And I’d have wished to paint this garden in such a way that one would think both of the old poet of this place (or rather, of Avignon), Petrarch, and of its new poet — Paul Gauguin.
However clumsy this effort, you’ll still see, perhaps, that while preparing your studio I’ve thought of you with very deep feeling.
Let’s be of good heart for the success of our enterprise, and may you continue to feel very much at home here.
Because I’m so strongly inclined to believe that all this will last for a long time.
Good handshake, and believe me
Ever yours,
Vincent
Only I’m afraid that you’ll find Brittany more beautiful — even though you may well see nothing more beautiful than things out of Daumier, figures here are often pure Daumier. Now, as for you, it won’t take you long to discover, under all the modernity, the ancient world and the Renaissance, which is sleeping. Now, as far as they’re concerned, you’re at liberty to reawaken them.
Bernard tells me that he, Moret, Laval and someone else would do an exchange with me. I am really, in principle, a great supporter of the system of exchanges among artists, since I see that it occupied a considerable place in the life of the Japanese painters. So one of these days I’ll send you such studies as I have to spare, in the dry state, and you’ll have first choice.
But I won’t exchange a single one with you if on your part it would mean costing you something as significant as your portrait, which would be too beautiful. For sure, I wouldn’t dare, because my brother will gladly buy it from you against a whole month’s allowance.
698 | Arles, on or about Friday, 5 October 1888 | To Emile Bernard (F)
My dear old Bernard.
The consignment Gauguin and you sent arrived at almost the same time as my studies went off. I was delighted, it really warmed my heart to see the two faces again. As for your portrait — you know — I like it very much — actually I like everything that you do, as you know — and perhaps nobody before me has liked what you do as much as I do.
I really urge you to study the portrait; make as many as possible and don’t give up — later we’ll have to attract the public through portraits — in my view that’s where the future lies. But let’s not get sidetracked into hypotheses now. Because it’s up to us next to thank you for the collection of rough sketches entitled At the brothel.
Bravo! The woman washing herself and the one who says ‘I’m second to none when it comes to taking it out of a man’ are the best, it seems to me. The others are grimacing too much — and most of all, are too vague, too little flesh and bone properly built up.
It doesn’t matter; it’s already something altogether new and interesting, and the rest, too — at the brothel — yes, that’s what needs to be done, and I assure you that I for one almost envy you this bloody good opportunity you have to go in there in uniform. Which those good little women adore. The poem at the end is really beautiful; stands up better than some of the figures. What you want, and what you say you believe, you say well and resonantly.
Write to me when you’re going to be in Paris — the thing is that I’ve already written you a thousand times that my night café isn’t a brothel, it’s a café where night prowlers cease to be night prowlers, since, slumped over tables, they spend the whole night there without prowling at all. Occasionally a whore brings her fellow there. But arriving there one night I came across a little group of a pimp and a whore who were making up after a quarrel. The woman was pretending to be indifferent and haughty, the man was tender. I started to paint it for you from memory — on a little no. 4 or no. 6 canvas — now if you’re leaving soon — I’ll send it to you in Paris; if you’re staying longer, say so, I’ll send it to you in Pont-Aven. I couldn’t add it to the consignment, it was nowhere near dry enough.
But I don’t want to sign this study, because I never work from memory — there will be colour in it, which will suit you, but to repeat, here I’m doing a study for you that I would prefer not to do. I mercilessly destroyed an important canvas — a Christ with the angel in Gethsemane — as well as another one depicting the poet with a starry sky — because the form hadn’t been studied from the model beforehand, necessary in such cases — despite the fact that the colour was right.
If the study I’m sending you in exchange doesn’t suit you, just look at it a little longer.
I had the devil’s own job to do it with an irritating mistral (like the study in red and green, as well). Well, despite the fact that it wasn’t painted as fluently as the old mill — it’s more delicate and more intimate. You see that all of this is perhaps not at all — Impressionist — well, too bad, I can’t do anything about it — but I do what I do with an abandonment to reality, without thinking about this or that. Goes without saying that if you preferred another study from the batch to the Men unloading sand, you could take it and remove my dedication if someone else wants it. But I believe that that one will suit you once you’ve looked at it a little longer.
If Laval, Moret and the other one agree to make exchanges with me, perfect, but on my side I’d be especially satisfied if they wanted to do their portraits for me.
You know, Bernard, it always seems to me that if I want to do studies of brothels I’d need more money than I have; I’m not young or womanizer enough for them to pose for me for free. And I can’t work without a model. I’m not saying that I don’t flatly turn my back on reality to turn a study into a painting — by arranging the colour, by enlarging, by simplifying — but I have such a fear of separating myself from what’s possible and what’s right as far as form is concerned.
Later, after another ten years of studies, all right, but in very truth I have so much curiosity for what’s possible and what really exists that I have so little desire or courage to search for the ideal, in so far as it could result from my abstract studies.
