In Arles, Vincent van Gogh was seized by a dramatic passion for painting. Inspired by the lights and colors when he first arrived in this little town hundreds of miles from his native Holland in 1888, in just over a year he painted several hundred works in a frenzy of artistic activity.

Van Gogh in Arles is a stirring account that reflects the hectic artistic pace of the artist's time in Arles. It describes how he achieved the pinnacle of artistic perfection, and how a constant, self-inflicted pressure took its toll, causing him to be admitted into a sanatorium.

The authoritative text dispenses with the myth and speculation that surround this period of Van Gogh's life, and uses firm evidence - Van Gogh's 796 published letters to his younger brother Theo - to place the artist in a dramatic new light: he is established as a stranger among strangers, having had little time away from his work to socialize in his new environment.

The book also identifies Van Gogh's ambition to create a new form of art, and carefully documents and analyzes his artistic development in those frenetic times.