A beautiful piece of work, and a labor of love in more ways than one. Artist, art historian, and biographer Steven Naifeh has put together an opulent assemblage of chapters discussing Vincent Van Gogh's artistic influences: artists and works that delighted him, taught him, and inspired him, from academics and old masters like Gerome, Holbein, Rembrandt, and Ruisdael; through locals like his cousin Mauve and regional schools like the Barbizon painters and the Hague School; to the Impressionist, Symbolist, Cloisonnist and other contemporaries like Gauguin, Lautrec, Signac, and Serusier, as well as Japanese prints and English magazine illustrations. Arranged thematically, Naifeh demonstrates how these other artists influenced and dazzled Vincent in how he saw, experienced and painted human figures, flowers, landscapes, skies, seas, trees, books, and religious belief. Naifeh expertly shows us unexpected and wonderfully apt correspondences, such as Luke Fildes's poignant drawing of Charles Dickens's empty chair after his death, and Vincent's lurid armchair vacated by Gauguin after their rupture; or a Decamps "Orientalist" courtyard opposite Vincent's blazing Arles "Yellow House." Many of the gorgeous color plates are captioned with comments from Vincent himself, underlining his thoughts about them.

As I paged through the book, admiring many pictures I was not familiar with, I began to notice... wait, Naifeh and his partner Gregory White Smith own this painting? And this one, and that one, and that print? Holy smoke... In a final chapter, Naifeh describes his ventures with Smith (in work, art, and life - they were together for 40 years until Smith's death from a brain tumor in 2014), in researching and writing their acclaimed biographies of Jackson Pollock and Van Gogh, and their tiptoeing into collecting. Clearly they had more money than he modestly cares to admit, but they also had taste, knowledge, and passion. So this book is also a showcase for the wonderful works they have collected. I'm also quietly glad to find someone who seems to share my furtive admiration of Gerome. (In spite of the often icky subject matter, nobody can paint sighthounds or big cats like Gerome!)

Though Naifeh credits White with the writer's gift, his own language often sings with color and admiration. The plates are rich, plentiful, well-arranged. This volume is a pure pleasure and belongs in any art history collection. ( )