Overwhelmed in the sense that the Begemann family of the old religion believed it had to suppress the active, indeed brilliant principle in her, and made her passive for ever and ever.
If only they hadn’t broken her when she was young! Or if they’d left it at that and not driven her to distraction again!, this time with 5 or 6 or even more women fighting against her alone.
DO READ L’EVANGELISTE BY DAUDET ABOUT THESE FEMALE INTRIGUES, which were different here but still of the same kind.
Oh Theo, why should I change? In the past I was very passive and very gentle and quiet — not any more, but I’m not a child any more either — sometimes I feel myself.
Take Mauve — why is he irascible and by no means always mild? I’m not yet as far as he is, but still I’ll get further than I am. I tell you, if one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good — many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm — and that’s a lie, and you said yourself in the past that it was a lie. That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity. Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you with a sort of imbecility.
You don’t know how paralyzing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter you can’t do anything. The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerizes some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves.
Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas IS AFRAID of the truly passionate painter who dares — and who has once broken the spell of ‘you can’t’.
Life itself likewise always turns towards one an infinitely meaningless, discouraging, dispiriting blank side on which there is nothing, any more than on a blank canvas.
But however meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, and who knows something, doesn’t let himself be fobbed off like that. He steps in and does something, and hangs on to that, in short, breaks, ‘violates’ — they say.
Let them talk, those cold theologians.
Theo, I feel such damned pity for this woman, precisely because her age and just possibly a liver and gall bladder disorder are hanging so fatally over her head. And this is made worse by the emotions. Still, we’ll see what can be done or what’s made impossible by fate. I’ll do nothing, though, without a very good doctor, so I shan’t do her any harm.
Yet it was at precisely this time that it happened that I was asked to make a drawing or painted sketch for 20 guilders. Which I duly acceded to, but because I suspected, and on investigation found my suspicion was correct, that Margot Begemann was behind it and would have given me the money indirectly, I most decidedly refused the payment but not the drawing, which I sent. It’s not easy to refuse it, though, when one is sorely in need of money. But it would have been a bridge of asses — so —
Instead of bridges of asses — is there something better to do? I very definitely believe so. For your sake and mine and for many others, I wish that we could get MOURETS in the art trade who knew how to create a broader, new buying public.
You’ll say, isn’t Tersteeg, for instance, a Mouret. Perhaps he is, after all.
But be that as it may, there are still new careers to be made, simply because the public that buys paintings could be multiplied tenfold, and this is becoming more necessary by the day.
Were a few Mourets to emerge, who bought and sold other than according to the old routine, good, then there would be more and more work to be done.
But if no Mourets come — then — perhaps the trade should change utterly because the painters themselves revived it and started their own permanent exhibitions without the old intermediary. I wish you knew and felt how young you still are if you would only act young and be daring.
If you aren’t an artist in painting, be an artist as a dealer, just like Mouret.
For my part — at times like these, when I get completely stuck — I still feel that in a few years’ time I’ll happily dare take on a great many larger bills for paint and other things. I want to have a lot of work — believe me — I have no intention of being bored — do a great deal or die.
469 | Nuenen, on or about Friday, 14 November 1884 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
You’ll certainly be interested in how things stand with the call to Helvoirt that Pa received. Pa told the people in Helvoirt that he certainly couldn’t even consider it unless the H. stipend was brought up to the level of the Nuenen stipend. And Pa writes today that they don’t seem to be raising any objections to making up the difference in stipend — they have to add 150 guilders to it, I believe. So although nothing has been decided — given the willingness of the good natives of Helvoirt — there’s a real chance that as a result of his own words Pa will have to consider it very seriously. This is important to me, because I would certainly not want to go to Helvoirt with them. I just wanted to tell you exactly how things stand.
These last few days, although it’s freezing quite hard here, I’ve been working outdoors on a rather large study (more than 1 metre) of an old water mill in Gennep, on the other side of Eindhoven. I want to finish the whole thing outdoors — but it will definitely be the last that I paint outdoors this year. Since I wrote to you I’ve also been working on other studies — among them two heads of polder workers.
I now have 3 people in Eindhoven who want to learn to paint and whom I’m teaching to paint still lifes.
I can safely say that I’ve progressed in painting technique and in colour since your visit. And that this will continue to improve, too.
In painting, it’s the first steps that count — it gets easier later, and I have some trumps in my hand. And I think there are tricks to be taken with them. Now you know that I made an approach to Mauve and Tersteeg again, to put right what happened in the past.
I don’t regret that approach.
But they’ve refused to have anything to do with it — ‘very definitely’ refused. This doesn’t discourage me.
I regard it as something like sending a painting to an exhibition and having it rejected.
One has to encounter opposition at first, or even several times.
So again, I don’t regret my approach, and shall most likely repeat it — not straightaway, exactly — but before too long.
