AMSTERDAM.- A letter from Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) to Hermanus Gijsbertus Tersteeg (1845-1927), his former manager at Goupil & Co art gallery in The Hague, was recently revealed to have been preserved. The letter, written in Amsterdam on 3 August 1877, was sent in a single envelope with a letter from Vincent’s brother Theo. The discovery is a considerable surprise, since it was thought that all the letters received by Tersteeg had been destroyed; one of Tersteeg’s sons once mentioned that he and his father had burned them.

No new letters from Van Gogh have surfaced since 1990. Unknown until today, this letter comes from a private collection and is now on temporary loan to the Van Gogh Museum. To mark the discovery, a presentation organised by the museum from 22 January to 4 March 2004 offers a unique opportunity to view this intriguing document.

The reason for the letter was a tragedy that hit the Tersteeg family on 24 July 1877. It was on that day that their third child died at the age of just three months old. The content of the letter is characteristic of the young Van Gogh, then 24 and preparing to take the admission exam in the hope of studying Theology and becoming a minister. In this carefully composed yet unconventional letter of condolence he takes on the part of comforter and advisor.

One of the most noteworthy passages is a reference to Vincent’s own stillborn brother, brought into the world by Anna van Gogh-Carbentus exactly a year before Van Gogh himself. Much psychological theorising has centred on this event, but until now no trace of the episode has been found in the surviving documents. In this letter Van Gogh harks back to what took place in 1852, but - and this is significant - the fragment does not indicate that Van Gogh was in any sense plagued by guilt. According to one psychological theory this can occur in a so-called ’replacement child’: a subsequent child may consider itself to be a mere substitute for the previous sibling and suffer as a result.

The newly discovered letter, written on two sides of a single sheet, is on display at the print room in the Rietveld building, together with other documents including letters, photos and a book sent by Van Gogh to Tersteeg by way of consolation.

Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker - who are working on the Van Gogh Letter Project - analyse the text of the letter, followed by an English translation in an article entitled ’Self-portrait between the lines: a previously unknown letter from Vincent van Gogh to H.G. Tersteeg’. The article appears in the Van Gogh Museum Journal 2003, which is due to be published in early February. The letter will also be included in the new edition of the complete correspondence of Van Gogh, planned for publication in 2008.