Ever Yours

by Vincent Van Gogh

  You see I’m writing to you only about the work today, and I must close, and don’t know whether I’ll be able to write any more to add to it. Best wishes to you and Ma, and thanks for your letters.

  Vincent

  For my part I must also wish you a happy birthday — since I’d like to give you something of my work that you’ll like I’ll set aside a little study of a book and a flower for you — in a large format with a whole mass of books with pink, yellow, green covers and fiery red — my painting Parisian novels was the same subject. Theo will bring this for you — I also have a study for Jet Mauve.

  592 | Arles, on or about Tuesday, 3 April 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)

  My dear Theo,

  I’m in a fury of work as the trees are in blossom and I wanted to do a Provence orchard of tremendous gaiety — writing to you in a calm frame of mind presents serious difficulties, yesterday I wrote some letters that I later destroyed. I continue every day to feel that we’re obliged to do something in Holland — that we need to launch it with all the fervour of the sansculottes, with a French gaiety worthy of the cause we’re pleading.

  So here’s a plan of attack that will cost us some of the best paintings we’ve made together, definitely worth let’s say a pundle off tousand-vrenc pills, well anyway they’ll have cost us money and a good slice out of our lives.

  But it would be a loud and clear reply to certain muffled insinuations treating us more or less as if we were already dead, and a revenge for your trip last year when the welcome they gave you was lacking in warmth &c. Enough.

  Let’s suppose, then, that first of all we gave Jet Mauve the Souvenir de Mauve.

  Let’s suppose I dedicate a study to Breitner (I have one exactly like the study I exchanged with L. Pissarro and Reid’s one, oranges, foreground white, background blue).

  Let’s suppose we also gave our sister some study or other.

  Let’s suppose we gave the modern museum in The Hague, since we have so many memories in The Hague, the 2 Montmartre landscapes exhibited at the Independents’.

  There’s one more thing that’s not at all easy. With Tersteeg having written to you ‘send me some Impressionists, but only paintings you yourself think are among the best’, and you having for your part included one of my paintings in this consignment, I’m in the uncomfortable position of convincing Tersteeg I really am an Impressionist of the Petit Boulevard and that I expect to retain that position. Ah well, he’ll have one of my paintings in his own collection — I’ve been thinking about it these past few days and I’ve found a funny thing of a kind I’m not going to do every day. It’s the drawbridge with a little yellow carriage and group of washerwomen, a study in which the fields are a bright orange, the grass very green, the sky and the water blue.

  It just needs a frame designed specially for it, in royal blue and gold like this, the flat part blue, the outer

  [Sketch 592A]

  592A. Corner of a frame

  strip gold. If necessary, the frame can be of blue plush, but it would be better to paint it.

  I think I can assure you that what I’m making here is better than my campaign in Asnières last spring.

  Nothing is absolutely decided in the whole plan except for the dedication in memory of Mauve and the dedication to Tersteeg. I haven’t yet managed to get a line written to tell him, but I’ll manage it, as the painting’s done it’ll come to me all by itself, but you’re well aware that we have the power in us to oblige them to talk about us if it so pleases us, and we can carry on the work of introducing the Impressionists there with the greatest calmness and self-assurance.

  If you see Reid again it would be a good idea to tell him we don’t have much confidence in the success of ambitious people and that we prefer to do good work, that we were surprised at his ways of behaving, which in the end were inexplicable, and that since then we no longer know what to think of him. I think Russell is trying to make peace between Reid and me, and that he wrote the letter precisely with that in mind. I’ll certainly write to Russell saying I told Reid bluntly that I was sure it was a mistake on his part and crazy to like paintings that are dead and to have no regard for living artists. That in any case I hoped to see him change in that respect.

  As soon as I received the letter I had to spend almost everything on colours and canvases, and I’d be very pleased if it were possible for you to send me something extra in the next few days. The painting of the garden with lovers is at the Théâtre Libre. Boyer, the framer, still has a lithograph, the old man with a bald head.

  I’d like you to get the consignment that I’m going to make for you before Tersteeg arrives in Paris, and you can put the apple trees in blossom in the room. I’m really glad it’s going well with Koning and that you aren’t living alone. What a bad business with Vignon, no doubt Mr Gendre was involved, I wish Mr Gendre nothing but ill, he does too much of it to other people. It’s a sad end for père Martin. I still can’t manage a letter to you of the kind I’d like, work is absorbing me completely. Well, first and foremost it’s to tell you I’d like to do some studies intended for Holland, and after that leave Holland alone for ever. Thinking of Mauve, J.H. Weissenbruch, Tersteeg, our mother and Wil, in the past few days, I’ve felt more emotion than perhaps reasonable, and it calms me down to say to myself that we’ll do some paintings for there. And after that I’ll forget them and I’ll probably think only about the Petit Boulevard.

  Rest assured that Tersteeg won’t refuse the painting, and that it’s a firm decision that that one and the one for Jet Mauve will go to Holland.

  For my part I won’t write to Tersteeg direct, if I say something to him I’ll send the letter to you with the painting.

