No. You’re wrong. He didn’t know about it for many years. He did eventually find out when someone decided to look him up but it was quite a while after it had been shown every week.
RumMunkey writes:
> IIRC, Vincent VanGough sold only 1 or 2 paintings in his life and died believing
> he was a total failure (commercially anyway).
If you’re going to use Van Gogh as an example, then an equally good case can be made for the American singer Eva Cassidy, who died at 33 with nothing except a local cult reputation, never even able to make a living off of her singing, but four and a half years after her death she had a #1 album in the U.K.
Brad Nowell died before any significant number of people outside of southern California knew who he was. I think it was Rolling Stone (but it might have been Guitar World) did a lengthy feature about him entitled “Dead On Arrival”, alluding to the fact that he was already dead by the time anyone had heard of him.
Sublime (Bradley Nowell’s band) wasn’t quite unknown before he died. I worked at Rolling Stone as an intern when he passed, and they did run a short obituary. But yes, it wasn’t until after he died that Sublime became huge. Sadly, the surviving members couldn’t capitalize on it, and Nowell’s been forgotten.
Franz Kafka and Bix Beiderbeke also acheived fame primarily after their deaths. In a darker vein, you could say the same for someone like Pat Tillman.
A favorite urban legend of mine that turned out completely untrue: For many years, I was convinced that “Weird Al” Yankovic kept his career secret from his mother. I’d heard that she was a devoutly religious shut-in who would never approve of Al’s lifestyle, so he told her he was a plumber, and she believed it. Very, very shut in, apparently.
Eva Peron had a following in Argentina at the time of her death, but didn’t become internationally famous until around 1978.
Perhaps this is the flip side of the coin, but the famous shot from Woodstock of two flower-children huddling together in a blanket seen here has never been positively substantiated, and there are several couples who claimed to be the couple in question.
I think one of the great chess players, Sultan Kahn has to be considered:
http://www.ishipress.com/sultan.htm
Much later, when Kahn was no longer a servant:
Khan knew that he had some fame in Europe, but his world fame came to my notice when I was beginning to learn chess in El Salvador, then he was pointed as one of the greatest chess players in history.