Raiders of the Lost Art Van Gogh s Guardian

On the 25th of January 1891, Theo van Gogh died at the age of 33. Just six months earlier, his brother Vincent van Gogh had also died, leaving behind an astonishing collection of artworks that were almost completely unknown. With the death of Theo, Vincent's closest confidant and most ardent supporter, the van Gogh artistic legacy hung in the balance, and the responsibility fell on the shoulders of Joanna Bonga, Theo's widow. This was a great act of faith. She may only have met this very difficult person, her husband's brother, two or three times in her life, and yet she determined to keep together this legacy of painting. She did it with great tenacity and also found a skill with lending pictures, allowing pictures to be bought, so that slowly and then increasingly quickly the fame of Vincent began to spread. Without Joanna Bonga, Vincent van Gogh may have been completely lost to the world. In the decades that followed, van Gogh's works have been on a truly remarkable journey. They inspired an entire artistic movement. They fell victim to the trials of World War II. They have been the target of greedy forgers and daring thieves, and their value has skyrocketed from the day they first caught the world's attention. The man himself also became a legendary figure thanks to the publication of the letters between Vincent and Theo, and the story is still being told. A long-lost masterpiece by Vincent van Gogh was only revealed in 2013. I think van Gogh will always have huge commercial value because of the myth of the man. He really is this character that everyone is fascinated by. She sold more than 250 works of art. We are sitting here having this conversation because that's why Vincent van Gogh has grown so famous. She spread him over the world. We have glimpses of his other lost paintings, some of which could still be out there. Joanna Bonger had only been married to Theo van Gogh for two years when he died. With his passing, she had inherited almost all of Vincent's works, but as a young widow with a newborn son to care for, she was in a very precarious position. She had the assistance of her art-loving brother Andreas, but even he didn't appreciate her new collection of masterpieces. You could have your own room at home. A mother could help with a boy. What will you do for money? Joanna was a middle-class Dutch girl, sister of a friend of a Dutchman living in Paris who was in the van Gogh brothers' circle. She was a very educated woman. She worked as a translator in the Library of the British Museum. I think there's a mixture of Dutch steeliness and Victorian sentimentality. She doesn't seem to have been tremendously interested in art before she was pulled into this circle of avant-garde art. In the very first letter, Theo wrote to Jo and Vincent was in the hospital in Arles. He wrote, we must keep the memory of my brother together, don't you think, shan't we darling, he says. So before being married, she knew that she was part of the game. I'll teach again, take lodgers. I'm not going back. Besides, mother doesn't have room for all the paintings. Nobody would think any less of you for selling. She seems to me to have been a rather serious-minded, intellectual young woman who took her responsibilities seriously and who really took on this project of posthumously conserving the reputation of Vincent van Gogh. She was the person who championed van Gogh after his death. I think she really saw herself as taking over the mantle from Theo, who was his main support both commercially and emotionally, and she knew how important it was to him to really launch the career of Vincent. Why don't we try to find a buyer for you here? I could ask in my office if you'd like. The insurance brokers. Well, it wouldn't be much, obviously. No, they don't approve of bohemian art, do they? Well, it's better than nothing. Joanna Bonger's brother Andreas, who had known Vincent van Gogh, would eventually assist in Joanna's quest. But at one point, it's believed he proposed a horrifying solution to his sister's storage problem. You know, they may not be painters, Joe, but they're perfectly decent people. It isn't boring to work hard or provide for oneself. Not everybody's brother is so easy to take advantage of. Well, it's said that Andreas Bonger wanted to destroy the paintings after Vincent's death. It does seem strange afterwards, and it does seem slightly out of character. So it may have been something he did or he thought of at one point very quickly. There still weren't very many sales. There still wasn't very much of a reputation. So it would be an entirely rational thing to do, not to hang on to all this junk. I'm sorry. Theo loved Vincent. I know. He was happy to help. And Vincent did work hard. He made himself sick. He worked so hard. I'm sorry. She was fiercely protective of his art. She really saw herself as carrying on Theo's legacy, making sure that Vincent became known and got what he deserved, really, as an artist. She apparently decided that what she ought