Ever Yours

by Vincent Van Gogh

  Very well — I’ll answer you, my dear friend.

  You wrote, ‘you dare to invoke Millet and Breton’.

  My reply to that is that I seriously invite you to consider — simply not to fight with me. For my part — I go my own way — you see — but I don’t seek a quarrel with anyone — not with you now either. I’d also let you say anything that you wanted — if you had any more such expressions — and it would just be like water off a duck’s back. So much for the present, though. That I don’t care about the form of the figure, which you’ve said before — it’s beneath me to take any notice of it and — old chap — it’s beneath you to say something so unfounded. You’ve known me for years now — have you ever seen me do anything other than work from the model and resign myself to the sometimes great expense of it, even though I’m poor enough as it is?

  What you didn’t write in your last, but did repeatedly and ad nauseam in previous letters, and was the reason for the letter to which you didn’t reply, is about ‘technique’. What I replied to you then and reply once more is — the conventional meaning that people increasingly give to the word technique, and the actual meaning, knowledge. Well then. Meissonier himself says,

  ‘the knowledge — nobody has it’.

  Well, ‘the knowledge’ isn’t the same as ‘knowledge’, that first of all, and that you won’t deny. But even that still isn’t it.

  Take Haverman, for instance; people — you too — say of him that he has so much technique. But not only Haverman, how many others — have something that’s equivalent to the sort of knowledge that H. has of art — among the French painters — Jacquet, say, and he’s better.

  My assertion is simply this — that drawing a figure academically correctly — that an even, reasoned brushstroke have little — at least less than is generally thought — to do with the needs — the urgent needs — of the present day in the field of painting.

  If, instead of saying H. has a lot of ‘technique’, you were to say H. has a lot of ‘craftsmanship’, I would have agreed with you for once. You will perhaps understand what I mean when I say that when Haverman sits in front of the head of a beautiful girl/woman, he’ll make it more beautiful than almost anyone, but put him in front of a peasant — and — he won’t even make a start on it. His art — as far as I know — proves chiefly applicable to subjects which aren’t the ones that are needed — is above all applicable to subjects that are pretty much completely and utterly opposite to Millet or Lhermitte — and sooner run parallel to Cabanel — who for all his what I call — craftsmanship — has said little that lasted — or contributed to progress. And — this I beg of you — don’t confuse this with the way a Millet or Lhermitte paints.

  What I said and still say — the word — technique — is all too often used in a conventional sense — and — it’s all too often not used in good faith. People praise the technique of all those Italians and Spaniards, and they’re fellows who are more conventional, have more sheer routine — than anyone else. And with such as Haverman, I fear, ‘craftsmanship’ so soon becomes — ‘routine’. And then — what’s it worth then?

  What I want to ask now — what’s the real reason that you’ve broken with me —?

  The reason I’m writing to you again is just out of love for Millet, for Breton and for everyone who paints the peasants and the people, among whom I count you. I don’t say it because I got a lot from you as a friend — my dear friend — because — I got precious little from you — and don’t take it amiss of me for saying this to you straight out for the first and last time — I know of no drier friendship than yours. But — firstly that’s not why I’m doing it — secondly, that might have improved too — but having created my own opportunities to find models &c., I’m not so petty as to keep it quiet. On the contrary — were any painter, no matter who, to come to this district, I would be glad both to invite him home and to show him the way. Precisely because it’s not always easy to find models who are willing to pose — and having a pied-à-terre somewhere isn’t a matter of indifference to everyone.

  And this is why I say to you that, if you want to paint here, you mustn’t be embarrassed because we had a disagreement. And — although I’m living on my own in my studio now — you can even stay too.

  It may be, though, that — superciliously — you’ll say that this is of no consequence to you. Well, that’s all right. I’m so accustomed to insults that they really are so like water off a duck’s back — that — someone like you — probably finds it hard to understand just how cold a letter like yours, say, leaves me. And being indifferent to it — I have no more resentment than a post. But I do have — enough clarity and serenity to reply as I do now.

