Original subtitles

[Music]

on the 25th of january 1891

teo van gogh died at the age of 33.

just six months earlier his brother

vincent van gogh had also died

leaving behind an astonishing collection

of artworks that were almost completely

unknown

with the death of teo vincent's closest

confidante most ardent supporter the van

gogh artistic legacy hung in the balance

and the responsibility fell on the

shoulders of joanna bonga

teo's widow

[Music]

this was a great act of faith she may

only have met this very difficult person

her husband's brother two or three times

in her life and yet she determined to

keep together this legacy of painting

she did it with great tenacity and also

found

skill with lending pictures allowing

pictures to be bought so that slowly and

then increasingly quickly the fame of

vincent began to spread

[Music]

without joanna bonga vincent van gogh

may have been completely lost to the

world

in the decades that followed van gogh's

works have been on a truly remarkable

journey they inspired an entire artistic

movement they fell victim to the trials

of world war ii

they have been the target of greedy

forgers and daring thieves

and their value has skyrocketed from the

day they first caught the world's

attention

the man himself also became a legendary

figure thanks to the publication of the

letters between vincent and teo

and the story is still being told

a long-lost masterpiece by vincent van

gogh was only revealed in 2013.

i think van gogh will always have huge

commercial value because of the myth of

the man he really is this

character that everyone is fascinated by

she sold more than 250 works of art we

are sitting here having this

conversation because that's why even

goes has grown so famous she spread him

over the world

we have glimpses of his other lost

paintings some of which could still be

out there

[Music]

joanna bonga had only been married to

teo van gogh for two years when he died

with his passing she had inherited

almost all of vincent's works

but as a young widow with a newborn son

to care for she was in a very precarious

position

she had the assistance of her art loving

brother andreas but even he didn't

appreciate her new collection of

masterpieces

you could have your own room at home

mother could help with the boy

[Music]

what will you do for money

gianna was a middle-class dutch girl

sister of a friend of a dutchman living

in paris who was in the van gogh

brothers circle she was a very educated

woman she worked as a translator in the

library of the british museum

i think there's a mixture of sort of

dutch steeliness and victory and

sentimentality she doesn't seem to have

been tremendously interested in art

before she was pulled into this circle

of avocado in the very first letter theo

wrote to yo and vincent was in the

hospital in ireland he wrote we must

keep the memory of my brother together

don't you think shan't we darling he

says

so before being married she knew that

she was part of the game

teach again

take lodges

i'm not going back

besides mother doesn't have room for all

the paintings

nobody would think any less of you for

selling

she seems to me for being a rather

serious-minded

intellectual young woman who took her

responsibilities seriously and who

really took on this project of uh

posthumously serving the reputation of

vincent van gogh she was the person who

championed van gogh after his death i

think she really saw herself as taking

over the mantle from teo who was his

main supports both commercially and

emotionally and she knew how important

it was to him to really launch the

career events and why don't we try to

find a buyer for you here

i could ask in my office if you'd like

the insurance brokers

well it wouldn't be much obviously no

they don't approve of bohemian art do

they

well it's better than nothing

joanna bonga's brother andreas who had

known vincent van gogh would eventually

assist in joanna's quest

but at one point it's believed he

proposed a horrifying solution to his

sister's storage problem

you know they may not be painters joe

but they're perfectly decent people

it isn't boring to work hard or provide

for oneself

not everybody's brother is so easy to

take advantage of well it's said that

andreas bongo wanted to destroy the

paintings after vincent's death it does

seem strange afterwards and it does seem

slightly out of character so it may have

been something he did or he thought of

at one point very quickly there still

weren't very many sales there still

wasn't very much of a reputation so uh

it would be an entirely rational thing

to do not to not to hang on to all this

junk i'm sorry theo loved vincent i know

he was happy to help and vincent did

work hard he made himself sick he worked

so hard i'm sorry

she was fiercely protective of his art

she really saw um herself as carrying on

teo's legacy

making sure that vincent became known

and

got what he deserved really as an artist

she apparently decided that

what she what she wants to do is devote

herself to as

becoming a sort of curator of this

collection

i'd like you to leave

but i only want what's best for you and

the boy

you won't get a better price in

amsterdam

get out

vincent was a genius feel new

i'm not selling

[Music]

