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The Woman Who Made Vincent van Gogh Famous

Her name is Jo van Gogh-Bonger.  She was the wife of Theo van Gogh and sister-in-law to his brother, Vincent van Gogh--the artist.

I saw a book about Jo while recently visiting the Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam, The Netherlands).  It is nearly 2" thick, quite heavy and contains 535 pages of which 171 are a combination of notes/footnotes, abbreviations, bibliography and an index.  The book itself is written in six sections.  The first section is about Jo's life to the point when she marries Theo.  That is as far as I've gotten.  

What I'm looking forward to reading in the remaining sections is how she grew into the ambitious, determined and undeterred advocate of Vincent's art after his and Theo's deaths, especially since she was left to raise a son on her own.  

Below is the book's cover with Jo's photograph.  As part of reading it, I've started a zine to act like SparksNotes to keep track of the key points to me about her journey.  Below the book cover is the front and back of the zine -- the back being my impression of Vincent's 'Sunflowers' painting.  I'm happy with this particularly in having mimicked the artist's color palette pretty well.  The real Van Gogh 'Sunflowers' painting can be seen in the screenshot at the bottom of this post.



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