The Seven Sketchbooks of Vincent van Gogh - A Facsimile Edition

Harry N. Abrams, New York. 1987. Large hardcover with dust jacket. 320 pages. Good copy. Light wear. 423 illustrations, including 210 facsimile reproductions. Until the publication of this book, the sketchbooks of Vincent van Gogh were available to only the few scholars who traveled to the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh in Amsterdam, where the sketchbooks have been preserved, on permanent loan from the Vincent van Gogh Foundation. Since Van Gogh's death, a limited number of these drawings from the sketchbooks have been reproduced in various publications on the artist. Now, however, the seven sketch- books are published in their entirety with approximately 150 drawings from the sketchbooks published for the first time. For this special publication, the pages from the sketch¬books have been reproduced in their original size. Further- more, the author, Johannes van der Wolk, has been able to reconstruct through careful research the sketchbooks that have not remained intact. Van der Wolk, formerly director of the Rjksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, is now Van Gogh curator at the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller in Otterlo, The Netherlands. In his text Van der Wolk guides the reader through his search for the original form and subsequent reconstruction of the sketchbooks. The results are exhaustive, but not final-the reader is invited to make his own discoveries as well. The sketchbook drawings are also discussed in relation to Van Gogh's major works and are reproduced in the text section next to the paintings for which they were the gene¬sis. For anyone interested in Van Gogh and his work, this book offers new insight into his working processes as well as an extraordinary opportunity to see many works by the hand of Van Gogh rarely seen before.