Others may have more clarity of mind than I for abstract studies — and you might certainly be among them, as well as Gauguin and perhaps myself when I’m old.
But in the meantime I’m still living off the real world. I exaggerate, I sometimes make changes to the subject, but still I don’t invent the whole of the painting; on the contrary, I find it ready-made — but to be untangled — in the real world.
But you’ll probably find these studies ugly, I don’t know. In any case, neither you nor anyone else should do an exchange grudgingly.
My brother writes that Anquetin’s back in Paris; I’m curious to know what he’s made. When you see him you’ll give him my warm regards.
The house will seem more lived-in now that I’ll see the portraits in it.
How happy I would be to see you there yourself this winter; it’s true that the trip costs rather a lot. Nevertheless, may one not risk those expenses by taking one’s revenge by working? Work’s so difficult in the north in winter. Here too, perhaps; I’ve hardly had the experience yet and it remains to be seen.
But it’s damned useful to see the south, where life is lived more in the open air, in order to understand the Japanese better.
And that touch of the haughty and the noble that certain places have down here will suit your book very well. In the Red sunset, the Sun should be imagined higher, outside the painting, let’s say just at the level of the FRAME. Because it so happens that an hour, an hour and a half before it sets, the things on the earth still keep their colours like that. Later the blue and the violet colour them darker, as soon as the sun sends out rays that are more horizontal. Thanks once again for what you sent me, it really warmed my heart.
And a good handshake in thought, and write to me the day of your departure so that I know when you’ll be in Paris; address in Paris still avenue de Beaulieu 5, isn’t it?
Ever yours,
Vincent
702 | Arles, Wednesday, 10 or Thursday, 11 October 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
When lately I very often think that all the costs of painting weigh on
you, you couldn’t imagine what anxiety I have about it. When things like what you describe about Bague in your last letter happen to us, then we must be on the point of selling. Or much rather, we must be on the point of being able to find some help, either from Thomas or from someone else, of the half-dealer, half-collector sort. Thus C.M., even without helping us in any other way, could buy another study from us. I don’t know if you’ve ever read Les frères Zemganno by the De Goncourts, who perhaps loosely retrace their own history. If you know it, you’ll know, more than I’d know how to express to you, that I fear that the effort of obtaining money for us will be too exhausting for you.
If I wasn’t dreadfully, and always, tormented by that anxiety, I would say things were going well, because the work will improve and my health is much better than in Paris. I realize more and more that work goes infinitely better when you feed yourself well, when you have your paint, when you have your studio, and all that. But is my heart set on my work going well? No, and a thousand times no. I’d like to succeed in making you clearly feel this truth, that in giving money to artists you yourself are doing an artist’s work, and that I’d wish only that my canvases might become of such a kind that you aren’t too unhappy with your work.
And that’s not all; I’d also like you to feel that we earn from the money that we transfer, and that by so doing, we’ll achieve a more complete independence than that provided by the trade as such.
And what we’ll do later to revive the trade could well be precisely that dealers live with artists, the one for what one may call the housekeeping side, to supply studio, food, paint &c., the other to produce. Alas, we’re not at that stage with the old trade, which will always follow the old routine that benefits nobody among the living and does no good for the dead, either. But what of it; that may leave us more or less cold, not having a duty to change what exists or to battle against a wall. Anyway, we’d have to get our share of sunshine without vexing anyone. And I always figure to myself that you don’t have your whole share of sunshine, since your work in Paris with the Goupils is too exhausting. So when I think about that, I have a dealer’s rage; then I want to earn money so that you can be freer to go and do what you want. I feel that we’re on the point of selling or of finding help that will give us breathing space.
There you are, perhaps I believe that what may still be far away is nearer than it in fact is, and then I feel this anxiety coming over me, of spending too much.
However, paintings come off better if one takes care of oneself and keeps well. But for you, for your work, for your whole life as well, you mustn’t have too many worries. How are those sciatic pains? Have they stopped?
Whatever happens, you’d help me more by keeping well, by living well; even if the consignments of colours had to suffer as a result, than by being too much in straits on my account. I believe that the day will come when people will want the work — well — but perhaps that’s still far away, and meanwhile, don’t be too hard up.
Because business, too, will come to you by itself and as if in a dream, better and more quickly if you take care of yourself than if you make yourself hard up. And look, at our age, surely we can finally have a certain calm, a certain wisdom about doing things. I fear now (and I avoid them) poverty, bad health and all that, and I hope you have the same sentiments.
So I almost have a feeling of remorse at having today bought this piece of furniture, although it’s good, because I had to ask you to send me money sooner than if it hadn’t been for that.
Be sure of this. If you were ill or if you had too much pain and trouble, nothing would work any more. And if you are well, business will eventually come to you by itself, and ideas for doing some business will come to you infinitely more by eating well than by not eating enough.