  If you want to break with me — very well.

  If you want to go on painting here — you don’t have to take any notice of this little bit of bickering in our correspondence.

  What you did the last time you were here — had and has my full sympathy — and — my dear friend Rappard — it’s because you worked so damned well that last time, and I think to myself that you might perhaps want things here to remain as they were, that I’m writing to you.

  Make up your own mind — I say frankly — from one point of view — in spite of all my appreciation of your painting — I have some concerns about whether you’ll be able to keep it up like this later — I sometimes fear that, because of the influences to which you cannot but be exposed given your social position and standing, you may not remain as good in the long run as you are at the moment — just as a painter in your painting — I don’t concern myself with the rest.

  So I say to you, as a painter to a painter, that if you want to look for paintings here, it will stay just the same as before. You can come here and, although I live on my own, stay just the same as before. You see — I thought that perhaps you had got and could get something out of it, and I just wanted to tell you this. If you can get on as well elsewhere — well then — I’ll have no reason to grieve about it, and then, adieu.

  You’ve told me nothing about your work, so I likewise say nothing about mine.

  Believe me — don’t argue with me about Millet — Millet is someone I won’t argue about, although I don’t refuse to talk about him.

  Regards.

  Vincent

  515 | Nuenen, on or about Tuesday, 14 July 1885 | To Theo van Gogh (D)

  My dear Theo,

  I wish that the 4 canvases I wrote to you about were gone. I may work on them again if I keep them here too long, and I think it’s better for you to get them as they come from the heath.

  The reason why I don’t send them off is that I don’t want to send them to you with the carriage unpaid at a moment when you say that you might be short yourself, and I can’t pay the carriage myself either.

  I’ve never seen the little house where Millet lived — but I imagine that these 4 little human nests are of the same kind.

  One of them is the residence of a gentleman who’s popularly known here as ‘the peasant of Rauwveld’ — the other is occupied by a worthy soul who, when I went there, was engaged in nothing more mysterious than turning over her potato patch, but must also be able to work magic, though — at any rate she goes by the name of ‘the witch’s head’.

  You remember that it says in the book by Gigoux how it came about that Delacroix had 17 paintings rejected at the same time. This shows — at least so it seems to me — that he and others from that period — were faced with connoisseurs and non-connoisseurs, none of whom either understood it or wanted to buy — this shows that those who are rightly described in the book as ‘the valiant ones’ didn’t talk about fighting a losing battle, but carried on painting.

  Something else I wanted to say to you is that we’ll have to paint a lot more if we take that about Delacroix as our starting-point. I must necessarily be the most disagreeable of all people, that’s to say having to ask for money. And since I don’t think that things will take a turn for the better as regards sales
in the next few days, this is bad enough. But I ask you, isn’t it better, after all, for both of us to work hard even though there are difficulties attached to it, than to sit about philosophizing at a time like this?

  I don’t know the future, Theo — but — I do know the eternal law that everything changes — think back 10 years and things were different, the conditions, the mood of the people, everything in short. And 10 years on, a great deal is bound to have changed again. But doing something endures — and one doesn’t easily regret having done something. The more active the better, and I’d rather fail than sit idle.

  Whether Portier is or isn’t the man to do something with my work — we need him now all the same. And here’s what I think — after working for a year, say, we’ll have got more together than now, and I know for sure that my work will do better as I complete one thing with another. The people who have some feeling for it now, who, like him, talk about showing it sometime — they’re consequently useful, because after another year’s work, say, they’ll have a few more things together that will speak for themselves, even if they say nothing at all. Should you happen to see Portier, feel free to tell him that, far from giving up, I’m planning to send him much more. You must also go on showing when you meet people. It won’t be so very long before what we can show will be more important. You can see for yourself — and it’s a phenomenon that gives me surprisingly great pleasure — that people are increasingly starting to stage exhibitions of 1 person or a very few who belong together. This is a phenomenon in the art trade which I dare think has more future than other enterprises. It’s good that people are beginning to understand that a Bouguereau can’t do well beside a Jacque — nor a figure by Beyle or Lhermitte beside a Schelfhout or Koekkoek.

