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Ever Yours

Page 4

by Vincent Van Gogh


  In Paris, Van Gogh went in search of new stimuli for his art. At first he sought to join the ranks of traditional artists, rather than strike out on a path of radical renewal. For him the world’s artistic capital meant a select group of highly admired predecessors, whom he could study in museums and galleries as part of his efforts to master his craft. Shortly after his arrival he enrolled in the studio of Cormon (whose real name was Fernand Piestre), an undogmatic Salon artist who gave private lessons in a classroom on the boulevard de Clichy. The master stopped by several times a week to give instruction, but otherwise the pupils were left to their own devices. Cormon allowed his pupils to draw and paint from models as much as they liked, but the techniques that he taught proved to be rooted in the academic tradition. In retrospect Van Gogh had the following to say about his three months with Cormon: ‘[I] did not find that as useful as I had expected it to be’ (569).

  A Troublesome Housemate

  Beforehand, when Van Gogh’s coming to Paris was still just a possibility, Vincent and Theo had warned each other that living together might prove to be difficult. They were right. The apartment in rue Laval, where Theo unexpectedly had to make room for Vincent, was exchanged in June for a more spacious apartment in rue Lepic in Montmartre (fig. 10). Vincent, who had finished his studies with Cormon, was given a small room to use as a studio, but his chaotic lifestyle and way of working left their mark throughout the house. Theo had a responsible, prestigious job that brought with it certain social obligations; Vincent’s sloppiness and nonconformist behaviour caused him a great deal of embarrassment.

  10. Rue Lepic, Paris

  The fact that the brothers were living together meant fewer letters, so their correspondence is not such a rich source of information on Vincent’s activities and his relations with Theo in this period. Our knowledge of their time together in Paris comes from eyewitness accounts and from references and descriptions in Vincent’s later letters. Artists with whom Vincent came into contact in this period reported that he was easily upset, aired his opinions whether they were called for or not, and always seemed to be looking for an argument. Feelings often ran high between the brothers, and Theo sometimes suggested in desperation that it would be better for them to live apart. But despite the difficulties, their fraternal bonds always prevailed.

  Loose Brushwork, Bright Colours

  During his first summer in Paris, Van Gogh painted many flower still lifes to increase his understanding of colour theory and to practise modelling with paint. His chief inspiration was the now-forgotten painter Adolphe Monticelli. His brushwork became looser and his colours brighter under the influence of Impressionism, which was ubiquitous in Paris. In the following period, Van Gogh’s contact with the younger generation—and thus with new ideas—gradually intensified. He became friendly with the intelligent and ambitious Emile Bernard, who was just eighteen years old (figs. 11, 12), and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who was at the beginning of his brief but highly successful career. Van Gogh also became acquainted with Paul Gauguin, who held great promise for the future, and he got to know the pointillists Paul Signac and Georges Seurat, who were experimenting with dots of unmixed paint that were meant to blend in the eyes of the viewer. Moreover, he became besotted with the clarity and elegance of Japanese prints.

  11. Emile Bernard and his sister Madeleine, c. 1888

  12. Van Gogh (seen from the back) and Bernard, Asnières, c. 1887

  Van Gogh’s affiliation with these new trends is evidenced by the fact that early in 1887 he organized an exhibition of Japanese prints at the café run by Agostina Segatori, his new lover, and another show later that year of works by himself and several of his friends, this time at a restaurant. The Japanese prints kept him busy. He copied them in paint and adopted their pictorial devices: emphatic contours, flat areas of single colours, and perspectival effects. He experimented with techniques employed by his friends, such as Lautrec’s use of diluted paint, and the stippling that was the signature style of Seurat and Signac. He did not imitate slavishly; instead, he tried out these methods and adopted what suited him, with a view to fulfilling his own, ever greater ambitions.

