Van Gogh condolence letter found

A Dutch museum dedicated to the life of Vincent van Gogh said Thursday that it had unveiled a newly discovered letter by the 19th century painter, shedding fresh light on his turbulent life.

The two-page letter, written Aug. 3, 1877, was recently discovered in a private collection and has gone on temporary loan to Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. The museum, which houses more than 200 of his paintings and 600 drawings, said it was the first previously unknown Van Gogh letter to surface since 1990.

Van Gogh’s 1877 letter of condolence to his art dealer friend Hermanus Gijsbertus Tersteeg on the death of one of his children was written before he became an artist. Van Gogh was 24 at the time and preparing to study theology in Amsterdam. The letter contains his first known direct reference to the stillbirth of a brother -- also named Vincent -- a year before the artist’s birth in 1853.