These things are indeed so, but this eternally existing art and this revival — this green shoot growing from the roots of the old felled trunk — these are things so spiritual that a kind of melancholy remains with us when we reflect that at less expense we could have made life instead of making art. You really ought, if you can, to make me feel that art is alive, you who perhaps love art more than I do.
I say to myself that that doesn’t have to do with art, but with me, that the only way for me to regain self-confidence and tranquillity is by doing better.
And here we are again at the end of my last letter — I’m getting old, but it’s only imagination if I were to believe that art is an old, stale thing. Now, if you know what a ‘mousmé ’ is (you’ll know when you’ve read Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème), I’ve just painted one. It took me my whole week, I wasn’t able to do anything else, having been not too well again. That’s what annoys me, if I’d been well I’d have knocked off some more landscapes in between times. But in order to finish off my mousmé I had to save my mental powers. A mousmé is a Japanese girl — Provençale in this case — aged between 12 and 14. That makes 2 figures, the Zouave, and her, that I have.
Look after your health, take baths, especially if Gruby recommends that you do. Because you’ll see in 4 years, the years by which I’m older than you, how far relative health is necessary in order to be able to work. Now we who work with our heads, our only and unique means of avoiding being finished too soon is the artificial prolongation of modern hygiene, rigorously followed, as far as we can endure it. Because I for one don’t do everything that I should do. And a little good cheer is better than any other remedy.
I have a letter from Russell. He says that he would have written to me before had it not been that his move to Belle-Île had absorbed him. He’s there now, and says that he’d be pleased if sooner or later I came to spend some time there. He still wants to do my portrait again. He even says, ‘I would have gone to Boussod’s to see the Gauguin, negresses talking, had it not been that I was prevented from doing so for the same reason’.
In short, he’s not refusing to buy one, but is making it understood that he wouldn’t want poorer quality than ours. You see that this is in any case better than nothing at all.
I’ll write this to Gauguin and will ask him for croquis of paintings. We shouldn’t push this business and give up on R. for the time being, but consider the thing as an ongoing piece of business that will come off.
And the same for Guillaumin, I’d like him to buy a figure by G.
He says he’s received a very fine bust of his wife from Rodin, and that on that occasion he lunched with Claude Monet and that he saw the 10 paintings of Antibes then. I’m sending him Geffrey’s article. He makes a very good critique of the Monets, first of all liking them very much: the difficulty attacked, the envelope of coloured air, the colour. Now after that he says, what must be repeated is that it all lacks construction everywhere, for example, with him a tree will have far too much foliage for the size of the trunk, and so always and everywhere, from the point of view of the reality of things, from the point of view of a whole number of laws of nature, he’s pretty well hopeless. He ends by saying that this quality of attacking difficulties is what everyone should have.
I’ve received from Bernard 10 croquis like his brothel; there are 3 of them that are in the style of Redon; the enthusiasm that he has for that I don’t much share myself.
But there’s a woman washing herself, very Rembrandtesque, or in the style of Goya, and a very strange landscape with figures.
He expressly forbids me to send them to you, but you’ll receive them by the same post. I think Russell will buy something else from Bernard. Now I’ve seen work by this Boch; it’s rigorously Impressionist but not powerful, at this moment when this new technique is still preoccupying him too much to allow him to be himself. He’ll become stronger and will bring out his individuality, I think. But MacKnight does watercolours of the power of those by Destrée, you know, that vile Dutchman we knew back in the old days. However, he’d washed some small still lifes, yellow jug on purple foreground, red jug on green, orange jug on blue: better, but it’s pretty poor.
