I must write to Gauguin today to ask him what he pays models, and to find out if there are any. There you are, if you’re getting old, it’s important to rule out what is an illusion and to calculate before jumping into things. And if when you’re younger you’re able to believe that you can meet your needs through diligent work, it becomes more and more doubtful now. I also told Gauguin that in my last letter. That if we painted like Bouguereau, that we could then hope to earn — but that the public will never change and only likes soft and smooth things. With a more austere talent, you can’t depend on the product of your labours; most of the people intelligent enough to understand and love Impressionist paintings are and will remain too poor to buy. Will Gauguin or I work less for that — no — but we’ll be obliged to accept poverty and social isolation as a prior condition. And to start with, let’s set ourselves up where living costs the least. So much the better if success comes, so much the better if one day we found ourselves better off.
What touches me most deeply in Zola’s L’oeuvre is that character Bongrand-Jundt.
It’s so true what he says: You believe, unfortunate souls, that when the artist has mastered his talent and gained his reputation, that then he’s home and dry?
On the contrary, from that moment on he isn’t allowed to produce a thing that isn’t good in every way. His very reputation obliges him to take all the more care over his work as chances of sales diminish. At the least sign of weakness the whole jealous pack falls on him and destroys precisely that reputation and that faith that a fickle and treacherous public briefly had in him.
Stronger than that is what Carlyle says. You know the fireflies in Brazil that are so luminous that in the evening ladies stick them into their hair with pins. It’s very fine, fame, but see, it is to the artist what the hairpin is to those insects.
You wish to succeed and shine; do you really know what you want?
Now I have a horror of success; I’m afraid of the morning after following a success by the Impressionists; even the present difficult days will later seem like ‘the good times’ to us.
Well, Gauguin and I must look ahead, we must work at getting a roof over our heads, beds; the essentials, in short, to endure the siege by failure that will last the whole of our life.
And we must settle down in the least expensive place. Then we’ll have the peace of mind needed to produce a large amount, even if we sell little or nothing.
But if expenses exceeded income, we’d be wrong to hope too much that everything would work out through the sale of our paintings. On the contrary, we’d be obliged to part with them at any price at the wrong time.
I conclude. Living more or less like monks or hermits, with work as our ruling passion, giving up well-being. Nature, the fine weather down here, that’s the advantage of the south. But I believe that Gauguin will never give up the battle of Paris; he has that too much at heart, and believes in a lasting success more than I do. That won’t do me any harm; on the contrary, perhaps I despair too much. So let’s leave him this illusion, but let’s be aware that what he’ll always need is lodgings, and his daily bread, and paint. That’s where the chink in his armour is, and it’s because he’s getting into debt now that he’ll be done for beforehand. By coming to his aid, the two of us make his victory in Paris possible, in fact.
If I had the same ambitions as he has, we probably wouldn’t get on well together. But I don’t care about my success nor about my happiness, I care about the continuation of the energetic undertakings of the Impressionists, I care about this question of a refuge and of daily bread for them. And I feel it a crime that I have that, while two can live on the same amount.
If you’re a painter, you’re taken either for a madman or for a rich man. A cup of milk costs you one franc, a slice of bread and butter two, and paintings don’t sell. That’s why we have to join together as the old monks did, the Brethren of the Common Life of our Dutch heathlands. I realize already that Gauguin hopes for success — he couldn’t do without Paris, he doesn’t foresee the infinity of poverty. You understand how far in these circumstances it’s absolutely one and the same to me to stay here or to leave. We have to allow him to fight his battle. He’ll win it, what’s more. Too far from Paris, he would think himself idle. But for ourselves let’s keep a total indifference regarding success or failure. I’d begun to sign my canvases, but I soon stopped; it seemed too silly to me. On a seascape there’s a very outrageous red signature, because I wanted a red note in the green. You’ll see them soon, anyway. Weekend will be a bit tough, so I hope to have your letter a day early rather than a day late.
Handshake.
Ever yours,
Vincent
663 | Arles, Saturday, 18 August 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
You’ll shortly make the acquaintance of Mr Patience Escalier — a sort of man with a hoe, an old Camargue oxherd, who’s now a gardener at a farmstead in the Crau.
Today without fail I’ll send you the drawing I made after this painting, as well as the drawing of the portrait of Roulin the postman.
The colour of this portrait of a peasant isn’t as dark as the Nuenen potato eaters — but the very civilized Parisian, Portier, probably so-called because he kicks paintings out of the door — will find himself up against the same question again. You’ve now changed since then, but you’ll see that he hasn’t changed, and really it’s a pity that there aren’t more paintings in clogs in Paris. I don’t believe that my peasant will do any harm, for example, to the Lautrec that you have, and I dare even believe that the Lautrec will, by simultaneous contrast, become even more distinguished, and mine will gain from the strange juxtaposition, because the sunlit and burnt, weather-beaten quality of the strong sun and strong air will show up more clearly beside the face powder and stylish outfit. What a mistake that Parisians haven’t acquired sufficient taste for rough things, for Monticellis, for barbotine. Well, I know that one shouldn’t be discouraged because utopia isn’t coming about. It’s just that I find that what I learned in Paris is fading, and that I’m returning to my ideas that came to me in the country before I knew the Impressionists. And I wouldn’t be very surprised if the Impressionists were soon to find fault with my way of doing things, which was fertilized more by the ideas of Delacroix than by theirs.
