Abstract
Van Gogh's letters have how many different versions described in them?
Bedroom in Arles
Vincent van Gogh Posthumous fame of Vincent van Gogh Vincent van Gogh Vincent van Gogh Still life paintings by Vincent van Gogh (Paris)
Vincent_van_Gogh-Influence Posthumous_fame_of_Vincent_van_Gogh-Art_historians Vincent_van_Gogh-Death Vincent_van_Gogh-Letters Still_life_paintings_by_Vincent_van_Gogh_(Paris)-Impressionism_1
In his final letter to Theo, Van Gogh admitted that as he did not have any children, he viewed his paintings as his progeny. Reflecting on this, the historian Simon Schama concluded that he "did have a child of course, Expressionism, and many, many heirs." Schama mentioned many artists who have adapted elements of Van Gogh's style, including Willem de Kooning, Howard Hodgkin and Jackson Pollock. The Fauves extended both his use of color and freedom in application, as did German Expressionists of the Die Brücke group, and as other early modernists. Abstract Expressionism of the 1940s and 1950s is seen as in part inspired from Van Gogh's broad, gestural brush strokes. In the words of art critic Sue Hubbard: "At the beginning of the twentieth century Van Gogh gave the Expressionists a new painterly language that enabled them to go beyond surface appearance and penetrate deeper essential truths. It is no coincidence that at this very moment Freud was also mining the depths of that essentially modern domain – the subconscious. This beautiful and intelligent exhibition places Van Gogh where he firmly belongs; as the trailblazer of modern art. "In 1957, Francis Bacon (1909–1992) based a series of paintings on reproductions of Van Gogh's "The Painter on the Road to Tarascon", the original of which was destroyed during World War II. Bacon was inspired by not only an image he described as "haunting", but also Van Gogh himself, whom Bacon regarded as an alienated outsider, a position which resonated with Bacon. The Irish artist further identified with Van Gogh's theories of art and quoted lines written in a letter to Theo, "painters do not paint things as they are... They paint them as "they themselves" feel them to be." An exhibition devoted to Vincent van Gogh's letters took place in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from October 2009 to January 2010 and then moved to the Royal Academy in London from late January to April. The Van Gogh Museum hosted an exhibition "Van Gogh at Work" featuring 200 paintings and drawings, 150 of them by van Gogh and others including Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard; from May 1, 2013 until January 12, 2014.  
In 1928, Jacob Baart de la Faille published the first "catalogue raisonné" of Van Gogh's works, comprising paintings as well as drawings and prints (and illustrating almost all of them) - a landmark in art history. There has been a reaction against the depiction of Van Gogh as a saint. John Rewald was one of the first to attempt an anti-hagiography; books pointing to Van Gogh's neuroticism have continued since. Counter-claims, particularly based on Van Gogh's three volumes of letters, support Roger Fry's praise. 
On 22 February 1890, Van Gogh suffered a new crisis that was "the starting point for one of the saddest episodes in a life already rife with sad events." This period lasted until the end of April, during which time he was unable to bring himself to write though he did continue to draw and paint. Hughes writes that from May 1889 to May 1890 he, "had fits of despair and hallucination during which he could not work, and in between them, long clear months in which he could and did, punctuated by extreme visionary ecstasy. "On 27 July 1890, aged 37, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver (although no gun was ever found). There were no witnesses and his location when he shot himself is unclear. Ingo Walther writes that "Some think Van Gogh shot himself in the wheat field that had engaged his attention as an artist of late; others think he did it at a barn near the inn." Biographer David Sweetman writes that the bullet was deflected by a rib bone and passed through his chest without doing apparent damage to internal organs—probably stopped by his spine. He was able to walk back to the Auberge Ravoux and was eventually attended to by two physicians, neither of whom was qualified to remove the bullet by surgery. The physicians left Van Gogh alone in his room, smoking his pipe. The following morning (Monday), Theo rushed to be with Van Gogh as soon as he was notified and found him in surprisingly good shape, but within hours Van Gogh began to fail due to an untreated infection caused by the wound. Van Gogh died in the evening, 29 hours after he supposedly shot himself. According to Theo, his brother's last words were: "The sadness will last forever. "Van Gogh was buried on 30 July in the municipal cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise at a funeral attended by Theo van Gogh, Andries Bonger, Charles Laval, Lucien Pissarro, Émile