Vincent van Gogh Van Gogh's fame reached its first peak in Austria and Germany before World War I, helped by the publication of his letters in three volumes in 1914. His letters are expressive and literate, and have been described as among the foremost 19th-century writings of their kind. These began a compelling mythology of Van Gogh as an intense and dedicated painter who suffered for his art and died young. In 1934, the novelist Irving Stone wrote a biographical novel of Van Gogh's life titled "Lust for Life", based on Van Gogh's letters to Theo. This novel and the 1956 film further
Posthumous fame of Vincent van Gogh Hommes d’aujourd’hui." Julius Meier-Graefe wrote influentially of Van Gogh, his publications including: "Entwicklungsgeschichte der modernen Kunst" (Stuttgart, 1904 and later Munich 1927), "Über Vincent van Gogh", Sozialistische Monatshefte (February 1906), "Vincent van Gogh" (Munich 1912), and "Van Gogh der Zeichner" (Berlin, 1928, published by Otto Wacker). In the English-speaking world, the Bloomsbury art critics Roger Fry and Clive Bell were his first champions. Fry, in a 1924 essay, "Vincent van Gogh," reported that after Van Gogh's death, he "disappeared" and "scarcely any picture dealer in Bond Street gave him another thought" until the 1910 show titled "Post Impressionist Exhibition" in