  595 | Arles, on or about Wednesday, 11 April 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)

  My dear Theo,

  It’s awfully good of you to have sent me the complete order of colours, I’ve just received them but haven’t yet had the time to check them. I’m so pleased about it. Today has been a good day too. This morning I worked on an orchard of plum trees in blossom — suddenly a tremendous wind began to blow, an effect I’d only ever seen here — and came back again at intervals. In the intervals, sunshine that made all the little white flowers sparkle. It was so beautiful! My friend the Dane came to join me, and at risk and peril every moment of seeing the whole lot of it on the ground I carried on painting — in this white effect there’s a lot of yellow with blue and lilac, the sky is white and blue. But as for the execution of what we do out of doors like this, what will they say? Well, let’s wait and see.

  So, after supper I started on the same painting I intend for Tersteeg, ‘The Langlois bridge’, for you. And I’d really like to make a repetition of that one for Jet Mauve too, because since I’m spending so much we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that we’ve got to try to get some back, of this money that’s quickly slipping away.

  Afterwards I was sorry I hadn’t asked for the colours from père Tanguy anyway, although there isn’t the least advantage in that — on the contrary — but he’s such a funny fellow and I still think of him often. Don’t forget to say hello to him for me if you see him, and tell him that if he’d like any paintings for his shop window he can have some from here, and the best. Ah, it seems to me more and more that people are the root of everything, and although it remains for ever a melancholy feeling not to find oneself in real life, in the sense that it would be better to work in flesh itself than colour or plaster, in the sense that it would be better to make children than to make paintings or to do business, at the same time you feel you’re living when you consider that you have friends among those who themselves aren’t in real life either.

  But precisely because what’s in people’s hearts is also the heart of business, we have to conquer friendships in Holland, or rather, revive them. All the more so since, as far as the cause of Impressionism goes, we have little to fear at the moment of not winning through. And it’s because of this victory that’s almost guaranteed in advance
that for our part we have to have good manners and do everything calmly.

  I would really like to have seen the embodiment of Marat you spoke about the other day. That would certainly interest me very much. Unwittingly, I imagine Marat as the — moral — equivalent (but more powerful) of Xanthippe — the woman whose love turned sour. Who nevertheless is still touching — but in the end it’s not as jolly as Guy de Maupassant’s La Maison Tellier.

  Has De Lautrec finished his painting of a woman leaning on a little café table?

  If I manage to learn how to work up the studies I’ve done from life on another canvas, we’d gain in terms of possible sales. I hope to succeed in doing it here — and that’s why I’m making a trial effort with the two paintings that will go to Holland, and on the other hand, you’ll have them too, and in this way there’s nothing reckless.

  You were right to tell Tasset that the geranium lake should be included after all, he sent it, I’ve just checked — all the colours that Impressionism has made fashionable are unstable, all the more reason boldly to use them too raw, time will only soften them too much. So the whole order I made up, in other words the 3 chromes (the orange, the yellow, the lemon), the Prussian blue, the emerald, the madder lakes, the Veronese green, the orange lead, all of that is hardly found in the Dutch palette, Maris, Mauve and Israëls. But it’s found in that of Delacroix, who had a passion for the two colours most disapproved of, and for the best of reasons, lemon and Prussian blue. All the same, I think he did superb things with them, blues and lemon yellows. Handshake to you, to Koning and once again many thanks for the colours.

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  597 | Arles, on or about Friday, 13 April 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)

  My dear Theo,

  Thanks for your letter containing the samples of absorbent canvas. Will be very glad to receive — but it’s not at all urgent — 3 metres of the sort at 6 francs.

  As for his consignment of colours, there were only 4 large tubes of white in it, while all the other tubes were half-size (of white). If he has charged for them in the same proportions, that’s very good, but pay attention to that.

  4 tubes of white at 1 franc, but the rest should only be half the price. I find his Prussian blue poor, and his cinnabar. The rest is good.

  Now I’ll tell you that I’m working on the 2 paintings of which I wanted to make repetitions. The pink peach tree is giving me the most trouble.

  [Sketch 597A]

  597A. Three orchards

  You can see from the four squares on the other side that the three orchards go together, more or less. I now also have a small pear tree, vertical, also flanked by two other horizontal canvases. That will make 6 canvases of orchards in blossom.

  At the moment I’m trying to finish them a little every day, and to make them go together.

  I dare hope for 3 more, also going together, but those are still only in the state of embryos or foetuses.

  I’d really like to do this group of 9 canvases.

  You understand that we’re free to consider the 9 canvases as the initial idea for a much larger, definitive decoration (this one consists of no. 25 and no. 12 canvases), which would be done after exactly the same subjects, at the same time next year.

  [Sketch 597B]

  597B. Small pear tree in blossom

  Here’s the other middle piece of the no. 12 canvases.

  The ground purple — in the background a wall, with straight poplars — and a very blue sky.

  The small pear tree has a purple trunk and white flowers, a large yellow butterfly on one of the clumps.

  On the left, in the corner, a little garden with a border of yellow reeds and green bushes and a flowerbed. A small pink house.

