I would rather spend what I have on models than on painting materials, I do assure you.
I’ve never complained about money spent on models.
Do you have the portrait of Carlyle — that beautiful one in The Graphic? At the moment I’m reading his ‘Sartor resartus’ — the philosophy of old clothes — under ‘old clothes’ he includes all manner of forms, and in the case of religion all dogmas. It’s beautiful — and honest — and humane. There’s been a lot of grumbling about this book, as with his other books. Many regard Carlyle as a monster. One nice comment on ‘the philosophy of old clothes’ is the following. Carlyle not only strips mankind naked but skins it too. Something like that. Well, that isn’t true, but it’s true that he’s honest enough not to call the shirt the skin — and far from finding a desire to belittle man in his work, I for one see that he puts man in a high position in the universe. At the same time, more than bitter criticism, I see love of mankind in him, a great deal of love. He — Carlyle — learned much from Goethe, but even more I believe from a certain man who wrote no books but whose words have survived nonetheless, although he didn’t write them down himself, i.e. Jesus. Before Carlyle he included many forms of all kinds under ‘old clothes’.
This week I bought a new 6-penny edition of Christmas carol and Haunted man by Dickens (London Chapman and Hall) with about 7 illustrations by Barnard, for example, a junk shop among others. I find all of Dickens beautiful, but those two tales — I’ve re-read them almost every year since I was a boy, and they always seem new to me. Barnard has understood Dickens well. Lately I again saw photographs after Black and White drawings by B., a series of characters from Dickens. I saw Mrs Gamp, Little Dorrit, SIKES, SYDNEY CARTON, and several others.
They’re a few figures worked up to a very high standard, very important, treated like cartoons. In my view there’s no other writer who’s as much a painter and draughtsman as Dickens. He’s one of those whose characters are resurrections. On a children’s print I found a small woodcut by Barnard engraved by Swain. A policeman in black drags along a woman in white who struggles against him. A band of street urchins follow behind. It’s almost impossible to express so much of the true character of a poor neighbourhood with fewer means. I’ll get another copy of that print for you — it’s only a small scratch.
Unfortunately, I can’t get you the print Empty chair by Fildes, which I was promised along with some others. The man now remembers ‘clearing them up’ a few years ago.
Write again soon — may the work prosper in every respect.
Oh — I have a near complete French edition of Dickens translated under the supervision of Dickens himself.
I believe you once told me that you couldn’t enjoy all of Dickens’s English works because sometimes the English was complicated, for instance the miners’ dialect in Hard times. If ever you would like to read some of it, it’s at your disposal, and I’m willing to exchange the whole collection of Dickens in French for something else, if you like. I’m gradually coming round to the idea of taking the English Household Edition. Adieu, with a handshake.
Ever yours,
Vincent
In The Graphic, 10 Feb. 1883 there’s a little figure by Frank Holl, a child in an attic room, very real. I bought the issue for it.
The illustrations by John Leech and Cruikshank have character too, but the Barnards are more worked up. Leech, though, is strong with street urchins.
[Sketch 325E]
325E. Baby crawling (‘Adventurer sallying forth’)
332 | The Hague, on or about Wednesday, 21 March 1883 | To Anthon van Rappard (D)
My dear friend Rappard —
Thanks for your letter, I was interested to learn that you’re again working on your painting The tile painters. In your letter I also found something about your coming here, and that was all the more reason to send you the duplicate woodcuts I still have left quickly, since I believe you would rather not wait any longer than necessary. At any rate after seeing them, you’ll regard various prints as not unwelcome possessions, I imagine.
I’ve also taken The Graphic Portfolio apart and inserted it between my loose prints. This is why you already have Low lodging house by Herkomer, and several of the best of this consignment too. I’m sending you the ordinary impressions of some prints that I obtained in duplicate in this way, and in the case of some the prints from the book itself, which are printed not from the clichés but from the blocks themselves.
In this consignment you’ll at last find something by Boyd Houghton, namely Shaker Evans, Liverpool harbour, Mail in the wilderness and Niagara falls. Once you’ve seen my Boyd Houghtons from the first year of The Graphic you will better understand what I wrote to you about the importance of this master’s work. Van der Weele saw them this week and was also struck by them.
This week I worked on drawings of figures with wheelbarrows — perhaps for lithography as well — yet what do I know of how it will turn out? — I just carry on drawing. As I wrote, Van der Weele came by this week — I was just working with a model — and we held a viewing from The Graphic on a wheelbarrow that I had drawn with the model. One sheet that we paid particular attention to was by Boyd Houghton — I wrote to you about it at the time — it shows a corridor at the offices of The Graphic at Christmas. The draughtsmen’s models come to wish them a merry Xmas and no doubt receive a tip. Most of the models are disabled — a man on crutches leads the way — holding on to his coat-tail is a blind person with someone else on his back who can’t walk at all — his coat-tail is held by a second blind person who is followed by an injured person with a bandage round his head, behind whom yet more come trudging along. I asked Van der Weele — Tell me, do we take models often ENOUGH??? Van der W. replied: When Israëls was at my studio lately and saw my big painting of the sand-carts, he said: ‘Now above all take plenty of models’.
