Today, Vincent van Gogh is one of the most famous artists in the world. His paintings are reproduced on umbrellas, socks, water bottles, and just about anything else you can imagine. And somewhere right now, someone is buying a Starry Night phone case.  

However, if it hadn’t been for one determined woman, he might well have remained a forgotten painter whose works gathered dust in second-hand shops and attics. 

That woman was his sister-in-law, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger.

Paris, 1891: A Widow, a Baby, and an Apartment Full of Paintings

Jo van Gogh-Bonger held her baby in her arms and sighed as she looked around her Paris apartment. Every wall was hung with Vincent’s paintings. There were more paintings leaning against the walls and rolled canvases filled the corners. In addition, every flat surface was piled with Vincent’s drawings and letters. What was she going to do with it all?

Just two years earlier, Johanna Bonger (known as Jo) had married the love of her life, Theo van Gogh. He was an art dealer and supported his brother, Vincent, both emotionally and financially. He was living and working in Paris, so as soon as they married, Jo joined him there. One year later, their first child, a little boy named Vincent Willem arrived. Everything seemed perfect. 

But quickly things spiraled downward. Theo’s brother Vincent died just six months after the baby was born and Theo, already ill, soon followed. Her world had fallen apart so quickly. In less than a year, she had become a mother and lost both her brother-in-law and her husband.

Now here she was, a 28-year-old widow with a baby to support. She was in Paris where everything was foreign to her, and she was heartbroken. 

And then, there were all those paintings… 

Theo hadn’t left her much, just a houseful of Vincent’s paintings, hundreds more of his drawings and piles of his letters. Today, such a collection would be worth an unimaginable fortune. But in 1891, it was a different story altogether – no one wanted them.

Jo Decides to Finish What Theo Started

Theo had been convinced of his brother’s talent and believed it was just a matter of time before the world recognized it. And Jo believed that too. 

Sitting in her Paris apartment, she made a decision that would shape the rest of her life. She would carry on where Theo had left off. She would promote Vincent’s work and convince the world that her husband had been right about his brother. 

Yes, that’s exactly what she would do… But first, she had to earn a living.

Back to the Netherlands, Paintings in Tow

So, Jo rolled up her sleeves, packed up all those paintings and moved back to the Netherlands, where she and the van Goghs were from. She opened a boarding house in a small town east of Amsterdam and started hanging pictures.

Life wasn’t easy. She had a young son to raise, a house to run and boarders to look after. But whenever she could squeeze out a spare minute, she would work on her other project – promoting Vincent’s art.

Winning Over the Skeptics

Jo knew that she couldn’t simply lock the paintings away and wait for the world to realize Vincent’s genius. But neither should she flood the market with them. She began lending works to exhibitions, selectively selling some, and keeping those she considered to be most important. 

She also went to work on the critics directly. One of the first she approached was Jan Veth, an influential Dutch painter, poet, and art critic. He took one look at Vincent’s paintings and dismissed them as “nearly vulgar.” Ouch!

Most people would have taken that as the final word from someone with Veth’s reputation. Not Jo. “I won’t rest until he likes them,” she wrote in her diary. And eventually, he did. In fact, he became one of the earliest respected voices to speak up for Vincent’s work.

Jo Remarries – and Gains an Ally

In 1901, about ten years after Theo’s death, Jo van Gogh-Bonger remarried. Her second husband was Johan Cohen Gosschalk, a Dutch painter and art critic who had previously lived at her boarding house. 

Johan supported her efforts to promote Vincent, and those efforts were beginning to pay off. Vincent was slowly becoming an important figure in modern art. 

1905: The Exhibition That Changed Everything 

Then finally, in 1905, came a major breakthrough. Jo organized a huge van Gogh retrospective at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. More than 400 works were exhibited, making it the largest Van Gogh exhibition the world had yet seen. It went a long way in establishing Vincent as a major modern artist. 

But Jo wasn’t ready to call it quits. She had another project up her sleeve.

The Other Inheritance: Vincent’s Letters

Paintings and drawings were only part of what Jo had inherited… She also had letters. Piles of letters – long, detailed letters Vincent had written to Theo. He had written about the paintings he was working on, the colors he was experimenting with, the artists who influenced him and his ideas about art.

Many people might have viewed these as private family correspondence – not for public consumption. But Jo understood that they were much more. They were an insight into Vincent the man as well as Vincent the artist. She spent years organizing and preparing them for publication. 

Then in 1914, she published them in a three-volume edition. Those letters were a major factor in transforming public perception of Vincent van Gogh. He was no longer simply the eccentric artist who had cut off part of his ear. 

The image most people have of Van Gogh today – the misunderstood genius, the devoted brother, the artist who suffered for his vision – owes much to the letters Jo preserved and published. By carefully promoting both the paintings and the letters, she ensured that future generations could understand the man behind the art.

Jo’s Legacy

Jo’s second husband died in 1912, after 11 years of marriage, and once again she was a widow. She spent much of the rest of her life promoting Vincent’s art, and eventually, as Theo had predicted, the world came around and recognized his talent. 

By the time Jo died in 1925, the situation was almost unrecognizable from the one she had faced in that Paris apartment in 1891. Vincent van Gogh was no longer an obscure artist whose paintings were unknown and unwanted. He was internationally recognized as a pioneer of modern art.

Van Gogh Museum

After Jo died, her son, Vincent Willem van Gogh, inherited the collection and continued his mother’s work. In 1962, the collection was transferred to the newly created Vincent van Gogh Foundation. This paved the way for the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which opened in 1973.

Even though Jo died nearly 50 years before the museum opened, in many ways it was the culmination of her life’s work – work she had begun when she was a young widow, surrounded by hundreds of paintings that no one wanted to buy, and she decided that the world simply hadn’t recognized their value yet.

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A Note About Jo’s Name

Dutch women did not legally lose their surnames when they married, which explains why Bonger remained part of Jo’s name throughout her life. She was born Johanna Gezina Bonger. After marrying Theo van Gogh, she became known as Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. When she remarried to Johan Cohen Gosschalk, she used Johanna Cohen Gosschalk-Bonger. After his death in 1912, she returned to the name van Gogh-Bonger.

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Had you heard of Jo van Gogh-Bonger before? Or have you visited the museum Let me know in the comments.

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