"Self-portrait with cut ear" by Vincent Van Gogh?[CRI]

Vincent van Gogh, known throughout the world as a brilliant painter, was also a literary master. That's the assessment of critics who've seen the artist's personal correspondence. Van Gogh discusses his life and his art in letters that are now on view to the public.

Van Gogh - the face of the man as he saw himself through his art.

The Dutch painter, who lived and died in the 1800s still influences modern art today.

During his lifetime he became almost as famous for his troubled mind as for his paintings.

To coincide with a new publication of all his known correspondence, the Van Gogh museum in the Netherlands is exhibiting more than 100 personal letters in which he discusses his craft.

They're on display alongside his paintings.

Axel Ruger, Van Gogh Museun Director, said, "I found it very interesting to see in those letters and drawings. How he can, in a very brief way, explain what he is doing. He had all those beautiful paintings, but he was also able to express the essence of the paintings in his small sketches and drawings. And then again and again I found that amazing."

Seeing the letters next to the paintings underlines Van Gogh's professionalism, which is sometimes overlooked amid spectacular biographical details such as his mental illness, his apparent amputation of part of his own left ear after a quarrel, and his suicide at the age of 37.

In the letters, Van Gogh writes about both the philosophy of painting and the technical details.

The collection includes all 820 known letters by Van Gogh, tracing his youth and late start as a painter to his spectacular blossoming in the late 1880s.

In all, it offers an unusually complete picture of the mental world of one of the world's great artists.

Leo Jansen, curator, said, "I am convinced that this edition will give a new impulse for research and understanding Van Gogh books and web sites present the material about the artist, and that makes a kind of three dimensional life of Van Gogh. Also I think the book will show that Van Gogh was not a very impulsive man, he was very methodological and structured."

For Van Gogh fans not interested in buying the 6-volume set, the entire compilation has been put online in a free, searchable database in French, Dutch and English, the three languages in which the painter wrote.

The book and web site were published on Tuesday, and the museum exhibition opens on Friday and runs through January 3 next year.

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