Van Gogh: The Life

The Pulitzer-winning biographers of Jackson Pollock spent a decade on Vincent van Gogh, working from a database of the family’s letters built with the Van Gogh Museum. The result is a nearly thousand-page life that treats him less as a myth than as a difficult, relentless man who came to painting late and worked at it with the same fervour he had brought to failing as an art dealer, a teacher and a preacher — and it ends with the authors’ argument, laid out in an appendix, that the fatal gunshot was most likely not self-inflicted.

Why it’s on the list: Bold on @mastersinvest’s 2025 list, meaning the curator rated it very good rather than merely read. It and the Caro and Henri entries are the artistic-life outliers on a list otherwise made of company histories.

Where I saw it: @mastersinvest’s “2025 Reading … so far” list, August 20, 2025, where it appears in bold. The full 46-title list is transcribed on 2025 Reading So Far… (tweet).

Connections

• 2025 Reading So Far… (tweet) — the list this came from.