You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
With varying emphasis biographers of Vincent van Gogh have pointed out the solitariness and isolation which thread as a central motif through his life. Van Gogh's infancy and childhood must have been affected by being a replacement for a stillborn first child, also named Vincent, who had been born exactly one year earlier. Little is known of van Gogh's early childhood except for anecdotal evidence that he was often troublesome and self-willed, that he was indulged by 'tender-hearted parents', and that, independently, a number of schoolmates years later recalled his solitary ways. As van Gogh grew out of adolescence, he strove desperately to find a person or cause or calling which would give him peace and fulfilment. Throughout his life he struggled with melancholia and repeatedly identified himself with the miserable and forlorn.
When asked as a young man if a beautiful woman or girl would attract him, van Gogh had answered: 'I would feel more attraction for and would rather come in contact with one who was ugly or old, or in some way unhappy, but who through experience and sorrow had gained a mind and a soul (117, I, p. 160)1. The appeal he always felt for those who had suffered or were in trouble helps to account for van Gogh's unreasonable and extravagant love for his older widowed cousin, Kee. He was 28 years old then, living with his parents and finishing a year's self-directed study of perspective and drawing. Kee, stern faced and far from pretty, was a caring mother to her eight-year-old first-born son when Vincent fell in love with her. A second son had died as an infant four years before. Although faced with an immediate and adamant 'no, no never, ' van Gogh was obsessed in pursuing his courtship.
Despite the hopelessness of his suit, van Gogh worked energetically, in a state of near-euphoria suggestive of a manic denial of rejection and loss.
… it was at first as terrible a blow as a death sentence, and for a moment it absolutely crushed me to the g