Ever Yours

by Vincent Van Gogh

  Noble blade, ignoble scabbard—

  In my soul I am fair.

  This is applicable to Thijs M. and to Quasimodo.

  Well — write soon if you haven’t written already, and believe me, with a handshake,

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  323 | The Hague, on or about Saturday, 3 March 1883 | To Theo van Gogh (D)

  [Sketch 323A]

  323A–B (top to bottom). Soup distribution in a public soup kitchen; Soup distribution in a public soup kitchen (detail); to the left, a failed, crossed-out version

  My dear Theo.

  Herewith a scratch of the selling of soup that I did in the public soup kitchen. It takes place in a large hall where the light enters from above through a door on the right.

  I re-created this scene in the studio. I put a white screen in the background and on it I drew the hatch in the proportions and dimensions it has in reality, with the furthest window covered and the lower part of the middle window covered. So that the light falls from P. Just as in the place itself.

  As you see, when I have the figures pose there, I get them exactly as they were in the actual soup kitchen.

  Above you see the positioning in the studio. I’ve framed the area to be drawn.

  [Sketch 323B]

  Of course now I can search for the poses of the figures for as long and as much and as minutely as I like, while still remaining broadly true to what I saw.

  I’d like to try this again, as a watercolour, for example. And really work to get somewhere with it. I feel that there’s now more opportunity for figure painting in the studio. When I sometimes tried this summer, before the changes, the figures took on such a neutral, cold colour that one didn’t feel a strong desire to paint. The picturesque quality went, so to speak, as soon as they came into that strong light.

  Do you know what I’ll need very badly for that? — some different pieces of fabric, brown, grey &c., to get the right background colour. In the case overleaf the wall is white with panelling painted grey, the floor darker. One can re-create the locality much more accurately by paying attention to things like that. I already have several things for it, and also have various REAL clothes. Yesterday, for example, bought a remarkably picturesque patched smock of coarse linen. I always keep an eye open for that kind of thing; if one gives it some thought one gets much more satisfaction from one’s models than if one leaves it entirely to chance.

  I have a love for the studio such as a bargee would have for his boat. I believe I’ll get it right. But my purse doesn’t always permit what I would like. Yet they are lasting things that one buys in this way, and now I have an opportunity that I may not have later, perhaps.

  The changes to the studio present me with more indirect costs than direct ones. For I won’t consider it finished before I have various things that I need to make it practical.

  You will have many expenses because of your patient — for my part I needn’t sit still if you can’t send anything extra at the moment. For that matter, you sent something extra not long ago. So I’d like to emphasize that I can manage if need be.

  But I have a fire inside me to press on and make good progress. There’s also another stimulus, namely that Rappard is making an effort too, more than in the past, and I want to keep up with him so that we can get on better and probably be of more help to each other. He has painted far more than I and drawn for longer, but there’s still a similarity in the level we’re at. I concede to him as to painting, but I don’t want to lag behind him in drawing. What I would like to see happen is that he and I go on in the same direction, namely the figures from the people, scenes in a soup kitchen, Hospital &c. He’s coming to visit me soon, he’s promised, and I’d like to reach some sort of agreement with him as regards making a series of drawings from the people that we could lithograph, for example, if it was good enough — not otherwise. That and in fact a pile of other things make me long to press on vigorously.

  In any case, I dare to promise you better drawings soon, whether you can send something or whether it’s inconvenient. The changes to the studio in themselves, to the extent that they’re now finished, already enable me to tackle certain things.

  But the road would have fewer obstacles if you could send me something extra soon. Otherwise I foresee that I’ll come up against various things, whether drawing materials or taking a model or making some more changes.

  I say ‘better drawings’; that is relatively. There are some among the studies of heads — orphan men &c. that I still have here — that I won’t immediately do better, since nature is definitely in them, and something I’m not yet satisfied with, of course, but of which equally I don’t yet dare say that I’ll do it so much better tomorrow or the day after.

  But by better drawings I mean something else, namely that I’ll approach them differently and try to put more chiaroscuro in them, which is something rarely if at all found in my studies of this winter.

  And I now dare promise you that in any event.

  Tomorrow I’ll have a house full of people, namely the woman’s mother and the woman’s youngest sister and a lad from the neighbourhood, and these people will pose with the rest of my household for the drawing for which this is the first scratch.

  Rappard is also working hard with models, and in my view there’s no better way. Especially if one stays loyal to one model, one comes to see more and more in the person. So this letter supplements my letter of yesterday in the sense that you can see from it that today I’ve made a plan for a new watercolour in the same genre as the one I sent you, and tomorrow I’ll get the models for it. I hope to reach a higher standard with this one than in the one I sent. Shall I succeed??? I can’t tell in advance.

  I’m starting on it even though there are still things I lack. But I have one thing I didn’t have in the past, and that’s the better light. And that’s worth more to me than any amount of paint. If you can run to paint as well, please do so, but I’ve already had so much from you and am so dissatisfied with the result up to now in many respects that I hardly dare ask. Anyway, I still have hope that, just as in algebra the product of two negatives will be positive, so the result of failures may be successes.