So shout at me to stop if I’m going too far. If not, it’s naturally much better, because for me too, I can of course work much better if I’m comfortable rather than too hard up. But don’t go believing that I’m more attached to my work than to our well-being, or at least to our peace of mind, above all. Once Gauguin’s here he’ll feel the same thing — and he’ll recover.
The day may well come for him when he’ll wish, and will be able, to become the family man again that he really is. I’m very, very curious to know what he has done in Brittany. Bernard writes many good things about it. But doing rich painting is so difficult to do in the cold and in poverty — and possible that in fact his real home will prove to be, when all’s said and done, the warmer and happier south.
If you saw the vineyards! There are bunches weighing a kilo, even — the grape is magnificent this year, from the fine autumn days coming at the end of a summer that left much to be desired.
I regret having spent money on this chest of drawers, but it can save us buying a dearer one — the least would have been 35. And when Gauguin comes, he would in any case have to have something there to put his linen in, and anyway his bedroom will be more complete like this. (I notice that this cupboard has panels just like those on which Monticelli painted.)
Once we have a richer moment I’d take this one for myself and he’d take the one at 35 francs. At that price there’s always something second-hand, but not always at the price at which I bought this one.
I’ve been thinking that if at your place there are now beginning to be certain studies that might be taking up too much room at your place and getting in your way, they could be taken off their stretching frames and sent here, where we have enough room to store them. I’m saying that about certain things from the past year, or, indeed, for everything that might be in your way. Paris will be very beautiful in the autumn, all the same. The town here is nothing at night, everything’s dark.
I believe that an abundance of gaslight, which, after all, is yellow and orange, intensifies blue, because at night the sky here seems to me, and it’s very funny, darker than in Paris. And if I ever see Paris again, I’ll try to paint effects of gaslight on the boulevard.
Ah, it must be the opposite in Marseille; I imagine that it must be more beautiful than Paris, La Canebière.
I so often think of Monticelli, and when I reflect on what they say about his death it seems to me that not only must we put aside the idea that he died a drinker in the sense of stupefied by drink, but we should also know that, even more than in the north, life is quite naturally spent in the open air and in cafés. My friend the postman, for example, lives a great deal in cafés and is certainly more or less a drinker and has been so all his life. But he’s so much the opposite of stupefied, and his elation is so natural, so intelligent, and then he argues with such a broad sweep, à la Garibaldi, that I’m quite prepared to reduce the legend of Monticelli the absinthe drinker to exactly the proportions of this case of my postman. My paper’s full, write to me as soon as is possible for you. Handshake and good luck.
Ever yours,
Vincent
One day I’ll perhaps know the details about those last days of Monticelli’s.
One day Mrs de Larebey la Roquette said to me: Monticelli, now, Monticelli, but he was a man who should have been at the head of a big studio in the south.
The other day, you remember, I wrote to our sister and to you that sometimes I believed I had the feeling that I was continuing Monticelli here. Good — but you see now — the studio in question, we’re setting it up.
What Gauguin will do, what I’ll also do myself, will be in keeping with that fine oeuvre by Monticelli, and we’ll try to prove to the good folk that Monticelli didn’t quite die, slumped over the tables of the cafés along La Canebière, but that the little old chap is still alive.
And the thing won’t end with us either; we’re starting it off on quite a solid footing.
703 | Arles, Saturday, 13 October 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
I had hardly dared hope so soon for your new 50-franc money order, for which I thank you very much.
I have many expenses, and it sometimes distresses me gr
eatly when I increasingly come to realize that painting is a craft that is probably practised by extremely poor people, since it costs a lot of money.
But the autumn still continues to be so fine! What a funny part of the country, this homeland of Tartarin’s! Yes, I’m happy with my lot; it isn’t a superb and sublime country, it’s all something out of Daumier come to life. Have you re-read the Tartarins yet? Ah, don’t forget to! Do you remember in Tartarin the lament of the old Tarascon diligence — that wonderful page? Well, I’ve just painted that red and green carriage in the yard of the inn. You’ll see.
[Sketch 703A]
703A. The Tarascon diligence
This hasty croquis gives you its composition.
Simple foreground of grey sand.
Background very simple too, pink and yellow walls with windows with green louvred shutters, corner of blue sky.
The two carriages very colourful: green, red, wheels yellow, black, blue, orange. A no. 30 canvas once again. The carriages are painted in the style of Monticelli, with impastos. You once had a very beautiful Claude Monet, of 4 colourful boats on a beach. Well, here it’s carriages, but the composition is of the same kind.
Now imagine a huge green-blue fir tree spreading its horizontal branches over a very green lawn and sand dappled with light and shade.
[Sketch 703B]
703B. The public garden with a couple strolling (‘The poet’s garden’)
This very simple corner of a garden is enlivened by beds of orange lead geraniums in the background areas, under the black branches. Two figures of lovers stand in the shade of the big tree. No. 30 canvas.
Ever Yours Page 92