Michael Prodger on Art

N EARLY JANUARY 1885, Vincent van Gogh was 31 years old and, after a series of setbacks, had returned to live with his parents in Neunen near Eindhoven. It was from their house that he wrote a letter to his brother Theo, his financial and emotional helpmeet. In it he discussed his death. The possibility of dropping dead, he said, was something “which I should not try to evade if it happened, but which I should not seek expressly”. Five-and-a-half years later, he was indeed dead and he had, seemingly, sought