But it will live. And above all Delacroix, too.
It still isn’t expressed properly. Tell Serret that I would be desperate if my figures were GOOD, tell him that I don’t want them academically correct. Tell him that I mean that if one photographs a digger, then he would certainly not be digging. Tell him that I think Michelangelo’s figures magnificent, even though the legs are definitely too long — the hips and buttocks too broad. Tell him that in my view Millet and Lhermitte are consequently the true painters, because they don’t paint things as they are, examined drily and analytically, but as they, Millet, Lhermitte, Michelangelo, feel them. Tell him that my great desire is to learn to make such inaccuracies, such variations, reworkings, alterations of the reality, that it might become, very well — lies if you will — but — truer than the literal truth.
And now I must close soon — I did need, though, just to talk about the fact that those who paint the life of the peasants or the common people, although they aren’t counted among the men of the world — will still, however, perhaps endure better in the long run than the makers of the exotic but painted in Paris harems and cardinals’ receptions.
I know that it’s being a disagreeable person when one’s in need of money at inconvenient times — but my excuse is just that painting the seemingly most everyday things is sometimes the most difficult and most expensive.
The expenses that I MUST incur if I want to work are sometimes very heavy in relation to my means. I assure you that if my constitution weren’t becoming virtually like that of a peasant as a result of wind and weather, I wouldn’t stick it out, for there’s simply nothing left over for my own comfort. But I don’t desire that for myself either, any more than many peasants desire to live other than as they live. But what I do ask is both for paint and, above all, for models. You’ll perhaps realize from what I say about the figure drawings that I’m positively passionate about going on with them.
You recently wrote to me that Serret had spoken to you ‘with conviction’ about certain faults in the structure of the figures of the potato eaters. But you’ll have been able to see from my answer that my own criticism also condemns them, considered from that point of view, only I’ve pointed out how this was an impression I had after I’d seen the cottage in the dim lamplight on many evenings, after having painted 40 heads, from which it follows that I was starting from a different point of view. Now we’ve started talking about the figure, though, I have a great deal to say. I find in Raffaëlli’s words, his perception about ‘Character’, what he says about that is good — and in its place — and clarified by the drawings themselves.
People who move in artistic and literary circles, though, as Raffaëlli does in Paris, think differently after all from, say, the way I do out in the country among the peasants. I mean they search for one word that sums up all their ideas — he suggests the word ‘Character’ for the figures of the future. I agree with it, with the intention — I believe — but I believe as little in the accuracy of the word as in the accuracy of other words — as little as in the accuracy or appositeness of my own expressions.
Rather than saying there has to be character in a digger — I describe it by saying this peasant has to be a peasant, this digger has to dig, and then there’s something in it that is essentially modern. But I feel that people can draw conclusions I don’t mean even from these words — even were I to add a whole list.
Instead of reducing the expenses for models — which are already quite a burden on me — I think it would be desirable — very desirable — if I could increase them a little. Because I’m concerned with something very different from being able to do ‘a little figure’ drawing.
Showing the FIGURE OF THE PEASANT IN ACTION, you see that’s what a figure is — I repeat — essentially modern — the heart of modern art itself — that which neither the Greeks, nor the Renaissance, nor the old Dutch school have done.
To me, this is a matter I think about every day. However, this difference between both the great and the lesser masters of the present (the great, for instance Millet, Lhermitte, Breton, Herkomer; the lesser, for instance Raffaëlli and Régamey) and the old schools isn’t something I’ve often found expressed truly forthrightly in articles on art.
Just think about whether you don’t find it’s true, though. The figure of the peasant and the workman started more as a ‘genre’ — but nowadays, with Millet in the van as the eternal master, it’s the very heart of modern art and will remain so.
People like Daumier — one has to respect them because they’re among the pioneers. The simple nude but modern figure ranks high — as revived by Henner and Lefebvre, Baudry and, above all, the sculptors like a Mercier, Dalou, they’re also among the very soundest. But peasants and labourers simply aren’t nude, and so one doesn’t have to think nude. The more people who start making figures of workmen and peasants the better I’ll like it. And I myself, I know of nothing else in which I take so much delight. This is a long letter and I still don’t know whether I’ve said what I mean clearly enough. I may perhaps drop Serret a line. If I do, I’ll send the letter to you to read, because I want to make it clear how much I attach to this question of the figure.
519 | Nuenen, on or about Thursday, 16 July 1885 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
I had a visit today from Wenckebach, a painter from Utrecht who sees Rappard every day. He makes landscapes and I’ve often heard his name mentioned, and he got a medal in London at the same time as Rappard. He has seen my work — those cottages I have for you, and the figure drawings too.