  The Modern Van Gogh

  Whereas several years earlier Van Gogh had declared that the truly modern should be sought in the art produced thirty or forty years earlier—i.e., that Millet was more modern than Manet—in Paris he came to the conclusion that being a ‘modern artist’ meant total immersion in the artistic, social and intellectual life of one’s time.

  Not only was Van Gogh convinced that portraiture was the perfect way to document contemporary attitudes, but he also considered it an eminently marketable genre. Of course there was still the problem of paying people to pose for him, and even though Paris was teeming with models—professional and otherwise—he made only about a dozen portraits and figure paintings in these years. He did, however, try out his newly acquired techniques and palette in some thirty self-portraits and numerous landscapes.

  It is astonishing to see how quickly Van Gogh, coming from the north with his gaze still fixed on the past, managed to reinvent himself in Paris in little over a year, becoming an artist who had shed all dogma. The modern Van Gogh was born in Paris, a fact he was well aware of when he left the city two years later. During that time there had also been a fundamental change in Theo and Vincent’s relationship: not as regards financial dependence, for Theo remained Vincent’s generous patron, but in terms of viewing each other more as equals. Previously Vincent had felt the need to justify his artistic choices and convictions, whereas now he and Theo were involved in a joint undertaking. Theo, too, had embraced the cause of the avant-garde, and according to Vincent, Theo contributed to it as an art dealer as much as he himself did as an artist. In February 1888, when Vincent fled the stressful and unhealthy life of the city to seek new, ‘Japanese’ colours and a more salubrious climate in Provence, he found strength in a fraternal bond that made him think of such revered examples as the Goncourts, the Bretons and the Marises. Vincent and Theo felt like ‘companions in fate in many respects’ and ‘brothers for more than one reason’ (790, 794).

  His Best Days: Van Gogh in Arles, 1888–1889

  Whenever Van Gogh moved, his first letters give a vivid impression of his new surroundings, and Arles was no exception. He thought the landscape and the inhabitants exceedingly picturesque, but life was not going to be as inexpensive as he had hoped. At the beginning of each new artistic adventure, he invariably underestimated the expense involved. He took up residence in a hotel in rue de la Cavalerie, not far from the railway station in the north of the city, which did not seem to him ‘any bigger than Breda or Mons’ (577), a far cry from the hectic metropolis of Paris.

  Though his life had now changed fundamentally, his thoughts were, for a number of reasons, still anchored largely in Paris. For one thing, he continued to take an interest in the friends and acquaintances he had left behind; in his first months in Arles, he repeatedly asked Theo for news about this or that person, and he started to correspond with Emile Bernard, who remained in Paris until his departure for Brittany in mid-April. At the same time, Van Gogh was continually hatching plans to exhibit the work of modern artists (whom he referred to collectively as ‘Impressionists’) outside Paris. He had high hopes of Theo’s initiative to send Impressionist paintings to Boussod’s branch in The Hague, which was still run by Tersteeg, their former boss and mentor. In these years, modern painting in the Netherlands was nearly synonymous with the Hague School, and the Impressionism of Paris was scarcely known there. The Van Gogh brothers corresponded about what strategy they should employ to win over Tersteeg, with the result that in late March 1888 Theo sent him a number of works, including one by Vincent. Only one Monticelli was sold; the others were returned. Evidently the Netherlands was not yet ready for the art that Vincent and Theo so ardently championed.

  Exhibitions and Sales

  Vincent also devoted a lot of energy to another plan with a similar aim: an artists’
society that would provide financial support to its members. Both established and younger artists would put their work at the disposal of the society, and the proceeds would be divided among them. In this way successful Impressionists (such as Monet) would support younger fellow artists. Nothing ever came of this plan, but Van Gogh continued to search for possibilities for artists to collaborate more. He frequently denounced the lack of solidarity and the rivalries that constantly flared up between the highly opinionated artistic factions in Paris.