but how did joanna bonga become a

curator for an almost unknown artist

her discovery of the letters written

between the brothers would prove key in

telling the lost story of vincent van

gogh's life

as would his reputation amongst other

avant-garde artists who also struggled

for recognition of their work

[Music]

in 1891 joanna bonga was left widowed at

the age of 28 with hundreds of artworks

by her troubled brother-in-law vincent

van gogh

there were no obvious buyers for the

paintings as vincent is only thought to

have sold one picture during his

lifetime the red vineyard was purchased

by the neo-impressionist painter anna

bach

vincent may not have had any real

commercial success but he was very

appreciated by the other avant-garde

artists of his era

this reputation he developed would prove

a starting point for joanna's quest

as with her discovery of the letters

that teo and vincent wrote to each other

that brought vincent's story to life

she found them in a kind of bottom

drawer they were living in pigao at the

time of her and theo

of course she poor woman was widowed

very young and she was left with nothing

except

200 van gaals she said every every week

i saw the yellow envelopes coming in and

theo put it in the cupboard and and she

got letters too from vincent

but she said

i only want to publish the letters after

his work will be known so

she waited and she did it on purpose

and i have

a very strong idea that she waited until

the mother of vincent and teo died so it

was not a

not too complicated for this old mother

i think there's something like 700

between the two boys most of them are

from vincent because he threw theos away

the great one where he says i'm going to

sign my pictures vincent because the

french can't pronounce van gogh

you know but kind of thing they're

wonderful letters she was so aware then

when she married teo

she got vincent too

that was part of it

vincent had lived in paris with his

brother teo from 1886 to 1888 when the

city was still enthralled by the work of

impressionist painters

and vincent had begun to ever so

slightly make his mark on the art world

as soon as he arrived in paris and

thanks to teo and in part he did meet

all of the avant-garde artists and in

fact before he left for uh for oral in

the south the last artist he went to see

was your surah and we know that gogao

was coming to admire him but it remained

a very

marginal kind of enthusiasm

another of the great artists of the era

who admired him was toulouse le trek

he even made a pastoral sketch of his

friend vincent in 1887.

