Ever Yours

by Vincent Van Gogh

  670 | Arles, on or about Sunday, 26 August 1888 | To Willemien van Gogh (F)

  My dear sister,

  If you’ll let me write to you in French, that will really make my letter easier for me.

  You please me much more by being moved by sculpture than by painting — all the more so since Theo assures me that you also have a good eye for paintings. Naturally, that couldn’t yet be a settled taste, which will never waver, but intuition, instinct, is already a great deal, and precisely what everyone doesn’t always have.

  But all the same, I’m very curious to know what effect the Luxembourg will have on you.

  Is it true, as I think in moments when I’m in a good mood, that what is alive in art, and eternally alive, is first the painter and then the painting?

  Well, what difference does that make — but if one sees people working it’s still something one doesn’t find under glass in museums.

  Poor Miss Harriet in Guy de Maupassant, she was right, perhaps.

  But was the painter wrong to go with the farm-girl? Perhaps not.

  In life there’s always a fate that’s very annoying. And many painters die or go mad from despair, or become paralyzed in their production because nobody loves them personally.

  Have you read Whitman’s American poems yet? Theo should have them, and I really urge you to read them, first because they’re really beautiful, and also, English people are talking about them a lot at the moment. He sees in the future, and even in the present, a world of health, of generous, frank carnal love — of friendship — of work, with the great starry firmament, something, in short, that one could only call God and eternity, put back in place above this world. They make you smile at first, they’re so candid, and then they make you think, for the same reason. The prayer of Christopher Columbus is very beautiful.

  What do you say about Monticelli’s bouquet of flowers that’s at Theo’s, and about Prévost’s Spanish woman? There are two real paintings of the south.

  I myself think about Monticelli a great deal down here. He was a strong man — a little, even very, cracked — dreaming of sunshine and love and gaiety, but always frustrated by poverty, a colourist’s extremely refined taste, a man of rare breeding, carrying on the best ancient traditions. He died in Marseille, rather sadly and probably after going through a real Gethsemane. Ah well, I myself am sure that I’ll carry him on here as if I were his son or his brother.

  We were talking just now about a fate that seemed sad to us. But isn’t there another, delightful fate? And what is it to us if there is or isn’t a resurrection, when we see a living man rise up immediately in a dead man’s place? Taking up the same cause, carrying on the same work, living the same life, dying the same death.

  When friend Gauguin’s here, and we go to Marseille, I firmly intend to walk there on the Canebière, dressed exactly like him, as I’ve seen his portrait, with an enormous yellow hat, a black velvet jacket, white trousers, yellow gloves and a reed cane and with a great southern air.

  And I’ll find Marseillais who knew him when he was alive, and if you’ve read in Tartarin what fên de brût is . . . . . . . We’ll make quite a noise on that occasion. Monticelli is a painter who did the south all in yellow, all in orange, all in sulphur. Most painters, because they’re not colourists, properly speaking, don’t see these colours there, and declare that a painter who sees with other eyes than theirs is mad. (In the Luxembourg you’ll see Montenards that aren’t yellow, and I like them very much all the same. But it’s likely that Montenard would find what I do totally contemptible.) All that is to be expected, of course. So I’ve already prepared especially a painting all in yellow of sunflowers (14 flowers) in a yellow vase and against a yellow background (it’s yet another one, in addition to the previous one with 12 flowers against a blue-green background). And I expect one day to exhibit that one in Marseille. And you’ll see that there’ll be some Marseillais or other who will remember what Monticelli once said and did. Has Theo shown you the barbotine yet? It’s really fine. Enjoy yourself, I kiss you in thought.

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  672 | Arles, Saturday, 1 September 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)

  My dear Theo,

  A line in haste to thank you very, very much indeed for the prompt dispatch of your letter. In fact, my chap had already come first thing this morning for his rent. Of course, I had to make my decision known today whether or not I’d keep the house on (because I rented it until Michaelmas, and you have to renew or withdraw beforehand). I told my chap that I’d take it on again for 3 months only, or preferably by the month. That way, supposing that our friend Gauguin arrived, we wouldn’t have a very long lease ahead of us should he not like it.

