and it is to this trait that the public owes the 663 letters from Vincent.

By contrast, Vincent infrequently kept letters sent to him and just 84 have survived, of which 39 were from Theo. Nevertheless, it is to these letters between the brothers that is owed much of what is known today about Vincent van Gogh. The only two periods about which the public is relatively uninformed are the Parisian period, during which they shared an apartment and had no need to correspond, and a one-year gap in the correspondence from 1879 to 1880, when