New show of Van Gogh letters lays bare his troubled genius

At times in his short life Vincent Van Gogh could hardly give away his pictures, let alone sell them.

Now one of the world's favourite painters - with his Sunflowers, Irises, and radiant wheat fields selling for millions, and selling by the million in reproduction - Van Gogh today conquers new literary heights with the publication of 902 letters in a major new show, The Artist Speaks, in Amsterdam.

It will come to London to be the major spring show at the Royal Academy from 27 January.

In the letters, which track his career from the dour flatlands of his native Holland to just a few days before he shot himself at the age of just 37 at Auvers sur Oise in France in July 1890, Van Gogh tells all.

It is a journey through rejection and madness to the great paintings of burning stars, flickering cypresses and the stark vibrant colours of Arles.

In a couple of letters he also mentions his life in London and includes sketches of houses in Isleworth, where he taught at a school in 1876.

It has taken more than 15 years to edit the correspondence into the new edition. It will be available in sumptuous book form in six volumes, with the English version selling for a cool £325.

However the Van Gogh museum will put the lot online for free from tonight. All two million words of texts and notes and more than 2,000 reproductions of his drawings and paintings will be available at the addresses below. "What we get is a view of the enormous storehouse of his mind and imagination," said Leo Jansen, one of the architects of the collection.

Two years before the end, Van Gogh had himself admitted to the asylum at the cloister of Saint Remy. "Through the iron barred window, I can see a square of wheat," he wrote to his brother Theo on 23 May 1889, "a perspective in which alone in the morning I see the sun rise in glory."

Philip Watson, who has edited the British version for Thames and Hudson, said: "They match the letters of Byron and Keats and Wilde in their power and directness. He is completely self aware - he knows what is happening to him, and he is not a raving madman."

Jansen added: "There is something completely thought out about the way he thinks about his art, every brush stroke is deliberate and planned. This is not the work of a madman slashing at the canvas with a frenzy of paint."

The London show will have more paintings and sketches, fewer of the letters. It will, however, be the biggest international collection of Van Gogh's work for 40 years.

But the new glory is in the letters. Jansen said: "They are almost a new form - the sketch letter, as he carefully lays out his thoughts on his pictures and his art."