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If you have not read part 1 from last week, I suggest that you do because I left off with Jo as a young widow. Her art dealer husband, Theo, had died under very difficult circumstances. She was now a single mother, with no job, and the proud possessor of hundreds of pieces of art, most of them worth very little. Now we are just diving in.

A Boarding House and a Lot of Canvases

A woman in Jo’s situation had only a few options. She chose a common one for a modestly genteel woman. She rented a house and took in boarders. It opened in May 1891, in the Dutch town of Bussum, and the residents were lucky, for they lived in a house where every wall held an original van Gogh. I hope they appreciated it, but it’s likely that most of them did not. Van Gogh was very modern at the time, and this was a world only recently converted to the idea of a Monet water lily as an object of beauty. A van Gogh flower was downright ugly.

Jo did appreciate van Gogh’s flowers. She was writing about how much she loved Vincent’s work even back when she thought she and Theo and Vincent were all going to live happily for decades. This is a small miracle for us because if she had agreed they were ugly, and she knew they weren’t worth very much, and also that keeping them meant packing them all up and paying to have them moved—well—let’s just say that a Marie Kondo or other minimalist would have chucked the whole lot.

Fortunately for posterity, Jo knew they were beautiful. The fact that both Vincent and Theo died so young and in such desperate circumstances did not leave her despairing. It left her determined to continue their work. She was not an artist, and she was not an art dealer, but she wasn’t going to let this collection slip into obscurity.

She had not kept a diary in three years, including all the time she was married, but on November 15, 1891, she reflected on the past and wrote:

“For a year and a half, I was the happiest woman on earth; it was a long, beautiful, wonderful dream, the most beautiful one can dream. And following it was all that untold suffering that I cannot touch upon—I lost him, my dear, faithful husband—who made my life so rich, so full, who awakened everything that was good in me, who not only loved me but who understood what I was lacking and wanted to teach me… his child is now my treasure, my comfort, my support, my all, to whom I cling and who gives me the courage to go on living. And so I’ve started writing in my diary again—not for the sentimental outpourings I wrote down as a young girl—(what a lot of nonsense I often proclaimed)—but for a -moment of self-analysis and self-examination now and then, to keep a better watch on myself and develop a little, if possible. I must use all my strength to learn again so that I may be of some use to my boy later and he will not look down on his mother with contempt—as so many boys, and rightly, have to do alas… I have to make sure that all the domestic worries don’t reduce me to a household machine, but I have to keep my mind alert… Theo taught me a lot about art—no, let me say rather that he taught me a lot about life, I learned everything through him: the greatest bliss—the greatest suffering, that teaches us to understand everything else!

“As well as the child, he has left me another task—Vincent’s work—getting it seen and appreciated as much as possible—keeping all the treasures that Theo and Vincent had collected intact for the child—that, too, is my work. I’m not without purpose— but I do feel lonely and abandoned—all the same, there are moments of great serenity—that the satisfaction of my work gives me if I may just maintain the health to work for our child—then my life will not have been devastated by the loss of my husband—but I shall always bless him and thankfully love him for all the happiness he once gave me” (Luijten, 137-138).

Because Theo died without a will, Jo inherited half of his property. The other half went to their son. But little Vincent was just a baby, and Jo was guardian. So she controlled all of it, even if she didn’t own all of it. She never lost sight of the fact that she had a legacy to protect, and that legacy belonged to Vincent the artist and also to his namesake, her son.

What the Legacy Was Worth

She immediately took out fire insurance protection on her property, and the amounts are telling. Two hundred paintings by van Gogh were valued at 2,000 francs in total, which may not mean much to you (or me), but averages out to 10 francs per painting. For comparison, we can look at some of her other art, including some big names in what was modern art at the time. Theo had regarded art as “good friends to live with” (Stolwijk, 153), and he had dreams of a big collection. He had not lived long enough to get very far on it, but he had started. Jo had three Gauguin paintings, and those were valued at 300 francs, or 100 francs per painting. Her handful of paintings by Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec averaged to 75 francs per painting. In other words, the van Goghs were not very valuable. Her portfolio of his drawings was valued at 600 francs total, and there were hundreds of drawings in it (Luijten, 130).

Jo also owned most the letters Vincent and Theo had written. Early on, Jo realized that Vincent was not just a great artist. He was a great story. The letters would generate interest in the art, if only she could organize, translate, and publish them. She did work on that, but she was a little busy, between being a single mom and running a boarding house. It would be decades before she saw the complete collection published.