to do is devote herself to becoming a sort of curator of this collection. I'd like you to leave. But I only want what's best for you and the boy. You won't get a better price in Amsterdam. Get out! Vincent was a genius. Theo knew. I'm not selling. But how did Joanna Bonger become a curator for an almost unknown artist? Her discovery of the letters written between the brothers would prove key in telling the lost story of Vincent van Gogh's life, as would his reputation amongst other avant-garde artists who also struggled for recognition of their work. In 1891, Joanna Bonger was left widowed at the age of 28 with hundreds of artworks by her troubled brother-in-law, Vincent van Gogh. There were no obvious buyers for the paintings, as Vincent is only thought to have sold one picture during his lifetime. The Red Vineyard was purchased by the neo-impressionist painter Anna Boch. Vincent may not have had any real commercial success, but he was very appreciated by the other avant-garde artists of his era. This reputation he'd developed would prove a starting point for Joanna's quest, as would her discovery of the letters that Theo and Vincent wrote to each other that brought Vincent's story to life. She found them in a kind of bottom drawer. They were living in Pigalle at the time, her and Theo. And of course, she, poor woman, was widowed very young, and she was left with nothing except 200 van Goghs. She said, every week I saw the yellow envelopes coming in, and Theo put it in the cupboards, and she got letters too from Vincent. But she said, I only want to publish the letters after his work will be known. So she waited, and she did it on purpose. And I have a very strong idea that she waited until the mother of Vincent and Theo died. So it was not too complicated for this old mother. I think there's something like 700 between the two boys. Most of them are from Vincent because he threw Theo's away. The great one where he says, I'm going to sign my picture as Vincent because the French can't pronounce van Gogh. You know, that kind of thing. They're wonderful letters. She was so aware that when she married Theo, she got Vincent too. That was part of it. Vincent had lived in Paris with his brother Theo from 1886 to 1888, when the city was still enthralled by the work of Impressionist painters. And Vincent had begun to ever so slightly make his mark on the art world. As soon as he arrived in Paris, and thanks to Theo in part, he did meet all of the avant-garde artists. And in fact, before he left for Arles in the south, the last artist he went to see was Georges Seurat. And we know that Gauguin was coming to admire him, but it remained a very marginal kind of enthusiasm. Another of the great artists of the era who admired him was Toulouse-Lautrec. He even made a pastel sketch of his friend Vincent in 1887. He'd spent two years living in Paris. Almost everything we know about van Gogh's life comes from his letters. And that was the one time when he was living, he was actually sharing a flat most of the time with his brother Theo, so there was no need for him to write. So there are very, very few letters from those two years. Although the exact details may not be known, what is for sure is that it was in Paris that Vincent's style of painting changed dramatically. He'd been influenced by the Impressionists of the era, but also by Japanese art. He was ahead of his time, though many of the tendencies, in terms of very bright colour, in terms of decorative patterning, in terms of self-expression in the way he did it, were coming to be valued in the avant-garde. But before he could make any real name for himself in the world artistic capital of Paris, van Gogh moved to Arles in the south of France in 1888. We sometimes think of him as an isolated figure, working away in the south of France with little contact with other artists. But in fact, when he was in Paris, he was right in the heart of things. And actually one of the reasons he left Paris was he found it too exhausting. It was in Arles that he created his best-known works, including The Sunflowers. His most commercially successful work now was made really in the last part of his life. I mean, when he died, a lot of the paint wouldn't have been dry on The Sunflowers, and that thick impasto paint would still be wet. So there really wasn't much of a chance for him to be promoting his work. And I don't think he was that kind of person. He wanted to be in the south, just working frenetically as he did. The pictures that we see as attractive and full of life and bubbling with enthusiasm at the time were rejected and seen as just too avant-garde. 