  Far too often I become thoroughly discouraged, thinking about what Gauguin will say about this part of the country in the long run. Isolation here is quite considerable, and while paying, you have to hack each step out of the ice in order just to get from one day’s work to the same the next day. The difficulty about models is there, but patience, and especially always having a few sous, can help there, of course. But this difficulty is real.

  I feel that even at the present time I could be an entirely different painter if I was able to settle the question of models. But I also feel the possibility of getting dull-witted and of seeing the time of potency in artistic production disappearing, just as in the course of life our balls start to let us down. That’s inevitable, and of course, here as there it’s self-confidence and striking while the iron’s hot that’s pressing.

  And so I very often feel despondent. But Gauguin and so many others are in exactly the same position, and we must above all look for the remedy within ourselves, in good will and patience. By being content to be no more than mediocrities. Acting like that, perhaps we’ll open up a new path.

  I’m very curious to receive your next letter, reporting more fully on your visit to Bing. It doesn’t surprise me that you say that after our sister’s departure you’ll feel an empty gap. You must above all try to fill it. And what could there be against Gauguin’s coming to live with you? That way he could satisfy himself on the subject of Paris while working at the same time.

  But in that case it would only be fair that he should also reimburse you in paintings for what you would do for him. For me, it’s a constant sorrow to do so comparatively little with the money I spend.

  My life is restless and anxious, but then, moving house and moving around a lot, perhaps I would only make things worse. It makes enormous trouble for me that I don’t speak the Provençal patois.

  I’m still thinking very seriously about using coarser colours, which would be no less solid for being less finely ground.

  At present I often stop myself when planning a painting, because of the paint it costs us. Now, that’s rather a pity, all the same, for this good reason, that perhaps we have the power to work today, but we don’t know if it’ll still be there tomorrow.

  All the same, rather than losing physical strength, I’m regaining it, and my stomach, especially, is stronger. I’m sending you 3 volumes of Balzac today; it’s really a bit old, etc., but the work of Daumier and De Lemud is no uglier for belonging to a period that doesn’t exist any more. At the moment, I’m at last reading Daudet’s L’immortel, which I find very beautiful but hardly consoling.

  I believe that I’ll have to read a book about elephant hunting, or a totally mendacious book of categorically impossible adventures, by Gustave Aimard for example, in order to get over the heartbreak that L’immortel will leave in me. Particularly because it’s so beautiful and so true, in making one feel the emptiness of the civilized world. I must say that for real power I prefer his Tartarin though. Warm regards to our sister, and once again, thank you for your letter.

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  673 | Arles, Monday, 3 September 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)

  My dear Theo,

  Yesterday I spent another day with that Belgian—who also has a
sister among the Vingtistes — — the weather wasn’t good but it was a jolly good day for chatting; we went for a walk, and all the same we did see some very fine things at the bullfights and outside the town. We talked more seriously about the plan that if I keep on lodgings in the south, he should definitely set up a kind of post in the coal-fields. That then Gauguin and he and I, in cases where the importance of a painting would be a reason for travelling, could exchange places — sometimes being in the north, but in a familiar part of the country where we have a friend, sometimes in the south. You’ll see him soon, this young man with the Dante-like face, because he’s coming to Paris, and if the room’s available you’ll be doing him a favour by putting him up. He’s quite distinguished in appearance, and he’ll become so in his paintings, I believe. He likes Delacroix, and we talked a lot about Delacroix yesterday; actually he knew the violent sketch of Christ’s boat.

  Ah well, thanks to him — at last I have a first sketch of that painting I’ve been dreaming about for a long time — the poet. He posed for it for me. His fine head, with its green gaze, stands out in my portrait against a starry, deep ultramarine sky; his clothing is a little yellow jacket, a collar of unbleached linen, a multicoloured tie. He gave me two sittings in one day.

