painted three more large canvases. They are vast stretches of wheatunder troubled skies, and I didn’t have to put myself out very much inorder to try and express sadness and extreme loneliness. (NYGS, 1978,Letter 649 c.10 July, 1890.)Van Gogh shot and wounded himself among those wheat fields onJuly 27, 1890. Theo was summoned and his brother seemed to be improvingwhen he fell into a coma and died in Theo’s presence on July 29.4VAN GOGH’S SOCIAL INTERACTIONSAND 

COMPARISONSAt

 the beginning of this chapter I introduced social comparison theoryand three of its constructs—upward comparison, downward comparison,and lateral comparison. I now want to consider how these comparisoncategories can be applied to van Gogh’s development as an artist and aperson.Upward Social ComparisonOne does not have to know the people one compares oneself with;indeed, they can be distant strangers or long dead. Nevertheless, it is clearthat van Gogh’s years as a fully committed artist were richly populatedwith other artists and members of the art world. In a letter to Theo, vanGogh asked how anyone can learn if no-one shows the way. With all thebest intentions in the world, one cannot succeed without coming intocontact with artists who are more advanced. (NYGS, 1978, Letter 138,November, 1980.)This letter expresses the need for knowledge of a neophyte. Actually,van Gogh was not exactly such a neophyte since, as in many respects anautodidact, he had been sketching for many years on his own. He ad-mired many artists, some of whom became important influences at dif-ferent points in his own development. The first of these, in his formative4It is important to remember that the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and Neo-Impressionists are considered as groups, as if the work in each group was somehow thesame. In fact, members in each group had in common only that they lived and worked atabout the same and applied a novel set of principles to their work. But each member of eachgroup had a unique voice and style and when we see or think of the work of van Gogh,Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Bonnard—all post-impressionists—it is their differencesthat strike us rather than their similarities