  Scatter Raffaëlli’s drawings about — and judge for yourself whether it would be possible to form a good idea of this singular artist. He — Raffaëlli — isn’t like Régamey — but I find him just as much of a personality. If my work stayed with me — I think I’d be constantly working over it. By sending it to you and to Portier as it comes from the countryside or from the cottages, the odd thing that isn’t right will sometimes get through — but things that wouldn’t be improved by frequently working over them will be preserved.

  If you had these 4 canvases and a few more, smaller studies of cottages, and someone saw nothing by me other than those, they’d be bound to think that I did nothing other than paint cottages. And likewise with that series of heads. But peasant life involves such diverse things that when Millet speaks of ‘working like a bunch of negroes’, this really does have to happen if one wants to achieve a whole. One may laugh at Courbet’s saying, ‘painting angels! who has ever seen angels!’ But I’d just like to add, for instance, ‘justices in the harem, who has ever seen justices in the Harem?’ (the painting by Benjamin-Constant). ‘Bull fights, who has ever seen those?’ and so many other Moorish, Spanish things, Cardinals, and then all those history paintings, which are still always there, metres high by metres wide! What’s the point of it all, and what do people want with it? After a few years most of it becomes stale and dull, and more and more boring.

  But still. Perhaps they’re well painted — maybe. Nowadays, when connoisseurs stand in front of a painting like the one by Benjamin-Constant, or like a reception at a cardinal’s by some Spaniard or other — it’s the custom to say, with a knowing air, something about ‘clever technique’. But — as soon as those same connoisseurs found themselves in front of a scene from peasant life or a drawing by Raffaëlli, say, they would criticize the technique with the same air —à la C.M.

  Perhaps you think that I’m wrong to comment on this — but — I’m so gripped by the thought that all these exotic paintings are painted in THE STUDIO. But just go and sit outdoors, painting on the spot itself! Then all sorts of things like the following happen — I must have picked a good hundred flies and more off the 4 canvases that you’ll be getting, not to mention dust and sand &c. — not to mention that, when one carries them across the heath and through hedgerows for a few hours, the odd branch or two scrapes across them &c. Not to mention that when one arrives on the heath after a couple of hours’ walk in this weather, one is tired and hot. Not to mention that the figures don’t stand still like professional models, and the effects that one wants to capture change as the day wears on.

  I don’t know how it is with you — but for my part, the more I work on it the more peasant life absorbs me. And the less and less I care about either the Cabanelesque things, among which I would also count Jacquet, also Benjamin-Constant’s present work — or the highly praised but so unspeakably, hopelessly dry technique of the Italians and Spaniards. Image makers! — what Jacque said, I often think about it. But I’m not biased; I like Raffaëlli who, after all, paints something very different from peasants — I like Alfred Stevens, Tissot, to mention something that’s entirely unlike peasants — I like a fine portrait. Zola who otherwise, to my mind, often makes colossal mistakes in his judgement of paintings — says something beautiful about art in general in ‘Mes haines’. ‘In the painting (the work of art) I look for, I love the man — the artist.’

  There you are, I think that’s perfectly true — I ask you, what sort of a man, what sort of a visionary/observer or thinker, what sort of a human character is there behind some of these canvases praised for their technique — often, after all, nothing. But a Raffaëlli — is someone, a Lhermitte is someone, and in many paintings by virtually unknown people one feels that they were made with a will, with emotion, with passion, with love. The TECHNIQUE of a painting from peasant life or — like Raffaëlli — from the heart of urban workers — entails difficulties quite different from those of the slick painting and the rendering of action of a Jacquet or Benjamin-Constant.

  That’s to say, living in those cottages day in and day out, being out in the fields just like the peasants — enduring the heat of the sun in the summer, the snow and frost in the winter, not indoors but outside, and not for a walk, but day in and day out like the peasants themselves.