he'd spent

two years living in paris almost

everything we know about angel's life

comes from his letters and that was the

one time when he was living he was

actually sharing a flat most of the time

with his brother theo so there was no

need for him to write

so there are very very few letters from

those two years

although the exact details may not be

known what is for sure is that it was in

paris that vincent's style of painting

changed dramatically

he'd been influenced by the

impressionists of the era but also by

japanese art

he was ahead of his time though many of

the tendencies in terms of very bright

color in terms of decorative patterning

in terms of um

self-expression in the way he did it

were coming to be valued in the

avant-garde

but before he could make any real name

for himself in the world artistic

capital of paris van gogh moved to al in

the south of france in 1888

we sometimes think of him as an isolated

working away in the south of france with

little contact with other artists but in

fact when he was in paris he was right

in the heart of things

and actually one of the reasons he left

paris was he found it too exhausting

it was in all that he created his best

known works including the sunflowers

his most commercially successful work

now was made really in the last part of

his life i mean when he died a lot of

the paint wouldn't have been dry on the

sunflowers and that thick and pasted

paint would still be wet so it really

wasn't much of a chance for him to be

promoting his work and i don't think he

was that kind of person he wanted to be

in the south just working frenetically

as he did the pictures that we see as

attractive and full of life and bubbling

with um enthusiasm at the time uh

were rejected and seen as just to avon

guard 20 or 30 years later things that

he had intuited about fragmentation so

if you look at the surface of a van gogh

it's very clearly made up of

of fragmentary brush strokes and there

are all sorts of fallings apart going

and including mental ones that would

have been very unfashionable in the

1880s people wanted synthesis

i think people relate to it now just

because it's highly emotive it's subject

matter which is fields it's nature it's

portraits but

in the colors and the marks and the

vibrancy of it it's almost mythic i sort

of 40 years later and after the first

world war people were aware of a world

that was fragile and they found that in

van gaav's

paintings you know sort of strident

anxious colors and

flickering brushwork

had he lived

another few decades

i suspect he would have become

very marketable but he died just too

soon it did then take

a few generations for a wider public to

appreciate those

values

whilst in the south of france van gogh

had stayed in touch with two other

struggling artists of the era emil

bernard and paul gogar

in his letters to them he even included

sketches of the paintings he was

creating in all

it's one of the things that's given van

gogh such a fame because the letters

give a marvelous insight into his art

van gogh goga and bernard had also

remained in contact by painting

self-portraits and sending them to each

other with the other member of the trio

in the background

if you look at the museum you see some

paintings by gogan and by bernard why

are they there because

they were exchanged

as he had done for most of his adult

life van gogh wrote many letters to teo

during his time in all

my dear tayo

many thanks for the canvas you sent

now we can join battle once more

my dear vincent your new consignment

arrived yesterday evening the painting

is truly remarkable

i have rented a room in montmartre which

you'd like

it is small but overlooks a little

garden full of ivy

joe sends her warm regards and a smile

from the little one

i remember you insisted a great deal on

me getting married

you were right

van gogh's attempt to start an artistic

community in the south of france did not

end well though

he had checked himself into the asylum

as sarah me where he painted many more

of his best known works

i do so wish you would tell me how you

feel

nothing is more distressing than

uncertainty

i don't say that my work is good but

rather it is the least bad that i can do

every day i wish for your speedy

recovery

there was one very important moment when

vincent sliced part of his ear and had

to go to the hospital in ao

and then there's a letter of

[ __ ] go to theo and she says

how beautiful two heads on one cushion

so it means that in the hospital the two

brothers were on the same bed

and talked things over just like they

did when they were very young

and i think that's a very moving moment

in

realizing how close this relation was

all your kindness to me dear brother

i've felt it more than ever today

don't bother your head about me or about

us old chap

i am beginning to consider madness and

illness like any other

and we all must accept the illnesses of

our time

do not despair

sooner or later we each have our share

better days will come write to me dear

brother

ever yours your loving vincent your

loving tale

vincent van gogh would eventually return

to paris in 1890 where teo and joanna

had recently had a son

also called vincent

vincent and joanna's relationship was

vestigial as far as actual

person-to-person

meeting is concerned she saw him when he

arrived in paris in may 1890 and there

was another visit to over while vincent

was the venezuelan village north of

paris she says and i thought i would

meet a boy that was very

struck by all these diseases but he was

well formed and he was at broad

shoulders i was surprised that he was so

alive and so

well aware of his position and then they

visited him in overseers 30 kilometers

north of paris

and they had a good time that day and

they

had lunch together and

he played with the little vinson

everything else joanna found out about

vincent she would either have heard from

theo uh learnt from reading the letters

or learnt after vincent's death which

makes it all the more remarkable that

she devoted most of the rest of her life

to

vincent's reputation and achievements as

an artist

vincent would not last long in overseer

wars

he continued painting right until the

very end though making some of his most

experimental works including a piece

called tree roots which is believed by

some to be his last ever painting

he would die on july the 29th 1890 of a

gunshot wound

[Music]

