Our research was focused on whether van Gogh's productivity was truly due to his suffering, or if his best work was instead borne of his periods of good health. While we can't assume to know when van Gogh was at his most inspired and why, our research shows that some of his most productive years coincide with his self-described best years, which brings his well-known status of a "tortured artist" into question. Despite this, our team also noticed a correlation between van Gogh's stress and his productivity, suggesting that his work output increased when he was under higher amounts of stress.
After marking van Gogh's mentions of good and bad health, we organized them by year in direct comparison with one another. We found that van Gogh's most productive year was 1889, during which his mentions of good and bad health are equal. In his second most productive year, 1888, his mentions of good health are significantly higher than his mentions of bad health. During these two years, van Gogh produced around 200 works of art, and by his own word experienced good health more than bad. Furthermore, in 1886, van Gogh experienced one of his least productive years since starting his career as an artist. This year is also where we see the highest disparity between his mentions of good and bad health, with zero mentions of good health and twelve mentions of bad. We can conclude, then, that there is a slight correlation between van Gogh's good health and his productivity.
Because we limited the use of good or bad health to when van Gogh directly referred to himself, there were other mentions of stress and happiness worthy of tagging, but in need of different descriptors. For these mentions, we noted van Gogh's most common reasons for stress and marked them as such. Most often, van Gogh experienced his highest levels of stress due to lack of money, his perceived failings as a painter, and family-induced stress. During these periods, he showed an uptick in productivity, likely due to an effort to sell more paintings. As van Gogh got more stressed about his career and finances, the number of pieces he mentioned in his letters to Theo increased. van Gogh lived under a consistent stress of proving the worth of his work to both the public and his family, and in this case, we believe said stress led to an uptick in productivity.
While there is certainly a correlation between van Gogh's financial stress and his productivity, the most telling correlation between van Gogh's paintings and his life is the "environment" category we used to define stress. Oftentimes during our research, van Gogh would refer to his surroundings as a source of either stress or the lack of it, which we labelled as "unstress." We equated the more general mentions of his stress and unstress to his general environment, and it is here where we found some of the most obvious connections between van Gogh's productivity and his mental health. 1889, 1888, 1882 and 1883, van Gogh's most prodctive years, all have significant differences between mentions of stress and unstress due to his environment. In each year of productivity, van Gogh is much more content with his surroundings than otherwise, with 1883 showing 30 mentions of unstressed versus only five mentions of his being stressed. For each most productive year there is a disparity like this, which suggests that the happier van Gogh was with his environment, the more productive he was.
Because van Gogh's environment was so important to both his well-being and his productivity, we organized our markup information by location as well as by year. van Gogh moved very often during his life, and we noticed significant differences in both his mental health and the amount of work he produced based on where he was living at the time. When looking at van Gogh's good and bad health by location, the results aren't particularly conclusive. The connections between good health and high levels of productivity are more or less equal with his mentions of bad health and high levels of productivity. However, when looking at his mentions of environmental stress and unstress in correlation with his location, we again find that his productivity increased when he found happiness in where he was living. Many times, Vincent would describe beautiful scenery to Theo in his letters. Most times, when he was delighted with the environment around him, he would find the inspiration to paint.
Of course, we can never truly know whether van Gogh would credit his artistic genius to his best or worst times, but in examining his own description of personal events and feelings, along with his own thoughts on his work, we found that his happiness tended to have a very positive effect on the amount of work he produced. His good health and unstress consistently lined up with his periods of higher productivity, meaning van Gogh's well-being was more important to his art than his suffering was. To put it in his words, “I think the success or failure of a drawing also depends greatly on the mood and the condition of the painter. Therefore I do what I can to keep cheerful and clear-headed. But sometimes, like now, a heavy depression comes over me, and then it’s hell.” -Vincent van Gogh in a letter to his brother, Theo. January 26, 1882.
Our team found Vincent's letters to Theo here, where the rest of his letters can be found as well.