I wanted to tell you now that I’d be very pleased if you didn’t just stay neutral in this matter — but on the contrary helped me to get what I want. I’ve admitted I was wrong, not just to Mauve but to T. as well.
All the more because I believe that later on they themselves will realize that for their part they totally misunderstood things.
Which they don’t see yet.
So for my part, by going so far this time as to very generously and decidedly admit I was wrong in the past, moreover to simply show them work as it gets better, in any event I won’t have to make any more apologies in future. ONCE is ENOUGH, and I didn’t necessarily even have to go as far as I did, namely — unconditionally. Getting them to be generous for their part — is another thing — you could assist in this if you want to. If not — don’t bother about it, but then after a while I’ll return to it again on my own.
I don’t know how you’ll have taken my last letter — which wasn’t meant angrily. My affairs can prosper, and in both our interests I wish that we could concentrate the strength we have at our disposal. I’ve replied briefly to both Tersteeg and M. about their refusal, to tell them that ‘I rather agree with Tersteeg that it would be BETTER for me to seek out new people than to try to renew old relationships, that this really is my own idea, too, but above and beyond that, that I nonetheless have enough faith in the future that I will NOT LIGHTLY give up regaining EVEN old relationships, even better than before’. This has been my answer to T. And is also what I tell you — I believe that it’s possible — to get on better terms than the present ones — with you, too.
But — speaking bluntly — I think that you’ve been too neutral toward
s me the last 1½ or two years, and I wish above all for more warmth, and the friendship was too cool and not animated enough for me.
Find this pedantic of me if you will — yet it isn’t pedantic but it’s for sound practical reasons that I pointed this out to you before and point it out again.
Margot Begemann is coming back to Nuenen one of these days — I’ve always remained good friends with her, and it’s on my advice that she did not give in to her sisters, who let it be seen that they’d rather she stayed away and who keep telling her that in their view she has made a hash of things. On the contrary, her family has obligations towards her, and in the past she put her own money into the business when her brother went bankrupt.
The issue here is that if she and I choose to love each other, be attached to each other — indeed have been for a long time — this is no wrongdoing on our part nor something for which people may blame us. Either her or me. And in my view it’s absurd that people felt they should get worked up about it — and then — in their opinion — in my interest or in hers. That was a bad turn.
Anyone may do this with the best intentions — yet — — — Louis Begemann — he had his objections, too, but was such and remained such that both she and I could talk to him, and it was precisely because he was humane and calm that it didn’t turn out much worse, and when that happened with her, which only I knew about, he could help and all the others only hindered. And we were in complete agreement about the steps to be taken then.
Three days before, after all, I had already warned him and said, I’m concerned about your sister.
Most certainly, at some time she has done greater or lesser good turns for pretty well all the people here in the neighbourhood, either in sickness or when they were in some trouble or other.
And she and I actually became attached during Ma’s illness.
She has just written to me: should there be any people sick in Nuenen, do go and visit them and see if anything can be done to help. Well, there are a thousand things of that nature in her.
And to put it very mildly, one can say that there has been a most deplorable misunderstanding here.
I think that, with hindsight, you would now no longer speak as you did on that evening.
That concerned me alone — and I could take it, so there’s no question of my reproaching you in this matter.
Only as an explanation for you, I say, just as you spoke to me, who can take it, so her sisters spoke to her, who was made distraught by it. You have nothing to do with it, because you spoke to me, who can take it, and you did not speak to her.
But the real fault lies with her sisters, or rather one of the sisters in particular, who proves to be very hard, since she’s actually still sulking and bearing a grudge.
You — would have to tell me again yourself that you bear a grudge — before I would suspect you of it.
So much on my part to you.
482 | Nuenen, on or about Monday, 2 February 1885 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
I have a great deal to say about your calling my last letter ‘particularly unpleasant’.
First of all this — some time ago you wrote various unpleasant things to me which I’ve been hearing from you and others for the past 15 years and more — that’s a long time — about relations at home.
With this specially added, ‘that you are suspicious’. Well, if it had only been the former, I probably wouldn’t have given it any more attention.
That addition of your suspicion, though, that was a bit too much for me, and I repeatedly asked you to take it back or to explain it, because I don’t allow something like that to be said without asking for enlightenment.
And in my last letter I compared suspicion in general with a dark glass one looks through.
And said that the nastiest misunderstandings arise because of it.
And that’s true.
When you now turn this round and write to me, ‘you remind me of the old people who say that things were better in their young days than now, forgetting meanwhile that they themselves have changed’, this doesn’t upset me.
What we were talking about is suspicion, which not I but you yourself mention, by you of me. First apply the thing about the old people to that, and after that see whether it also applies to me.
If it also applies to me after that — then I’ll have to change.