20 or 30 years later, things that he had intuited about fragmentation. So if you look at the surface of van Gogh, it's very clearly made up of fragmentary brushstrokes. And there are all sorts of fallings apart going on, including mental ones. That would have been very unfashionable in the 1880s. People wanted synthesis. I think people relate to it now just because it's highly emotive. It's subject matter, which feels its nature as portraits, but in the colours and the marks and the vibrancy of it, it's almost mythic. By sort of 40 years later and after the First World War, people were aware of a world that was fragile. And they found that in van Gogh's paintings, you know, sort of strident, anxious colours and flickering brushwork. Had he lived another few decades, I suspect he would have become very marketable. But he died just too soon. It did then take a few generations for a wider public to appreciate those values. Whilst in the south of France, van Gogh had stayed in touch with two other struggling artists of the era, Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin. In his letters to them, he even included sketches of the paintings he was creating in Arles. It's one of the things that's given van Gogh such a fame because the letters give a marvellous insight into his art. Van Gogh, Gauguin and Bernard had also remained in contact by painting self-portraits and sending them to each other, with the other member of the trio in the background. If you look at a museum, you see some paintings by Gauguin and by Bernard. Why are they there? Because they were exchanged. As he had done for most of his adult life, van Gogh wrote many letters to Théo during his time in Arles. My dear Théo, many thanks for the canvas you sent. Now we can join battle once more. My dear Vincent, your new consignment arrived yesterday evening. The painting is truly remarkable. I have rented a room in Montmartre which you'd like. It is small but overlooks a little garden full of ivy. Jo sends her warm regards and a smile from the little one. I remember you insisted a great deal on me getting married. You were right. Van Gogh's attempt to start an artistic community in the south of France did not end well though. He had checked himself into the asylum at Saint-Rémy where he painted many more of his best-known works. I do so wish you would tell me how you feel. Nothing is more distressing than uncertainty. I don't say that my work is good, but rather it is the least bad that I can do. Every day I wish for your speedy recovery. There is one very important moment when Vincent sliced part of his ear and had to go to the hospital in Arles. And then there's a letter of Madeline to Théo. She says, How beautiful, two heads on one cushion. So it means that in the hospital the two brothers were on the same bed and talked things over just like they did when they were very young. And I think that's a very moving moment in realizing how close this relation was. All your kindness to me, dear brother. I've felt it more than ever today. Don't bother your head about me or about us, old chap. I am beginning to consider madness and illness like any other. And we all must accept the illnesses of our time. Do not despair. Sooner or later we each have our share. Better days will come. Write to me, dear brother. Ever yours, your loving Vincent. Your loving Théo. Vincent van Gogh would eventually return to Paris in 1890, where Théo and Joanna had recently had a son, also called Vincent. Vincent and Joanna's relationship was vestigial as far as actual person-to-person meeting is concerned. She saw him when he arrived in Paris in May 1890 and there was another visit to Auvergne while Vincent was living in a small village north of Paris. She says, I thought I would meet a boy that was very struck by all these diseases. But he was well formed and he was at broad shoulders. I was surprised that he was so alive and so well aware of his position. And then they visited him in Auvers-sur-Oise, 30 kilometers north of Paris. And they had a good time that day and they had lunch together and he played with little Vincent. Everything else Joanna found out about Vincent, she would either have heard from Théo, learnt from reading the letters or learnt after Vincent's death, which makes it all the more remarkable that she devoted most of the rest of her life to Vincent's reputation and achievements as an artist. Vincent would not last long in Auvers-sur-Oise. He continued painting right until the very end though, making some of his most experimental works, including a piece called Tree Roots, which is believed by some to be his last ever painting. He would die on July the 29th 1890 of a gunshot wound. She had a little feeling of guilt after Vincent died and she said, but we didn't say anything wrong, did we? No, we did, Théo said. It was not our fault. It was in his head and we did not cause it. Théo van Gogh would also be dead within six months. It must have been incredibly stressful for Théo, being his benefactor, making sure that he was funded, also being his pretty much sole confidant to all of the highs and lows of Vincent's work and mental state. Of course he was heartbroken and he had lots of grief and it was very hard for him and he was sad and he was everything, but still he had a second stage of syphilis too. No doubt the emotional shock of losing his brother who he'd been so close to must have also exacerbated his condition. Within a few months he