  By the same token, Van Gogh had plans to collaborate with Theo in exhibiting and selling in nearby Marseille his own work and that of his friends. Just as he was fantasizing about possibilities to make a name for himself in Marseille, he had a modest success in Paris: three of his works were included in the exhibition mounted by the Société des Artistes Indépendants. Apart from the exhibitions he had organized himself and several works given on consignment to small art dealers, this was the first public acknowledgement of his place among the artists of the avant-garde. For someone who longed so fervently for recognition, it is striking how laconically he commented on his participation and the choice of works in the period leading up to the exhibition. In later years, when more appreciation was forthcoming, Van Gogh’s reaction was the same: any praise or sign of recognition caused him to retreat into the background, as though he was afraid of falling into a trap and losing his independence. Fame, in the words of the writer Alphonse Daudet as reported by Van Gogh, ‘is something like when smoking, sticking your cigar in your mouth by the lighted end’ (673).

  Painting and Drawing Campaigns

  In the meantime Van Gogh was working as much as possible. Although he remained modest about his own talent compared with that of other artists, he had left Paris with increased confidence in his abilities and the feeling that he was ‘on firmer ground’ (602). Nature in Arles and the surrounding countryside was glorious, and the light and colours enthralled him. In the spring, when the snow had melted and the fruit trees were decked out in the most colourful blossoms, he made one painting after another, a veritable onslaught in true Van Gogh fashion. To mount such a campaign, he needed large quantities of paint and canvas, which he asked Theo to send. He also explored the landscape throughout the area, with its canals and drawbridges, farmhouses in the fields, and views across the plateau of La Crau.

  When he needed to cut costs, he made drawings in ink and reed pen. He cut his reed pens himself from reeds he found during his walks along the canals. These pen-and-ink drawings, which display a very personal style, represent the prelude to a long series of masterly works that Van Gogh was to make in the south of France. He admired the Japanese draughtsmen who could capture a figure or landscape with a few simple strokes of the pen or brush. Van Gogh himself, however, achieved an equally admirable and seemingly effortless style of drawing that was unlike anything else being done at the time.

  After returning from a three-day trip to the coast, he embarked on a new campaign, in which he again took up a subject that he had neglected since leaving Brabant: rural life, in this case the wheat harvest in the fields around Arles. In shimmering yellows he painted fields, sheaves of wheat and haystacks under an intensely blue Mediterranean sky. He later made drawings after many of these paintings, which he sent to Theo and friends such as Emile Bernard and John Peter Russell.

  Friends in the South

  He also resumed portrait painting. Even though he was a loner, Van Gogh tried to make contact with the people of Arles. His eccentric behaviour prevented him from building up a large circle of friends, but he struck up a friendship with the postman Joseph Roulin, whose portrait he painted on numerous occasions. Several months later he also persuaded Roulin’s wife to pose for him; their children could not avoid having their portraits painted either. The postman, a socialist—unusual in those days—had outspoken political opinions to which Van Gogh gladly listened. Delighted with such down-to-earth, common folk, he also portrayed the gardener Patience Escalier, whose weathered face showed plain signs of the hard life of a peasant. Using large areas of the strongest possible colours, Van Gogh bestowed these works with an intensity never before seen in his portraits.

  A different kind of contact was the friendship he enjoyed with several artists who were staying in the vicinity of Arles, such as Dodge MacKnight, whom he knew from Paris, the Danish artist Christian Mourier-Petersen and the Belgian Eugène Boch. Van Gogh attached great value to edifying discussions with fellow artists, but he did not think very highly of MacKnight. He liked Mourier-Petersen, but found him artistically immature. His fondness for Boch, however—a sensitive intellectual from an artistic milieu—led him to paint a portrait in which he exaggerated the colours and introduced a personal symbolism: ‘To express the thought of a forehead through the radiance of a light tone on a dark background. To express hope through some star. The ardour of a living being through the rays of a setting sun. That’s certainly not trompe-l’oeil realism, but isn’t it something that really exists?’ (673). Although Van Gogh always took reality as his starting point, he did not strive to create a literal image of it, ‘because the reflection of reality in the mirror, if it was possible to fix it with colour and everything—would in no way be a painting, any more than a photograph’ (620). A painting must, above all, express his experience of reality.