she had a little feeling of guilt

after vincent died and she said but we

didn't say anything wrong did we no we

did they said it was not our fault it

was in his head and we did not cause it

tayo van gogh would also be dead within

six months

it must have been incredibly stressful

for toyota being the his benefactor

making sure that he was funded

also being his

pretty much so confident to you

all of the highs and lows of vincent

work and mental state

of course he was heartbroken and he was

he had lots of grief and it was very

hard for him and he was sad and he was

everything but still he had a second

stage of

syphilis too no doubt the emotional

shock of losing his brother who he'd

been so close to

must have also exacerbated his condition

within a few months he went totally mad

and

if you want to have

an uncomfortable night read the report

of the the doctor of theo because it was

a very hard very hard time for him

following the death of her husband and

brother-in-law joanna had to make use of

the limited reputation vincent had built

up amongst his fellow artists

following the death of teo and vincent

johanna

really rallied to make sure that his art

became known

and her house became a sort of hub for

people interested in van gogh and she

really really pushed him

it didn't take her long soon claude

monet came to see van gogh's works and

announced his surprise that a man who

loved flowers and light so much could

have been so unhappy

another giant of the time camille

pizarro also showed his appreciation

declaring that vincent's flowers look

like people

there were some young artists and they

helped her with the first exhibitions

here in amsterdam

in 1892 and she did it very well she did

essentially i think three things she

published the letters bit by bit she

lent pictures to international

exhibitions which there were a sequence

so that people saw van gogh's work

and a certain amount of it was sold

these early sales were made to some of

the most influential and wealthy people

of the era

the major galleries would quickly follow

behind them in trying to purchase works

and it's during this time that many of

the mysteries of what happened to van

gogh's paintings started to form

some items would sadly be lost forever

some are still missing and one has been

sitting unappreciated in an attic for

decades

joanna bonga wasted no time in

presenting the works of her

brother-in-law vincent van gogh to the

world she arranged numerous exhibitions

and loaned the paintings to various

galleries

and it wasn't long before buyers soon

came knocking on her door

[Music]

joanna had works from the entirety of

vincent's career but it was the

sunflower paintings that would

unsurprisingly prove the most popular

possibly the very first buyer of vincent

van gogh's work after he died was the

celebrated french writer octave mirbo

in 1891 he purchased both the irises

painting and the three sunflowers

painting for a mere 600 francs

[Music]