went totally mad and if you want to have an uncomfortable night, read the report of the doctor, of Théo, because it was a very hard, very hard time for him. Following the death of her husband and brother-in-law, Joanna had to make use of the limited reputation Vincent had built up amongst his fellow artists. Following the death of Théo and Vincent, Johanna really rallied to make sure that his art became known and her house became a sort of hub for people interested in van Gogh and she really, really pushed him. It didn't take her long. Soon, Claude Monet came to see van Gogh's works and announced his surprise that a man who loved flowers and light so much could have been so unhappy. Another giant of the time, Camille Pizarro, also showed his appreciation, declaring that Vincent's flowers look like people. There were some young artists and they helped her with the first exhibitions here in Amsterdam in 1892 and she did it very well. She did essentially, I think, three things. She published the letters bit by bit. She lent pictures to international exhibitions of which there were a sequence so that people saw van Gogh's work and a certain amount of it was sold. These early sales were made to some of the most influential and wealthy people of the era. The major galleries would quickly follow behind them in trying to purchase works and it's during this time that many of the mysteries of what happened to van Gogh's paintings started to form. Some items would sadly be lost forever. Some are still missing and one has been sitting unappreciated in an attic for decades. Joanna Bonger wasted no time in presenting the works of her brother-in-law, Vincent van Gogh, to the world. She arranged numerous exhibitions and loaned the paintings to various galleries and it wasn't long before buyers soon came knocking on her door. Joanna had works from the entirety of Vincent's career but it was the sunflower paintings that would unsurprisingly prove the most popular. Possibly the very first buyer of Vincent van Gogh's work after he died was the celebrated French writer, Octave Mirbeau. In 1891, he purchased both the irises painting and the three sunflowers painting for a mere 600 francs. In 1894, Emil Schuffenegger, an avant-garde artist himself, started collecting van Gogh's when he purchased one of the series of sunflowers. Amazingly, he chose to alter the picture by stretching out the canvas on all sides and painting in the gaps himself. Hugo von Schude, the director of the National Gallery in Berlin, was also taken by the sunflowers, buying one of the series for himself in 1905. The painting has remained in Germany ever since. But it was in 1908 that the most determined collector emerged. That year, Helena Kröller-Muller first acquired this early painting by van Gogh titled Edge of a Wood and it would begin a long love affair with the artist. Helena Kröller-Muller was a very, very wealthy person. One of the wealthiest person in Holland at the time. When Helena went to Paris, she did not buy little bags but she did buy van Gogh's. Just having them five at a time or ten at a time. She mostly, but her husband also was buying. In the beginning, she started buying one and one and then they went to Paris to auctions, visiting artist studios. And there is one weekend she bought five van Gogh's. Together, the Kröller-Mullers managed to purchase 91 van Gogh's, making it the second largest collection in the world and eventually the centerpiece of the Kröller-Muller Museum. It was very obvious that in the Netherlands, she was the wealthiest collectioner at that moment. For her, van Gogh was the greatest artist that there had been and he was sort of the start of modern art. And she was also very interested in him because he was painting and drawing social themes and she was a very social conscious person. So that attracted her too. Helena Kröller-Muller's support played a key role in developing van Gogh's legacy. But surprisingly, she had no contact with Joanna Bonger and bought her paintings from the first dealers in van Gogh's works. That's quite surprising because Jo had the paintings and if you see with a kind of U-turn, what went from Jo to Helena Kröller-Muller, that had everything to do with the fact that Helena Kröller-Muller was a very, very wealthy person and Jo was a very convinced social democrat. And I think the characters of the ladies were not that close to each other. She also played a very important role in that because she showed her own collection. She gave them loan to other exhibitions, both nationally as internationally. And Jo Bonger also gave her collection. They both were very important in making him so famous and so well-known. Joanna Bonger would marry again in 1901. Her new husband, Johan Coen Goschalk, was also an artist and painted portraits of her. But she would be left widowed again in 1912. She went to live in New York City soon after World War I broke out and it was during this terrifying time that she first published the letters of Vincent and Theo. They sold very well. It was during