A never-before-exhibited collection of letters from Vincent van Gogh to a colleague reveal the beliefs and mundane challenges of the artistic genius — from his beliefs about sex to keeping his easel steady in the wind, AP reports from New York.

Van Gogh wrote the letters to Emile Bernard over two years starting in 1887, shortly before the tortured artist committed suicide. “You see the human being in a body — who gets exhausted, working at his easel, outdoors in the blazing sun, with no food on some days,” said Jennifer Tonkovich, curator of ‘Painted With Words: Vincent Van Gogh’s Letters to Emile Bernard’, on display at The Morgan Library & Museum. Bernard, an artist and poet, became friends with the Dutch-born Van Gogh in Paris, and the two often worked side by side. Van Gogh later moved to Arles, in France. He committed suicide in 1890 at the age of 37, walking into fields outside Paris and shooting himself in the chest.

The letters debunk the popular conception of the artist as an unknown, naive genius recognised only after his death. “You have the sense of a well-read person; Van Gogh read everything from the Bible to Zola. And his talent was recognised even then,” she says. “Van Gogh adamantly believed that too much sexual activity detracts from your work,” the curator said. “He believed sexual activity depletes you.”