As one of the world’s most famous Post-Impressionist painters, Vincent van Gogh created vivid, colorful works that often contrasted with the challenges of his life. The Dutch artist painted prolifically during his short decade-long career, and at the same time he wrestled with a host of mental and physical complaints.

Because of Van Gogh’s visible (and invisible) suffering, he has often been labeled a “tortured genius.” It’s a stereotype that first gained steam in the 19th century, not long before Van Gogh started painting. After his death, the reputation started to stick.

Yet during his lifetime, Van Gogh’s views about the relationship between mental illness and creativity evolved as he looked at the lives of other artists in an effort to better understand himself.

Laura Prins, PhD, an art history lecturer in the Netherlands specializing in historical views of the “mad genius” reputation, has spent much of her career studying Van Gogh. Ahead of the exhibition “Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits,” I talked with Prins about how Van Gogh perceived himself as an artist, as well as the alleged relationship between psychological strife and the ability to create great art.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Madeline Bilis: What do you think about Van Gogh’s reputation as a “tortured genius”?

Laura Prins: I’d say it’s quite one sided—and unnuanced. Both the tortured part and the genius part are two large, vague concepts and not easy to define. I prefer to see him as an ambitious artist who sometimes struggled in life.

In order to deal with his ambitions and struggles, he looked at other artists as examples—his contemporaries but also predecessors. He was wondering how much you should suffer or sacrifice for your work. This is a theme, which you see with different artists during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The idea of him being the tortured, suffering genius? I don’t think it gives him credit for being an artist. Of course it’s easy to combine his artistry and his illness, since he did suffer from an illness later in his life, but I’d say they are not that directly related.

How was Van Gogh suffering?

Suffering is a big word for it, but he always had a difficult life because he acted differently than people in his surroundings. This is the 19th century, so you have these rules of how to behave, and he thought about things differently. So he always had these troubles and could be quite gloomy. He changed careers a few times and he lived in different places. As an adult he lived with his parents for a while, and with his brother Theo. That couldn’t have been easy.

He also had an unhealthy lifestyle, especially when he lived by himself: he could skip meals, smoke on an empty stomach, drink too much. Once he moved to Arles, in 1888, he was already quite tired. His lifestyle took a toll on him.

Especially in Arles, his ambitions were sky-high. He was hoping for [Paul] Gauguin to join him. In the summer he was working quite hard in these very hot wheat fields, and again, not taking care of himself. So the combination of stress, already being too tired when Gauguin came, and then their discussions—I think he felt his dream falling apart. At first he believed he and Gauguin were on the same page in their ideas of which direction modern art should take, and it turned out they weren’t. With the combination of the stress, alcohol, and years of poor lifestyle choices, it probably all led to a psychosis at the end of 1888, followed by a few more.

It’s with Gauguin when Van Gogh famously cuts off his ear, just before Christmas. Does he ever reflect on this through the lens of creative genius?

No, he only mentioned the incident once, vaguely. He was trying to grasp the idea that he could do something harmful like that. He explained to Theo: “I’ve just had a simple artist’s bout of craziness.” He believed artists had sensitive nerves, and apparently harming yourself like that was a risk of an artistic lifestyle. To cope with this idea, he studied the lives of other artists. It was to get consolation that he was not the only one dealing with these pressing things that you face if you strive to be a great artist. When everyone seems to think you’re mad or obsessed or different, when no one else understands what you’re doing, you have to believe in yourself. That is something you see with many artists.

Did people in the 19th century see a relationship between creativity and mental illness?

It was quite a big theme already, and it especially developed in the early 19th century. It was not necessarily attributed to painters at first, but more to geniuses like thinkers, poets, and writers. Psychiatry had started to develop as a discipline and, in the early days, focused especially on the mind, emotions, and imagination. At the same time, the modern concept of a “genius” developed, a flesh-and-blood person who was able to create extraordinary things and who was believed to possess a lively imagination. So when artists started to work from their imagination, with ideas that did not always correspond to reality, you find that doctors were wondering, “What makes the imagination of a genius different from the ill minds of my patients?” It was then that they started to wonder if genius is part of an illness, or if it’s just very similar.

Artists also dwelled on the idea of a relationship between creativity and mental illness, but in different ways. For instance, they wondered, “How many sacrifices do I have to make for art?” They dwell on the idea of their suffering—not necessarily mental illness, but the suffering and sacrifices needed for being a great genius, a great artist, a great poet. That is a commonplace idea you see throughout the 19th century.

Did Van Gogh ever remark on his mental health challenges in relation to his work?

He was quite ambivalent about the relationship between creativity and mental illness. In his early life he romanticized the idea of the suffering genius, and in Paris he became familiar with bohemian life. But once he became seriously ill, you see him finding reasons for what made him ill. These reasons shift over time, and the relationship with his work is also very ambivalent. One part of it is that his work is a consolation, something to hang onto. He also sees it as the thing that made him ill. He especially questions if his experiments with the imagination, in the way that Gauguin used it, had asked too much of his mind. So these are the shifts you see in how he looked at it himself. And I don’t think he was able to give a final answer to it.

Clearly his mental and physical challenges increase toward the end of his life.

There were a few things going on at that time. You have to remember that he stayed for more than a year in a mental hospital in the south of France, quite alone. That must have been really hard—you’re just on your own, you’re ill, you don’t know exactly what’s going on with you or if you will recover, and meanwhile you have this ambition to become a great artist.

And while the ambition was always there, it did weaken after every mental breakdown. I also don’t think he was very optimistic when he left the asylum. He was very happy to leave—since he felt he was not getting better there and was eager to be near his brother in Paris—but he also had to struggle with daily life again. We now know that the period just after institutionalization is particularly challenging for people with mental vulnerabilities.

There was also this increasing feeling of being a burden to his brother. They had an agreement that in exchange for financial support, the paintings Vincent made would be for Theo to sell. While he was developing as an artist, he was sure that his paintings would be worth something, but when he lived near his brother in the last months of his life, he realized he was becoming a burden to Theo, who was also quite ill at the time. With the combination of this toll on the body and the mind, he might have thought it was best to leave this world. But of course, it’s all speculation. You can’t know what’s going on in someone’s head.

How would you describe his artistic career?

With Van Gogh, you see someone who is learning as an artist, because he was only working for 10 years. Usually, as an artist, you study to become one first, then slowly you start to develop your own style for a few years, and then maybe 10 more years later, you’re something. With Van Gogh, it was all combined. So you see within these 10 years that he’s still learning things, trying things out. He’s not this isolated man doing whatever he feels like. He really thought about what modern art should be and how he could be a part of it. What other artists were important for this development. Who could he look at from the past as examples? The experimentation part of it continued until his last months, when he was in Auvers. Only days before he died by suicide, he was still trying things out in his painting.

Even in that very tough mental state, he kept creating.

He must have been very motivated and determined to work until, at 37, he was just too tired. It was not because of his illness that he was such a great artist but, despite his illness, he could still be this great artist.