  Adieu, and best wishes for your patient, or rather your convalescent.

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  [Sketch 323C]

  323C. Soup distribution in a public soup kitchen

  325 | The Hague, on or about Monday, 5 March 1883 | To Anthon van Rappard (D)

  My dear friend Rappard

  Thanks for your letter of 27 February, which I’m answering today. First of all your questions about lithography. You’ll have seen that it’s the same paper for ink or crayon. I get this paper from Jos. Smulders & Co., paper dealers, Spuistraat of this city; their warehouse is in Laan, and there they have a large stock of stones in various sizes. They called it ‘Korn paper’, and had ordered it for one of the ministries, where various maps were drawn on it for lithographing.

  There were a few sheets over and I took all of it. He then said that he would order a few more sheets. I don’t know whether he did so, but in any case Smulders knows all about it and can order it within a few days by post. It’s rather expensive, 1.75 guilders a sheet. Lithographic crayon — as well as a type made specially for the paper, more expensive than the ordinary type and in my view greatly inferior to the sort not specially made for it — as well as autographic ink, liquid and in pieces, can also be obtained from Smulders and other places, for these ingredients can surely be found at all lithographers.

  The scraper I used is this shape

  [Sketch 325A]

  325A–B (top to bottom). Scraper; Point

  and I bought it at Smulders. There’s also what’s known as a point, for scratching in hairs, say, at all events for quick, delicate scratches like those made by an etching needle, only white in black.

  [Sketch 325B]

  Needless to say, you can in fact use various things as a scraper.
The shape doesn’t matter much — I did it with my pocket-knife as well.

  How much do I pay for my experiments?? He’s promised to quote a fixed price, together with prices for printing and stones. The prices I paid provisionally don’t count since we had come to an arrangement, because the printer himself didn’t know at that point — and there were failures &c. However, I’m to get a quotation from Smulders which will be rather interesting but which he had to take time to work out. He was to quote me prices, that is, for stones of different sizes bought 12 at a time, and for printing one series of 1 and one series of 2 dozen drawings. And the price for paper. When I last spoke to him he was terribly busy and said, remind me at the end of March, then we’ll check on everything together in the warehouse. So for the present I know next to nothing about the actual prices.

  The running of the ink when printing doesn’t depend directly on the thickness of the lines, at least I’ve seen enormously thick lines transferred perfectly. As to your friend who draws with a fine pen, that’s up to him, but I think it’s absolutely wrong, because I fear that in this way he’s trying to get something out of the process that isn’t in its nature. If one wants to work with a fine point and still be forceful, I know of only one way, namely etching. If one wants to work with a pen in autographic ink, my feeling is that one should certainly not use a pen finer than an ordinary writing pen.

  Very fine pens, like very elegant people, are sometimes amazingly impractical, and in my view often lack the suppleness or elasticity that most ordinary pens have to some degree.

  Last year I bought at least 6 expensive, special penholders and various pens — it was all rubbish. But at first sight they looked very practical. Anyway, I don’t know either, some may be good, and a good result may come from working with autographic ink and fine pens — so be it — I’ll be pleased if it works out well, but I should think one would get more satisfaction from the fuller, bolder stroke of an ordinary quill pen, for example.

  Now another thing — do you know natural chalk? Last year I was given a few large pieces by my brother, this size, no less.

  [Sketch 325C]

  325C–D (top to bottom). Natural chalk; Head of a woman in profile, and two drafts

  I worked with it but didn’t pay it much attention and forgot about it. Now lately I found a piece again and I was struck by how beautiful its colour was, its blackness.

  Yesterday I did a drawing with it, women and children at a hatch at the public kitchen where soup is sold. And I must tell you that this experiment pleased me very much indeed.

  [Sketch 325D]

  I scrawl some lines here at random to show you the range of black.

  Don’t you think it’s beautifully warm?

  I immediately wrote to my brother for more of the same. Shall I send you a piece when I get it? But if you already know of it and can get it at your place, then you send me some. For I intend to use it continually in combination with lithographic crayon.

  It’s just as if there were soul and life in the stuff, and as if it understands what one intends and itself cooperates. I’d like to call it Gypsy chalk.

  Because the pieces are very big, there’s no need to use a holder. It has the colour of a ploughed field on a summer evening! I’ll get half a barrel if that’s the measure it’s sold by, which I doubt, however.

  Album des Vosges is already a fairly old publication, but it certainly does exist. And it’s beautiful. Your list of woodcuts has some fine things, especially the Lançons. I have Smugglers, but I lack Aid Committee, for example. But I have Soup distribution in duplicate — perhaps the same one but perhaps not, and have an inn with Rag-pickers in duplicate. So you can have them. I know sketches by Renouard of cats, pigs, rabbits but I haven’t got them. I have Speech by Gambetta and moreover Beggars on New Year’s Day too.

