Do you see why it wasn’t an irresponsible action on my part, and wouldn’t be if I were to try it again?
Because first I don’t have any pretension, don’t feel any desire at all, and secondly don’t receive the means from anyone whatsoever, or earn them, to keep up some sort of position or whatever you call it — I consider myself completely at liberty to consort with the so-called lower orders if the opportunity arises.
We’d perpetually return to the same questions.
Just ask yourself now if I’m alone among those in the same profession who would most definitely turn down patronage if it entails obligations to maintain some sort of position while the money wasn’t enough to be able to do it, so that one gets into debt rather than make progress. If it could be done on the money, I might perhaps not refuse to bend, any more than others do. But we’re certainly not that far at present — I have a stretch of years in front of me, as you say yourself, when my work will have very little commercial value. Very well — THEN I WOULD RATHER FALL INTO THE HANDS OF MUDDLING ALONG and of living through hard times — which I’ve done more than once — than into the hands of Messrs Van Gogh.
My only regret about arguing with Pa when I did is that I didn’t do it 10 years earlier. If you carry on in the footsteps of Pa &c. — you’ll just see how you’ll gradually get annoyed — and — how you would also become annoying to certain people. But those are awkward customers and, you’ll say — they’re of no consequence.
434 | Nuenen, between about Wednesday, 5 and about Sunday, 9 March 1884 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
One of these days I’ll send you another new pen drawing of a weaver — larger than the 5 others. The loom viewed from the front — that will make this little series of drawings more complete. I think that they’ll look best if you mount them on grey Ingres.
It would disappoint me a bit to get these little weavers back. And if nobody else you know wants to take them on, I’d think this is an article that perhaps you could take for yourself, in order to bring together a number of pen drawings of Brabant artisans, with this as the start. Which I’d be happy to undertake and — on the assumption that I’ll be in Brabant quite a lot now — would be very keen to do.
On condition that we make them into a set that stays together, I’ll be happy to set the price low so that it can stay as a whole, even if many drawings of that kind were to come.
However, for my part I’ll go along with what you think best in this regard.
And you see that it isn’t my endeavour to break off business with you — only, I’ve pointed out to you that it occurred to me that it might be useful to show the drawings as I send them.
As regards what you wrote to me about Marie — I believe that in such a case, where one sees no possibility of carrying it through, there’s something one shouldn’t forget.
Namely that if the woman has loved you and felt something for you, and you for her, this period of love is a stroke of luck in life. Whether the woman is beautiful or ugly, young or old, should she prove better or worse, only indirectly has anything to do with it. The plain fact remains that you have loved each other. On parting now — don’t extinguish that or try not to forget it — and the rock to avoid then is that of self-righteousness — one shouldn’t then let it appear as if the woman had a great obligation to the man — one should part as if one had an obligation oneself — is in my view more chivalrous — and — more humane. This may be the way you see it too. Love always causes trouble, that’s true, but in its favour, it energizes. But anyway.
As to myself, I believe — and consider it possible that to some extent it might also be the same with you — that I haven’t yet had enough experience with women. What we were taught about them in our youth is quite wrong, that’s certain — had nothing to do with real life at all. And if one has to see to it that one learns something by experience, it would be mightily pleasant if one was good and the world was good &c. — yes indeed — but it seems to me that one increasingly comes to realize that we ourselves are as bad as the world in general — of which we are a speck of dust — and the world as bad as we are — whether one does one’s very best or acts more indifferently, it always becomes something else — works out differently — from what one actually wanted. But whether it turns out better or worse, happier or unhappier, doing something is better than doing nothing.
Well, provided one takes care, as Uncle Vincent says — that one doesn’t grow up into a stiff, self-righteous stick — one may even be as good as one wishes. His Hon. taught this wise lesson to C.M.’s daughter.
Well, regards.
Yours truly,
Vincent
Your letter about Millet has good passages — better observed than what you say about Lhermitte, for whom you can safely keep your sympathy, it seems to me. Don’t immerse yourself in that absolutely sterile carping about who’s the first, who the second &c., that’s nothing but nonsense and stupidity. There are enough who do that, and you, be one of those who think Millet very good and Lhermitte too, so that you leave no room to fret about who’s the best, the first — they’re both above the mark.
What would be the point of making comparisons between Rembrandt and Nicolaas Maes or Vermeer — nonsense, eh? — so stop it.
There was also something I wanted to ask you about Millet. Do you think that Millet would have become Millet if he’d lived childless and without a wife?