the First World War and people think that's the wrong moment to publish letters like that. But on the contrary, during wartime, people are more attached to literature or to very important things that were happening in the past. After World War I, Joanna returned to the Netherlands where she continued to work on building Vincent's legacy. She loaned out the sunflowers to another artist called Isaac Israels who used them as the backgrounds for his paintings. Israels also painted portraits of Joanna with whom he at once had a brief relationship. Isaac already knew Theo when he lived in Paris and visited him there. He was a well-known painter here, painted a lot of impressionist things in cities, very well-known in Amsterdam. Jo and he met each other and they liked each other very well, very, very well. We have the diaries of Jo still. There is a line and she says, I was at the studio of Isaac Israels. We played with fire. And then two lines are cut out. Very interesting. And I think the only one who could have done this was her son, Vincent. The series of sunflowers paintings had become Van Gogh's most recognized work thanks to Joanna's efforts. In 1924, Jim Eade, the curator of the National Gallery in London, made it his mission to purchase one of the sunflowers. But it wouldn't be easy to convince Joanna to part with her personal favorite. Would you care for some tea? Yes. He had begun to paint sunflowers in Paris. Already, Paul Gauguin had told him this was a great subject for him, had told him that these were marvelous. He repeatedly said how tremendous he thought the sunflower paintings were and tried to get Van Gogh to give him one of them as well. So Vincent and Gauguin both thought that these were important pictures. We know from a quote from Vincent Van Gogh that he really saw the sunflower as his own symbol. There's something about them that grabs people. I mean, the color of the yellow on yellow is a dramatic and interesting way of presenting it. It's so become an iconic that one just associates sunflowers, almost the flowers, with Van Gogh. To paint a picture which is effectively all in modulations of one color would have seemed tremendously radical or indeed, to some relatively avant-garde artists who saw it early on, completely insane. I cannot express how honored we would be. The sunflowers truly is a masterpiece. We acquired this in 1924 when we received money from Samuel Courtauld, the industrialist, specifically to buy modern paintings for the National Gallery. And right then, Van Gogh was right at the top of the list of modern artists whom we wanted to represent here. It was very keen to buy a Van Gogh and really wanted the sunflowers. And they pleaded with Johanna to sell the sunflowers to the National Gallery. We would take the greatest of care. There's a couple of letters from her which are very moving. She says that she's seen the painting every day during her life or her adult life and she didn't want to part with it. She knew that it was important and she wanted to hang on to it. I think she had a connection with it and knew that Theo did too and wanted to keep it. It's not for sale. I understand. Jimmy, at that point, was one of the few people in Britain who really knew about modern art and could speak authoritatively. What he said to Johanna Banger, in my understanding, was that we are the National Gallery. If this artist is to be represented here, we really need a picture of the highest achievement. Jimmy's persistence would eventually prove worthwhile in the end. A few days later, she sent another letter to the director of the National Gallery saying that she would reluctantly sell it for the sake of Vincent's glory because she wanted him to be represented in such an important gallery. Dear Mr. Ede, I have tried to harden my heart against your appeal. I have looked on that picture every day for 30 years. I could not bear to part with it. It was really the kudos and importance of that gallery that made her think, this is really going to set in stone Vincent as a titan of the 20th century. I have come to realize that no other picture could represent Vincent in a more worthy manner. He would have wanted to be there in your gallery. It's interesting that van Gogh actually had lived in London earlier in his life when he worked as an art dealer in his early 20s and he loved going to the National Gallery. So it's very nice that his sunflowers have ended up there. She also would have known that he was a great admirer of certain aspects of British art and British literature, the moralizing side of it, that art was about something, that it taught you things. It is a sacrifice I must make for his glory. With van Gogh's work now in the National Gallery, Joanna's mission could be declared a complete success as Vincent had been accepted as a truly great artist. She would die just a year after the painting was sold. But what of the huge number of van Gogh's that Joanna still had in her possession? They would eventually become the very foundation of the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam