Vincent & Sien by Silvia Kwon

 

This exquisite cover sets the mood perfectly for reading the story of Vincent Van Gogh and Sien Hoornik. I was completely transported into the world of Vincent and Sien by Silvia Kwon’s sensitive, painstakingly researched imagining of their lives as they might have lived them.

Vincent was an artistic genius whose self-belief  wouldn’t allow him to follow any other path than the one he was on, spending years perfecting his drawing skills with pencils and charcoal before he considered himself ready to use paint.  This novel begins on the night Vincent finds Sien, pregnant and starving and having collapsed on the street next to her sleeping little daughter. He gives them shelter for the night and soon asks her to come back and pose for him. 

Sien’s world has until now been one of extreme poverty; Vincent is living on an allowance sent to him by his younger brother, Theo, a seller of paintings by successful artists. All of this has been well documented over the years, and admirers of Vincent Van Gogh are all well acquainted with the bare facts of his life story. How exciting, then, to read it as it might have happened. 

I was so overcome by the loveliness of this book that I was often close to tears while reading it. I don’t mean to imply that Silvia Kwon has prettied up the world of a destitute street walker and a driven artist who, earning no money himself,  is usually poverty stricken from spending most of his brother’s allowance on art materials and paying people to pose for him. Rather, it was the contrast with Vincent’s life then and how he is now acknowledged as a grand master of stupendous brilliance. There is nothing more heart stopping than to look at his paintings in person, making perfect sense of stories of his struggles to achieve perfection in his art. 

This is a truly beautiful, unforgettable book. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Published by Pan Macmillan.