Vincent and Theo van Gogh: a lifetime short on money, one brother always sending more
Vincent sold only one painting in his life. From age twenty-three, his brother Theo wired him money every month for eleven years. Six hundred letters later, the world finally saw what Theo had always believed.
In 1872, on a railway platform in the Netherlands, a sixteen-year-old boy waved goodbye to his nineteen-year-old brother, who was leaving for a job in The Hague.
The brother leaving was Vincent van Gogh. He was not yet the painter the world now knows — just an awkward young man working at an art dealership, not very good with people. On the platform, the two young men made a promise: no matter where life took them, they would keep writing.
They kept that promise for the rest of their lives.
Over the next seventeen years, Vincent wrote more than six hundred letters to his younger brother Theo. Theo was a young gallery manager in Paris, not rich, but from the age of twenty-three he sent his older brother money every month — a few dozen francs, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less — and he did it for eleven years.
Vincent painted on that money. He could not afford a proper studio, so he lived in cheap hotels; he could not afford good paint, so he used the cheapest kind; he painted picture after picture and sold almost none. In his letters to Theo, he rarely complained. He simply described what he was painting: "Today I painted the potato eaters. I want their hands to look like they really dug those potatoes out of the ground." "The sun is brutal today and my head aches, but I want to finish that field of wheat."
Theo never told him to quit. He simply sent the money on time, and sometimes scribbled a note with the transfer: you are painting the right thing, keep going.
The rarest friendship is not the people who toast you when you succeed. It is the one who, when you have achieved nothing, is still willing to wire you money every month.
In 1890, Vincent died in Auvers, France, at thirty-seven. In his whole life he sold exactly one painting, Red Vineyard, for four hundred francs.
Six months later, Theo died too. He had outlived his older brother by barely half a year. In those six months he could do almost nothing else — he spent them organizing the paintings, rereading the letters, trying to make the world understand how good his brother had been.
Theo's widow, Joanne, later published those six hundred letters and pushed, painting by painting, for exhibitions. The Van Gogh the world knows and loves today — The Starry Night printed on T-shirts, the paintings in every major museum — traces back to these two brothers.
In one letter Vincent wrote: "I sometimes feel like a broken boat. But on board there is one person who believes I can reach shore. That person is you."
Theo's reply was only a few lines: "You paint. I will find the money."
A true friend is the person you never have to convince that you are worth helping.
In the end
While he was alive, the whole world thought Vincent van Gogh was a failure. One brother, from age twenty-three to age thirty-four, sent him money every single month, on time.
We meet a lot of people in a lifetime. To have even one person who is still there when you fail — that is already wealth.