Nearly 130 years after his death, Vincent van Gogh continues to exert a powerful fascination over viewers and historians. This superb book offers readers a selection of the artist's most unforgettable canvases, as well as some lesser-known examples, many drawn from the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The volume explores the works in the context of Van Gogh's short but brilliant career, in which frequent spells of isolation were paired with lively engagement with his peers and the popular ideas of his time. Additionally, Van Gogh's continuous stream of letters written to family and friends--one of the most important archival resources of nineteenth-century art--provides a narrative thread around which this study develops. In the text, art historian Belinda Thomson considers Van Gogh as a cosmopolitan figure who combined his art experiences and native traditions absorbed in Holland and in Victorian England, and later succeeded in making his mark upon the painting scene in France at one of its richest periods. This book will be a welcome resource for art lovers, offering a different take on one of history's most interesting artists.