when it opened in 1973. But in the intervening decades, many works by Vincent had gone missing due to the chaos of World War II and a collection of mysterious owners and devious forgers. The struggle to get them all back continues. Joanna Bonger, the guardian of Vincent van Gogh's legacy, died on September the 2nd, 1925, soon after selling the painting of 15 sunflowers to the National Gallery in London. Before she passed away, though, van Gogh had already inspired a whole new generation of artists, especially in Germany. It truly was Germany that first embraced him as a great artist. And if we look at the art that emerged in Germany in the decades following, it is as if they'd been waiting for someone who would show them how to paint with this intense expressivity and with this extraordinary sense of color. Van Gogh had, in fact, been so lauded in Germany that fakes of the artist first started to emerge here. The major incident was in the 1920s when a Berlin gallery owner, Otto Wacker, faked dozens of van Gogh paintings, which were initially accepted by the experts, and then they realized they were wrong, and he was found guilty. And since then, there has been a continual problem of faking. A number of van Goghs have been de-attributed, even those which belong to museums. So it continues to be highly controversial. The fear of fakes continues to the present day. One of the sunflowers paintings once owned by Emil Schuffenegger was sold for a record £22.5 million in 1987. It was known that the picture had been extended around the edges, but some at the time claimed that the whole painting was a copy done by Schuffenegger. However, this claim was later confirmed to be untrue. The problem of fakery has also dogged another work by Vincent van Gogh for nearly its entire existence. But in 2013, the van Gogh Museum was able to present a newly rediscovered painting for the first time in many decades. The Sunset at Montmajor. It is a great pleasure for us to present to you this morning a new work by Vincent van Gogh. That painting was one of the paintings that was owned by Theo van Gogh and passed into the hands of Johanna, and it was first sold in 1901, and then it went through a period until 1908 where we don't know the provenance. And then it went into the collection of a Norwegian businessman. Quite soon after he bought it, he was told it was a fake, so he just put it up in his attic, and there it stayed with his family. And then about 20 years ago, it was sent to the van Gogh Museum to ask whether it might be authentic, and at that point it was rejected and the museum said it was not right. And then in 2011, research was launched again, and they looked at the paint technique, the type of paint, really under the microscope. They used a letter from July 1888 when it was painted from Vincent Tuteo, which described a very similar scene of this abbey painted from the scrubland below. There were two key points. One was it had a number chalked on the back, which turned out to be an inventory number from Andreas Bonger, so we could link it up with an 1890 inventory. And the other thing which was surprising was missed by the van Gogh Museum the first time is that it shows the castle of Montmajor in the south of France, which had a very unusual tower, and that helped to identify it. There is a kind of rule in art history that when a picture disappears off the beaten track, when it goes to a place like Norway, where it's not seen by a lot of people, then it becomes, the assumption arises, oh, it can't be right, and it falls out of favour. The discovery of this new work gives us hope that other missing van Goghs may be found one day. Many of them vanished during World War II. There are probably roughly 10 van Gogh paintings which disappeared during the Second World War. There were a few that were probably burnt and destroyed, including a very important self-portrait. There were some that were looted or stolen and have not turned up. One of the lost van Goghs which I personally would most like to see is the picture of the painter on the road to Tarrascan. That is a picture of van Gogh himself walking along the road which led past his yellow house out into the fields. This one disappeared during the Second World War. It was probably destroyed in a fire. The chances, unfortunately, are rather small that it survived. There are others which one day we may see again. There's an important flower still life which was stolen during the war and has not turned up. I mean, it might one day. Who knows? There is an extraordinary photograph of Herman Goering sort of caressing, in a creepy way, this very important late van Gogh from the Auvers period called A Tree With Ivy, a painting which possibly Goering then appropriated. A lot of pictures in Paris were disappearing into collections of prominent Nazi officials. It seems Goering had a taste for contemporary art as well as Renaissance art and Baroque art. But if he did, it didn't remain with the main collection of Goering's work which was then