Vincent van Gogh was a prolific letter-writer as well as a painter. Now the Royal Academy in London has announced plans for a show beginning in January that will pair his missives with his art, illuminating his frame of mind at the time of various works.

More than 800 van Gogh letters survive, with new ones often coming to light. They are fragile, having been written on cheap paper, a fitting medium for a starving artist. One particularly interesting example is from 1888, when he was down to his final 50 francs but claimed that making money was a breeze. "Fortunately, it's extremely easy to sell the right sort of paintings in the right sort of place to the right sort of gentleman," he wrote. "You only have to go down the Rue de la Paix — there strolls, just for that reason, the good art lover." All possibly true, but history records a grand total of one van Gogh sold during his decade as a professional artist, to a friend’s sister. Posthumously, he did much better.