  Have found 2 beautiful Régameys, a Foundling hospital in Japan by F. Régamey, and soldiers in white cloaks keeping black horses in check by Guillaume Régamey, after a painted sketch, very fine. Read a short biography of both brothers. Guillaume is dead, was only 38 years old. Began by exhibiting some military paintings that resembled Bellangé. Afterwards he became rather reclusive, seems to have had an illness that made life difficult for him. Yet worked throughout it all — for years — when he was dead — a host of superb studies were found — which were then exhibited — while during his lifetime almost no one knew about them. Isn’t that beautiful?

  F. Régamey travels a great deal and, as you know, is very strong in the Japanese. What you say about the French woodcuts in general is what I also feel: the English have found more of the soul of woodcuts, the original character that’s as singular as the character of etchings, such as Buckman, A London dustyard, and Harbour of refuge by Walker. Still, Boetzel and Lavieille know that too, though, but Swain is the master. I think, though, that the Lançons engraved by Moller are highly original in character. There is soul in the Feyen-Perrins by Boetzel, for example, and the Millets by Lavieille. But otherwise, well, often they lapse into the industrial, the unfeeling.

  You ask after De Bock. I haven’t visited him for a long time, not since before I became ill. I noticed that whenever I looked him up or saw him he said ‘Oh, I’ll come round and see you’ in such a manner that I concluded I should take it as meaning: but don’t come to see me until I’ve been to see you, which isn’t going to happen. At any rate I haven’t gone back there, precisely because I don’t want to intrude. I know that De Bock is working on a very large painting at present. This winter I saw a few smaller ones that I thought very beautiful. I didn’t meet De Bock himself at his studio but on the street, twice recently, in fur coat, kid gloves &c. In short, like someone in extremely flourishing circumstances. And I hear on all sides that he is indeed what one might call flourishing.

  I often find his work very beautiful, but it doesn’t remind me all that much of Ruisdael, for example, and on reflection that may not be your lasting impression either. Actually, I’d very much like to see his studio again, just because I’d so like to be convinced that it’s as beautiful as I’d like it to be, and now I can’t help having my doubts about him all the time. Last year my impression of him was really not very favourable — he was always talking about Millet — fine, and about the greatness, broadness, of Millet — for example, out of doors too; I once spoke to him about this in the Scheveningse Bosjes. I said then — But De Bock, if Millet were here now, would he look at those clouds and that grass and those twenty-seven tree-trunks and forget only that little chap in his bombazine suit who’s sitting eating, his spade at his side?

  Or would that small part of the panorama where the little man sits be the point on which he fixed his attention? I don’t think I love Millet less than you, I said. The fact that you admire Millet gives me great pleasure, but forgive me if I don’t believe that Millet looked in the way you’re forever suggesting to me. Millet is above all, and more than anyone else, the painter of mankind. To be sure he painted landscapes, and it’s no doubt true that they’re beautiful, but it’s hard for me to understand how you can really mean what you say when you see in Millet above all the kind of thing you suggest to me.

  In short, Rappard, in friend De Bock I find more of BILDERS, for example, than of Millet or Ruisdael. Still, I may be mistaken or see more in him later, nothing would please me more.

  I certainly like Bilders too, and there isn’t a painting by De Bock that I don’t see with some pleasure. They always have something fresh and friendly about them.

  But there’s a certain kind of art, perhaps less flowery, more thorny, in which I find more for my heart.

  I know Ruisdael himself had his metamorphoses, and his finest works may not be the waterfalls and grand views of woods but ‘The breakwater with russet waters’ and The bush in the Louvre. The mills at Van der Hoop. The bleaching grounds at Overveen in the Mauritshuis here. And more of the more ordinary things he went in for later on, probably because of the influence of Rembrandt and Vermeer of Delft. I’d lik
e something like that to happen to De Bock. But will that be the case? I’d pity him if he didn’t land more in the thorns than in the flowers, that’s all.

  And although there has been an unintended coolness for some time now, nothing more serious than a few discussions about Millet and similar subjects has passed between us. And I’ve nothing against him — only so far I don’t exactly see the likes of Millet or Ruisdael in him. For the time being I find it like Bilders, not Gerard Bilders but the elder. And I certainly don’t dismiss that, and wouldn’t write so much about him if I didn’t care for him.

  I’m still very happy with the changes to the studio, especially because the experiments I did with various models showed me that a great deal has been gained.

  In the past a figure in the studio had no cast shadow, since the strong reflection threw light back on it. In this way all effects were neutralized. Now that drawback has been overcome.

  Don’t think for a moment that I’m abandoning lithographs, but I’ve had so many expenses and have so many things I need to buy that I can’t tackle any new stones. Nothing will be lost by waiting a little.

  But I’m longing to work more with natural chalk.

  Do you know what I sometimes long for so much? — it’s to see your studio. And not just that, but also the area where you normally stroll and potter about in search of subjects. I’m sure there are beautiful courtyards and alleys in Utrecht too.

  The Hague is beautiful — and there’s enormous diversity. I hope to work hard this year. There are often financial difficulties, too, that hold me back — you will understand that — but I’ll concentrate more and more on Black and White, precisely because I want to and must work a lot.

  With watercolour and painting, too, I have to keep stopping because of the costs, and with a piece of chalk or a pencil one has only the costs of the model and some paper.