recovered. Maybe it's in a bank vault somewhere still. One can hope. There are a tantalising number of lost van Goghs which it would be wonderful to see again and also destroyed van Goghs. Amongst the latter, one of the most poignant is the Sunflower painting. This one was bought by a Japanese collector in 1920. It was actually the first van Gogh to go to Japan, which is interesting. It was in a private collection and it was destroyed on the 6th of August, 1945, the very same day as the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. This was on a separate bombing raid in Tokyo itself. It's a very interesting coincidence. It tells us a lot about the different ways he was thinking about sunflowers at that moment because it doesn't resemble our picture at all. So clearly he was working out a lot of possibilities in his mind. We had a rather poor photographic reproduction of the painting, but what I found was a very early 1920s colour reproduction in a portfolio published in Japan which had not been known about to van Gogh specialists. And this had much more natural colours, so it gave us an idea of what the picture looks like. And even more interestingly, this reproduction has an orange frame around the painting, an orange strip of wood. And if you look at van Gogh's letters, he describes how he wanted to present the blue sunflowers against an orange frame. So for the first time, we can see how van Gogh wanted to present the picture. Some of the others which have disappeared, one might entertain hopes that one day they will reappear. While the search for lost van Gogh's continues, the story of Vincent's life has become world famous. After the publication of the letters, the writer Irving Stone released the wildly successful novel Lust for Life in 1934, which told the story of Vincent van Gogh's many hardships. What do you know about pain? It would be made into a film starring Kirk Douglas 20 years later. Let me talk to Kay for as long as I can keep my hand in this frame. The movie captured what had become one of the most legendary times in van Gogh's life, when he was staying in Arles with Paul Gauguin, another artist who was largely unappreciated during his lifetime. I've dug ditches in the stinking heat of the tropics. I worked in the docks and weather so cold, my hands froze on the ropes. And I can tell you there's nothing noble or beautiful about it. I did it so I could go on painting. I didn't have a brother to support me. There was already a sort of bit of a myth of the man around Gauguin. He had been a stockbroker and he left his wife and he was really sort of a character within those circles. And Vincent, I think, really looked up to him, saw him as this pioneer of an emotive form of art full of synesthesia and using paint to conjure different ways of thinking. He was just on the edge of having a breakdown when Gauguin arrived. Gauguin actually mentions this in his own letter to Theo. And then van Gogh actually gets better for a couple of months. I think he paints something like 25 pictures in five months, and he's just painting and painting and painting. Not necessarily the happiest period in his entire life. The idyll that they both envisaged of working in this wonderful artistic commune never came to fruition. It was a disaster. The reason we know so much about the life and work of the unknown Vincent van Gogh is thanks to the tireless efforts of Joanna Bonga. The epic battles with Paul Gauguin down in Arles, his tortured mental state, the mutilation of his own ear and, of course, the devoted relationship between the artist and his brother Theo. All of these elements are part of the legend of Vincent van Gogh. So why has Joanna's story largely been forgotten? Well, I suppose Joanna's contribution comes from a lot of people's points of view. After the story's ended, after the brothers van Gogh died, her role becomes very important. I guess in the public eye, people are really interested in Vincent and to some extent they're interested in Theo. But Joanna was further away from them and didn't know Vincent well. She sold more than 250 works of art. Because she has sold them, that's why Van Gogh has grown so famous. I think it's certainly true that her name, Joanna Bonga, is not as well known to the general public as she ought to be because what she did was on an heroic scale in assuring this legacy and assuring the fame of Vincent. She spread him over the world. But still, she had about 600 works by Van Gogh, many drawings, 200 paintings, and about 200 pieces of art of other people. The paintings went to the Van Gogh Museum in the 1970s, so everyone just assumes they've been in a museum. And I guess for that reason, she's not well known. It's quite possible that Van Gogh would have been completely forgotten without Joanna Bonga, because there would have been very, very few works surviving. She did play a very important role. Without her, so much of the material wouldn't have survived. Vincent, he said, people will only understand my portraits 25 years after, and he was right.