Now I believe that many people would use more models if they had more money to spend — but still, as long as we always spend on them every 10 stuivers we can spare.
It would be wonderful if people joined forces and there was a place where models would rendezvous each day, as at The Graphic in the past. Anyway, be that as it may, let’s keep up each other’s enthusiasm, and let’s encourage each other, as far as we can, to carry on working. Not in the direction of pleasing dealers or the ordinary art lovers but in the direction of manly strength, truth, loyalty, honesty.
Which are all directly connected, in my view, with working with models. It seems that everything one makes in this way is doomed to be called ‘disagreeable’, but I believe this far from imaginary but definitely existing prejudice ought to give way all the same before the attempts of the painters against it, provided the painters are agreed on this between themselves and support and help each other, and don’t allow the dealers to be the only ones who speak to the public, but put a word in for themselves now and again. For while I’m prepared to accept that what a painter says about his own work won’t always be understood, I still believe that in this way better seed would be scattered in the field of public opinion than the seeds the dealers and their associates are in the habit of sowing according to a conventional formula that’s always the same.
These thoughts naturally bring me to the field of exhibitions. You work for exhibitions — fine — I myself am decidedly not at all fond of exhibitions.
I used to be fonder of them in the past than I am now — I don’t know why this is — in the past I viewed exhibitions from a different angle — perhaps in the past I had ample occasion to see behind the scenes of certain affairs connected to exhibitions &c. — and perhaps it isn’t just nonchalance on my part that I believe that many are mistaken regarding the results of an exhibition. I don’t want to discuss it further now, other than to say that I myself would have more faith in a coming together of painters through mutual sympathy and similarity of purpose and warm friendship and loyalty than in a coming together of their works by means of exhibitions.
This i
s why, when I see paintings hung together in the same room, I don’t yet venture to conclude that a spirit of unity and a respect for each other and a certain healthy collaboration exists among those who made the aforementioned paintings &c. I regard this last point — the existence or non-existence of these things — as being of such great weight that little else qualifies as possibly being important, other than in connection with this spiritual unity, and whatever other matters, important in themselves, there may be apart from that, no surrogate can make up for the lack of that unity, and the lack of that is a lack of firm ground under one’s feet. I don’t have the least desire for exhibitions &c. to stop, but I do desire a reform or rather renewal and strengthening of the associations and the collaboration between painters, which would certainly have the kind of influence that would make even exhibitions beneficial. As for your Tile painters — I was interested to hear that you’re working on it again — I’m especially interested in what it’s like and what it will become. I take an interest in everything to do with this painting or with your other paintings, and see something of them and hear about them with sympathy — but whether or not they go to an exhibition matters as little to me as what kind of frame you have them in. Well, adieu — write again soon.
Ever yours,
Vincent
I dislike writing or talking about technique in general, Rappard — although all the same I sometimes long to talk about how to realize some idea or other that I might have, be it with you or with someone else, and I don’t take the practical value of such discussions lightly.
However, this latter doesn’t alter the first thought — which perhaps I’m not expressing properly. That first thought — I can’t exactly put it into words — is based not on something negative but on something positive.
In the positive awareness that art is something larger and loftier than our own skill or learning or knowledge. That art is something which, although produced by human hands, is not wrought by the hands alone but wells up from a deeper source in our soul, and that I find something in dexterity and technical knowledge about art that reminds me of what, in religion, they’d call self-righteousness.
My sympathies in the literary as well as the artistic sphere are drawn most strongly to those artists in whom I see the soul most at work. Israëls, for instance, is a clever technician, but Vollon is equally so — I like Israëls even more than Vollon, though, because in Israëls I see something more and something very different from the masterly rendering of fabrics, something very different from the light and shade, something very different from the colour — yet that something very different being achieved by that accurate rendering of the effect of light, fabric, colour. Eliot really has that ‘something different’, which I see, as I said, in Israëls much more than in Vollon, and Dickens has it too.
Does it lie in the choice of subjects? No, that too is another consequence.
And what I’m getting at, among other things, is that Eliot is masterly in execution, but above and beyond that is that extra something of singular genius of which I would say: perhaps one improves by reading these books — or, these books have the power to invigorate.
Without meaning to I wrote a lot about exhibitions there, actually I barely think about them. Now I do happen to be thinking about them, and I view my thoughts with a degree of surprise. I wouldn’t be expressing them fully enough if I didn’t add that there’s something so thoroughly honest and good in some paintings that, whatever is done with them — whether they fall into good or into bad — into honest or dishonest hands — something good comes from them. ‘Let your light shine before men’ is something that I believe is every painter’s duty, but — it doesn’t, in my view, immediately follow that letting the light shine before men has to be done in exhibitions — I have to tell you that, rather than wanting to hide the candle under the bed instead of putting it in a candlestick, I wish there were more and better opportunities than exhibitions to bring art to the people. Anyway, enough of that.
I recently re-read Eliot’s Felix Holt, The radical. This book has been very well translated into Dutch. I hope you know it — if you don’t know it, see if you can’t get hold of it somewhere.