  Poor Health and Bouts of Melancholy

  A subject that continually arises in Van Gogh’s letters is the fragile health of both brothers. Even though Vincent seemed hopeful and energetic during his first months in Arles, he nevertheless wrote in July: ‘After the crisis I went through when I came here, I can no longer make plans or anything else; I’m definitely better now, but hope, the desire to achieve, is broken and I work from necessity, so as not to suffer so much mentally, to distract myself’ (645). The ‘crisis’ probably refers to the physical ailments he had when he left Paris; in his first months in Provence he wrote mainly about stomach complaints, which gradually subsided. Like Theo, he believed in the alternative treatments that were all the rage in those days, for which the brothers had consulted Dr David Gruby in Paris. Theo had persistent physical complaints, such as a chronic cough and fatigue. In retrospect, it is clear that he was already suffering from the syphilis that would eventually kill him. Vincent’s ailments, on the other hand, were the result of too much work and too little rest, an unhealthy diet, and too much alcohol. Gruby advised a strict regimen: nutritious food, eating and sleeping at regular times, and limited contact with ‘women’ (i.e., prostitutes).

  There was also a psychological side to these ailments, however. Sometimes Vincent was overcome by dejection and melancholy; Theo, too, was familiar with such moods. Vincent describes their paradoxical effect: ‘Now you talk about the emptiness you sometimes feel; that’s just the same thing that I have, too. . . . The more I become dissipated, ill, a broken pitcher, the more I too become a creative artist in that great revival of art of which we’re speaking’ (650). He seems to be saying that any striving for progress in art—the greatest good—is self-destructive. It is a curious mixture of optimism and fatalism, but he is wholeheartedly willing to make this sacrifice for the sake of art.

  Waiting for Gauguin

  Van Gogh was not the only artist who fought this battle; his friend Gauguin (fig. 13), who was working in Brittany at the time, was in bad shape too, both physically and mentally, and also deeply in debt, which prevented him from travelling. The brothers had great faith in Gauguin’s talent, and looked for ways to support him. Theo tried to find buyers for his work, and even acquired one of Gauguin’s paintings for himself.

  13. Paul Gauguin with his son Emil and his daughter Aline, 1891

  Vincent thought that Gauguin’s distressing situation pointed the way to a better future. He had meanwhile rented a small house on place Lamartine in Arles (fig. 14). At first he used his ‘yellow house’ only as a studio, but he began to see it as a means of realizing his dream of working together with Gauguin in Arles. In this Studio
of the South they would be able to strike out on what he saw as the inevitable path to the future of painting: collaboration and solidarity. Theo was willing to give financial support to this adventure in exchange for a certain number of Gauguin’s works (he already had Vincent’s at his disposal). By this time Vincent had worked out his plan in detail, but it was months before Gauguin was ready to take the step—not so much because he believed in Vincent’s scheme but because it was his only opportunity to get away from Brittany.

  14. The Yellow House (at right), where Van Gogh lived in Arles

  Van Gogh’s letters in the months preceding Gauguin’s arrival in Arles make it clear that these two men were not very compatible, yet Van Gogh began his preparations in a spirit of hope. He furnished his house as their living quarters—which put considerable strain on Theo’s budget—and decided to decorate it with paintings, turning it into a true artists’ house where Gauguin would feel at home and at the same time notice the progress Van Gogh had made as a painter. In fact, in these very months—the summer and autumn of 1888—Vincent created an impressive series of works, a number of which are now icons of modern art: sunflowers in a vase, a café at night, numerous portraits, park views and his bedroom. He was at the height of his powers, and he knew it. This demanded the utmost of him, both physically and mentally, so much so that shortly before Gauguin’s arrival at the end of October 1888, he was forced to take a couple of days of urgently needed rest.

 

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