Because instead of trying to render exactly what I have before my eyes, I use colour more arbitrarily in order to express myself forcefully. Well, let’s let that lie as far as theory goes, but I’m going to give you an example of what I mean.
I’d like to do the portrait of an artist friend who dreams great dreams, who works as the nightingale sings, because that’s his nature.
This man will be blond. I’d like to put in the painting my appreciation, my love that I have for him.
I’ll paint him, then, just as he is, as faithfully as I can — to begin with.
But the painting isn’t finished like that. To finish it, I’m now going to be an arbitrary colourist.
I exaggerate the blond of the hair, I come to orange tones, chromes, pale lemon. Behind the head — instead of painting the dull wall of the mean room, I paint the infinite.
I make a simple background of the richest, most intense blue that I can prepare, and with this simple combination, the brightly lit blond head, against this rich blue background achieves a mysterious effect, like a star in the deep azure.
Similarly, I’ve proceeded in this way in the peasant’s portrait.
However, without wishing to evoke the mysterious brilliance of a pale star in the infinite blue in this case.
But imagining the terrific man I had to do, in the very furnace of harvest time, deep in the south. Hence the oranges, blazing like red-hot iron, hence the old gold tones, glowing in the darkness. Ah, my dear brother — — and the good folk will see only caricature in this exaggeration. But what does that do to us, we’ve read La terre and Germinal, and if we paint a peasant we’d like to show that this reading has in some wa
y become part of us.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to paint the postman as I feel him; as a revolutionary this man is like père Tanguy, he’s probably considered a good republican because he heartily detests the republic we currently enjoy, and because, in short, he’s a little dubious and a little disillusioned with the republican idea itself. But one day I saw him singing the Marseillaise — and I thought I was seeing ’89, not next year, but the one 99 years ago. It was something out of Delacroix, out of Daumier, out of the old Dutch painting entirely.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to get that in a pose, and yet you need an intelligent model to be able to do the painting.
I must tell you now that materially speaking, these days are extremely hard.
Whatever I do, living is pretty expensive here, more or less like Paris, where, while spending 5 or 6 francs a day, you don’t have much.
If I have models, then I suffer considerably as a result. Doesn’t matter. And so I’ll go on.
So I assure you that if by chance you sometimes sent me a little more money, that would benefit the paintings, but not me. Myself, I only have the choice between being a good painter or a bad one. I choose the former. But the things needed for painting are like those of a ruinous mistress; you can do nothing without money, and you never have enough of it.
And so painting should be done at society’s expense, and the artist shouldn’t be overburdened by it.
But there you are, we should keep quiet once again, because nobody is forcing us to work, indifference towards painting being, inevitably, fairly general, fairly eternal.
Fortunately my stomach has recovered to such an extent that I lived for 3 weeks of the month on ship’s biscuits with milk, eggs.
It’s the good heat that gives me strength, and I definitely wasn’t wrong to go to the south now instead of waiting until the damage was irreparable. Yes, I’m as well now as other men, which I have only been briefly — in Nuenen, for example — and that’s not disagreeable. By ‘other men’ I mean a bit like the road-menders on strike, père Tanguy, père Millet, the peasants. If you’re well, you should be able to live on a piece of bread, while working the whole day long, and still having the strength to smoke and to drink your glass; you need that in these conditions. And still to feel the stars and the infinite, clearly, up there. Then life is almost magical, after all. Ah, those who don’t believe in the sun down here are truly blasphemous.
Unfortunately, along with the sun, dear God, for 3 quarters of the time there’s the devil of a mistral.
Saturday’s post has gone by, damn it, and I didn’t doubt but that I would receive your letter, but you can see that I’m not getting upset about it. Handshake.
Ever yours,
Vincent
665 | Arles, on or about Tuesday, 21 August 1888 | To Emile Bernard (F)
My dear Bernard,
I want to do figures, figures and more figures, it’s stronger than me, this series of bipeds from the baby to Socrates and from the black-haired woman with white skin to the woman with yellow hair and a sunburnt face the colour of brick.
Meanwhile, I mostly do other things.
Thanks for your letter; this time I’m writing in great haste and really worn out.
I’m very pleased that you’ve joined Gauguin.
Ah, I do have a new figure all the same, which is absolutely a continuation of certain studies of heads done in Holland; I showed you them once, with a painting from that time, potato eaters. I wish I could show it to you.
Again it’s a study in which colour plays a role that the black and white of a drawing couldn’t convey.
I wanted to send you a very large and very carefully finished drawing of it.
Well — it turned into something entirely different, while still being correct.
