Wandering through Vincent van Gogh’s Brabant

Wandering through Vincent van Gogh's Brabant Landscape, farming life and artisan weavers photographed 1865 - 1920 Ronald Peeters and Emy Thorissen - King’s Commissioner of North Brabant writes in the foreword: ‘Vincent was an artist’, is what I once wrote in the bid book for the Van Gogh National Park. But not only a painter, the unrecognised genius of his time, he was also a brilliant writer. He also laid bare his soul in his letters. His struggles with art, people and incomprehension. There is, however, one subject that he keeps returning to, Brabant and its people, the Brabanders. That Brabant, the Brabantine countryside of heather, streams, woods and fens, has not been lost in the course of time. There is more than those reminders of Vincent, tangible in the recently established Van Gogh National Park. Images and letters that bear witness to them have been preserved. Photos that show how accurately Vincent observed his surroundings, the Brabant of that time. This beautiful and important book combines Vincent’s words with images from his time. He becomes our guide to his Brabant, to our Brabant, because that’s also the challenge, to preserve Vincent’s Brabant with all of his lieux de mémoires - realms of memory - for the future, whilst dealing with change. Wandering through Vincent van Gogh’s Brabant is a window into the eternal past that, despite everything, still remains tangible, in Vincent’s words and paintings, in the Van Gogh National Park and, of course, in this book! Wim B.H.J. van de Donk King’s Commissioner of North Brabant