in 1894 emil schufeneker an avant-garde

artist himself started collecting van

gogh's when he purchased one of the

series of sunflowers

amazingly he chose to alter the picture

by stretching out the canvas on all

sides and painting in the gaps himself

hugo von schudie the director of the

national gallery in berlin was also

taken by the sunflowers buying one of

the series for himself in 1905. the

painting has remained in germany ever

since

but it was in 1908 that the most

determined collector emerged that year

helena kroller muller first acquired

this early painting by van gogh titled

edge of a wood

and it will begin a long love affair

with the artist

helena colomel was a very very wealthy

person

one of the wealthiest person in holland

at the time

when helena went to paris she did not

buy little bags but she did buy if and

goes

just having them

five at a time or ten at a time she

mostly but her husband also was buying

in beginning she started buying one on

one and then they went to paris to to

auctions visiting artists studios

and there is one weekend she bought five

of course

together the crawler mullers managed to

purchase 91 van goghs making it the

second largest collection in the world

and eventually the centerpiece of the

crawler muller museum

it was

very obvious that in the netherlands she

was the wealthiest collectioner at that

moment

for her van gogh was the greatest artist

that they had been and he was sort of

the start of modern art

and she was also very interested in

because he was was painting and drawing

social themes and she was a very social

conscious person so that attracted her

too helena crolla muller's support

played a key role in developing van

gogh's legacy but surprisingly she had

no contact with joanna bonga and bought

her paintings from the first dealers in

van gogh's works

that's quite surprising because

joe had the paintings and if you see

with a kind of u-turn what went from yo

to helena colomelo that had everything

to do with the fact that helena colomelo

was a very very wealthy person and yo

was a very convinced social democrat

and i think the the characters of the

ladies were not

that close to each other she was also

played a very important role in that

because she showed her own collection

she gave them a loan to other

exhibitions both nationally as

internationally

and joe bonga also gave her collection

they both were very important in making

him so famous and so well-known

joanna bonga would marry again in 1901

her new husband johann cohen goshalk was

also an artist and painted portraits of

her

but she would be left widowed again in

1912. she went to live in new york city

soon after world war one broke out and

it was during this terrifying time that

she first published the letters of

vincent and teo

they sold very well it was during the

first world war and people think that's

a wrong moment to publish letters like

that but on the contrary

during war time people are more attached

to literature or to very important

things that were happening in the past

after world war one joanna returned to

the netherlands where she continued to

work on building vincent's legacy

she loaned out the sunflowers to another

artist called isaac israel's who used

them as the backgrounds for his

paintings

israel's also painted portraits of

joanna with whom he had once had a brief

relationship

isaac already knew teo when he lived in

paris and visited him there and

he was a well-known painter here they

did a lot of impressionist things in

cities very well known in amsterdam yo

and he met each other

and they

liked each other very well

very very well

we have the diaries of yo still and

there is a line and she says i was at

the studio of isaac israel's

we played with fire

and then two lines are cut out

interesting

and i think the only one who could have

done this was her son vincent

[Music]

the series of sunflowers paintings had

become van gogh's most recognized work

thanks to joanna's efforts

in 1924 jim eid the curator of the

national gallery in london made it his

mission to purchase one of the

sunflowers

but it wouldn't be easy to convince

joanna to part with her personal

favorite

[Music]

would you care for some tea

yes

he had begun to paint sunflowers in

paris already

paul gauguin had told him this was a

great subject for him had told him that

these were marvelous he repeatedly said

how tremendous he thought the sunflower

paintings were and tried to get van gogh

to give him one of them as well so

vincent and gogar both thought that

these were important pictures we know

from a quote from vincent van gogh that

he really saw the sunflower as his own

symbol there's something about them that

grabs people i mean the color of the

yellow on yellow is a dramatic and

interesting way of presenting it it's so

become an iconic that one just

associates sunflowers almost the flowers

with van gogh

to paint a picture which is effectively

all in modulations of one color would

have seemed tremendously radical or

indeed to some

relatively avant-garde artists who saw

it early on completely insane

i cannot express how honored we would be

the sunflowers truly is a masterpiece

we acquired this in 1924 when we

received uh money from samuel cortold

the industrialist specifically to bind

modern paintings for the national

gallery and right then van gogh was

right at the top of the list of modern

artists whom we wanted to represent here

it was very keen to buy a van gogh

and really wanted the sunflowers and

they pleaded with the ohana to sell the

sunflowers to the national gallery we

would take the greatest of care

there's a couple of letters from her

which are very moving she says that

she's seen the painting every day during

her life or her adult life and she

didn't want to part with it she knew

that it was important and she wanted to

hang on to it i think she had a

connection with it and knew that teo did

too and wanted to keep it

it's not for sale

i understand

jimmy at that point was one of the few

people in britain who really knew about

modern art

and could speak authoritatively

what he said to johanna bonger in my

understanding was that we are the

national gallery if this artist is to be

represented here we really need a

picture of the highest achievement

[Music]

jimmy's persistence would eventually

prove worthwhile in the end

[Music]

a few days later she sent her another

letter to the director of the national

gallery saying that

she would

reluctantly sell it for the sake of

vincent's glory because she wanted him

to be represented in such an important

gallery

dear mr eid

[Music]

i have tried to harden my heart against

european

i have looked on that picture every day

for 30 years

[Music]

i could not bear to part with it

it was really the kudos and importance

of that gallery that made her think this

is really going to set and stone

vincent as a

titan of the 20th century

i have come to realize that no other

picture could represent vincent in a

more worthy manner

[Music]

he would have wanted it to be there in

your gallery

it's interesting that van gogh actually

had lived in london earlier in his life

when he worked as an art dealer in

his early 20s and he loved going to the

national gallery so it's very nice that

his sunflowers have ended up there

she also would have known that he was a

great admirer of certain aspects of

british art and british literature the

moralizing

side of it that art was about something

that it taught you things

it is a sacrifice i must make

for his glory

with van gogh's work now in the national

gallery joanna's mission could be

declared a complete success as vincent

had been accepted as a truly great

artist

she would die just a year after the

painting was sold

but what of the huge number of van goghs

that joanna still had in her possession

they would eventually become the very

foundation of the van gogh museum in

amsterdam when it opened in 1973

but in the intervening decades many

works by vincent had gone missing due to

the chaos of world war ii and a

collection of mysterious owners and

devious forgers

struggle to get them all back

continues

[Music]

