Superb Van Gogh show at Royal Academy

Royal Academy, London: The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters

This extraordinary exhibition of the work and letters of Vincent van Gogh is an absolute must for not just lovers of art, but for anyone wanting to see a life mapped out in creativity and correspondence.

It's an enduring mystery that Van Gogh barely sold a painting during his painfully short lifetime (he shot himself aged just 37), particularly when - as this superbly laid out exhibition shows - you see the quantity of amazing work turned out by this Dutch son of the manse.

Most of the correspondence on show is with his younger brother Theo, a successful art dealer who gave him moral and financial backing during his 10-year artistic career.

He has sent me to preach the Gospel to the poor, Vincent wrote to Theo in 1876, and for the next three years he pursued his calling, first as a theology student and then as a missionary to the coal miners in the Belgian Borinage. Distraught at the poverty he saw, he ended up giving all his possessions including most of his clothing to the miners, and the Dutch Reformed Church ended up rejecting him after his 'scandalous' behaviour was reported to the authorities.

He left the Church, embittered and poverty-stricken, yet stayed in the region, beginning his artistic career making sketches of rural life of Belgian peasants.

The Academy's exhibition walks you through the different phases of his painting progression, from the early landscapes and sketches from peasant life, on to his dramatic change into a colourist on arriving in Paris early in 1886, greatly influenced by the Impressionists and pointillists Seurat and Signac.

You also get the chance to see much of the other art and literature that influenced his work, notably Japanese prints, the paintings of Millet and Delacroix, and the novels of the great British, French and American writers of the time.

His unique portraiture is amply represented, as well as his work in Arles on the River Rhone. Many of the letters featured include sketches and drawings as he describes to Theo what he is working on. The recurring theme of nature and his later landscapes are explored in depth, along with his mental breakdowns and eventual suicide.

The picture that emerges is very far from the stereotype of the tortured artist derived from his final two years. An erudite man and deep thinker, constantly influenced yet wrestling with his spiritual sensibilities, he wrote to his brother of his "terrible need of – shall I say the word, religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars."

• The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters runs from 23 January until 18 April 2010. Full price tickets are £12 (reductions for students, OAPs, U18s etc) and can be booked on www.royalacademy.org.uk

Russ Bravo