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
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh was initiated by the Van Gogh Museum. The project consists of a complete annotated collection of letters written by and to Vincent. In the last days of December 1901, running through January 1902, Bruno Cassirer and his cousin Paul Cassirer organized the first van Gogh exhibition in Berlin, Germany. Paul Cassirer first established a market for van Gogh, and then, with the assistance of Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, controlled market prices. In 1906 Bruno Cassirer published a small volume of selected letters of Vincent's to Theo van Gogh, translated into German. Of the 844 surviving letters that van Gogh wrote, 663