He found his inspiration the more easily and sympathized with the simple folk better and deeper because he himself lived like a labourer’s family — but with infinitely more feeling than an ordinary labourer. Millet’s motto was: God blesses large families — and his life proves that he meant it. Would Millet have been able to do this without Sensier? Perhaps not. But why did Millet break with those men who were originally his friends and from whom he had an annuity? Sensier says enough about this to make out that the trouble was that they rated both Millet’s person and Millet’s work as mediocre, and plagued both themselves and Millet with it until that pitcher finally broke, having been too many times to the well. And yet Sensier doesn’t go into details about those days — just as if he understood that Millet himself found that time a dreadful bore and preferred not to think of it. Sensier says somewhere that when Millet thought about his first wife and the struggle of those days, he would clasp his head between his two hands with a gesture as if the great darkness and inexpressible melancholy of that period overwhelmed him again. His domestic life was more successful the second time — but he wasn’t with those original people any more.
439 | Nuenen, on or about Tuesday, 18 March 1884 | To Anthon van Rappard (D)
My dear friend Rappard,
Thank you for your letter — which made me happy. I was pleased that you saw something in my drawings.
I won’t go into generalities about technique, but I do foresee that, precisely when I become stronger in what I’ll call power of expression than I am at this moment, people will say, not less but in fact even more than now, that I have no technique. Consequently — I’m in complete agreement with you that I must say even more forcibly what I’m saying in my present work — and I’m toiling away to strengthen myself in this respect — but — that the general public will understand it better then — no.
All the same, in my view that doesn’t alter the fact that the reasoning of the good man who asked about your work, ‘does he paint for money?’, is the reasoning of a moaner — since this intelligent creature counts it among the axioms that originality prevents one from earning money with one’s work.
Passing this off as an AXIOM, because it can decidedly not be proved as a proposition is, as I said — the usual trick of moaners — and lazy little Jesuits.
Do you think that I don’t care about technique or am not searching for it? I do — but only to the extent that — I want to say what I have to say — and where I can’t do it yet, or not well enough, I work on it to improve myself. But I don’t give a damn whe
ther my language squares with that of these orators — (you know you made the comparison — if someone had something useful, true — necessary to say, and said it in terms that were difficult to understand, what good would it be to either speaker or audience?).
I want to stay with this point for a moment — precisely because I’ve often come across a rather curious historical phenomenon.
Let it be clearly understood: that one must speak in the audience’s mother tongue if that audience only speaks one language — that goes without saying, and it would be absurd not to take it as read.
But now the second part of the question. Given a man who has something to say and speaks in the language that his audience is also naturally familiar with.
Then — the phenomenon that the speaker of truth has little oratorical chic will manifest itself time and time again — and does not appeal to the majority of his audience — indeed is branded a man ‘slow of speech’ and despised as such.
He may consider himself lucky if there is one, or a very few at most, who are edified by him, because these listeners weren’t concerned with oratorical tirades but precisely, effectively with — the truth, usefulness, necessity of the words, which enlightened, broadened them, made them freer or more intelligent.
And now the painters — is the purpose and non plus ultra of art those singular spots of colour — that waywardness in the drawing, that which is called distinction of technique? Certainly not. If one takes a Corot, a Daubigny, a Dupré, a Millet or an Israëls — fellows who are certainly the great forerunners — their work is BEYOND THE PAINT, it stands apart from the chic fellows, just as an oratorical tirade (by, say, a Numa Roumestan) is something very different from a prayer or — a good poem.
One MUST therefore work on technique in so far as one must say what one feels better, more accurately, more profoundly, but — with the less verbiage the better. But the rest — one needn’t occupy oneself with it.
Why I say this is because I believe I’ve observed that you sometimes think things in your own work aren’t good, which to my mind are good. In my view, your technique is better than, say, Haverman’s — because already your brushstroke often has something singular, distinctive, reasoned and deliberate about it, which in Haverman is endless convention, always redolent of the studio, not of nature.
Those sketches of yours that I saw, for instance, the little weaver and the old women of Terschelling, appeal to me — they get to the heart of things. I get little but malaise and boredom from Haverman.
I’m afraid that in the future, too — and I congratulate you on it — you will ALSO hear the same comments about technique, as well as about subject and . . . . . everything, in fact, even when that brushstroke of yours, which already has so much character, gets even more.
There are however art lovers who do, after all, appreciate precisely those things that have been painted with emotion.
Although we’re no longer in the days of Thoré and of Théophile Gautier — alas. Just think about whether it’s wise, particularly nowadays, to talk a lot about technique — you’ll say I’m doing that here myself — actually I do regret it.
But for my part, I intend to tell people consistently that I can’t paint, even when I’ve mastered my brush much better than now. You understand? — especially then, when I really will have an individual manner, more finished and even more concise than now.
I liked what Herkomer said when he opened his own art school — for a number of people who could already paint — he kindly asked his students if they would be so good as to not want to paint like him — but according to their own nature — I am concerned, he says, with setting originality free — not with winning disciples for Herkomer’s doctrine.
Lions do not ape one another.
