A volume which explores Van Gogh s oeuvre through two fundamental aspects of his artistic identity: his love for the countryside and his attachment to the city. Admired for his light-filled landscapes as much as for his impassioned portraits, Vincent Van Gogh was an impetuous painter with a cavalier disregard for convention when it suited him. At the same time he was a sophisticated thinker, fluent in several languages, trained as an art dealer. Though often plagued by several doubts about his work, he was immensely ambitious and ultimately had a clear sense of his oeuvre as a whole and the place it was to take in the history of art. Such apparently contradictory positions define much of Van Gogh s live and artistic output. They are also at the basis of this volume which explores Van Gogh s oeuvre through two fundamental aspects of his artistic identity: his love for the countryside as a stable, never changing environment and his attachment to the city as the centre of fast moving, modern life.