Two chairs. Each of them dominating the painting it appears in. Positioned at an angle, touching the edges of the canvas, they have a monumental quality, and seem to be saying: "Go ahead, sit down." Both chairs are unoccupied. There are only one or two objects on them, waiting to be removed or picked up by the person they belong to. Both of these chairs dominate the pictures, filling the painted space, solid, palpable; yet they are intensely related to each other, too, like two panels of a diptych that achieve new unity in being brought together. Juxtaposed, the chairs will be looking at each other, as it were, offering an invitation to talk, to confide; or else, back to back, they will have turned away from each other, as if they had nothing more to say and existed in different worlds.

Two chairs. Each of them dominating the painting it appears in. Positioned at an angle, touching the edges of the canvas, they have a monumental quality, and seem to be saying: "Go ahead, sit down." Both chairs are unoccupied. There are only one or two objects on them, waiting to be removed or picked up by the person they belong to. Both of these chairs dominate the pictures, filling the painted space, solid, palpable; yet they are intensely related to each other, too, like two panels of a diptych that achieve new unity in being brought together. Juxtaposed, the chairs will be looking at each other, as it were, offering an invitation to talk, to confide; or else, back to back, they will have turned away from each other, as if they had nothing more to say and existed in different worlds.

"Now, at any rate", wrote Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo (Letter 5631 in December 1888, when he painted the two chairs, "I can tell you that the latest two studies are most remarkable. One chair made of wood and extremely yellow wicker, up against the wall, on red tiles (by daylight). Then Gauguin’s armchair, red and green, a nocturnal mood, the wall and floor similarly red and green, two novels and a candle on the seat. On canvas, the paint thickly applied." The curious subjects van Gogh was taking were furniture in his house at Arles and represented the daily meeting-place of van Gogh and his guest, Paul Gauguin. The two painters would sit talking about Art and the affairs of the world, debating, quarrelling, till things went up in their faces: Gauguin’s sojourn was to be inseparably linked to the nervous breakdown from which van Gogh was never fully to recover. "A few days before we parted", van Gogh subsequently wrote to A. E. Aurier (Letter 626a), describing the nocturnal painting of Gauguin’s chair, "before illness forced me to enter a home, I tried to paint his empty chair."

FOREWORD Deserted

CHAPTER I THE MAKING OF AN ARTIST 1853-1883

The Family 1853-1875

Van Gogh's Other Art The Letters

The Religious Maniac 1875-1880

"No Beginning but in God" Van Gogh and Religion

First Steps as an Artist 1880-1881

Van Gogh's Early Models

Family Life The Hague 1882-1883

Art and Responsibility Commitments for the Future

No Soul, No Self Drente 1883

CHAPTER II THE YEARS IN NUENEN 1883-1885

An Artist Pure and Simple The First Year

Progress The Weavers Series

"With all my strength" Winter i884-I885

Painting as Manifesto The Potato Easter

Understanding and Suspicion Summer and Autum I885

Colour and the Finished Work Evolving a Theory of Art

CHAPTER III CITY LIFE 1885-1888

The Antwerp Interlude Winter 1885-1886

A Dutchman in Paris 1886-1888

Through the Window 1886

Isms, Isms, Isms The 1887 Watershed

The far East on his Doorstep Van Gogh and Japonism

FOREWORD The Unity of Art and Life

CHAPTER IV PAINTING AND UTOPIA  Arles, February 1888 to May 1889

Arles: The Heart of Japan

Personal Impressionism Orchards in Blossom

Under a Southern Sun May to August 1888

Working without Painting Van Gogh' s Drawings

Enchantment and Affliction The Night Paintings of September 1888

The Dream of an Artists' Community September and October 1888

Aesthetic Subtlety Van Gogh and Symbolism

Genius and Error: Gauguin in Arles October to December 1888

Art and Madness

The Supportive Power of Pictures January to May 1889

CHAPTER V "ALMOST A CRY OF FEAR" Saint-Remy, May 1889 to May 1890

The Monastic Life

Olives, Cypresses and Hills Van Gogh' s Compacted Landscape

The Portraits

Space and Colour Metaphors of Paradox

Exhibitions and Criticism Van Gogh's First Successes

Selfhood and Otherness Homage to the Masters

Ways of Escape The Final Months in Saint-Remy

Reverence and Awe Van Gogh and Nature

CHAPTER VI THE END Auvers-sur-Oise, May to July 1890

On Doctor Gachet's Territory

Frieze Art Van Gogh' s 'Art nouveau'

"I wish it were all over now" Suicide

A Revolution in Art: Modernism

APPENDICES Vincent van Gogh 1853-1890 A Chronology

Bibliography

Comparative Table of Catalogue Numbers

Index of Paintings

Index of Names