joanna bonga the guardian of vincent van

gogh's legacy died on september the 2nd

1925

soon after selling the painting of 15

sunflowers to the national gallery in

london

before she passed away though van gogh

had already inspired a whole new

generation of artists especially in

germany

[Music]

it truly was germany that first embraced

him as a great artist and if we look at

the art that emerged in germany in the

decades following it is as if they'd

been waiting for someone who would show

them how to paint with this intense

expressivity and with this extraordinary

sense of color

van gogh had in fact been so lauded in

germany that fakes of the artists first

started to emerge here

the major incident was in the 1920s when

a berlin

gallery owner otto vacca

faked dozens of van gogh paintings which

were initially accepted by the experts

and then they realized they were wrong

and he was found guilty and since then

there has been a continual problem of

faking a number of van goghs have been

de-attributed even those which belong to

museums

so it continues to be highly

controversial

the fear of fakes continues to the

present day one of the sunflowers

paintings once owned by emil schufeneker

was sold for a record 22.5 million

pounds in 1987. it was known that the

picture had been extended around the

edges but some of the time claimed that

the whole painting was a copy done by

schufeneker however this claim was later

confirmed to be untrue

the problem of fakery has also dogged

another work by vincent van gogh for

nearly its entire existence

but in 2013 the van gogh museum was able

to present a newly rediscovered painting

for the first time in many decades

the sunset and montmartre

it is a great pleasure for us to present

to you this morning a

that painting was one of the paintings

that was owned by tayo van gogh and

passed into the hands of johanna and it

was first sold in 1901 and then it went

through a period until 1908 where we

don't know the provenance and then it

went into the collection of a norwegian

businessman quite soon after he bought

it he was told it was a fake so he just

put it up in his attic

and there it stayed with his family and

then about 20 years ago it was sent to

the van gogh museum and to ask what it

whether it might be authentic and at

that point it was rejected and the

museum said it was not right and then in

2011

research was launched again

and they looked at the paint technique

the type of paint really under the

microscope they used a letter from july

1888 when it was painted from vincent

duteo which described a very similar

scene of this abbey

painted from the scrub land below there

were two

key points one was it had a

number chalked on the back which

turned out to be an inventory number

from andreas bonga so we could link it

up with a 1890 inventory and the other

thing which was surprising was missed by

the van gogh museum the first time is

that it

shows the castle of montmartre in the

south of france which had a very unusual

tower

and that helped to identify it there is

a kind of rule in art history that when

a

a picture disappears off the the the

beaten track when it goes to a place

like norway

um where it's not seen by a lot of

people

then it becomes the assumption arises oh

it can't be right

and it falls out of out of favor

the discovery of this new work gives us

hope that other missing van goghs may be

found one day

many of them vanished during world war

ii

there are probably roughly 10 van gogh

paintings which disappeared during the

second world war there were a few that

were probably burnt and destroyed

including a very important self-portrait

um there were some that were looted or

stolen and have not turned up one of the

lost van gogh which i personally would

most like to see is that is the picture

of the painter on the road to tara skong

that is a picture of van gogh himself

walking along the road which led past

his yellow house out into the fields

this one disappeared during the second

world war it was probably destroyed in a

fire the chances are unfortunately

rather small that it survived there are

others which

one day we may

see again there's an important flower

still life

which

was stolen during the wars is not turned

up i mean it might one day who knows

there is an extraordinary photograph of

hermann goring sort of caressing in a

creepy way this very important late van

gogh from the over period called a tree

with ivy a painting which possibly going

then

appropriated as a lot of pictures in

paris were disappearing into collections

of prominent nazi officials it seems

goring had a taste for contemporary art

as well as renee sanchez and brock art

but if he did

uh it wasn't he didn't remain with the

main collection of goering's work which

was then recovered maybe it's in a bank

fault somewhere still one can hope there

are a tantalizing number of lost

fangoths which it would be uh

wonderful to see again and also