There are certain ideas about life in it that I find outstanding — profound things said in a plain way — it’s a book written with great spirit, and various scenes are described exactly as Frank Holl or someone like him would draw them. It’s a similar conception and outlook. There aren’t many writers who are as thoroughly sincere and good as Eliot. This book, The radical, isn’t as well known in Holland as, say, her Adam Bede, and her scenes from clerical life aren’t very well known either — more’s the pity, in the same way that it’s a great pity that not everyone knows Israëls’s work.
342 | The Hague, on or about Thursday, 10 May 1883 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
I received your letter in good order with the 50 francs enclosed. Which were a deliverance for me, at any rate a respite. I’ve also heard from friend Rappard — but nothing definite as yet.
A letter that’s a reply to my letter, and that he will help me and come as well, but, he writes, my health is letting me down again. Ends with: I enclose the money herewith. Postscriptum: oh, I’ll come immediately and bring it myself — I’ll come tomorrow. This is followed by a telegram the next day. Not coming, letter follows later.
So, despite having heard something, it’s still the same as with a game of goose, if you remember how one can land on a goose, thus go forward, but unfortunately just then land on a new goose with its beak pointing in a direction one doesn’t want to take, and so one must count back to one’s original position. Yet it isn’t his fault, for he’s been really very ill and is still feeling the remnants or after-effects of that. Moreover, his sister had a fairly similar illness, and they were most concerned about her, but she recovered too.
Nonetheless, I do believe this of friend Rappard, that he does things that cost him a great deal of energy and nervous tension and aren’t worth the powder he expends on them. Thus before his illness I heard about decorations for the centenary of the Utrecht painters’ society, and now this time it was church ornaments. By chance I wrote to him that I thought they were both unwise, and he fell ill last time and now this time. I would approve if he overworked himself on normal things, but, as I said, this isn’t worth the powder expended on it, and I wrote again to him: you’re a soldier and one of the few who have cartridges in their box at the present time. Use them only in cases where a shot is unavoidable.
I fear — dear brother — that the money you loaned to our dear cousin H. has currently taken the form of a vicious gun dog, for instance, or some similar curiosity, since I believe he’s quite often mistaken about such purchases — and then later it’s sometimes impossible for him to bring it back from that form to the state of banknotes or to cash it in because, like other lovers of horses and hounds, he’s caught in the snares of some crooked dealer. I’m one of those who wish him as much good fortune as possible in these negotiations, and would like to see nothing better than that their outcome is that he may speedily return what he owes you. At one time there were big plans to populate the plantation with countless dogs. This livestock farming is highly commendable, but at present I want to say no more about it than that I hope it may prove exceedingly profitable.
Is your patient already discharged from hospital? But there may still be worrying days, no less grave than when she was in there. Michelet says rightly: a woman is an illness. They are changeable, Theo — they are changeable like the weather. Now those with an eye for it see something beautiful and good in all weathers, find snow beautiful and burning sun beautiful and storm beautiful and calm beautiful, cold good and heat, are fond of all seasons and don’t want to miss a single day of the year, and are fundamentally content and resigned to things being as they are — yet even if one looks at the weather and the changing year like this — and the changing female nature in the same way — believing that in
the essence of that nature, in its mysteriousness, there is a Reason — accepting where one doesn’t understand — even, I say, if one should view it in that way, our own nature and vision isn’t always and at every moment in harmony and accord with that of the woman with whom we’re united, and individually one feels either concern or dissatisfaction or vacillation, despite the belief and the good spirits or serenity one may have.
I was told by the professor who delivered her that the complete cure of my woman would take years. That is, the nervous system remains tremendously sensitive, for example, and she has that changeableness of women very strongly. The great danger is — as you will understand — tumbling back into old mistakes.
This danger, although of a moral nature, has links with the physical constitution. And I have constant and sometimes serious concerns about what I would call these lurches between getting better and lapsing back into old bad habits. Her mood can be such that it’s almost unbearable, even for me, quick-tempered, wilfully wrong, in short, sometimes I despair. It passes — and more than once she has said to me later — I DON’T MYSELF KNOW WHAT I’M DOING THEN.
Do you remember writing to me last year that you feared that I would be burdened with the mother? Sometimes I wish things had taken that turn. The mother is very sturdy when she wants to be, and could have done so much better than she has. Now she sometimes obstructs more than she helps. Anyway, when the woman does something wrong it’s sometimes the mother’s fault, and when the mother does wrong it’s sometimes the family who are behind the mother. Things which aren’t so bad in themselves but which prevent progress and overwhelm or neutralize better influences.
My woman has certain faults and defects in the way she acts — that’s bound to be the case. THAT DOES NOT MAKE HER BAD in my view. Still, those defects must be eliminated — habits of laxity, indifference, lack of activity and deftness, oh, a mass of things. But all with the same root — wrong upbringing, years of an utterly wrong view of life, fatal influences of bad company. I tell you this in confidence, mind — and not out of desperation but so that you will understand that for me this love isn’t a bed of roses, but something as prosaic as Monday morning.
Ever Yours Page 43