Because once again the colour suggests the scorched air of harvest time at midday in the blistering heat, and without that it’s a different painting. I would dare to believe that you and Gauguin would understand it, but how ugly they’ll find it!
You fellows know what a peasant is, how much of the wild animal there is when you come across somebody pure-bred.
I also have a man unloading a sand boat. That is, there are two boats, purplish pink, in Veronese green water, with yellow-grey sand, wheelbarrows, planks, a little blue and yellow man.
All of it seen from the top of a quay overhanging everything in a bird’s-eye view. No sky. It’s just a sketch, or rather, a rough sketch done out in the mistral.
Next, I’m attempting to do dusty thistles with a great swarm of butterflies swirling above them. Oh, the beautiful sun down here in high summer; it beats down on your head and I have no doubt at all that it drives you crazy. Now being that way already, all I do is enjoy it.
I’m thinking of decorating my studio with half a dozen paintings of Sunflowers.
A decoration in which harsh or broken yellows will burst against various BLUE backgrounds, from the palest Veronese to royal blue, framed with thin laths painted in orange lead.
Sorts of effects of stained-glass windows of a Gothic church.
Ah, my dear pals, we crazy ones, let’s anyway enjoy with our eyes, shall we?
Alas, nature gets paid in kind, and our bodies are despicable and sometimes a heavy burden. But since Giotto, a sickly character, that’s the way things are.
Oh, and nevertheless, what delight of the eye and what laughter, the toothless laughter of Rembrandt the old lion, his head covered in a cloth, his palette in his hand. How I’d like to spend these present days in Pont-Aven, but anyway, I console myself by reconsidering the sunflowers.
I shake your hand firmly; more soon.
Ever yours,
Vincent
669 | Arles, on or about Sunday, 26 August 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
Many thanks for your letter and for the 50-franc note it contained. Certainly, it isn’t impossible that our sister will come later and live with us. It’s a good sign as far as her taste goes that she likes sculpture; that really did please me.
Painting as it is now promises to become more subtle — more music and less sculpture — in fact, it promises colour. As long as it keeps this promise.
The sunflowers are progressing; there’s a new bouquet of 14 flowers on a green-yellow background, so it’s exactly the same effect — but in larger format, no. 30 canvas — as a still life of quinces and lemons that you already have, but in the sunflowers the painting is much simpler.
Do you remember that one day at the Hôtel Drouot we saw a bouquet of peonies by Manet? Pink flowers, very green leaves, painted in thick impasto and not glazed, like Jeannin’s. Standing out against a simple white background, I believe.
Now there’s something that was really healthy.
As for stippling, making halos or other things, I find that a real discovery, but it can already be foreseen that this technique won’t become a universal dogma any more than another. Another reason why Seurat’s La Grande Jatte, Signac’s landscapes with coarse stippling, Anquetin’s boat, will in time become even more personal, even more original.
As far as my clothes are concerned, they were certainly starting to suffer — but only last week I bought a black velvet jacket of quite good quality for 20 francs, and a new hat, so that’s not at all urgent.
But I consulted this postman whom I painted, who has very often set up his little household and dismantled it again, moving house for roughly the price of the indispensable pieces of furniture, and he says that here you can’t get a good bed that will last, for less than 150 francs, if you want to have something solid, of course.
However, that hardly upsets the calculation that by saving the money for lodgings, at the end of a year you find you own furniture without having spent any more during the year. And as soon as I’m able, I won’t hesitate to do that.
If we were to refrain from setting ourselves up like that, Gauguin and I could drag on from year to year in small lodgings where o
ne can’t fail to become dull-witted. I’m more or less that way already, because it goes back a long, long way. And at present that has even ceased to be a source of pain, and perhaps at first I won’t feel at home in my own home. Never mind. However, let’s not forget Bouvard et Pécuchet, let’s not forget À vau l’eau, because all of that is very, very profoundly true. Au bonheur des dames and Bel-ami, that’s no less true, however. It’s ways of seeing things — now, with the first one, we’re less in danger of behaving like Don Quixote; it’s possible, and with the last idea we go the whole hog.
Now I have the old peasant again this week.
Ah — MacKnight has cleared off at last — I don’t regret it in the least. His pal the Belgian didn’t seem greatly saddened by it either when he came yesterday to tell me about it, and we spent the evening together. He’s very reasonable in his ideas, and knows what he wants, at least. At the moment he’s doing timid Impressionism, but very much by the rules, very exact. And I told him that it was the best thing he could do, although he would lose 2 years on it perhaps, delaying his originality, but after all, I told him, it’s as necessary now to pass through Impressionism properly as it once was to go through a Paris studio. He accepted that absolutely in its entirety, precisely because that way you shock nobody, and you can’t later be accused of not being abreast of things. He’s thinking seriously of going to paint the coal-miners in the Borinage, and if he’s still here when Gauguin comes, not impossible then that we’ll ask him to do for us in the north what we’d do for him in the south — do our utmost to enable him to live more cheaply than on his own. More soon.
Ever yours,
Vincent
Ever Yours Page 87