Vincent: A Graphic Biography

I deeply adore the art off Vincent van Gogh and ever since learning a bit about his life I felt connected to him and his passion and vast sadness and unrest.

In this book the life of Vincent is retold through the voice of Jo, his sister-in-law, the wife of his favourite brother Theo, who died shortly after Vincent.
She was the one who then spent most of her life reading and translating the brothers‘ correspondences and taking care of Vincents paintings. After all he only sold one during his lifetime, through Jos and her son Vincents work then became very widely known and popular.

However, this graphic novel does a decent work of retelling his life, albeit leaving out the newer research and more recent view on the circumstances of his death. That problaby has not been a suicide but rather an unfortunate accident involving children playing with a gun and him covering them by saying it was a suicide attempt.

This is one thing that bothered me, but that‘s the only thing, regarding the content of the text.

What really striked as a wasted chance to make this a really great book is the quality of the drawings.
They feel lazy, stiff and mostly loveless. The only ones that were somewhat good were those depicting Vincents actual artworks. The rest has flat colours and thick linings that make most expressions weird.
The positioning of the drawings and the chosen subjects were good, the style just doesn‘t seem to fit.

Maybe my opinion and view on this is rooted in the love I have for Vincents story and art so that these drawings don‘t align with my expectations and other readers don‘t get bothered at all by them or maybe like the style.

Overall I would recommend reading it, if only for the concise summary of this artists life.