In the meantime, the art world carried on as usual, and a slow trickle of exhibition organizers remembered that their former colleague Theo van Gogh had had a brother who painted. Jo did not know the business, but she did have a clever strategy. Each time she was asked to contribute, she sent some of the best works on loan, but not for sale. This piqued interest in the lesser works that were for sale, while maintaining the best works for her own collection (Luijten, 150). She used this tactic in the Hague, Paris, Antwerp, and Amsterdam. Her strategy worked and interest slowly grew, even farther afield in Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. In 1893, she began publishing a few of Vincent’s letters in magazines, and she was right that people who read the tragic story were suddenly much more interested in the art they had previously despised (Luijten, 153).

Even so, the prices were low at the beginning. One of the many things working against her was that Jo was not a part of the art world, nor was she welcome. There was a strong sense that a woman was too ignorant to do a good job. We already saw that last week from her own brother Andries, the art dealer, but he wasn’t the only one. Her taste was criticized by other art dealers as well, including one who wrote:

“Mrs. van Gogh is a charming little woman, but it irritates me when someone goes into raptures about something they do not understand at all, and blinded by sentimentality are still supposed to be able to be purely critical. It’s schoolgirlish drivel, that’s all… Mrs. van Gogh would think that the best work was the one that was most overblown and sentimental—that made her cry the most; she forgets that her grief turns Vincent into a God” (Luijten, 147).

Moderately Success

Chauvinism aside, things were going reasonably well for Jo. In addition to constantly packing and unpacking paintings, her boarding house was successful. She began writing magazine articles on feminism and child-raising and book reviews. In 1901, she remarried, which allowed her to get rid of the boarding house.

Her new husband was an artist, but not one I had heard of: Johan Cohen Gosschalk. This marriage was a disappointment. Gosschalk was mentally ill, and though his decline was not as spectacular as Theo’s, it was still difficult and longer. He would disappear for days at a time, and when he was home, his gloom pervaded the house (Luijten, 196). It was good that Jo had been smart enough to get a prenup. Premarital property remained separate, giving Gosschalk no claim on the van Gogh collection.

Meanwhile van Gogh’s visibility was picking up. There was now a van Gogh in a permanent museum. Not because the museum had bought it, but because 26 enthusiasts had gone in together to purchase it for the museum. One of the 26 was Jo herself because she knew that a museum would do more for Vincent’s reputation than any private collector could (Luijten, 209).

In 1904, Jo answered a great many questions from a German art critic writing a book. She didn’t like the book or how it portrayed Vincent, but there was no doubt it was good for publicity. Some of Vincent’s canvases were now selling for over 1000 francs. That’s 100 times the average amount she had insured them for when they first became hers (Luijten, 197).

Definite Success

In 1905, Jo staged her own exhibition in Amsterdam. She had contributed to many, but this was the first in which she managed the whole thing, and it went well: she showed 484 van Gogh works. Many of which she owned herself, but she also borrowed many back from the  private collectors she had sold to in order to add credibility and cachet. In terms of sheer size, it is still the largest van Gogh exhibition ever, and thousands of people paid 25 cents a ticket to see it, coming from as far away as Paris (Luijten, 225-225).

Comments from critics ranged from compelling: “the work will grip you and never let you go” to contemptuous, like the one who looked at Starry Night and sniffed that the stars looked like doughnuts (Luijten, 226).

The cost of putting on the exhibit was 4,130 Dutch guilders. The revenue from tickets did not cover that. But over the next few months, Jo sold 34,000 guilders’ worth of art, so it was a huge success (Luijten, 228). She followed it up with two very big donations to the Rijksmuseum, the most prestigious museum in the Netherlands.

Of course, selling the art came with its own set of headaches. In 1906, Jo was accused of having sold all the best works. Only “inferior” works were left. Jo was highly indignant. She did not consider herself crass or commercial, though it is certainly true that her life cost money, just like everyone else’s. Still, her major goal was to boost Vincent’s reputation by sharing his work as widely as possible. She insisted that her soul was not sold to commerce and that the best works had never been for sale and never would be (Luijten, 235).

Which is a very interesting comment because it gives us an indication of which works she thought were the best. Did she make that judgment based on her own artistic evaluation? The one that more than one art dealer had told her was weak, uninformed, and womanish? Or did she rely on the letters and comments from Theo and Vincent to tell her which ones they thought were the best, always remembering that creators of all types are notoriously bad at judging their own work. I am mentioning this because nowadays Vincent’s most famous painting by far is Starry Night. But Jo clearly did not consider that one of the best because she sold it. And when the buyer later needed money, she bought it back from him and sold it again at a profit.

By now, Jo was raising her prices, sometimes by as much as 400% (Luijten, 237). Art is a luxury market: sometimes the higher the prices are, the more people are eager to get them. One wealthy collector made headlines by paying Jo five times her asking price for multiple paintings (Luijten, 246).

For those of us ordinary rabble, who could never afford such prices, Jo began authorizing reproductions of the work, which could be sold at a fraction of the cost and distributed worldwide, so everyone would know the name of van Gogh.

