Tim – I couldn’t agree more. With pretty much everything you said. Except for the part about this being a great entry. To that I just say, thanks! I was thinking about it and gathering my evidence for some time. :)

John, I agree that if he had had just a little more hope on the horizon he might have lived longer. I don’t think his success makes up for or cancels out the terrible way he lived, but it shows me that his hardship was in fact worth the effort. When I saw that Starry Night was a standard screen lock on iPhones, I began to believe that his images will only die with all of humanity. And that’s pretty incredible.

Always very interesting to me though is that he *was* starting to get attention in the last six months of his life or so, but was very averse to getting any attention. To the point of writing critics begging them NOT to write about him. You probably already know this, but it sometimes make me wonder if any more attention really would’ve helped him. Sometimes I think it might have driven him to suicide even earlier. (Of course a lack of attention and a regular income would have been ideal, but I wonder how possible that could have been with how revolutionary his style was.) Since you are a fellow Van Gogh enthusiast, I’d love to know your thoughts.

And Josie — yes, I thought for a minute it was an alien. But it just turned out to be my coworker. After a few prompts and incredulous looks he said he knew who I meant. :)