I talked to him about the fact that to my regret I’d had trouble with Rappard, which I could hardly explain otherwise than that he’d been prattling about my work with other people from The Hague, and that since, moreover, he hadn’t seen anything in a long time, he couldn’t help got his head stuffed full there.
I showed Wenckebach figures that Rappard thought good in the past, and at the same time those that I’m doing now, and pointed out to him how I’d changed in a few things and would change even more, but that what I was looking for now was certainly not inferior.
Then he said that he didn’t doubt that Rappard would take back what he had written to me.
I also showed him how, as regards the colour, I’m not predisposed to always paint darkly. A couple of the cottages are actually very light.
But that I’m concerned with taking the primary colours red, blue, yellow, as starting-points, as points of departure, and not grey.
Then we talked quite a bit about colour, and he said among other things that he’d noticed that in old watercolours Jaap Maris had also used ruddy, brown-grey, red tones, and rather a lot in fact — so that if one were to hold it next to one of his present drawings it would look completely red. And the same about Israëls, too.
I may be doing more harm than good by telling you this, because it’s part of a conversation, and I actually ought to tell all of it. But we’ve spoken of it before, and so you may well understand it anyway, in its context. To get an honest, sound coloration, to sustain it, it’s advisable — and particularly in this day and age, now imitators of the great, grey fellows (not the masters themselves) want more and more, always and everywhere, to paint everything light — to practise in the more powerful spectrums and to persevere in using them, since the actual colourists always on the colours
Thus Wenckebach said, for instance, that he liked the thing of the old tower, which I painted last year with a lot of bitumen in it, and thought it was beyond the paint. He said he found the whole thing original. Other old things, too, that water mill, oxplough, avenue of autumn trees.
But what pleased me most was that he thought the figures good — he called them Millet-like. I know for sure, though, that I’ll get them even better if I just have some luck with the expenses and can carry on working hard on them. I’m rather worried about that, though, and as for this month — I’m absolutely broke — I haven’t a guilder left.
; We’ll have a hard time — but don’t blame me too much, for with perseverance there’s still a good chance later of reaping what we sow.
I’m worried enough about your money troubles, though, I wish I could lighten them a little for you.
When you come to Holland — shouldn’t you try to approach Tersteeg again? Tersteeg is someone who dares, provided he’s convinced — he’s all right. And Mauve likewise.
If the fellows who persevered in studying the figure were very numerous, I’d say there would be little chance of finding some help.
But they’re not so very numerous — and they’re no less necessary than in the past.
It’s hard for you to keep going on your own, and I can’t do anything to reduce the expenses — on the contrary, I wish I could take more models. What’s to be done? One mustn’t say it’s fighting a losing battle, because others have won it, and we’ll win it too.
As for Rappard, I’ve just written to tell him that I want him to retract his letter once and for all. You see, though, Theo, how it comes down to sticking to one’s guns in one’s work.
I wrote to Rappard that we really do have something else to fight besides each other, and that at this moment the fellows who paint peasants and the common people must join hands, because unity is strength. One can’t do it alone, at any rate; a whole troop who agree can do more. Keep your spirits up, too, for perhaps we’ll get more friends, and then it will liven up, and the squabbling among us might perhaps become a peasant battle against the sort of painters one can still point out in all juries nowadays, who even now would try to stifle the ideas for which Millet was the pioneer if they could. Regards — but send me something if you can, even if it’s only ten francs, to see me through.
Ever yours,
Vincent
521 | Eindhoven, Monday, 27 July 1885 | To Anthon van Rappard (D)
Eindhoven, 27 July
My dear friend Rappard,
That there must necessarily be an end to this nagging is, in the first place, because it really would come to resemble the dispute between a certain two pious ministers who debated a difference of opinion concerning the geographical location of the road to salvation with so much fervour that at a certain moment, with one and the same gesture, they cast their respective wigs in each other’s faces. Those wigs should be part of it — and — how, with the best will in the world, shall we proceed now, for we’re just at the critical point and neither you nor I is in the possession of the indispensable projectile in question? I’m at my wits’ end for this reason, and I’m very sorry that we’ve started something that we now don’t appear capable of crowning with the above-mentioned end — so utterly worthy of the cause.
I think that the dispute has a decidedly ridiculous side, and would become more and more so, and really, that’s the reason why I don’t want to go into it any further. It’s just too absurd.
Be sensible, and put a stop to it on your part, too.
Everything that occurs to a person doesn’t necessarily come straight from his conscience — as if your conscience dictated those letters to you? — as if it was your duty to write them? — what — nonsense — laugh at it.
However, since you thought it was your duty and thought your conscience impelled you to do it, for my part I’m willing to let the whole matter with all its ramifications drop, and so be
DONE.