destroyed vancouver amongst

the latter one of the most poignant is

the sunflower painting

this one was bought by a japanese

collector in 1920 it was actually the

first fang off to go to japan which is

interesting it was in a private

collection and was

destroyed on the 6th of august 1945 the

very same day as the first atomic

bomb was dropped on hiroshima

so this was on a separate bombing raid

in tokyo itself it's very interesting

coincidence it tells us a lot uh about

how the different ways he was thinking

about sunflowers at that moment because

it doesn't resemble uh our picture

at all so clearly he was working out a

lot of possibilities in his mind we had

a rather poor

photographic reproduction of the

painting but what i found was a very

early 1920s color reproduction

in a portfolio published in japan which

had not been known about to vanguard

specialists

and this had much more natural colors so

it gave us an idea of what the picture

looks like and even more interestingly

this reproduction has an orange frame

around the painting of orange strip of

wood

and if you look at van gogh's letters he

describes how he wanted to present the

blue sunflowers against an orange frame

so for the first time we can see how van

gogh wanted to present the picture some

of the others which have disappeared we

one might entertain hopes that one day

they will reappear

while the search for lost van gogh's

continues the story of vincent's life

has become world famous

after the publication of the letters the

writer irving stone released the wildly

successful novel lust for life in 1934

which told the story of vincent van

gogh's many hardships

[Music]

what do you know about pain

it will be made into a film starring

kirk douglas 20 years later let me talk

to kay for as long as i can keep my hand

in this flame

the movie captured or to become one of

the most legendary times in van gogh's

life when he was staying in al with paul

gauguin another artist who was largely

unappreciated during his lifetime

i've dug ditches in the stinking heat of

the tropics i've worked in the darks and

weather so so-called my hands froze on

the ropes and i can tell you there's

nothing noble or beautiful about it

i did it so i could go on painting

i didn't have a brother to support me

there was already a sort of bit of a

myth of the man around gurgaon he had

been a stock broker and he left his wife

and he was really sort of a character

within those circles and vincent i think

really looked up to him saw him as this

pioneer of an emotive form of art full

of synesthesia and

using paint to conjure different ways of

thinking and set the senses

he was just on the edge of of having a

breakdown when goku arrived goku

actually mentions this in his own

letters such ceo um

and then van gogh's actually gets better

for a couple of months i think he paints

something like 25 pictures in five

months and he's just painting and

painting and painting not necessarily

the happiest period in his entire life

the idle that they both envisaged of

working in this wonderful artistic

commune

never came to fruition it was a disaster

[Music]

the reason we know so much about the

life and work of the unknown vincent van

gogh is thanks to the tireless efforts

of joanna bonga

the epic battles with paul gogan down in

al his tortured mental state

the mutilation of his own ear and of

course the devoted relationship between

the artist and his brother teo

all of these elements are part of the

legend of vincent van gogh

so why has joanna's story largely been

forgotten

well i suppose joanna's contribution

comes from a lot of people's points of

view

after the stories ended after the

brothers van gogh

died

her role becomes very important i guess

in the public eye people are really

interested in vince and to some extent

they're interested in teo but joanna was

further away from them and didn't know

vincent well

she sold

more than 250

works of art because she has sold them

that's why even goes has grown so famous

i think it's certainly true that her

name joanna banger is not as well known

to the general public as she ought to be

because what she did was on an heroic

scale in assuring this legacy and

assuring the fame of vincent

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she spread him over the world

but still she had

about

600 works by van gogh

many drawings 200 paintings and about

200 pieces of art of other people

the paintings went to the van gogh

museum in the 1970s so everyone just

assumed they've been in a museum and i

guess for that reason she's not well

known it's quite possible that van gogh

would have been completely forgotten

without joanna bonga because there would

be very very few work surviving

she did play a very important role

without her so much the material

wouldn't have survived

vincent he said

people will only understand my portraits

25 years after and and

he was right

[Music]

you