"Paris with it's Eifel tower" "I would paint it tonight" "I so liked painting at night," "But no" "That life is over" "1990" "$ 82 000 000 for one of my portraits of dr Gachet" "Yet, I have just made one sale during my lifetime" "Now my paintings are in all the big museums" "Here, at the d'Orsay museum in Paris, there are about 20" "People come from everywhere to see them" "For the paintings and for the legend too - my painters' legend" "Cut ear, the crazy man" "The one who would commit suicide at the age of 37, and now the most expensive painter of the world" "Sometimes I wonder if most people aren't more interested in all that, than in my painting" "Hopefully there are exceptions" "He is different" "His name is Peter Knapp" "He's a photographer and a filmmaker" "He's passionate about my painting" "I like following him to the places where I used to paint to Auvers and d'Arles" "I remember this picture" "I was satisfied with it, the church" "Practically violet against the pure cobbled sky" "The windows just patches of ultramarine" "The roof, violet and orange in places" "I like her too, her name is Helen Baccaris" "I noticed that women find me a lot more interesting since I died" "I think I scared them off when I was alive" "I was too nervous and tormented" "Helen's been working here for over a year, all alone in the basement of the van Gogh Museum" "The green boxes contain all my drawings, and in another room, they have all my letters detail" "900 letters" " I wrote then almost everyday" "Everyday she tries to find the reasons for my axiety and troubled life, and I am very difficult to read" "My writing is a mess, with no punctuation, in very broken French" "Yes, when I began my life as a painter," "I decided to write in French" "The double row of flowers is pink and green on one side" "And orange, with hardly any leaves on the other" "In the mids, ideria, white, a little pomegranate" "Helen works in the museum in Holland, that's named after me" "More than a milion-and-a-half visitors every year" "I've spend the two last months of my life here in Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris" "I was buried here, after only 37 years of life" "Peter lives here too, don't think it's a coincedence" "He's making a film about my painting" "I like following him when he goes to the places I lived and used to paint" "I know this study well, my first work in Auvers" "Writing to Theo, I told him that I found the Pieto" "Auversian Pieto" "Peter says he realized while I paint my pictures" "I painted the distant background at eyelevel that I looked down on the foreground as I was seeing it from above" "As for the horizon, he noticed that tended to set it very high in the frame" "That makes, for what he calls "a wide angle effect", that draws the viewer into the picture, and surrounds him" "My dear Theo," "I just sent you three large drawings, as well as a few more smaller one's" "Theo, my brother, far more than my brother" "Sometimes, when I was painting those pictures," "I felt we were doing them together" "I could never have painted them without Theo" "Theo was an art dealer; he made a good living" "He allowed me to devote myself entirely to my art" "He sent me money, canvas, paper, tubes of paint, everything I needed to paint, to work" "That was our agreement" "And I produced, I felt driven to do good work" "Usually I included a sketch in progress in the letters I sent to Theo" "Then when the picture was finished," "I sent it to him" "And then I moved on, I set another canvas on the easel" "That's whay I was here for, you see?" "I was on this earth to paint, to paint right to the end" "In less than a century, I'll become a myth, all I wanted was to become a painter" "Don't think it was easy" "I spent a long time finding my way" "Me, the Dutchman, the preacher's son" "When I was only 16, I became an art dealer in Amsterdam, London and Paris" "Then I became a preacher, like my father, in Belgium" "I used to preach to the destitude, to miners and labourers" "I talked to them, and read them the Bible" "I enjoyed it, because I like people, but it didn't last" "They thought I was over zealous" "They thanked me, and told me to go on my way" "So I did the one thing I could do, the one thing I really wanted to do, deep down" "I drew, I drew and I drew," "I was 27 by then" "I varied my approaches" "At first I copied works by artists I admired" "Millet especially, yes, I copied Millet a lot" "And I took the plunge, I began painting in oils" "Pictures didn't just come to me at first," "I worked in a very academic way" "I did multiple studies to come to grips with my subject," "I was moving on, step by step" "But colour, which made me famous later