For your information, this is how it is with me for the rest of the year, precisely and in detail — I have to pay:
three suppliers who are all pestering me, one 45 guilders, the other 25 guilders, the other 30 guilders. These are the exact sums outstanding on accounts which have of course been much higher over the course of the year, but which I pay off in cash, as much as I possibly can with the utmost effort.
Suppose I get 4 x 150 francs from you for Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. = 600 francs. That then leaves 350 francs to last from now until New Year. And then bear in mind that I have literally nothing left this month, and that I also have to live this month.
So that from Aug.–1 January, in other words almost 5 months, I have to live and paint on 350 francs. Which I can do on 150 francs a month, but not easily, but anyway it’s possible as a minimum.
However, if in the course of 4 months 250 francs has to be deducted to pay for paint and rent, well then, the work is hampered and obstructed so much that one doesn’t know what to do, and would rather say to the fellows sell my things then! But let me work! Without hesitation I’ve just thrown this month in to calm the fellows down. But the hardship that’s caused is bad enough.
And my last word on the subject is that if my work were weak and awful, I would agree with you if you said — ‘I can’t do anything about it’.
Well — since larger and smaller painted studies as well as new drawings were able to make you understand that we’re making progress with it, I’m not so sure whether ‘I can’t do anything about it’ should be your final word. Talk to Serret, talk to Portier about it — and say how much I want to keep working and how little opportunity I have myself to find art lovers, since painting the peasants means that once and for all the countryside, not the city is my place of work.
Vincent
529 | Nuenen, on or about Wednesday, 19 August 1885 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
I wanted to add to my letter of the day before yesterday that I had a letter from Rappard yesterday, and our quarrel is wholly made up, that he sent me a croquis of a large painting of a brickworks that he’s working on. This looks very original — if one wanted to find other paintings in the same spirit, it would be Meunier, say, whose mine-workers you saw in Antwerp. He’s rented a small house outside Utrecht, just as a studio (and arranged for light from above) near the brickworks, and since he’s also going back to Terschelling he’s deep in nature again, and to my mind that’s better than working in town.
I wanted to tell you, though, that I hope that the quarrel that we have will end like this, too, and that it will be settled. No more than I can accept his criticism, can I fully resign myself to the present situation in which my work is held up so badly by my financial difficulties. I don’t ask you to put this right alone, but I simply want us to do our best together (and not just I alone either) to make headway. It’s an effort for you, too, and not easy; I know that, and as such I appreciate it very much, but making an effort for a goal is no misfortune, and having to fight is the precondition for every honest victory.
The expenses of painting can’t always be avoided, and not incurring them is sometimes not the best policy, because nothing decent could come of it if one hesitated to pay for models or essential painting materials. And since it’s getting harder for me rather than better, it has eventually got to such a pitch that I definitely have to complain.
And I say once more, let’s keep my little painting business in order, because sooner or later we might be in sore need of it.
When there’s a storm in the air, one has to keep the boats in good shape. The man I now have in The Hague is Leurs, who doesn’t live in Praktizijnshoek any more but in Molenstraat.
He’s asking me to send him more than one painting in order to have more than one chance, and is offering me his two windows.
And since he’s very hard pressed for money himself, he won’t shrink from making an effort. I’m sending him a couple of cottages, the old tower and smaller ones of figures. And while he shows those, I’ll make a few new ones to keep him going.
I’ve also got a chance of persuading a second in The Hague.
But for me it comes down to being able to go on working.
I’ve made another small painting of the wheat harvest since you left, the same size as the women pulling turnips in the snow: a reaper, a woman binding sheaves, sheaves, and the windmill, like the drawings you saw. An effect in the evening after sunset.
Also more studies of interiors.
Once again I suggest that you just talk it over with Portier and Serret, say that I’m in quite a fix, encourage them to do what they can, that for my part I’ll see about sending them new things.