  Yesterday I received a letter from our sister, who has seen many things. Ah, if she could marry an artist, that wouldn’t be bad.

  Well, we’ll have to go on urging her to untangle her personality, rather than her artistic abilities.

  I’ve finished Daudet’s L’immortel — I rather like the remark by the sculptor Védrine, who says that achieving FAME is something like when smoking, sticking your cigar in your mouth by the lighted end.

  Now I definitely like L’immortel less, much less, than Tartarin.

  You know, it seems to me that L’immortel isn’t as fine as Tartarin for colour, because, with its quantity of subtle and accurate observations, it makes me think of Jean Béraud’s disheartening paintings, so dry, so cold. Tartarin, now, is so genuinely great — with the greatness of a masterpiece, just like Candide.

  I would very much like to ask you to expose my studies from down here, which aren’t completely dry yet, to the air as far as possible. If they stayed shut away or in the dark, the colours would deteriorate. So, the portrait of the young girl, the harvest (wide landscape with the ruin in the background and the chain of the Alpilles), the small seascape, the garden with the weeping tree and the conifer bushes, if you could put them on stretching frames that would be good. I’m a little attached to those.

  You can see clearly from the drawing of the small seascape that that one’s the most worked up.

  I’m having 2 oak frames made, for my new head of a peasant and for my study of a poet. Ah, my dear brother, sometimes I know so clearly what I want. In life and in painting too, I can easily do without the dear Lord, but I can’t, suffering as I do, do without something greater than myself, which is my life, the power to create.

  And if frustrated in this power physically, we try to create thoughts instead of children; in that way, we’re part of humanity all the same. And in a painting I’d like to say something consoling, like a piece of music. I’d like to paint men or women with that je ne sais quoi of the eternal, of which the halo used to be the symbol, and which we try to achieve through the radiance itself, through the vibrancy of our colorations.

  The portrait conceived in this way doesn’t become an Ary Scheffer, because there’s a blue sky behind it, as in the Saint Augustine. Because Ary Scheffer is so little of a colourist.

  But this would be more in tune with what Eugène Delacroix was looking for and found in his Tasso in prison and so many other paintings depicting a true man. Ah, the portrait — the portrait with the model’s thoughts, his soul — it so much seems to me that it must come.

  We talked a lot yesterday, the Belgian and I, about the advantages and disadvantages of this place. We quite agree on both. And on the immense interest that would hold for us, to be able to move about, sometimes the north, sometimes the south. He’s going to stay with MacKnight again for reasons of living more cheaply.

  That, though, has a disadvantage for him, I believe, because living with an idler makes you idle. I believe you’ll enjoy meeting him, he’s still young. I believe that he’ll ask your advice on buying Japanese prints and Daumier lithographs. For those, the Daumiers, it would be good to buy more, because later on we won’t be able to find them.

  The Belgian was saying that with MacKnight he paid 80 francs for board and lodging. What a difference, then, living together — myself I have to pay 45 a month for my lodging alone. And so I always come back to the same calculation, that with Gauguin I’ll spend no more than on my own, and that without suffering thereby.

  Now for them, it’s to be taken into account that they were very badly housed, not in terms of their beds, but of the possibility of working at home.

  So I’m still between two currents of ideas, the first, material difficulties, turning this way and that to build up an existence, and then the study of colour. I still have hopes of finding something there. To express the love of two lovers through a marriage of two complementary colours, their mixture and their contrasts, the mysterious vibrations of adjacent tones. To express the thought of a forehead through the radiance of a light tone on a dark background. To express hope through some star. The ardour of a living being through the rays of a setting sun. That’s certainly not trompe-l’oeil realism, but isn’t it something that really exists? More soon; I’ll tell you when the Belgian might pass through, because I’ll see him again tomorrow.

  Handshake.

