Van Gogh, who killed himself at the age of 37, looks out of the many self-portraits he left behind. When he was alive, according to his father, he walked with bent head: depression was one of his responses to the fear of abandonment. From some of the portraits he looks straight at us and this is tantamount to looking into us, if we are willing to let him do so, and also to looking into himself. From other portraits he looks just slightly past us, avoiding our eyes, frightened, idealizing and then attacking those elders who were useless to him, so that ulimately he turned the attack against himself.

In life, the only person who could tolerate him for any length of time was his brother