Bernard, Julien Tanguy and Dr. Gachet amongst some 20 family and friends, as well as some locals. The funeral was described by Émile Bernard in a letter to Albert Aurier. Theo suffered from syphilis and his health declined rapidly after Vincent's death. Weak and unable to come to terms with Vincent's absence, he died six months later, on 25 January, at Den Dolder. The original burial plot was leased for 15 years; the intention was to bury Vincent alongside Theo. Vincent's remains were exhumed on 13 June 1905, in the presence of Jo Bonger, Dr. Gachet and others, and relocated, eventually for Theo to be buried beside him. The precise location of the original grave is no longer known. In 1914, the year she had Van Gogh's letters published, Jo Bonger had Theo moved from Utrecht and reburied with Vincent. While many of Van Gogh's late paintings are somber, they are essentially optimistic and reflect his desire to return to lucid mental health right up to the time of his death. Yet some of his final works reflect his deepening concerns. Referring to his paintings of wheatfields under troubled skies, he commented in a letter to his brother Theo: "I did not have to go out of my way very much in order to try to express sadness and extreme loneliness." Nevertheless, he adds in the same paragraph: " ... these canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words, that is, how healthy and invigorating I find the countryside. "There has been much debate over the years as to the source of Van Gogh's illness and its effect on his work. Over 150 psychiatrists have attempted to label its root, with some 30 different diagnoses. Diagnoses include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, syphilis, poisoning from swallowed paints, temporal lobe epilepsy and acute intermittent porphyria. Any of these could have been the culprit and been aggravated by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia and consumption of alcohol, especially absinthe. In "Van Gogh: the Life", a biography published in 2011, authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith argue that Van Gogh did not commit suicide. They contend that he was shot accidentally by two boys he knew who had “a malfunctioning gun”. Experts at the Van Gogh Museum remain unconvinced. Prominent skeptic Joe Nickell also was not convinced. Nickell analyzed the questions raised by Naifeh and Smith to support their new theory and claimed that they could be addressed with more plausible answers. He maintained that Naifeh and Smith ignored the well-known psychological state of Van Gogh, as well as reliable testimony from Adeline Ravoux, daughter of the innkeeper Gustave Ravoux, the owner of the gun. According to Nickell, Naifeh and Smith make many assumptions about the circumstances surrounding the incident. He asserts that they also misrepresent the remarks of Rene Secretan, one of the two boys, who in 1956 admitted to having tormented the artist, but not to having shot him. Nickell concludes that their theory is the result of the logical fallacy of 'confirmation bias' – "start the investigation with a supposed answer and work backward to the evidence."
The most comprehensive primary source for the understanding of Van Gogh as an artist is the collection of letters between him and his younger brother, art dealer Theo van Gogh. They lay the foundation for most of what is known about the thoughts and beliefs of the artist. Theo provided his brother with both financial and emotional support. Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Van Gogh's thoughts and theories of art, is recorded in the hundreds of letters they exchanged between 1872 and 1890: more than 600 from Vincent to Theo and 40 from Theo to Vincent. Although many are undated, art historians have generally been able to put them in chronological order. Problems remain, mainly in dating those from Arles, although it is known that during that period, Van Gogh wrote 200 letters to friends in Dutch, French and English. The period when Vincent lived in Paris is the most difficult for historians to analyze because the brothers lived together and had no need to correspond. In addition to letters to and from Theo, other surviving documents include those to Van Rappard, Émile Bernard, Van Gogh's sister Wil and her friend Line Kruysse. The letters were first annotated in 1913 by Theo's widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger who explained that she published them with 'trepidation' because she did not want the drama in the artist's life to overshadow his work. Van Gogh himself was an avid reader of other artists' biographies and expected their lives to be in keeping with the character of their art. 
How Van Gogh integrated modern art concepts. Van Gogh's work in still life reflects his emergence as an important practitioner of modern art, particularly integrating techniques of Impressionism. The table identifies key Impressionist techniques and examples of how Van Gogh used them in this series of still life paintings. 