The village where they’re staying is pure Millet, small peasants, nothing but that, totally rustic and intimate. That character completely escapes them. I believe that MacKnight has civilized and converted to civilized Christianity his lout of a landlord. At least, when you go there that scoundrel and his worthy spouse shake your hand — it’s in a café, of course — when you ask for a drink they have ways of refusing the money, ‘Oh, I couldn’t take money from an artiss’ (with two s’s). Anyhow, it’s their own fault that it’s appalling, and this Boch must be getting pretty dull-witted with MacKnight. I think MacKnight has money, but not much. So they contaminate the village; if it weren’t for that, I’d go there often to work there. What one ought to do there is not talk to civilized people; but they know the stationmaster and a score of bloody nuisances, and that’s largely why they don’t do a damned thing. I’ve already said that to Mourier, who once used to believe that MacKnight got on highly intelligently with the ‘man of the fields’.
Naturally, these simple and naive people of the fields make fun of them, and despise them. On the contrary, if you do your work there without worrying about the village idlers with their stiff collars, then you can go into the homes of the peasants, enabling them to earn a few sous. And then that bloody Fontvieille would be a treasure to them, but the natives are — Zola’s small peasants, innocent and gentle beings, as we know. It’s likely that MacKnight will shortly do little landscapes with sheep, for boxes of sweets.
Not just my paintings, but I myself most of all, I had recently become wild-eyed, a bit like Hugo van der Goes in the painting by Emile Wauters.
But having had all my beard carefully shaved off, I believe that I have as much of the very placid abbot in the same painting as of the mad painter so intelligently depicted in it. And I’m not unhappy to be somewhere between the two, because you have to live.
Especially as there’s no getting away from the fact that one day or another there could be a crisis if you changed as far as your position with the Boussods was concerned. One more reason for maintaining relations with artists on my part as well as on yours.
Besides, I believe I’ve told the truth, all the same. If I succeeded in bringing back in prices the money spent, I would be doing no more than my duty. And the practical thing I can do is the portrait. As far as drinking too much goes . . . I don’t know if it’s bad. But just look at Bismarck, who in any case is very practical and very intelligent. His little doctor told him he was drinking too much and that he’d overtaxed himself all his life, from his stomach to his brain. B. stopped drinking there and then. Since then he’s lost ground and is dragging along. He must really be laughing inside at his doctor, whom fortunately for him he didn’t consult too soon. Anyway, good handshake.
Ever yours,
Vincent
Remember that with Gauguin we should in no way change the idea of coming to his aid if the proposal is acceptable as it stands, but we don’t need him. So, as far as working alone goes, don’t believe that it bothers me, and don’t press the matter for me, be FULLY ASSURED of that.
The portrait of a young girl is on a white background strongly tinted with Veronese green, the bodice is striped blood-red and purple. The skirt is royal blue with large orange-yellow stippling. The matt areas of flesh are yellow grey, the hair purplish, the eyebrows black, and the eyelashes, the eyes orange and Prussian blue; a sprig of oleander between the fingers, because the 2 hands are included.
651 | Arles, Monday, 30 July 1888 | To Emile Bernard (F)
My dear old Bernard.
You’ll agree, I’ve no doubt at all, that neither you nor I can have a full idea of what Velázquez and Goya were like as men and as painters, because neither you nor I have seen Spain, their country, and so many fine things that have remained in the south. E
ven so, what we know of them does count for something in itself.
It goes without saying that for the northerners, Rembrandt first and foremost, it’s extremely desirable, when judging these painters, to know both their work in its full extent and their country, and the rather intimate and hidden history of those days, and of the customs of the ancient country.
I want to repeat to you that neither Baudelaire nor you has a sufficiently clear idea when it comes to Rembrandt.
And when it comes to you, I couldn’t encourage you enough to take a long look at major and minor Dutchmen before arriving at an opinion. Here it’s not just a matter of strange precious stones, but it’s a matter of sorting out marvels from among marvels.
And a fair amount of paste from among the diamonds. Thus for myself, having been studying my country’s school for 20 years now, in most cases I wouldn’t even reply if the subject came up, so much do I generally hear people talk beside the point when the painters of the north are being discussed.
So to you I can only reply, come on, just look a little more closely than that; really, it’s worth the effort a thousand times over.