  So there are the details of the decoration of orchards in blossom, which I was intending for you.

  But the last 3 canvases exist only in a provisional state, and are supposed to represent a very large orchard with a border of cypresses and large pear trees and apple trees.

  The ‘Pont de Langlois’ for you is going well, and will be better than the study, I think.

  Am in a real hurry to get back to work. As for the Guillaumin, if it’s possible, it’s certainly a good deal to buy it. But since they’re talking about a new method for fixing pastel, would perhaps be wise to ask him to fix it in this way, in case of purchase. Handshake to you and to Koning.

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  I’ve had a letter from Bernard with some sonnets that he’s made, some of which are successful; he’ll succeed in making a good sonnet, for which I almost envy him.

  As soon as the Langlois bridge and the repetition of the other painting (the pink peach tree) are dry, will make a consignment.

  599 | Arles, Thursday, 19 April 1888 | To Emile Bernard (F)

  My dear old Bernard,

  Many thanks for sending your sonnets. For form and sonority I very much like the first one, ‘Under the sleeping canopies of the gigantic trees’. Now for idea and sentiment it’s perhaps the last one that I prefer: ‘For hope has poured its neurosis into my breast’, but it seems to me that what you want to evoke isn’t stated clearly enough: the certainty that we seem to have and which anyway we can prove, of nothingness, of emptiness, of the treachery of desirable, good or beautiful things, and despite this knowledge we forever allow ourselves to be deceived by the spell that external life, things outside ourselves, cast over our 6 senses, as though we knew nothing, and especially not the difference between objective and subjective. And fortunately for us, in that way we remain ignorant and hopeful. Now I also like ‘In winter, have neither a sou nor a flower’, and Contempt. Corner of a chapel and Drawing by Albrecht Dürer I find less clear; for example, precisely which drawing by Albrecht Dürer is it? But excellent passages in it nevertheless. ‘Having come from the blue plains, Made pale by the long miles’ is a jolly good rendering of the landscapes bristling with blue rocks between which the roads wind in the backgrounds of Cranach and Van Eyck.

  Twisted on his cross in a spiral is a very, very good rendering of the exaggerated thinness of the mystical Christs; why not add to it that the anguished expression of the martyr is like the eye of a broken-hearted cab horse? That way it would be more utterly Parisian, where you see looks like that, either in the pensioners of the little carriages, or in poets and artists. But all in all it’s not as good as your painting yet. Never mind. It’ll come, and you must certainly continue doing sonnets.

  There are so many people, especially among our pals, who imagine that words are nothing. On the contrary, don’t you think, it’s as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint a thing. There’s the art of lines and colours, but there’s the art of words that will last just the same.

  [Sketch 599A]

  599A. Orchard with pear trees in blossom

  Here’s a new orchard, quite simple in composition; a white tree, a small green tree, a square corner of greenery — a lilac field, an orange roof, a big blue sky. Have nine orchards on the go; one white, one pink, one almost red pink, one white and blue, one pink and grey, one green and pink.

  I worked one to death yesterday, of a cherry tree against blue sky, the young shoots of the leaves were orange and gold, the clusters of flowers white. That, against the blue green of the sky, was darned glorious. Unfortunately there’s rain today, which prevents me from going back on the attack.

  Saw a brothel here on Sunday (not to mention the other days), a large room tinged with a bluish limewash — like a village school — a good fifty or so red soldiers and black civilians, with faces of a magnificent yellow or orange (what tones in the faces down here), the women in sky-blue, in vermilion, everything that’s of the purest and gaudiest. All of it in yellow light. Far less gloomy than the establishments of the same kind in Paris. Spleen isn’t in the air down here. At present I’m still keeping very quiet and very calm, because first I have to get over a stomach ailment of which I’m the happy owner, but afterwards
I’ll have to make a lot of noise, because I aspire to share the renown of the immortal Tartarin de Tarascon.

  It interested me enormously that you intend spending your time in Algeria. That’s perfect, and a hell of a long way from being a misfortune. Truly, I congratulate you on it. We’ll see each other in Marseille in any case.

  You’ll find that you’ll enjoy seeing the blue down here, and feeling the sun.

  I now have a terrace for a studio.

  I really intend to go and do seascapes too, in Marseille, and I don’t pine here for the grey sea of the north. If you see Gauguin, greet him warmly for me; I must write to him in a moment.

  My dear old Bernard, don’t despair and above all, don’t be downhearted, my good fellow, because with your talent and your stay in Algeria, you’ll be a hell of a good artist. True — you’ll be a southerner too. If I have a piece of advice to give you, it’s to build yourself up by eating healthy and simple things for a year beforehand, yes. Starting now. Because it’s better not to come here with a ruined stomach or spoiled blood. That was the case with me, and although I’m recovering, I’m recovering slowly, and I regret not having been a little more prudent beforehand. But who can do anything in a bloody winter like this one, because it was a preternatural winter. So see that your blood’s good beforehand; with the bad food here it’s difficult to regain that, but once you’re healthy it’s less difficult to stay that way than in Paris.