Vincent van Gogh (Russell painting) Vincent van Gogh" (1887) and Paul Gauguin's "The Painter of Sunflowers" (1888). Van Gogh seems to have been particularly attached to Russell's portrait, which the Australian gifted to him as a mark of their friendship. The painting passed from Van Gogh to his brother Theo, then to their family, and is now in the permanent collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Russell was born into a wealthy engineering family in 1858 in Sydney, New South Wales. The family business, P.N. Russell & Co, was responsible for much of the city's 19th-century ironwork. Although Russell had a strong interest
Johanna van Gogh-Bonger in Berlin and in 1914 to publish the first volume of "the Letters to Theo". Publication of the letters helped spread the compelling mystique of Vincent van Gogh, the intense and dedicated painter who suffered for his art and died young, throughout Europe and the rest of the world. She lived in New York from 1915 to 1919, returning to Amsterdam. She died on 2 September 1925, at the age of 62, in Laren, Netherlands. At the time of her death, she was still occupied translating Vincent's letters into English. She had one child and four grandchildren. Johanna van Gogh-Bonger