And similarly the figures of either the English draughtsmen or the English writers, on account of their Monday morning-like sobriety and deliberate austerity and prose and analysis, continue to attract me as something solid and firm which gives one something to hold onto on days when one is feeling weak. And those of Balzac and Zola among the French writers just as much. As yet I don’t know the books by Murger you write about, but I hope to become acquainted with them.
Did I write to you before that I read Daudet’s Les rois en exil? I thought it rather beautiful.
The titles of those books sound very attractive, La bohème among others. How far we have strayed in our age from la bohème of Gavarni’s day! It seems to me that things were a little warmer then, and more good-humoured and livelier than now. But I don’t know, and there’s also much that’s good in the present, or would be more than is actually the case if there were rather more joining together.
At the moment a wonderful effect can be seen from the window of my studio. The city with its towers and roofs and smoking chimneys stands out as a dark, sombre silhouette against a horizon of light. The light, though, is only a broad strip; above it hangs a heavy shower, more concentrated below, above torn by the autumn wind into great tufts and clumps that float off. But that strip of light makes the wet roofs glisten here and there in the sombre mass of the city (in a drawing you would lift it with a stroke of body-colour), and ensures that, although the mass all has the same tone, you can still distinguish between red tiles and slates.
Schenkweg runs through the foreground as a glistening line through the wet, the poplars have yellow leaves, the banks of the ditch and the meadow are deep green, figures are black.
I would draw it, or rather try to draw it, if I hadn’t spent the whole afternoon toiling at figures of peat carriers which are still too much in my mind for there to be room for something new, and must remain there.
I do so often long for you and think of you so much. What you write about some characters in Paris, about artists who live with women, are less petty-minded than others perhaps, try desperately to stay young, seems well observed to me. Such people exist there and here. It’s perhaps even more difficult there than here for a person to keep some freshness in domestic life, because that’s almost more of an uphill struggle there. How many have become desperate in Paris — calmly, rationally, logically and rightly desperate? I read something along these lines about Tassaert, among others, whom I like very much, and was pained by what happened to him.
All the more, all the more, I think every attempt in this direction is worthy of respect. I also believe that it may happen that one succeeds and one mustn’t begin by despairing; even if one loses here and there, and even if one sometimes feels a sort of decline, the point is nevertheless to revive and have courage, even though things don’t turn out as one first thought. Moreover, don’t think that I look with contempt on people such as you describe because their life isn’t founded on serious and well-considered principles. My view on this is as follows: the result must be an action, not an abstract idea. I think principles are good and worth the effort only when they develop into deeds, and I think it’s good to reflect and to try to be conscientious, because that makes a person’s will to work more resolute and turns the various actions into a whole. I think that people such as you describe would get more steadiness if they went about what they do more rationally, but otherwise I much prefer them to people who make a great show of their principles without making the slightest effort to put them into practice or even giving that a thought. For the latter have no use for the finest of principles, and the former are precisely the people who, if they ever get round to living with willpower and reflection, will do something great. For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.
What is drawing? How does one get there? It’s working one’s way through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. How can one get through that wall? — since hammering on it doesn’t help at all. In my view, one must undermine the wall and grind through it slowly and patiently. And behold, how can one remain dedicated to such a task without allowing oneself to be lured from it or distracted, unless one reflects and organizes one’s life according to principles? And it’s the same with other things as it is with artistic matters. And the great isn’t something accidental; it must be willed. Whether originally deeds lead to principles in a person or principles lead to deeds is something that seems to me as unanswerable and as little worth answering as the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg.
But I believe it’s a positive thing and of great importance that one should try to develop one’s powers of thought and will.
I’m very curious about what you’ll think of the figures I’m doing at present, when you see them sooner or later. It’s the same with them as with the question of the chicken and the egg: should one make figures for a composition one has done first, or combine the figures made separately so that the composition flows from them? I believe it comes down to the same thing. Just as long as one works. I end with that with which you close your letter — that we have in common a liking for seeing behind the scenes or, in other words, are inclined to analyze things. Now this, I believe, is exactly the quality one must have in order to paint — one must exercise this power when painting or drawing. It may be that there has to be something innate in us, to some extent (but that too you have, and so do I — for that we may have to thank our childhood in Brabant and a background that helped, much more than is usually the case, to teach us to think), but above all, above all, it’s only later that the artistic sense develops and ripens through working. How you might become a very good painter I don’t know, but I certainly believe that it is in you and will come out.
Adieu, old chap, thanks for what you sent, and a hearty handshake.
Ever yours,
Vincent
I have the stove in place already — old chap, how I wish we could look at drawings and sketches for an evening sometime — and woodcuts. I have some more splendid ones.
This week I hope to have orphan boys to pose, then I may be able to rescue the drawing of orphan children after all.