And let’s see about getting that crate off. I’ve also painted 3 more studies of the women among the potatoes, the first of which you’ve already seen.
Rappard had spoken to Wenckebach, and in his letter there was no longer any trace of the tone he’d started to take. And although he’s going to Terschelling first, he writes that he wants to come and make more studies here. Regards, and wishing you good fortune.
Yours truly,
Vincent
531 | Nuenen, on or about Wednesday, 2 September 1885 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
Thanks for your letter and 150 francs enclosed. I also received the two new Lhermittes today. He’s a master of the figure. He’s able to do what he likes with it — conceiving the whole neither from the colour nor from the local tone, but rather proceeding from the light — as Rembrandt did — there’s something astonishingly masterly in everything he does — in modelling, above all things, he utterly satisfies the demands of honesty.
A great deal is said about — Poussin. Bracquemond talks about him, too. The French call Poussin their greatest ever painter among the old masters. Well it’s certain that what’s said about Poussin, whom I know so very little about, I find in Lhermitte and in Millet. But with this distinction, that it seems to me Poussin is the original grain, the others are the full ear. For my part, then, I rate today’s superior.
This last fortnight I’ve had a great deal of trouble with the reverend gentlemen of the priesthood, who gave me to understand — of course with the best of intentions and, no less than others, believing that it was their duty to interfere — who gave me to understand that I shouldn’t be too familiar with people beneath my station — who, having spoken to me in those terms, spoke in a very different tone to the ‘people of lower station’, that’s to say with threats that they mustn’t allow themselves to be painted. This time I simply went straight to the burgomaster and told him exactly what had happened, and pointed out that this was none of the priests’ business and that they should stick to their own province of more abstract things. In any event, I’m not encountering any more opposition for the time being, and I think it quite possible that that’s how it will remain. A girl I’d often painted was having a child and they thought it was mine, although it wasn’t me. However, knowing the facts of the matter from the girl herself and it being a case in which a member of the priest’s congregation in Nuenen had behaved extremely badly, they can’t get their teeth into me, at least not this time. But you see that it isn’t easy to paint people at home and draw them as they go about their business. Anyway — they won’t easily win in this case, and this winter I do hope to keep the very same models, who are of the old Brabant stock through and through.
Even so, I have a few more new drawings.
But now, in the last few days, I could not get anyone in the fields. Fortunately for me, the priest isn’t yet, but is nonetheless beginning to become, quite unpopular. It’s a bad business, though, and if it were to continue I’d probably move. You’ll ask what’s the point of being a disagreeable person — sometimes you have to be. If I’d discussed it meekly they’d have ground me down without mercy. And when they hinder me in my work, sometimes the only way I know is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The priest went so far as to promise
the people money if they didn’t allow themselves to be painted — however, the people replied very pertly that they’d rather earn it from me than go cap in hand to him. But you see, they only do it for the sake of earning money and I don’t get anything done for nothing around here.
You ask me whether Rappard has ever sold anything. I know he’s flusher at present than before, that for a long time, for instance, he had a nude model day after day, that for the purposes of a painting of a brickworks he’s now rented a small house actually on the spot and altered it so that he had light from above — I know that he’s been on another trip through Drenthe and that he’s also going to Terschelling. That all of this is pretty expensive, and the money for it has to come from somewhere. That although he may have money of his own, he must be earning as well, because otherwise he couldn’t do what he’s doing. It may be that his family is buying or friends, that’s possible, but at any rate somebody must be.
But this evening I’m much too occupied with Lhermitte’s drawings to go on writing any more about other things.
When I think about Millet or about Lhermitte — then — I find modern art as great — as Michelangelo and Rembrandt — the old infinite, the new infinite too — the old genius, the new genius. Perhaps someone like Chenavard doesn’t see it like this — but for my part I’m convinced — that in this regard one can believe in the present.
The fact that I have a definite belief as regards art also means that I know what I want to get in my own work, and that I’ll try to get it even if I go under in the attempt. Regards.
