Every day, neighbors would watch Vincent van Gogh walk down the hill. Through the garden gate he’d go, out into the fields behind his house in search of the elusive water beetles that fascinated him. He carried a glass jar and an old fishing net—the better to skim the beasties off the surface of the creek.

Vincent spent hours sitting on the banks of the stream, waiting silently for a shiny black critter to appear. Each one was unique. Some had crooked legs that wriggled when you plucked them out of the water. Others had long, fearsome-looking antennae.

Vincent knew the names of all the different types of bugs. When he caught one, he’d drop it in his jar for safekeeping during the long trek back home. There, in his attic bedroom, he delivered the bugs to their final resting place. He took great care pinning the collected beetles inside tiny specimen boxes. Onto each box he glued a label with the Latin name of its dearly departed inhabitant. Sometimes he would show the bugs to his sisters before he boxed them up. The girls were horrified.

But Vincent didn’t care what anyone thought about his hobbies. He loved nature, collecting things, and being by himself. On summer days, he’d gather handfuls of wildflowers from the meadow; it was said that he had memorized the spots where only the rarest flowers bloomed.

Other times he spent hours staring at birds, studying their movements. He became an expert on avian migration. When the birds flew south for the winter, he set out to find their nests and then added them to his nature collection.

Vincent’s mother shared his love of the outdoors, but she worried that he was spending too much time alone in the fields. She tried to convince him to pick up a hobby, like drawing. She gave him art books, pencils, and sketchpads and encouraged him to trace the images he saw in the paintings.

But Vincent quickly grew bored with copying, and once again he ventured into the meadow to sketch his own vision of nature. He wasn’t happy with his drawings, however, and rarely showed them to anyone. He later called them nothing more than “little scratches.”

Only one person could get Vincent to change his solitary ways: his younger brother Theo. Theo was Vincent’s opposite in every way. Cheerful, friendly, and fun-loving, Theo loved spending time with people. He had none of Vincent’s gloomy disposition and shared none of his eccentricities. While Vincent liked to study birds and collect their nests, Theo preferred to whistle along with their songs.

For a time, Theo’s sunny personality rubbed off on Vincent. Though they were four years apart in age, they became roommates, playmates, and constant companions. Vincent taught Theo how to shoot marbles and invented elaborate games to play. In summer, they built sandcastles in the family garden. When winter came, they skated on the pond or dragged their sleds through the snow. If it was too cold to go outside, they stayed indoors and played board games by the fireside.

But Vincent soon fell into a sad funk. It didn’t help that he felt as if Theo was their parents’ favorite. The kids in town also took an immediate liking to Theo, which only worsened the sibling rivalry.

Vincent grew ever more resentful. Once the closest of friends, the brothers began arguing more frequently. Overcome with sadness, Vincent withdrew and once again sought solace in nature. When he passed Theo on his way to the creek to collect bugs, he ignored him.

Vincent’s behavior—and his appearance—grew increasingly bizarre. He trudged through town with his head down, glowering at neighbors from behind the brim of a straw hat, wandering off the beaten paths into the wild countryside on long walkabouts.

To his parents’ dismay, Vincent loved to venture out at night, especially when a storm was brewing. He once disappeared for several hours, ending up in a town six miles away. When he returned home in the middle of the night, his clothes were filthy and his shoes were caked in mud.

At home, Vincent became quarrelsome and prone to tantrums. The family maid complained that he was the most unpleasant of all the Van Gogh children. She branded him an oarige, the Dutch word for “oddball.”

At first, even art brought no satisfaction to Vincent, and his temper could be destructive. He once drew a picture of a cat climbing an apple tree. But when he showed it to his mother, she failed to give him the approval he was seeking. Vincent tore up the sketch. When he was eight years old, a sculptor’s assistant gave him some clay, which he expertly molded into an elephant. But Vincent was so dissatisfied with his sculpture that he smashed it on the floor.

Shortly after turning sixteen, Vincent got a job in an art gallery in the Hague. He spent the next four years packing and unpacking art supplies, boxing up paintings, and getting an up-close look at the works of the great Dutch masters, including Rembrandt van Rijn and Jan Vermeer.

Being left alone seemed to revive Vincent’s spirits. He handled the artworks as carefully as he had once collected the insects, becoming as devoted to the study of art as he was to the world of nature. He even made up with Theo, who visited him in the Hague and later followed him into the art business. The brothers began writing long letters to each other in which Vincent confessed his feelings of loneliness and isolation and his desire to express himself through his art.

It would be another decade before Vincent was able to dedicate himself full-time to painting. In the meantime, he endured many personal and professional setbacks. Over the years, he poured all his unhappiness and his energy into making art. Although he was never able to recapture the serenity he had found as a child skimming water bugs off the stream near his house, he did manage to convey the intensity of his feelings about nature—and his own personality—in many of his paintings.

Theo remained one of the few bright spots in Vincent’s life. Besides exchanging regular letters—more than six hundred in all—Theo also sent Vincent money and introduced his brother to many of the important artists of the day, including Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne. Until the end, Theo served as his older brother’s bridge to the outside world—and the best friend this lonely artist ever had.