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  The Belgian said that at home they have a Degroux, the sketch for Saying grace in the Brussels museum.

  The portrait of the Belgian has something of the portrait of Reid that you have, in terms of execution.

  677 | Arles, Sunday, 9 September 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)

  My dear Theo,

  I’ve just put the croquis of the new painting, THE ‘NIGHT CAFÉ’, in the post — as well as another one that I did some time ago. I’ll perhaps end up making some Japanese prints.

  Now yesterday I worked at furnishing the house. Just as the postman and his wife told me, the two beds, if you want something sturdy, will come to 150 francs each. I found that everything they’d told me about prices was true. As a result I had to change tack, and this is what I did: I bought one bed in walnut and another in deal, which will be mine, and which I’ll paint later.

  Then I bought linen for one of the beds, and I bought two palliasses. If Gauguin or somebody else were to come, there you are, his bed will be made in a minute. From the start, I wanted to arrange the house not just for myself but in such a way as to be able to put somebody up.

  Naturally, that ate up most of my money.

  With what was left, I bought 12 chairs, a mirror, and some small indispensable things. Which in short means that next week I’ll be able to go and live there.

  For putting somebody up, there’ll be the prettiest room upstairs, which I’ll try to make as nice as possible, like a woman’s boudoir, really artistic. Then there’ll be my own bedroom, which I’d like to be exceedingly simple, but the furniture square and broad.

  The bed, the chairs, table, all in deal. Downstairs, the studio and another room, also a studio, but a kitchen at the same time.

  One of these days you’ll see a painting of the little house itself, in full sunshine or else with the window lit and the starry sky.

  Then you’ll be able to believe you own your country house here in Arles. Because I myself am enthusiastic about the idea of arranging it in such a way that you’ll like it, and that it’ll be a studio in a style absolutely meant to be that way.

  Let’s say that in a year you come to spend a holiday here and in Marseille, it will be ready then — and the way I envisage it, the house will be just full of paintings from top to bottom.

  The room where you�
��ll stay then, or which will be Gauguin’s if Gauguin comes, will have a decoration of large yellow sunflowers on its white walls.

  Opening the window in the morning, you see the greenery in the gardens and the rising sun and the entrance of the town.

  But you’ll see these big paintings of bouquets of 12, 14 sunflowers stuffed into this tiny little boudoir with a pretty bed and everything else elegant. It won’t be commonplace.

  And the studio — the red floor-tiles, the white walls and ceiling, the rustic chairs, the deal table, with, I hope, decoration of portraits. That will have character à la Daumier — and it won’t, I dare predict, be commonplace.

  Now I’m going to ask you to look for some Daumier lithographs for the studio, and some Japanese prints, but it’s not at all urgent, and only when you find duplicates of them.

  And some Delacroixs too, ordinary lithographs by modern artists.

  It’s not the least little bit urgent, but I have my idea. I really want to make of it — AN ARTISTS’ HOUSE but not precious, on the contrary, nothing precious, but everything from the chair to the painting having character.

  So for the beds I bought local beds, two wide double beds, instead of iron beds. It gives a look of solidity, durability, calm, and if it takes a bit more bed-linen, that’s too bad, but it must have character.

  Most fortunately I have a charwoman who’s very loyal; without that I wouldn’t dare begin the business of living in my own place. She’s quite old and has a mixed bunch of kids, and she keeps my tiles nice and red and clean.

  I wouldn’t be able to explain to you how pleased I am to find a big, serious job this way. Because I hope it’ll be a true decoration that I’m going to undertake there.

  So, as I’ve already told you, I’m going to paint my own bed, there’ll be 3 subjects. Perhaps a naked woman, I haven’t decided, perhaps a cradle with a child; I don’t know, but I’ll take my time.

  I now no longer feel any hesitation about staying here, because ideas for work are coming to me in abundance. I now plan to buy some article for the house every month. And with patience, the house will be worth something for the furniture and the decorations.