Yours truly,
Vincent
534 | Nuenen, on or about Saturday, 10 October 1885 | To Theo van Gogh (D)
My dear Theo,
I’ve been to Amsterdam this week — I hardly had time to see anything but the museum.
I was there 3 days; went Tuesday, back Thursday. Result is that I’m very glad I went, whatever the cost, and that I don’t propose going for so long again without seeing paintings.
I’d already put it off and put it off, that and so much else, because of the cost. But it’s much better that I can no longer imagine that this is the thing to do. I get too much out of it — for my work, and when I look at the old paintings, which I can decipher as regards technique very differently from before — then perhaps I have precious little need for conversation anyway.
I don’t know whether you remember that to the left of the Night watch, in other words as a pendant to the Syndics, there’s a painting — it was unknown to me until now — by Frans Hals and P. Codde, 20 or so officers full length. Have you noticed it??? In itself, that painting alone makes the trip to Amsterdam well worth while, especially for a colourist. There’s a figure in it, the figure of the standard-bearer in the extreme left corner, right up against the frame. That figure is in grey from top to toe, let’s call it pearl grey, — of a singular neutral tone — probably obtained with orange and blue mixed so that they neutralize each other — by varying this basic colour in itself — by making it a little lighter here, a little darker there, the whole figure is as it were painted with one and the same grey. But the leather shoes are a different material from the leggings, which are different from the folds of the breeches, which are different from the doublet — expressing different materials, very different in colour one from another, still all one family of grey — but wait!
Into that grey he now introduces blue and orange — and some white.
The doublet has satin ribbons of a divine soft blue. Sash and flag orange — a white collar.
Orange, white, blue, as the national colours were then. Orange and blue next to each other, that most glorious spectrum — on a ground of grey judiciously mixed, precisely by uniting just those two, let me call them poles of electricity (in terms of colour, though) so that they obliterate each other, a white against that grey. Further carried through in that painting — other orange spectrums against a different blue, further the most glorious blacks against the most glorious whites — the heads — some twenty — sparkling with spirit and life, and how they’re done! and what colour! the superb appearance of all those fellows, full length. But that orange, white, blue chap in the left corner — — . . . . . . I’ve seldom seen a more divinely beautiful figure — — it’s something marvellous.
Delacroix would have adored it — just adored it to the utmost.
I stood there literally rooted to the spot. Now you know the singer, that laughing chap — bust in a greenish black with carmine.
Carmine in the flesh colour, too.
You know the bust of the man in yellow — dull lemon — whose face, because of the opposition of tones, is a daring and masterly bronze, like wine-red (violet?).
Bürger wrote about Rembrandt’s Jewish bride just as he wrote about Vermeer of Delft, just as he wrote about Millet’s sower, just as he wrote about Frans Hals — dedicating himself and surpassing himself. The Syndics is perfect — the finest Rembrandt — but that Jewish bride — not reckoned so much — what an intimate, what an infinitely sympathetic painting, painted — with a glowing hand. You see, in The syndics Rembrandt is true to life, although even there he still goes into the higher — into the very highest — infinite. But yet — Rembrandt could do something else — when he didn’t have to be true in the literal sense, as he did in a portrait — when he could — make poetry — be a poet, that’s to say Creator. That’s what he is in the Jewish bride. Oh how Delacroix would have understood that very painting! What a noble sentiment, fathomlessly deep. One must have died many times to paint like this — is certainly applicable here. Still — one can speak about the paintings by Frans Hals, he always remains — on earth. Rembrandt goes so deep into the mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language. It is with justice that they call Rembrandt — magician — that’s no easy occupation.
I’ve packed up various still lifes which you’ll receive next week, with two souvenirs of Amsterdam that I snatched in haste and also a couple of drawings. Will also send you before long a book by De Goncourt — Chérie. De Goncourt is always good, and the way he works so conscientious, and so much toil goes into it.
