Without Jo Bonger, Vincent van Gogh’s brilliance might have been completely lost to history. When Vincent died in 1890, followed tragically by his brother Theo just six months later, Jo was left as a 28-year-old widow with an infant son (V.W. van Gogh) and an apartment packed with roughly 400 unsold paintings and hundreds of drawings.
Operating in a heavily male-dominated 1890s art world, she systematically built his global reputation using a highly strategic blueprint:
- Publishing the Letters: Jo realized that Vincent’s intensely emotional art was best understood through his personal mind. She spent years transcribing and editing the massive correspondence between Vincent and Theo, publishing them in 1914. She spent her final years translating them into English, providing the tragic, human narrative that completely won over global art critics.
- Controlling the Art Market: Instead of selling off the paintings quickly for fast cash, she tightly regulated the market to create an aura of scarcity and value. She would showcase masterpiece paintings strictly “on loan” alongside smaller works for sale to stimulate high-value demand.
- Masterful Exhibition Curating: Jo single-handedly organized exhibitions across Europe, culminating in a massive 484-work retrospective at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum in 1905 that permanently cemented Vincent as a pioneer of modern art.
By intentionally keeping a core “family collection” of Vincent’s absolute best works intact, she provided the exact foundation that allowed her son, V.W. van Gogh, to later open the permanent museum. In 1962, he made a historic agreement with the Dutch government to transfer the massive family collection to the Vincent van Gogh Foundation, which led directly to the opening of the Van Gogh Museum in 1973. But it was a perfect storm that launched “Van Gogh-mania” in the United States and permanently cemented his mainstream global success.
While Jo Bonger built the foundational reputation in Europe, it was the combination of the landmark New York 1935–1936 MoMA Exhibition, the highly popular 1936 Phaidon Press book, and the widespread distribution of the 1937 limited-edition lithographs that turned him into an American cultural phenomenon. The true catalyst for his American stardom was the retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, which ran from November 1935 to January 1936. The exhibition completely shattered all previous museum attendance records, drawing over 120,000 visitors in New York alone. The lines wrapped around the block. After its massive success in New York, a large portion of the collection traveled to cities across the United States. It became a traveling phenomenon, introducing his vivid textures and tragic life story to millions of Americans who had never seen an impressionist painting in person.
Before this era, high-quality, large-scale reproductions of art were rare and expensive. In 1936, Phaidon Press published a revolutionary, large-format monograph titled Vincent van Gogh: Paintings and Drawings. This book utilized advanced photogravure printing on heavy paper, presenting over 100 high-fidelity monochromes and full-color tipped-in plates which are now very desirable. It allowed everyday Americans, universities, and local libraries across the country to “own” a piece of Van Gogh’s gallery experience. It became an instant collector’s item and the definitive reference book that normalized his style in American households.
To capitalize on the exploding American demand following the MoMA tour, the artist guild was licensed to produce high-quality, large-format prints in 1937, proofed on the specialized presses of AWG. Because Van Gogh had died long before modern commercial lithography took off, authentic art prints were scarce. The 1937 portfolio featured masterpieces like Sunflowers, Gypsy Camp, and Portrait of a Young Man printed on fine laid paper with distinct watermarks. These limited-edition prints allowed galleries, hotels, and wealthy private collectors to prominently display his works, transforming Van Gogh from an avant-garde academic subject into an absolute icon of interior design and Post-Impressionism
The highly sought-after 1937 portfolio was officially titled Eight Paintings by Vincent van Gogh: A Portfolio of Prints. It was published by the Artists and Writers Guild (AWG) in New York, with an introduction and appreciation written by art critic Jerome Klein. These enormous “elephant folio” pieces—with sheets measuring roughly 19.5″ × 25″ (and image bounds averaging 49.5 × 63.5 cm)—were proofed on specialized presses using fine laid paper watermarked with the AWG insignia.
The 8 Lithograph Masterpieces in the Portfolio, the portfolio specifically gathered some of Van Gogh’s most famous vibrant, textural post-impressionist color plates:
1. Sunflowers
2. The Bedroom at Arles (Artist’s Bedroom)
3. Boats at Saintes-Maries (Fishing Boats on the Beach)
4. The Vegetable Garden (The Harvest / Blue Cart)
5. Portrait of a Young Man
6. Portrait of Armand Roulin
7. L’Arlésienne (Portrait of Madame Ginoux)
8. Self-Portrait (with Felt Hat)
While AWG did not publicly document an exact, rigid hand-numbered limit for the total print run (unlike the tiny 150-copy art house runs in Europe like Germany’s Marées-Gesellschaft), intact portfolios containing all 8 original perforated sheets are exceptionally rare today and highly prized on the secondary antique market. These are classified as “after” prints—meaning they were mechanically produced by a commercial publisher (after the original oil paintings) rather than pulled from a printing plate that Van Gogh personally carved, etched, or signed.
When collectors look at “quality” and “scarcity” for mid-century Van Gogh prints, the 1937 AWG portfolio is held in incredibly high regard for three clear reasons: First, the Artists and Writers Guild utilized advanced, heavy-ink chromolithography and specialized photogravure techniques on dense, textured laid paper. The ink lay deeply on the page, successfully mimicking the intense, dramatic weight of Van Gogh’s original impasto brushstrokes. Second, their survival rate is very low. Because the pages were intentionally perforated for framing, the vast majority of these books were instantly torn apart, exposed to light, cropped down, or lost to moisture over the last 90 years. Finally, These prints captured a perfect cultural moment. They represent the exact year America fell in love with Van Gogh. Owning an item from this specific portfolio is owning a piece of the historic catalyst that turned Van Gogh into a household name in the United States.
Complete Intact AWG Vincent Van Gogh Portfolio Value:
A complete, original 1937 portfolio featuring all 8 color lithographs with their perforated margins entirely intact, clean text pages, and the original spiral-bound hardback portfolio covers generally commands between $500 and $1,000+ at auction. Peak Market Record: Pristine examples showing minimal foxing or edge wear to the oversized paper frequently outperform their initial estimates, routinely hitting hammered totals near $950 at competitive estate and print auctions.If you hunt through raw estate auctions, old bookstores, or loose print bins, you can find a loose page for under $200. Once that exact same raw page is brought to a fine art framer, given a premium custom wood design, protected under museum UV glass, and sold with gallery documentation, it can completely transform into a $1,000+ luxury wall piece.
The 1937 AWG Portfolio lithographs are the American Crown Jewel. The 1937 portfolio is essentially the most magnificent, historic, and legitimate vintage American artifact from the first wave of global Van Gogh appreciation.