Now if, for example, I claim that the Van Ostade in the Louvre, which shows the painter’s family, the man, the wife, the ten or so kids, is a painting infinitely deserving of study and thought, just like Ter Borch’s Peace of Münster. If the paintings in the gallery in the Louvre that I personally prefer and find the most astonishing are very often forgotten by the very artists who go to see the Dutchmen, then I’m not in the least surprised, knowing that my own choice in that gallery is based on a knowledge of this subject that most of the French couldn’t have.
But if, for example, my opinion differed from yours on those subjects, I’m confident that you would agree with me later. What grieves me at the Louvre is to see their Rembrandts getting spoiled and the cretins in the administration damaging many beautiful paintings. Thus the annoying yellow tonality of certain canvases by Rembrandt is an effect of deterioration through humidity or other causes, instances of which I could point out to you.
As difficult to say what Rembrandt’s colour is as to give a name to the Velázquez greys; we could say, for want of something better, ‘Rembrandt gold’, and that’s what we do, but that’s quite vague.
Having come to France I have, perhaps better than many Frenchmen themselves, felt Delacroix and Zola, for whom my sincere and frank admiration is boundless.
Since I had a fairly complete idea of Rembrandt. One, Delacroix, proceeds by way of colours, the other, Rembrandt, by values, but they’re on a par.
Zola and Balzac, as painters of a society, of reality as a whole, arouse rare artistic emotions in those who love them, for the very reason that they embrace the whole epoch that they paint. When Delacroix paints humanity, life in general instead of an epoch, he belongs to the same family of universal geniuses all the same.
I love the closing words of Silvestre, I think it was, who ends a masterly article like this:
Thus died — almost smiling — Eugène Delacroix, a painter of high breeding — who had a sun in his head and a thunderstorm in his heart — who went from warriors to saints — from saints to lovers — from lovers to tigers — and from the tiger to flowers.
Daumier is also a really great genius.
Millet, another painter of an entire race and the settings in which it lives.
Possible that these great geniuses are no more than crazies, and that to have faith and boundless admiration for them you’d have to be a crazy too. That may well be — I would prefer my madness to other people’s wisdom.
To go to Rembrandt indirectly is perhaps the most direct route. Let’s talk about Frans Hals. Never did he paint Christs, annunciations to shepherds, angels or crucifixions and resurrections; never did he paint voluptuous and bestial naked women.
He painted portraits; nothing nothing nothing but that.
Portraits of soldiers, gatherings of officers, portraits of magistrates assembled for the business of the republic, portraits of matrons with pink or yellow skin, wearing white bonnets, dressed in wool and black satin, discussing the budget of an orphanage or an almshouse; he did portraits of good citizens with their families, the man, his wife, his child; he painted the tipsy drinker, the old fishwife full of a witch’s mirth, the beautiful gypsy whore, babies in swaddling-clothes, the gallant, bon vivant gentleman, moustachioed, booted and spurred; he painted himself and his wife as young lovers on a turf bench in a garden, after their first wedding night. He painted guttersnipes and laughing urchins, he painted musicians and he painted a fat cook.
He doesn’t know much more than that, but it’s ———————— well worth Dante’s Paradise and the Michelangelos and Raphaels and even the Greeks. It’s beautiful like Zola, and healthier and more cheerful, but just as alive, because his epoch was healthier and less sad. Now what is Rembrandt? The same thing entirely — a painter of portraits. That’s the healthy, broad, clear idea that one must have first of all of the two eminent Dutchmen, who are on a par, before going into the subject more deeply.
This fully understood, ALL this glorious republic, represented by these two prolific portraitists, re-created in broad strokes, we retain very wide margins for landscapes, interior scenes, animals, philosophical subjects.
But I beg you, follow this straightforward argument carefully, which I’m doing my utmost to present to you in a very very simple way.
