationship with Gauguin and Van Gogh's psychological state in the days before the crisis.

7. Letter 756 (June 1889, Saint-Rémy): Description of the Starry Night (MoMA New York): "Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?" Van Gogh's description of the MoMA Starry Night is brief and unenthusiastic compared to its eventual canonical status.

8. Letter 833 (January 1890, Saint-Rémy): Van Gogh's response to Albert Aurier's critical appreciation article (the first major positive critical assessment of his work published in his lifetime). Van Gogh characteristically argues the praise belongs more properly to Gauguin and Monticelli.

9. Letter 856 (February 1890, Saint-Rémy): "I started straight away on the bedroom with blossom against a blue sky. I put my whole heart into it." Description of Almond Blossom, painted for the newborn Vincent Willem.

10. Letter 902 (July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise): Van Gogh's final letter to Theo, found unsent in his pocket after he was shot on 27 July 1890. Contains: "Well, my own work, I am risking my life for it and my reason has half foundered owing to it."

Jo van Gogh-Bonger: The Woman Who Saved the Letters

Johanna Gezina van Gogh-Bonger (Amsterdam, 1862 – Amsterdam, 1925) married Theo van Gogh in April 1889, ten months before Vincent's death and fourteen months before Theo's death. She was 27 when she became a widow with a newborn son and the responsibility for preserving and promoting the work of a painter who was not yet recognised as one of the most significant artists of the 19th century. The recognition that followed — and that makes the Van Gogh Museum possible today — was primarily the result of Jo's sustained 34-year effort of preservation, exhibition, and publication.

Jo's specific contributions: she organised the first major Van Gogh retrospective at the Panorama building in Amsterdam in 1892, one year after Theo's death. She translated the letters from Dutch into English (the first English-language Van Gogh biography and letter selection appeared in 1914 based on her translations). She negotiated with museums and galleries across Europe to exhibit the works. She refused to sell the core collection despite significant financial pressure, keeping the most significant works together. She died in 1925; her son Vincent Willem continued her work and ultimately established the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam in 1973.

vangoghletters.org: The Free Complete Archive

The complete critical edition of the Van Gogh letters was published in 2009 by the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam and the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands as a six-volume print edition and a freely accessible online archive at vangoghletters.org. The online archive contains all 902 letters in their original language, with translations into English and Dutch for all non-Dutch originals, complete scholarly annotations for every biographical and art historical reference in each letter, high-resolution reproductions of all sketches included in the letters (Van Gogh frequently included small pen drawings of paintings he was describing), and a complete index searchable by date, location, correspondent, and text.

The vangoghletters.org archive is one of the most significant open-access humanities resources on the internet. It allows anyone to read the complete Van Gogh correspondence in chronological sequence, to search for specific paintings by their letter descriptions, and to cross-reference biographical events with the letters written immediately before and after them. The letter describing the Night Café (Letter 605), the Bedroom (Letter 628), Almond Blossom (Letter 856), and the final unsent letter (Letter 902) are all freely available at full scholarly annotation level.

What the Letters Say About His Most Famous Paintings

Starry Night (June 1889, MoMA New York): Van Gogh described the Starry Night only briefly and without the enthusiasm that the painting's eventual canonical status would suggest he should have felt. In Letter 756 he called it "an exaggeration in terms of style" and expressed ambivalence about its relationship to what he considered his stronger work — the daytime olive tree paintings. He did not consider the Starry Night his best Saint-Rémy work. This disconnect between Van Gogh's own assessment and the painting's eventual status as the most visited work in MoMA is one of the most striking ironies in the history of art criticism.

Sunflowers (1888, National Gallery London and Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam): Van Gogh described the Sunflowers series enthusiastically in multiple letters as room decoration for Gauguin's bedroom in the Yellow House. He wrote to Gauguin directly that he had "decorated my room with sunflowers" and described the intended colour programme: chrome yellow dominant, warm and hot, the colour of the Provençal summer. The letters confirm the Sunflowers' status as the most specifically decorative and domestically intended major works in Van Gogh's oeuvre.

Night Café (September 1888, Yale University Art Gallery): Van Gogh's description of the Night Café in Letter 605 is the most explicit statement of expressive intent for any Van Gogh painting: "I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime. I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green." This letter is the primary documentary source for the painting's expressive programme and has been cited in virtually every major Van Gogh scholarly publication.

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FAQ

How many letters did Van Gogh write to Theo?

Vincent van Gogh wrote 819 surviving letters to his brother Theo van Gogh between 1872 and 1890, part of a 902-letter complete correspondence that also includes letters to his sister Wil, to Émile Bernard, to Paul Gauguin, to Albert Aurier, and others. The letters constitute the most extensive written record of a visual artist's working process in history. The complete critical edition is freely available at vangoghletters.org, published in 2009 by the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam and the Huygens Institute.

What did Van Gogh write to Theo about?

Van Gogh's letters to Theo cover: specific pigments and their properties, books he was reading (Dickens, Zola, Maupassant, Hugo, Tolstoy), descriptions of specific paintings being made (including palette, dimensions, and intended meaning), his financial situation (requests for money, descriptions of going without food), his mental health, his diet, his relationships with other artists, and his theoretical understanding of colour. The letters for the Arles period (1888–89) are the most detailed and the most extensively cited in Van Gogh scholarship.

What is Van Gogh's last letter?

Van Gogh's last letter (Letter 902, July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise) was found unsent in his pocket after he shot himself on 27 July 1890. It was addressed to Theo and contains: "Well, my own work, I am risking my life for it and my reason has half foundered owing to it." The letter also expresses continued concern about Theo's health and financial situation, and discusses several paintings Van Gogh was working on in the final days at Auvers. It is freely available at vangoghletters.org.

Article Summary

Van Gogh wrote 902 surviving letters (1872–1890): 819 to Theo, 22 to sister Wil, 22 to Émile Bernard, 17 to Gauguin, others. Languages: Dutch (primary), French, English. Theo van Gogh (Zundert 1857 – Utrecht 1891): art dealer at Boussod Valadon Paris, sent 150 francs/month throughout 1880–1890, died 6 months after Vincent at age 33. Jo van Gogh-Bonger (1862–1925): preserved letters, organised 1892 Amsterdam retrospective, translated to English, refused to sell core collection, died 1925. 2009 complete critical edition: Van Gogh Museum + Huygens Institute, 6 volumes + vangoghletters.org (free, searchable, fully annotated). 10 key letters: #274 (fire/calling), #605 (Night Café expressive intent), #628 (Bedroom colour programme), #756 (Starry Night ambivalence), #856 (Almond Blossom), #902 (final unsent). DeckArts from ~$140. Canadian maple. UV archival 100+ years. Berlin. 30-day return.

About the Author

Stanislav Arnautov is the founder of DeckArts and a creative director originally from Ukraine, now based in Berlin.