The strategy was working. So much so that Jo found it cumbersome to be known as Mrs. Cohen Gosschalk. Upon the death of her second husband, she changed her name back to Mrs. van Gogh-Bonger. It was the relationship that had mattered more for her. And it was good for business too.

1914 was another watershed year. In it she finally published the full, but not complete, collection of Vincent and Theo’s letters, which she had worked on off and on for decades. I say not complete because Jo made plenty of edits and cuts where she thought the subject was boring or embarrassing (Luijten, 295). Though we could wish for a stricter presentation, the book cemented Vincent’s reputation as a tragic genius who created his best art out of great suffering. Many people who did not like van Gogh’s work when they looked only at the canvases started to see beauty in it.

1914 was also the year that Jo decided to move Theo’s body so that he could share a double grave plot with Vincent in the south of France. Their monument is still there, and you can visit it. But it was an interesting choice on Jo’s part because double plots were usually for husband and wife. When it was Jo’s turn to be buried, it was done in Amsterdam, and I am not clear on whether that was her choice, or her son’s.

1914 is also the year when Jo finally, finally expressed just a little resentment at the way her brother-in-law Vincent had dominated her own relationship with her husband. In one letter she said she felt it was Vincent’s fault that Theo began to decline so rapidly and concluded, “when I think about all these things I feel a grudge against Vincent, because he is the one who took my happiness. But I must not indulge these memories” (Luijten, 301).

Other than that, there is no hint anywhere in her lifetime that she was anything but devoted to the memory and legacy of Vincent van Gogh.

New Audiences and a Continuing Legacy

Meanwhile, there were new audiences who had yet to appreciate Vincent. In 1916, Jo went to the United States. By this point, her son Vincent was married, and an engineer, and he had a job in the States. Jo joined him for three years. The Americans were interested in her collection, but World War I made shipping anything too risky. German U-boats were bringing down ships, and Jo did not want to see any of her canvases at the bottom of the Atlantic. But she could certainly generate interest with the small number she and her son had brought with them, and being forced to wait probably didn’t hurt the market value.

Another market that had remained stubborn was England. Jo was still working on the English translations of Vincent’s letters, and yes, she was doing it herself. Nevertheless, the National Gallery and the Tate Modern wanted a masterpiece. Specifically, they wanted the Sunflowers, of which there were a couple of versions. However, these did fall in the group that Jo felt she should never part with. She told the English that the sunflowers were not for sale, never, they belonged in her family, just like Vincent’s bedroom, and the house at Arles (Luijten, 339).

But eventually the English wore her down because the prospect of having Vincent’s work in the most important museum in England was too great a chance to pass up. In 1924, they got their Sunflowers after all.

By the end of her life, Jo could say that she had participated in more than 100 art exhibitions, and now she was turning down requests because there were so many. She had successfully placed hundreds of Vincent’s artworks with major collections on multiple continents, while still retaining for herself a larger collection than she had sold. The drawings that she still had were insured at 56,850 guilders, or nearly 100 times the amount that all the drawings had been valued at when they first passed into her possession (Luijten, 346). Vincent had frequently “sold” paintings, if you want to call it that, in return for a place to live for a while or food. In contrast, Jo was able to ask 10,000 guilders for Irises and 12,000 guilders for a Self-Portrait, at a time when a professor’s annual salary was around 4,000 guilders (Luijten, 248, 349).

Jo died of Parkinsons on September 2, 1925. The work of promoting van Gogh’s legacy fell to her son, who didn’t necessarily want the job. He did it only half-heartedly in the early days; he was understandably busy with his engineering career. But Jo had done enough that van Gogh was a household name already and nothing was going to stop that. The exhibitions went on, worldwide, and later in his life, the younger Vincent van Gogh, did spend a great deal of time promoting the legacy he had inherited. In 1973, he gave a speech at the opening of Amsterdam’s van Gogh museum, to which he had sold the remaining family collection so that it could stay as part of the heritage of the Dutch people. He forgot to mention his mother’s name in the speech (Luijten, 362), but that’s motherhood for you, isn’t it?

Anyway, the paintings that Jo so carefully protected are still there, open to the public, and well worth a visit. We’re very lucky that Jo chose to keep them when she opened her boarding house.

Selected Sources

Luijten, Hans. Jo van Gogh-Bonger. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022.

Naifeh, Steven, and Gregory White Smith. Van Gogh. Random House, 2011.

Ozanne, Marie-Angelique, and Frederique De Jode. Theo. Vendome Press, 2004.

Stolwijk, Chris, and Richard Thomson. Theo van Gogh, 1857-1891. Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum and Waanders Publishers, 1999.

Van Gogh Museum. “How Many Paintings Did Vincent Sell during His Lifetime?” Van Gogh Museum, n.d. https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/vincent-van-gogh-faq/how-many-paintings-did-vincent-sell-during-his-lifetime.