The rooms were packed with elbows and hot bustling bodies as we wedged our way into the gaps between people, we were thankful for being small. Grabbing my sister’s bag I held onto her as she dragged me more carelessly then I could manage, up to the glassed cases where Van Gogh’s letters to his brother and friends cold be found. We watched as his penmanship change from a carefully calculated and precise script to a more erratic one as time went on.

We didn’t see the “mad artist,” in fact we saw the portrait of an artist trying to develop his style and interpret the world around him. His artistic development was incredible to see as we walked from room to room. Once in a while, I’d nudge my sister and say ” look at that tree, you can see the beginnings,” it was the beginning of the swirls and the Van Gogh we know today.

The mood was saddened as we walked to the last room where a letter to his brother was found, unfinished on the body of Vincent Van Gogh when he had shot himself in the stomach. The writing was more controlled, as though he had felt some sort of calm as soon as he knew what he was going to do.

The thought that he had only sold one painting in his lifetime, played on my mind. It felt like the joke was on the world at the time as crowds piled in paying steep prices to have a look at his letters and paintings. If only he had known that his pain and trouble would pay off, not in his lifetime, but the next, but what would he have really thought?