His career as an art dealer in London is promising, not least because he belongs to the important Van Gogh family and his childless uncle is owner of a half of Goupil Galleries in Europe.

He is twenty-one years old and in love for the first time. In 1874, boundless Lust for Life comes over Vincent Van Gogh.

Irving Stone died in Los Angeles, California, USA, in August 1989. In the course of fifty years the author brought out many other popular biographical novels and non-fiction biographies, most noteworthy among them Sailor on Horseback (1938) about Jack London, The President's Lady (1951) about American president Andrew Jackson and his wife Rachel Donelson Jackson, The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961) about Renaissance artist Michelangelo, The Passions of the Mind (1971) about Sigmund Freud, and The Origin (1980) about Charles Darwin. Back in the USA, he began to write and, after several setbacks, he made his literary debut with Lust for Life (1934), a “bio-history” surrounding the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh. After his studies at the University of California in Berkley and a stint as a teaching assistant, he lived in Paris with his first wife for the rest of the 1920s. Irving Stone was born Irving Tennenbaum in San Francisco, California, USA, in April 1903 and later legally adopted his stepfather’s surname. Whatever he does, he does it with all his body and soul risking physical as well as mental health and not wasting a doubt on whether his efforts are worthwhile or not. The classical “bio-history” Lust for Life by Irving Stone shows the painter Vincent Van Gogh as he changes from a not quite ordinary young man from Brabant who seeks his true vocation in life to the fanatical painter who finds his own way. A strong fit of working passion may bring to light a great masterpiece or result in the complete breakdown of the artist. It can grow so powerful, though, that it becomes an all-consuming, often uncontrollable obsession bordering on lunacy and even closest friends or family react with incomprehension or fear. Most artists know passion as the essential driving force of their creative work and recognise it as a precondition for their advancement and eventually success.

Lust for life vincent van gogh book