I saw two paintings by Israëls in Amsterdam, that is the Zandvoort fisherman and — one of his very latest, an old woman, hunched up like a bundle of rags, by a bedstead in which her husband’s corpse is lying. I thought them both masterly. Let people prattle on about technique as they will, with hollow, hypocritical, Pharisee words — the true painters — allow themselves to be guided by that conscience that’s called sentiment; their soul, their brains aren’t led by the brush, but the brush is led by their brains. Moreover it’s the canvas that’s afraid of a true painter, and not the painter who’s afraid of the canvas.
In Amsterdam I saw other present-day paintings, Witkamp and others. Witkamp’s certainly the best, reminds me of Jules Breton; others I have in mind but won’t name, who — fence — with what they call technique, for my part I found WEAK precisely in the technical sense. You know — all those cold, grey tones that they think are distinguished and that are flat and bloody boringly, childishly mixed. Nowadays, for the convenience of painters who work in what they think is a distinguished, light spectrum, they deliberately manufacture colours consisting of — the ordinary ones mixed with pure white. Bah!
Listen — the technique, the mixing of colour, the modelling of the Zandvoort fisherman, for instance, is to my mind Delacroix-like and superb, and the present-day cold, flat greys — don’t mean much in terms of technique, become paint, and Israëls is beyond the paint. To be sure — I’m not talking about Jaap Maris, Willem Maris, Mauve, Neuhuys, who each worked in his singular spectrum in the right manner — Blommers &c. But the school of the masters, their followers, Theo — I think they’re getting threadbare.
Went to the Fodor too.
Decamps’s shepherd really is a masterpiece — do you remember the Meissonier — a sketch — of a deathbed? The Diaz? Well, I always like to see Bosboom, Waldorp, Nuijen,
Rochussen, the original fellows of that period 40 years back. Rochussen has a vitality like Gavarni’s.
The still lifes I’m sending you are studies for colour. I’m going to do some more — don’t think this is pointless. They’ll sink in after a while, but in a year, say, they’ll be better than now once they’re dry right through and are given a thorough varnishing. If you use drawing pins to hang a large number of my studies on a wall in your room, both the earlier ones and these — just jumbled together — you’ll see, I believe, that there’s a link between these studies, that the colours work well alongside one another.
Speaking — of — too black — I’m very glad, all the more so as I see more of the paintings in cold, childish spectrums — that they think my studies are too black.
Look at the Zandvoort fisherman, and what is it painted with? Is it painted with red, with blue, with yellow, with black and some off-white, with brown (all well mixed and broken) or not? When Israëls says that one mustn’t be black, he certainly never means what they’re making of it now; he means that one gives colour to the shadows, but of course that really doesn’t rule out a single spectrum, however low, not that of the blacks and browns and deep blues.
But what’s the point of thinking about it — it’s better to think about Rembrandt, about Frans Hals, about Israëls, than about that respectable impotence.
I’m writing at some length — even if you perhaps don’t believe what I say about the colours, and even if you think me pessimistic when I say that much of what they call subtle grey is very ugly grey, even if you think me pessimistic or worse still when I also condemn the smooth finishing of faces, hands, eyes, since all the great masters worked differently — perhaps, little by little, your own study of art, which you have happily begun again properly, will change you too. Now I have a favour to ask you. That friend of mine in Eindhoven, who went with me to Amsterdam, bought Bürger, Musées de la Hollande, Van der Hoop et Rotterdam at C.M.’s, but C.M. didn’t have the first volume, Musées de la Haye et d’Amsterdam. We must have that one though. It’s out of print, but you’ll be able to dig one up somewhere, and he’s even prepared to give 10 francs for it if need be, although preferably cheaper, of course. I’ll send you what it costs you straightaway, since it’s for him, and he charged me with this on that condition. So will you do your best to get it? If you do find it, read it through again yourself first — because it’s so good.
Ever Yours Page 68