on, was still a long way off" "I was still seeing darkly" "In 1886 I joined Theo in Paris" "I was 32 years old" "I had been painting almost constantly 4 years then 4 years and already more than 200 paintings" "And it's here, in Paris, that I made a discovery that was going to change my life" "It is covets colour" "And I started to apply the famous theory of complimentary colour by Charles Blanc" "Blanc says that to heighten colours, we must use them with their compliment" "Yellow and violet are complimentary, and so are blue and orange; green and red" "I wrote to Theo:" "If a stroke of red is surrounded by green, the red will become more intense, and the painting will find a natural equilibrium, even if it wasn't in the composition" "I was searching, I wanted to move forward" "Ah, his father Tanguy," "I'm glad to see him again he is the one who sold the painting I sent him" "I painted him twice against the background of a Japanese print" "Japanese art was our passion" "Japan had been closed off and isolated for so long" "The Japanese work we found, was dedicated and precise, and so much about simplicity" "That's what I needed: a lot of colour and drawing" "No smooth surfaces, just brush strokes" "Yes, yes I painted like I drew" "And I remember, I was overjoyed" "I had found my path at last" "I was in my painting" "My dear friend," "No, come on, not that letter!" "I know that Helen wants to understand, but she shouldn't read what I crossed out" "I only kept this letter for the drawing on the back" "I didn't mean for people to read it" "My dear friend," "Write to my brother, to tell him to keep my paintings at the original price, rather than selling them off cheap" "?" "Did I tell you that Helen and Peter knew each other?" "She tells Peter about what she's discovered, or thinks what she's discovered in my letters" "The things I crossed out, the art market, it all fascinates her, the price of paintings, who cares?" " really!" "All right," "I don't deny I didn't want my pictures to be sold cheaply" "I'd rather they won't sell at all, than have their prices lowered" "With my painter-friends, I used to talk about painting," "Murat, Calour, Gauguin, Signac, de Toulouse Lautrec, I met them all in Paris with Theo" "They were carrying the impressionist torch" "They all told me about the south of France, and the light you get there, and the joy of basking with light" "This was in 1888, and I was 35, and I have certainly made more than 400 paintings" "From then on the machine would get carried away" "During the two short years I had left," "I would produce almost as many again" "So, off I went, down south, to a city called Arles" "And in Arles, I painted," "I painted that yellow light" "I painted it by night, this very yellow and deep blue, like golden nuggets against a screen of darkness no yellow without blue" "I painted the day: yellow, sulpher yellow, lemon, ?" ", gold" "I painted without stopping," "I was searching, brighter, always brighter" "I was obsessed with that high yellow note" "I was tracking it, circling it, closing in, until everything figured" "Ah, I've been through these places, morning, afternoon, evening, in the burning heat, sometimes disturbed, and always alone" "Always" "Peter can tread in my footsteps, but he'll never be alone as I was" "That's where Gauguin and the severed ear-incident happened" "So much has been said about it all, that I have to tell you the story" "I knew Gauguin from Paris, that's him!" "the self-portrait he gave me" "I admired him as a painter" "And I wanted him to come to Arles, and set up a community of artists" "So, I wrote to him, saying I had rented a house with a room for him" "I asked Theo to write to him too, and to send him some money" "Gauguin took his time, eventually he wrote back" "He couldn't come right away, but hy was assuring me that he wanted to, very much" "He delayed, and then at last, he was here, in Arles" "I don't think I'd ever been so happy" "I was convinced that together we would make strides" "We worked very well together, side by side, elbow to elbow sometimes on the same subject" "However, there were problems," "I was highly strung," "I smoked too much, drunk too much coffee and wine" "I don't even know what happened that night" "We probably drunk again, we definately argued" "Then I cut a little piece of my ear off, and in the middle of the night, I took this piece of ear to Rachel" "I liked Rachel, she was close to me, and she had a warm heart" "Nothing was ever the same after that people said I was mad, the mad-whit head they called me" "So, I asked to be committed to the hospice in Saint-Remy-de-Provence" "A home for the insane; commited voluntary" "And I painted, I kept