Artist’s Letters

Letters from Van Gogh, Mondrian and Israëls online accessible to everyone

The Huygens Institute is developing a universal online publishing platform for collections of letters written by Dutch artists, in collaboration with heritage institutions that manage these collections. The platform will initially make the online letter editions of Vincent van Gogh, Piet Mondrian and Isaac Israëls accessible, so that everyone can view, read and search them. In addition, the platform will serve as a blueprint for the digital publication of collections of letters by other Dutch artists, so that more heritage institutions can make use of it.

Image: Portrait of Jo van Gogh-Bonger writing, Johan Cohen Gosschalk, circa 1902. Collection: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

Why the digital publication of artists’ letters?

Dutch artists such as Van Gogh, Mondrian and Israëls left not only paintings, but also letters, notes and drafts. These documents are preserved in collections held by various institutions, including the RKD (Netherlands Institute for Art History) and the Van Gogh Museum. As part of the Artists’ Letters project, we make these collections accessible by providing online editions with annotations, translations and links via Linked Open Data, a method of linking data from multiple sources.

Partnerships and external collaborators

Our partners are DI HuC KNAW, RKD en Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

We are proud to collaborate with:

Hennie Brugman
Bram Buitendijk
Sebastiaan van Daalen
Hayco de Jong
Bas Leenknecht
Dirk Roorda
Wietse Coppes
Sabine Craft-Giepmans
Reinier van ’t Zelfde
Nienke Bakker
Michiel Goossen
Hans Luijten
Anniek Meinder
Marije Vellekoop

Valuable but often hidden sources

Many museums and research institutions have letters and writings that are not officially part of the art collection yet closely related to it, or that ended up in the collection more or less by chance. For example, the Van Gogh Museum manages various correspondences by and about Vincent van Gogh, and the RKD has a large collection of letters by Piet Mondrian.

Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Willemien van Gogh with sketch of Memory of the Garden in Etten (recto), Arles, c. 12 November 1888. Collection Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

Although these are valuable sources for historical and cultural-historical research, they have remained relatively invisible and are often difficult to access.

From pioneering project to sustainable digital edition

Some of these letter collections have previously been made digitally available. Van Gogh Letters, for example, was a pioneering digital project (2009) by the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute. Later, the RKD and the Huygens Institute collaborated on a digital edition of part of Mondrian’s correspondence.

Postcard from Piet Mondrian to art dealer Albert Reballio. Laren, 24 February 1915. Collection RKD.

In the past, such digital editions were set up as separate projects, each with its own digital infrastructure. This resulted in beautiful editions, but because the software easily becomes outdated and has to be constantly updated to work in newer systems, the editions are not sustainable. As a result, many of these editions have become ‘data silos’: stand-alone systems with customised software that is difficult to maintain in the long term. A universal online publishing platform for collections of letters will solve this problem.

Towards sustainable digital edition practice

The Huygens Institute has developed a new approach for the digital scholarly edition of cultural heritage sources with the eDITem project, based on sustainably usable software, fixed standards and Linked Open Data.

In the Artists’ Letters project, we are applying these new principles to three online editions:

• A revised edition of Vincent van Gogh’s letters
• A revised edition of Piet Mondrian’s letters
• Isaac Israëls’ letters to Jo van Gogh-Bonger