Vincent van Gogh: The Lost Arles Sketchbook

“The most revolutionary discovery in the entire history of Van Gogh’s oeuvre. Not one drawing; not ten, not fifty, but sixty-five drawings.” —Ronald Pickvance, from the Foreword Late in life, during his time living in Provence, Vincent van Gogh kept a sketchbook within a humble account ledger given to him by Joseph and Marie Ginoux, the owners of the Café de la Gare in Arles. This artifact of incalculable historical and aesthetic value remained hidden for more than one hundred and twenty years. It reappears today as a revelation and an extraordinary treasure. Published in this volume for the first time, Van Gogh’s lost sketchbook tells a riveting story. Over two tumultuous years in the artist’s life, he drew sixty-five sketches, including landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and a self-portrait, within the ledger. These priceless drawings provide insight into the last years of Van Gogh’s life, just before his fatal stay in Auvers-sur-Oise, and a new understanding of his most famous paintings, such as The Yellow House, The Night Café, and The Starry Night. With meticulous analysis of the sketchbook and the historical record, art historian Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov discusses each drawing in terms of Van Gogh’s career as a whole, and in particular during his time in Arles and Saint-Rémy-de-Provence between February 1888 and May 1890. This ground-breaking book includes facsimile reproductions of all the sketches and is richly illustrated with dozens of drawings, photographs, and paintings that situate the sketchbook in the context of Van Gogh’s life’s work and the history of art. The result of a remarkable discovery, Vincent van Gogh: The Lost Arles Sketchbook offers fresh insight into the life and work of one of the world’s most beloved artists. Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov is professor emeritus at the Fine Arts Department of Erindale College at the University of Toronto (Canada). She is an internationally acclaimed art historian who curated two major exhibitions in 1981 on the connection between the work of Vincent van Gogh and that of contemporary artists, including Vincent van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism (Art Gallery of Ontario and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam), as well as the inaugural exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, Van Gogh à Paris, in 1988. She is guest co-curator and coauthor of the catalogue of a large exhibition, Mystical Landscapes: From Van Gogh to Emily Carr, at the Art Gallery of Ontario (2016) and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris (2017). Ronald Pickvance is an eminent Van Gogh scholar and the author of numerous publications on Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, including English Influences on Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh in Arles, Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and Auvers, Van Gogh, Gaugin and the School of Pont-Aven, Manet, and Degas. His curations of Van Gogh’s work have been exhibited at The Gianadda Foundation in Martigny, Switzerland; The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and The Art Institute of Chicago.