278 | The Hague, Wednesday, 1 November 1882 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
1 Nov.
My dear Theo,
For several days I’ve been completely taken up by something that may also be of interest to you and I think it well worth writing to you about it especially. In a letter from Rappard I received an extract from a lecture by Herkomer on the subject of the wood engravings of recent times.
I can’t tell you about the whole thing in detail, you may have read the article yourself (which was in an English art magazine, perhaps the Art Journal). It was mainly about the drawings in The Graphic. Herkomer relates how he himself worked on them with great ambition and enthusiasm, and he particularly recalls the splendid prints in the first volumes. Feels that no words can express sufficiently forcefully how important he finds the work of those first artists. He reviews the progress made in process and technique, the difference between the old and the modern wood engraving, &c. &c. Then talks about the present day, and that brings him to the real subject of his lecture. He says: the wood engravers are cleverer than ever, but nonetheless I see a decadence if I think back to when The Graphic began. And — he goes on — in my view the reason lies in two things against which I protest. One has to do with the publishers, the other with the artists.
Both have their faults, which will ruin things if one doesn’t combat them.
The publishers, he says, demand things done for effect: ‘correct and honest drawing is no longer wanted, complete designs are no longer in request, a “bit” just covering an awkward corner of a page, is all that is required’.
‘The managers declare that the public require the representation of a public event or so and are satisfied if it is correct and entertaining, caring nothing for the a
rtistic qualities of the work. I do not believe what they say. The only excuse you may accept is “dearth of good draughtsmen” ’.
Then he comes to the artists, and says that he regrets that these days all too often it’s the wood engraver, not the draughtsman, who makes the prints beautiful. Urges the artists not to accept this — to draw soberly and forcefully so that the engraver remains what he should be, the translator of the draughtsman’s work, and doesn’t get the upper hand. Then comes his conclusion, a forceful plea to all to continue supporting the cause warmly, and not to allow any weakening.
There’s something of a reproach in his plea, and it isn’t without some melancholy that he speaks, and as one fighting against the indifference he finds intolerable.
‘To you — the public — the art offers infinite pleasure and edification. For you it is really done. Therefore clamour loudly for good work and be sure it will be forthcoming’ — are his closing words.
The whole thing is thoroughly sound, firm, honest. His manner of speaking makes the same impression on me as some letters by Millet.
It gives me encouragement, and it truly does me good to hear someone talk like that for once.
I say that it’s a terrible pity that here there’s no enthusiasm, so to speak, for the art that’s most suitable for the common people.
If the painters were to close ranks to ensure that their work (which, after all, is made for the people, in my view — at least I believe that is the highest, noblest vocation for any artist) could also come into the hands of the people and was put within everyone’s reach, that would be something that would produce the same results as were produced in the first years of The Graphic.
Neuhuys, Van der Velden and a few others made drawings this year for ‘De Zwaluw’, a magazine that appears monthly and costs 7½ cents. There are some good ones, but one can see that most were done with a weak hand (not the original drawings but the way of popularizing them), and from what I hear the magazine is no more likely to keep going than its predecessors. Why doesn’t it work? — the booksellers say they earn nothing from it, and instead of circulating it they block it.
And as for the painters, I believe they haven’t yet made every effort to take the matter to heart. The definition that many a painter here in Holland gives in reply to the question ‘What is a wood engraving?’ is: ‘it’s those things lying in the Zuid-Hollandsch Koffiehuis’. So they rank them among the drinks. And the makers of them among the drunks, perhaps.
And what do the dealers say? Suppose I went to anyone here with around 100 sketches that I’ve gathered together. At best I fear I would be told ‘did you imagine those things had commercial value?’
My love and respect for the great draughtsmen of both the age of Gavarni and of the present day increases the better acquainted with their work I become, and above all as I do my best myself to make something from what one sees every day on the streets.
What I value in Herkomer, in Fildes, in Holl and the other founders of The Graphic, why I find and will continue to find them even more sympathetic than Gavarni and Daumier, is that, while the latter seem to view society more with mockery, the former, like such men as Millet, Breton, Degroux and Israëls, choose subjects which — while as true as those of Gav. or Daum. — have something noble and in which there’s a more serious sentiment. That, above all, must remain, it seems to me.
An artist need not be a minister or a collector in church, but he must have a warm heart for people, and I find it a noble thing that, for example, no winter passed without The Graphic doing something to keep alive sympathy for the poor. For instance, I have a print by Woodville showing the distribution of turf tickets in Ireland, another by Staniland entitled Help the helpers depicting various scenes in a hospital — where money was short, Christmas in the workhouse by Herkomer, Homeless and hungry by Fildes &c. I find them even more beautiful than the drawings by Bertall or somebody for the Vie Elégante or other élégances. Perhaps you’ll find this a tedious letter — but everything was once more fresh in my mind. I had gathered together and mounted my 100 or so studies and when I had finished the job a slightly melancholy sense of ‘what’s the good?’ came over me — but then Herkomer’s forceful words calling on people not to weaken and saying that it’s more necessary than ever to keep the hand to the plough did me so much good, and I thought I’d briefly tell you the substance of what he said. With a handshake in thought, believe me
Ever yours,
Vincent
I hope to hear from you in the coming days, I received a good letter from home.