painting, like a painting engine," "I felt I couldn't stop, I couldn't stop, I never took a break" "So I worked, I worked flat out, like a bricklayer, I worked hard" "Dear Theo, the work is going very well" "I'm struggling with a picture" "I started a few days before my illness" "A reaper, the study is all yellow, extremely thickly painted, but the subject was beautiful and simple" "I see in him the image of death, but there's no sadness in this death," "it takes place in broad daylight, with the sun flooding everything in the light of pure gold" "I kept myself in the asylum for a whole year" "Why?" "I stayed in the hospital, because it is cheaper than living in a hotel, and they left me in peace there" "I could go out when I wanted, so I could paint" "Sometimes the pictures came to me naturally, like in a dream" "But sometimes it was terribly labourious" "As hard as searching for a diamond or a pearl" "The olive trees for example" "I was struggling to capture them" "They were silver, sometimes with more blue in them, sometimes greenish or bronze" "It's difficult, terribly difficult" "But I like it so much to work in the fields" "After a year in the asylum," "I felt I was better" "My old demons were living in peace" "Well, not all the time, but more and more often, and for longer periods" "So I told myself that what I had learned in the south, draw in colour, well, I could apply it in the north" "I could paint the north in the southern light" "I talked about this to Theo" "Theo had married Johanna" "The just had a little boy" "A little Vincent, named after me" "But what about me?" "Would my brother be able to afford a family as well as my painting and living expences?" "Theo suggested that I moved to Auvers-sur-Oise" "I was now 37" "And these were to be the last two months of my life" "In Auvers there was choice," "We were comended a doctor who loved painting and painters" "The doctor was dr Gachet" "The house you see, was his" "That's where he lived" "I've painted several portraits of the doctor" "I know Theo, he thought the doctor could keep an eye on me" "I immediately felt dr Gachet was a friend" "He wanted me to paint a lot... as therapy" "I stayed in a small room in a boarding house" "I wanted to live cheaply, like a bricklayer" "and the Ravoux-family was so nice" "My room was only Fr 3,50 per day," "and the food was good there" "I felt good in Auvers right away, and I felt really at peace among that nature," "all those fields, the tranquility of the green countryside, after the massive beauty of the south" "It all put my mind at rest" "Everything suddenly became clear and simple" "And I kept on drawing of cause" "Those sketches are my vision of people and things" "I need the sketch to imagine the paintings to come" "It all begins in the simplicity of drawing, when there's no more than a line, sometimes it becomes the detail, at other times, the whole picture" "I had been painting day after day, for 9 years without stopping" "9 years, and over 900 paintings" "Still lives, portraits, landscapes" "I worked more and more, and more and more painting, and I knew my painting was good" "In Auvers I crossed a new threshold:" "more than 80 paintings in 2 months!" "Do the math:" "That's sometimes 3 paintings a day!" "An exhausting, burning pace!" "I got up early, I went to bed late" "I painted, I worked, I worked for hours" "And I was alone, yes, in the end I was always alone" "I couldn't go on, too much solitude, and such immence exhaustion" "So one evil day in July," "The 27th of July 1890 to be precise" "One day of utter weariness," "I shot myself in the chest" "Surrounded by wheat, in the middle of the field" "Just where I lost the paint" "Two days later, I died" "My dedicated and beloved brother, Theo died just 6 months later" "Vincent," "Just before you died, you wrote 2 letters to your brother, Theo" "The first letter you wrote, but didn't mail, was found on your body" "In that letter, stained by your blood, you told Theo of your torment" "and how you risked your life for your work, for your paintings" "In the other letter, the one you mailed, you told Theo about your love of the light and detail in one of your last paintings:" "Foreground of green and pink grass, a lilac and green bush on the left," "and a clump of plants with whitish foiliage, in the centre a rose-bed," "the house itself in the background, pink, with a roof of blueish tiles" "a bench, with 3 chairs, a dark figure in a yellow hat, and a black cat in the foreground" "Pale green sky" "I guess you wanted Theo to know how pleased you were with your work" "You had a short life, only 37 years, but your life is made longer by your paintings" "You live on ?" "afterwards?" "?"