Get him into your head, this Master Frans Hals, painter of various portraits of a whole self-assured and lively and immortal republic. Get into your head the no less great and universal master portrait painter of the Dutch Republic, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, a broad and naturalistic and healthy man, as much as Hals himself. And after that we’ll see flowing from that source, Rembrandt, the direct and true pupils, Vermeer of Delft, Fabritius, Nicolas Maes, Pieter de Hooch, Bol; and those influenced by him, Potter, Ruisdael, Ostade, Ter Borch. I mention Fabritius to you there, by whom we know only — two canvases — I don’t mention a heap of good painters, and especially not the paste among these diamonds, paste firmly embedded in ordinary French skulls.
Am I, my dear old Bernard, terribly incomprehensible this time? I’m trying to make you see the great simple thing, the painting of humanity, let’s rather say of a whole republic, through the simple medium of the portrait. This first and foremost; later — — — if, on the subject of Rembrandt, we’re dealing to some extent with magic, with Christs and nude women, it’s very interesting — but it’s not the main thing. Let Baudelaire hold his tongue in this department, they’re resounding words, and how hollow!!! Let’s take Baudelaire for what he is, a modern poet just as Musset is another, but let them leave us alone when we’re talking painting.
Handshake.
Ever yours,
Vincent
I don’t like your drawing Lubricity as much as the others; I like the tree, though, it has a great look.
655 | Arles, on or about Sunday, 5 August 1888 | To Emile Bernard (F)
My dear old Bernard,
I realize that I’ve forgotten to answer your question as to whether Gauguin is still in Pont-Aven. Yes, he’s still there, and if you feel like writing to him am inclined to believe that it will please him. It’s still likely that he’ll join me here shortly, as soon as either one of us is able to find the travel expenses.
I don’t believe that this question of the Dutchmen, which we’re discussing these days, is without interest. It’s quite interesting to consult them when it’s a matter of any kind of virility, originality, naturalism.
In the first place, I must speak to you again about yourself, about two still lifes that you’ve done, and about the two portraits of your grandmother. Have you ever done better, have you ever been more yourself, and someone? Not in my opinion. Profound study of the first thing to come to hand, of the first person to come along, was enough to really create something. Do you know what made me like these 3 or 4 studies so much? That je ne sais quoi of somethin
g deliberate, very wise, that je ne sais quoi of something steady and firm and sure of oneself, which they show. You’ve never been closer to Rembrandt, my dear chap, than then. In Rembrandt’s studio, the incomparable sphinx, Vermeer of Delft, found this extremely sound technique that hasn’t been surpassed. Which today . . . . . we’re burning . . . to find. Oh, I know that we’re working and arguing COLOUR as they did chiaroscuro, value.
What do these differences matter when in the end it’s a question of expressing oneself powerfully?
At present . . . . . . you’re examining primitive Italian and German techniques, the symbolic meaning that the Italians’ abstract and mystical drawing may contain. DO SO.
I myself rather like this anecdote about Giotto — there was a competition for the execution of some painting or other of a Virgin. Lots of proposals were sent to the fine arts authorities of those days. One of these proposals, signed Giotto, was simply — an oval —
[Sketch 655A]
655A. Oval
an egg shape — the authorities, intrigued and trusting — entrust the Virgin in question — to Giotto. Whether it’s true or not I don’t know, but I rather like the anecdote.
However, let’s return to Daumier and to your grandmother. When are you going to show us more of them, studies of that soundness? I urge you to do so, while at the same time in no way belittling your investigations concerning the properties of lines in contrary motion — being not at all indifferent, I hope, to the simultaneous contrasts of lines, of forms. The trouble is, do you see, my dear old Bernard, that Giotto, Cimabue, as well as Holbein and Van Eyck, lived in an obeliscal — if you’ll pardon the expression — society, layered, architecturally constructed, in which each individual was a stone, all of them holding together and forming a monumental society. I have no doubt that we’ll again see an incarnation of this society when the socialists logically build their social edifice — from which they’re a fair distance away yet. But you know we’re in a state of total laxity and anarchy.
Ever Yours Page 85