What I wrote about a certain atmosphere at home, which I had more opportunity to observe than I cared to, is, I fear, all too true.
When you ask me in your letter how it is that you never hear me say, ‘I’d like to be thus or so’ — is — because I believe that those who make the greatest parade of ‘I’d like to be thus or so’ do the least to improve themselves. Those who say it, usually don’t do it.
Were I to express myself about such wishes, it would not be easy to do so in an atmosphere like the one that now exists between us.
So that’s the reason — and since I take pains to improve my work, I don’t have to keep lapsing into lamentations.
I’m sorry you didn’t send me that No. of L’Illustration; I’ve been following Renouard a good while, and have what he’s done for L’Illustration going back for years. And this is one of the very finest, which I think you would also have been delighted with yourself.
One can’t get the old Nos. if one orders them in the bookshop, at least not here. I do wish you could get it. If it’s too much trouble for you, leave it, although it’s really not that much trouble after all.
And — after all — take note that as far as that suspicion is concerned and what I replied to it, it isn’t so much because I won’t allow you or others, if need be, to think of me exactly as you will, but I’ve warned you that it would give you little satisfaction if your character were to set in that mould.
Since you repeatedly say that you know me better than anyone else and yet it still all ends in suspicion, though, this is serious enough for me to decidedly object to it, and to that ‘know so well’, and to the other thing, that suspicion. I’ve a history like that behind me with Pa — I’m not starting on a Pa II.
If I’d kept on top of things with Pa from the start and not simply stayed silent, a great deal wouldn’t have happened.
So don’t take it amiss that I now say foursquare what I think about it. That’s better for both of us. For the rest, old chap, I think I’m working rather too hard for it to be too long before I can reduce the financial burden on you somewhat. It may take me longer than I’d like for you or for me, but keeping on working is a path that can hardly fail altogether. And when I insist on pressing on with it, it’s in order to put an end to the possibility of quarrelling. Because even the possibility of quarrelling ceases to exist as soon as I find a means of covering myself financially. Then my work will no longer be at issue, and at present it still is.
And therefore don’t despair. But now it’s wretched for both of us. And for me the work is expensive; I have to paint a lot and I constantly need a model for it; just all the more reason why, at a time when the work is difficult and exacting, and at the same time thankless, it’s quite wretched to get suspicion for it. Never mind, it’s a period I have to go through, and one doesn’t paint for one’s comfort.
Thanks for what you sent. Regards.
Yours truly,
Vincent
483 | Nuenen, between about Thursday, 5 and about Thursday, 26 February 1885 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
Many thanks for your parcel of L’Illustrations, with which you’ve given me great pleasure. I like all of the various drawings by Renouard, and didn’t know any of them. However — but this isn’t to put you to more trouble, but because I wrote things about it that are perhaps not altogether applicable to the other drawings by him — however, the actual composition by R. that I meant isn’t among them, that No. may be sold out. The breadth in the figure was superb in it — it was an old man and some women and a child, I think, who sat doing nothing in a wea
ver’s interior where the looms were still.
I hadn’t yet seen anything from Salon 84 in reproduction, and now at least got some idea of a few interesting paintings from the Salon No. Among other things, of that composition by Puvis de Chavannes.
I imagine that the Harpignies with the setting sun must have been magnificent. And the paintings by Feyen-Perrin, of which there are croquis.
What also struck me was a figure of a girl by Emile Lévy, Japonaise, and the painting by Beyle, Women burning seaweed, and the one by Collin, Summer, 3 female nudes.
I’m hard at work on painting those heads. I paint during the day and draw in the evening. I’ve already painted at least 30 or so this way, and drawn as many.
With the result that I see a chance, before long I hope, of doing it very differently. I think that it will help me with the figure in general. Today I had a white and black one, against the flesh colour.
And I’m also always looking for blue. As a rule, the peasant figures here are blue. That, in the ripe wheat or against the withered leaves of a beech hedge, so that the hidden nuances of darker and lighter blue are brought alive again and made to speak by contrast with gold tones or reddish brown, is very beautiful, and has struck me here from the first.
The people here instinctively wear the most beautiful blue that I’ve ever seen. It’s coarse linen that they weave themselves, warp black, weft blue, which creates a black and blue striped pattern. When it’s faded and slightly discoloured by wind and weather, it’s an infinitely calm, subtle shade that specifically brings out the flesh colours. In short, blue enough to react with all the colours in which there are hidden orange elements, and faded enough not to clash.
But this is a question of colour, and the question of the form is what matters more to me at the point where I now find myself. Expressing the form — I think — works best with an almost monochrome colour scheme, the tones of which vary chiefly in intensity and in value. For instance, The well by Jules Breton was painted in a single colour, almost. But one does have to study each colour individually in association with its opposite before one can be really sure of being harmonious.
Ever Yours Page 62