Well, I’ve painted quite a lot these last few days, a seated girl winding shuttles for the weavers, and the figure of the weaver separately.
I’m longing for you to see my painted studies sometime — not because I’m satisfied with them myself, but because I believe that you’ll be convinced by them that I really am exercising my hand and, when I say I care relatively little for technique, it’s not because I’m saving myself trouble or trying to avoid difficulties. Because that’s not my system.
I’m also longing for you to get to know this corner of Brabant sometime — much more beautiful than the Breda side in my view. It’s delightful here at the moment.
There’s a village here — Son en Breugel, which is amazingly like Courrières, where the Bretons live — yet the figures over there are at least as beautiful. As one starts to appreciate the form more, one sometimes takes a dislike to — ‘the Dutch traditional costumes’, as they’re called on the photograph albums that they sell to foreigners.
I’m sending you herewith a little booklet about Corot — which I think you’ll enjoy reading if you don’t know it — there are several accurate biographical details in it. I saw the exhibition at the time, for which this is the catalogue.
What’s remarkable in it is that that man ripened and matured for so long. Just look at what he did at different times in his life. I’ve seen examples of his first ACTUAL WORK — itself the result of years of study — honest as the day is long, thoroughly sound — but how people must have despised it! Corot’s studies were a lesson to me when I saw them, and was already struck at the time by the difference from studies by many other landscape painters.
If I didn’t see more technique in your little peasant cemetery than in Corot’s studies — I’d liken it to them. In sentiment it’s identical — an endeavour to express only the intimate and the essential.
What I’m saying in this letter amounts to this — let’s try to get the hang of the secrets of technique so well that people are taken in and swear by all that’s holy that we have no technique.
Let the work be so skilful that it seems naive and doesn’t stink of our cleverness.
I don’t believe that I have reached this desirable point yet, for I don’t even believe that you, who are further on than I am, are already there.
I believe you’ll see more in this letter than nitpicking about words.
I believe that the more one has to do with nature itself — the deeper one penetrates into it — the less attraction one sees in all these studio tricks, and yet, I do want to take them as they are and see them painting. I would really like to spend a lot of time in studios.
Not in the books have I found it
And from the ‘learned’ — oh, little learned
is in De Génestet, as you know. One might say as a variant on this,
Not in the studio have I found it
Perhaps my inserting painters or connoisseurs as equals shocks you.
But changing the subject — it’s devilishly difficult to feel nothing, not to be affected by what such moaners as ‘does he paint for money’ say. One hears that rot day in and day out, and later one gets angry with oneself for having taken any notice of it. That’s how it is with me — and I think that it must occasionally be the same with you. One doesn’t give a damn about it, but all the same it gets on one’s nerves — like when one hears someone singing off-key or is pursued by a barrel-organ with a grudge against you. Don’t you think that’s true about the barrel-organ, and also that it seems to pick on you specifically?
For wherever one goes, it’s the same old tune everywhere.
Oh, as to me — I’m going to do what I tell you — when people say this and that to me — I’m going to finish their sentences before they do — in the same way as, when I know someone is in the habit of offering me a finger instead of a hand (I pulled it off yesterday with a venerable colleague of my father’s), I for my part also have one finger ready and, keeping a straight face, carefully touch his with it when shaking hands — in a way that the man can’t say anything about it but realizes I’m bloody well getting my own back on him.
Well, I’ve recently made somebody very angry with something of the sort — does one lose anythin
g by it? No, for in truth these people are a hindrance, and the fact that I write to you about some expressions you use is to ask you: are you sure that those who are praising technique to the skies are in good faith? I just ask it precisely because I know that your aim is to avoid studio chic.
440 | Nuenen, on or about Thursday, 20 March 1884 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
I just received your letter and the 250 francs enclosed. If I may regard your letter as a reply to my proposal, I would certainly be able to accept what you say. For my part I simply wish — in order to avoid correspondence, dispute — in order to be able to say something when one is railed at in daily life by one person or another as being ‘without means of support’ — that if I continue to receive the usual from you, I may regard it as money that I’ve earned. Naturally I’ll send you work every month. That work, as you say, is then your property — and I completely agree with you that in that case you have every right to do nothing with it — indeed, I wouldn’t even be in a position to object if you thought fit to tear it up.
I for my part, needing money, am obliged to accept it even if someone says to me ‘I don’t want to do anything with this drawing of yours or burn it, you can have this much for it’ — in the circumstances I’d say — very well — give me the money — here you have my work — I want to get on — in order to get on I must have money — I’m seeing to it that I get it — and so — if need be, even if I really didn’t give a damn about you, as long as I receive money from you each month that is useful and necessary to me (without conditions that I may not do this, that or the other), I won’t break the ties, and if need be I’ll put up with anything.
Ever Yours Page 59