It remains — to ask you whether and, if so, approximately when you’re thinking of coming here to make a number of studies.
I would then see to it that you can stay with my mother as usual.
Sincerely,
Vincent
527 | Nuenen, on or about Monday, 17 August 1885 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
I’ve heard from that colourman — who tells me I can send the paintings. But that he wants me to send them as soon as possible because there are many strangers in The Hague at present.
He’s quite right there. What I want to ask you is that you try to send me enough for me to get the crate made and pay the carriage. DEDUCT it next month, IF YOU LIKE — but I have nothing, and it’s important to me to get my consignment off immediately.
Your visit really left me with a less than favourable impression — I believe more than ever that more difficulties await you in the next few years than you imagine.
I continue to insist that it’s somewhat fatal that your energy has evidently taken a different direction, rather than working on our getting our heads above water with the painting. And yet it’s such a short while ago that you wrote that you now had more confidence that my work was good.
You take it as though I was doing you wrong or was hostile to you, now I most decidedly have rather a lot of remarks to make. And considerable concerns for the future. I can’t speak other than I did, can I?
To my mind you don’t in the least belong among the rising men now. Take this amiss of me — if you will — and treat me as you will accordingly.
I’m willing to take back my remarks should I see very different things in you, but that I made them during your visit — Yes. But even though you say today, ‘I’m selling 500,000 francs’ worth a year’ — this doesn’t make any impression on me at all, since I’m only too convinced of the precariousness of it all — you keeping up even a half or a fifth of that and delivering in the years ahead.
It’s too up in the air for me, too little at ground level.
And art itself is solid enough, that’s not the trouble.
But, ‘to be a counting-house will pass’ was said, not by me, but by someone whose words came dreadfully true. And I wish you were, or would become, a painter. I put it bluntly, more strongly than before, because I believe so firmly that the large-scale art trade is, in many respects, too much like tulip mania.
And the positions in it dependent on chance and whim. Make a miscalculation — make what may be an insignificant mistake — and — what’s left of that huge figure you’re turning over now? That figure depends on G&Cie’s whim.
And KNOWLEDGE OF ART, stripped bare, is related, more closely than you think, to the practice of art. TRADE in paintings is something very different when one is on one’s own from when one works for large distributors. And it’s the same with other things, too. Anyway — work hard — but — try to work sensibly too.
The trouble you’ve taken together with me — for providing money is also taking trouble and there’s absolutely no getting away from it — this trouble has at least been an act of personal initiative, and of personal will and energy — but what am I to think or say of it if, little by little, with the decided weakening of the financial aid, something else weren’t to be put in its place? And now, above all, to my mind at any rate, it’s the time to try to push ahead with my work.
I’ve also been looking for addresses in Antwerp, and will hear more precisely about them before long. Then I can probably send things there, too. But if you want these things, help me to bring them about.
You said to me yourself, Where there is a will there is a way; well then, I’ll take you at your word a little as to whether you’re really seeking for us to make progress. If I were to ask for extravagant things and you refused, then so be it — but where they’re the most essential, the very simplest necessities, and the lack just becomes more and more, and worse and worse, then I think you’re taking economy too far, and in this respect it’s very far from being useful.
Regards.
Yours truly,
Vincent
Just a word about Serret and about Portier. Tell them as it is, that is that I did have studies ready, but that I had to pay a colourman who was making it difficult for me just now. That in order to put a stop to it, I wrote to tell him that I put his paint in my studies, and that I asked him to take the trouble to sell something for me instead of nagging. That I’ll go through with it, and have to send him things.
That as to the drawings which I said I’d show Serret, since I’m in a hurry to do things, I need them myself.
But I do still think it’s of some importance that at any rate he knows that I really did have them when you came, and that you tell him that you saw them at my place, and then also tell him exactly what you think. I won’t influence your own opinion. That I’m sad about your thinking that this is all right, though, yes — that is so.
But I don’t refuse to take such measures — and even if one of these colourmen wanted to sell off my bits and pieces, he would be welcome to go to those lengths. It’s certain that the paint-dealing gentlemen wouldn’t blush to do it.
However, I’m fed up with talking about it; I’ve said what I had to say — and you — you can deal with my suggestion as you see fit.
And if these fellows want to attack me and sell me up, since they expressly threatened me with collection, and that over matters of less than 30 guilders, then I won’t be able to resist them and will let them do as they please, but it will be as if it happens before your very eyes, since you’ve just been here. That I can’t stop the work at the level I now am, that’s true. I need paint &c. every day. I must make progress, and if I want to pay for what I need today, then an outstanding bill from yesterday will have to wait.
Ever Yours Page 67