Willem-Jan Verlinden - The Van Gogh Sisters

Vincent van Gogh, Parsonage Seen from the Back, 1884. Pen, black chalk, heightened with white, 24 36 cm (9 14 in.). This drawing was owned by Lies van Gogh until 1928.

Willem-Jan Verlinden was born in the Netherlands and studied art history in Leiden. He has worked for a number of museums and art foundations and is the co-author, with Kristine Gorenhart, of How I Love London: Walking Through Vincent Van Goghs London.

Vincent van Gogh: A Life in Letters

Edited by Nienke Bakker, Leo Jansen and Hans Luijten

Vincents Portraits

Ralph Skea

Vincents Books: Van Gogh and the Writers Who Inspired Him

Mariella Guzzoni

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It seems difficult to imagine now, but there was a time I did not know Vincent van Gogh had three younger sisters. I only discovered Anna, Elisabeth and Willemien van Gogh in the course of research I was undertaking for another book on Vincent and his London years. Quickly I became fascinated by these three women and their eventful lives. As I investigated them further, I was greatly rewarded, discovering hundreds of letters they had written and that were saved letters to their parents, to each other, to uncles and aunts and to their now famous brothers. I also found dozens of other documents: school reports, certificates, diplomas, medical reports, photos, and of course drawings and paintings by Vincent, including the ones he had made for his youngest sister Willemien (Wil) and their mother.

I decided to undertake an extensive study of all this material hidden away in archives, libraries, family photo albums and of course the collection of The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and to make the letters the backbone of a new narrative that would bring the three sisters out of their brothers shadow.

Most of these documents have survived out of the love of family and friends, and the habit of collecting letters, dated in order of receipt, with a ribbon around them. As Vincent became more and more famous over the course of the twentieth century, family members and museums were more careful to preserve everything they had on him, and started to deliberately collect things.

There is of course Vincent himself as well, who depicts his relatives in letters, drawings and paintings. He drew and painted not only his mother and Willemien, but also the houses they lived in, the churches his father preached in, the gardens and courtyards they played in and the nature surrounding them in the villages where they lived as a family, their home base in the North Brabant period of their joint history.

In 2016 my book on the Van Gogh sisters was published in Dutch. This book, and all the sisters letters, could only be read in that language until Thames & Hudson decided to publish it in English. And now here it is, in your hands: a book in English about the lives of Vincent van Goghs sisters, based in large part on their letters.

After the Dutch edition was published, I became acquainted with people who had known Vincents sisters, as well as some of their descendants, all of whom were kind enough to grant me access to personal documents and photographs of their great-great-grandmothers or their relatives acquaintances. And as a result you are holding a unique document, containing letters that have rarely, or never before, been published in English or in any other language, interspersed with photographs of the Van Goghs from family archives that have never been seen by anyone outside the immediate family circle.

I hope that Vincents sisters become as dear to you as they have become to me even though Vincent himself occasionally could not stand them. Because indeed, you not only get to know the sisters, but of course you also learn much more about Vincent and the rest of the Van Gogh family, through their own words.

In 1885, the Protestant Van Gogh family was living in the village of Nuenen, in the Dutch province of North Brabant. On Thursday 26 March that year, Reverend Theodorus (Dorus) van Gogh, father of Vincent van Gogh and his five siblings, arrived home after a long journey across the heathland and collapsed at the parsonage doorstep. The familys servant was just able to catch the minister as he fell, and word was sent to his youngest daughter, Willemien, who was visiting neighbours. She ran home and attempted to resuscitate her father, but it was too late: Dorus van Gogh, known as Pa to his children, had died, aged sixty-three.

Dorus van Gogh. Date and photographer unknown.

The Protestant reverend was buried in the Tomakker general cemetery, at the foot of Nuenens old tower, on 30 March 1885. The burial site could be located from a distance because of this tower, also visible from the garden of the parsonage. Vincent made a drawing of just this angle with pencil, pen and ink in March 1884 (see

Vincent van Gogh, Parsonage at Nuenen, 1885. Oil on canvas, 33.2 43 cm (13 17 in.).

Doruss sudden passing escalated a tension that had been smouldering in the family for years. Vincent, approaching his thirty-second birthday when his father died and still living in the family home, had become more and more of a nuisance to his parents. His eccentric habits and occasional outright belligerence were an embarrassment to Dorus, whose authority over his flock depended in part on his familys comportment. Not long after the funeral, Anna, the eldest of the Van Gogh sisters, and Vincent had an explosive argument over Vincents continued presence at the family home, which she and her siblings felt threatened not only his mothers well-being but also the familys standing in the village just as he had their fathers. It was this confrontation that provoked Vincent to leave his home, and the Netherlands, for good. By the end of the year he moved to Antwerp, and from there travelled to France to pursue his dream of becoming a painter.

His sister Willemien, known as Wil, was just twenty-three years old when she found her father dead at the family home. She was a caring young woman who was close to her siblings and mother (who the children called Moe, pronounced moo). While her older brothers and sisters each left home in their turn, Willemien stayed with Moe to help look after the household, and moved with her to the town of Breda after Pas death. Dorus had grown up there; his father, Vincent, had been minister at the Grote Kerk (Main Church) and pastor at the Koninklijke Militaire Academie (Royal Military Academy). Moe and Willemien lived in Breda for only a few years before moving to the university town of Leiden, where Anna lived with her husband and daughters.