288 | The Hague, Sunday, 26 and Monday, 27 November 1882 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
Sunday
My dear Theo,
Yesterday I at last got around to reading a book by Murger, namely Les buveurs d’eau. I find something of the same charm in it as in, say, the drawings of Nanteuil, Baron, Roqueplan, Tony Johannot, something witty, something lively. Yet it’s highly conventional, or at least so this book seems to me (I haven’t yet read any others by him), and in my view there’s the same difference between him and Alph. Karr and Souvestre, for example, as between an Henry Monnier and Compte-Calix and the above artists. I’m trying to take all the people I compare from the same era.
It breathes that age of la bohème (though the reality of that period is papered over in the book) and that’s why it interests me, but in my view it lacks originality and honesty of sentiment. It may be, though, that his books in which there are no painter characters are better than this one — it appears that writers are always unfortunate with painter characters, Balzac among them (his painters are fairly uninteresting). Even Zola might be right in his Claude Lantier — Claude Lantiers certainly exist — but still one would like to see Zola doing a kind of painter different from Lantier for once, who it seems to me is drawn from life by Zola after someone or other, and certainly not the worst, from the movement that was known as Impressionists, I believe. And they aren’t the ones who make up the core of the body of artists.
Conversely, I know of few good drawn or painted portraits of writers. On this point most painters also lapse into the conventional and make of a writer a man who simply sits at a table full of papers, or don’t even go that far and make him a gentleman with a collar and tie, and moreover a face without any particular expression.
There’s a painter by Meissonier that I find beautiful; it’s that figure seen from behind, bending forwards, with the feet on the cross-bar of the easel, I believe. All one sees is a pair of knees drawn up, a back, a neck and the back of a head, and just a glimpse of a fist with a pencil or something like that. But the fellow does it well, and the action of concentrated attention is caught, just like in a certain figure by Rembrandt where a little fellow sits reading, also huddled up, with his head resting on his fist, and one immediately feels that sense of being absolutely gripped by the book.
Take the Victor Hugo by Bonnat — beautiful, really beautiful — but even more beautiful in my view is the Victor Hugo described in words by Victor Hugo himself, nothing else than just this:
And I, I was silent —
As one sees a blackcock keep silent on the heath.
Don’t you think that little figure on the heath is splendid? Isn’t it as vivid as a little general of 93 by Meissonier — about 1 centimetre or so in size?
There’s a portrait of Millet by Millet that I find beautiful, no more than a head with a kind of shepherd’s cap on top.
But the looking — with half-closed eyes — the intense looking of a painter — how beautifully that’s caught, and that cockerel-like quality, if I may put it like that.
It’s Sunday again. This morning I was on Rijswijkseweg. The meadows are partly flooded so that there was an effect of tonal green and silver with the rough, black and grey and green trunks and branches of old trees twisted by the wind in the foreground, a silhouette of the village with its spire against the light sky in the background, here and there a fence, or a dung-heap with a flock of crows pic
king at it.
How you would feel something like that — how well you would paint it if you wanted to.
It was extraordinarily beautiful this morning, and it did me good to go for a long walk, for with all the drawing and the lithographs I’d hardly been out of doors this week.
As to the lithography, I hope to get a proof tomorrow of an old man. I hope it turns out well. I did it with a kind of crayon that’s specially intended for this process, but I fear that the ordinary lithographic crayon will turn out to be the best after all, and I’ll be sorry I didn’t use that. Well, we’ll see how it turns out.
Tomorrow I hope to learn various things about printing that the printer’s going to show me. I would love to learn how to print myself. I think it quite possible that this new method will revive lithography. I believe that a way could be found of uniting the advantages of the new with the old method. One can never predict anything for certain, but who knows whether it might not lead to new magazines being founded again.
Monday
That was as far as I got yesterday evening — this morning I had to go to the printer’s with my old man. Now I’ve followed everything: the transfer to the stone, the preparation of the stone, the actual printing. And I have a better understanding of what I can change by retouching. Herewith the first impression, not counting one that went wrong.
I hope to do it better in time. I myself am very far from satisfied with this but, well, getting better must come through doing it and through trying. It seems to me that a painter has a duty to try to put an idea into his work. I was trying to say this in this print — but I can’t say it as beautifully, as strikingly as reality, of which this is only a dim reflection seen in a dark mirror — that it seems to me that one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the existence of ‘something on high’ in which Millet believed, namely in the existence of a God and an eternity, is the unutterably moving quality that there can be in the expression of an old man like that, without his being aware of it perhaps, as he sits so quietly in the corner of his hearth. At the same time something precious, something noble, that can’t be meant for the worms.
Ever Yours Page 37