  And I ask you, when you think about it, am I so wrong to criticize the criticism of the connoisseurs, who are presently fencing more busily than ever with the often so meaningless word technique (they’re increasingly giving it a conventional meaning)?

  When one counts all the trudging and lugging one has to do to paint ‘the peasant of Rauwveld’ and his cottage, I dare swear that this is a longer and more tiring expedition than many painters of exotic subjects, be it the justice in the harem or the reception at the cardinal’s, make for their choicest eccentric subjects. For in Paris one can get Arab or Spanish or Moorish models simply by ordering and paying for them. But it’s harder for someone like Raffaëlli, who paints the rag-pickers of Paris in their own small quarter, and his work is more serious.

  Seemingly there’s nothing simpler than painting peasants or rag-pickers and other labourers but — no subjects in painting are as difficult as those everyday figures!

  There isn’t — as far as I know — a single academy where one learns to draw and paint a digger, a sower, a woman hanging a pot over the fire, or a seamstress. But in every town of any consequence at all there’s an academy with a choice of models for historical, Arab, Louis XV and, in a word, ALL FIGURES, PROVIDED THEY DON’T EXIST IN REALITY.

  If I send you and Serret a few studies of diggers or peasant women who are weeding, gleaning corn &c. as THE START of a whole series about all kinds of work in the fields — then it may be that either Serret or you will discover faults in them which will be useful for me to know about, and which I’ll naturally concede myself.

  But I want to point out something that’s perhaps worth noting. All academic figures are constructed in the same way and, let’s admit, one couldn’t do better. Impeccable — without faults — you’ll already have seen what I’m driving at — also without giving us anything new to discover.

  Not so the figures of a Millet, a Lhermitte, a Régamey, a Lhermitte, a Daumier. Th
ey’re also well constructed — but not the way the academy teaches, after all. I think that no matter how academically correct a figure may be, it’s REDUNDANT in this day and age, even if it were by Ingres himself (apart from his Source of course, because that indeed was and is and will remain something new) if it lacks that essential modernism — the intimate character, the actual DOING SOMETHING.

  When will the figure not be redundant then, even though there were necessarily faults and grave faults in it to my mind, you’ll probably ask.

  When the digger digs, when the peasant is a peasant, and the peasant woman a peasant woman. Is this something new? Yes. Even the little figures by Ostade, Ter Borch don’t work the way they do nowadays.

  I’d like to say a lot more about this and I’d like to say how much I myself want to do what I’ve begun even better — and how much higher than my own I value the work of some others. I ask you — do you know of a single digger, a single sower in the old Dutch school??? Did they ever try to make ‘a labourer’? Did Velázquez try it in his water-carrier? Or his folk types? No.

  Work, that’s what the figures in the old paintings don’t do. These days I’m slogging away at a woman whom I saw last winter, lifting carrots in the snow. There it is — Millet did it, Lhermitte, and in general the peasant painters of this century — an Israëls — they find that more beautiful than anything else. But even in this century, how relatively few there are among the legion of painters who want the figure — yes — above all — for the sake of the figure (i.e. for the sake of form and modelling) but can’t conceive of it other than working, and also have the need — which the old masters avoided, as did the old Dutch masters who depicted so many conventional actions — and — I say — have the need TO PAINT THE ACTION FOR THE ACTION’S SAKE.

  So that the painting or the drawing is a FIGURE drawing for the sake of the figure and the inexpressibly harmonic form of the human body — yet at the same time — is lifting carrots in the snow. Am I expressing myself clearly? I hope so, and just say this to Serret — I can say it in fewer words — a nude figure by Cabanel, a lady by Jacquet and a peasant woman not by Bastien-Lepage himself, but a peasant woman by a Parisian who learnt to draw at the academy, will always show the limbs and the structure of the body in the same way — sometimes charmingly — correct — in proportion and anatomy. But when Israëls or when Daumier or Lhermitte, say, draw a figure, one will feel the form of the body much more and yet — this is why I particularly want to include Daumier — the proportions will sometimes be almost random, the anatomy and structure often completely wrong ‘in the eyes of the academicians’.