A Fire in His Soul: How Paris Changed Vincent van Gogh

Everybody knows something about Vincent Van Gogh. But, the tragic facts of his life often obscure everything else. In recent years, the work of the Van Gogh Museum and foundations has been instrumental in illuminating his life like never before. Van Gogh’s letters, published by his sister-in-law, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, are our primary source. Van Gogh was not shy, never leaving anyone in the dark about what he thought—and it’s all in writing.

Miles J. Unger’s A Fire in His Soul: Van Gogh, Paris, and the Making of an Artist gives us the context we need to better understand the letters around those two crucial years Van Gogh lived in Paris, and the circumstances leading to the move. And, with this context, comes a revelation: the Vincent van Gogh we have come to know—solitary, friendless, misunderstood—is not quite the Vincent van Gogh that lived and breathed and took the world by storm.

The Romantic Portrait of Van Gogh

We are used to thinking of Van Gogh in a romanticized, idealized manner. We feel with him, we empathize with him. We hurt with him so much that to make peace with his conflicting legacy we picture him as the victim of a society that did not appreciate nor understand his genius. Van Gogh was too good for this world. We did not deserve him. His unrequited love of humanity (in Unger’s words) fueled his passion and his art, producing masterpieces that the world was too backward to receive or admire.

The reality that emerges from the careful examination of the evidence brings out a whole new reading of Van Gogh’s life that is surprising yet entirely human.

Van Gogh: The Boy

With all this in mind, Unger focused on one variable that has been largely ignored by the literature: Paris. Van Gogh’s work can broadly be divided before making the move to Paris, and after. Had he never moved to Paris, would his work have taken the shape it took?

To look at this question, Unger takes us back to the life of young Vincent van Gogh. We see his many moods, divided loyalties, his struggles between expressing his inner world and acting like a correct gentleman. Unger examines the influences that shaped the Van Gogh family and the relationship between its members. And, that most important of all of Van Gogh’s connections to his younger brother, Theo. We then realize that despite their mutual clinging to their youthful devotion, their adult relationship was fraught with tension.

Van Gogh: The Man

By stepping back, Unger prepares the reader to understand how Van Gogh had no idea what his place in the world was when the time came to step into it. He tried so many things to find it! He made an initial foray into art as an apprentice dealer in his uncle’s very successful gallery. Van Gogh’s passion, however, his inability to compromise, his zeal, his refusal—or inability—to conform. In short, all those things that we admire so much today got in the way of his success over and over again. 

When art dealing failed—the exact profession in which his younger brother thrived—he decided his fervor may be better suited to the life of a minister. Again, his unconventional attitudes put him at odds with both his superiors and those he so desperately longed to serve. This is how Van Gogh put that feeling to his brother:

Van Gogh: The Artist

With nothing else to do, he picked up a pencil and paper and began to sketch. Art had always been hovering at the fringes of his life. Theo had suggested a return to it before. Unger says,

Like always, Van Gogh threw himself at his new endeavor with vigor. His letters of this period are bursting with both ideas and complaints. To do art right was expensive. He needed paints, canvases, models, not to mention money for food and rent. Van Gogh demanded that Theo supply these, since taking up art had been his idea in the first place. 

Van Gogh expected help, while ignoring Theo’s guidance aimed at making him more efficient and his art more profitable. But, he simply did not know how to follow anyone’s counsel but his own. Eventually, it occurred to him that they would actually save money if they just lived together in Paris. One can imagine what Theo thought about this idea!

Van Gogh: The Parisian

Van Gogh made it to Paris despite his brother’s objections. He simply bought a ticket and telegrammed once he was already there. What followed was a transformation that could not have occurred anywhere else.

Finding so many others like himself must have been a monumental realization. Van Gogh had always been surrounded by people who were ready, eager even, to do what was expected of them. He never was! He had, as Unger puts it, “difficulty accommodating himself to the demands of polite society. He was made of rough edges and sharp elbows, incapable of conformity, no matter how desperately he longed for acceptance.”

Van Gogh: The Legend

In Paris, over and over again, he would form friendships that dissolved and ended in disappointment.

Six months before Van Gogh’s death, the critic Albert Aurier published an article where he introduced Van Gogh to the public as a “saintly hermit, shunned by a society too materialistic and out of touch with the spiritual dimension of the universe to appreciate his unique gift.”

Van Gogh was shocked by this portrayal. The suggestion that he made his art in isolation was hurtful on many levels. All his life he had sought, unsuccessfully, to relate to others, to be understood and appreciated for who he was and what he had to offer. To have this failing named as the very thing that made him brilliant must have been deeply distressing. Moreover, it hinted at the mental illness that he tried so desperately to vanquish.

Alas, Aurier’s story was more appealing than the truth. As Unger said, “Art, modern art in particular, needed heroes, men and women whose alienation from society was the sign of their integrity.” And so, the legend was born.

A More Balanced Reading

In A Fire in His Soul, Unger gives us an entirely new reading of the facts. Unger looks at Van Gogh through a new lens that examines his life, not in isolation. Rather, it considers the influences surrounding him in the one place most poised to recognize and celebrate his uniqueness.

What emerges is an utterly fascinating story of transformation, self-expression, and acceptance, of the power of human will and human connection. The “romanticized version of the man and antiseptic image of the art rob the story of much of its fascination. Rather than deprive the tale of its beauty, Van Gogh’s failings make his ultimate triumph that much more remarkable, even transcendent.”

In our own wrestle to uncover the world, and where we fit within it, Van Gogh’s story provides hope against despair. We could let the tragedy overshadow the greatness. That is one reading. Or, perhaps, we could choose to believe what Van Gogh’s story tells us—over and over again. That which Unger developed so well within the pages of his book: There is a place in the world for each one of us with our unique talents, viewpoints, and gifts. Let us not give up before we have found it.

Miles J. Unger’s A Fire in His Soul: Van Gogh, Paris, and the Making of an Artist was published by Pegasus Books in March 2025. Get your own copy on the distributor’s website.