We’ve hardly ever exhibited, have we?
There were a few canvases at Tanguy’s place first of all, at Thomas’s and then at Martin’s.
Now I declare here that I absolutely do not know what useful purpose that even serves, and it would seem to me more just, certainly, that you should simply keep the studies that you liked in your apartment, that you send the others back to me here rolled up, since the apartment is small and if you kept everything they’d clutter it up.
So, without our hurrying I’m preparing the wherewithal here to stage a more serious exhibition.
But as for the Revue Indépendante I’d ask you to put a complete end to it, the opportunity is too good, and you’ll feel that they’re completely mistaken if they imagine I’m going to pay to have myself put on show in such a small, dark and above all scheming hole.
Now with regard to the few canvases at Tanguy’s or Thomas’s place … that’s a matter of such absolute indifference to me that in reality it isn’t worth talking about — but you should know above all that I’m really not at all attached to the idea. I know in advance what I’ll do the moment I have enough canvases. For the moment I’m simply busying myself with making them.
What will please you is that Gauguin has finished his canvas of the women picking grapes, it’s as fine as the negresses and if, say, you paid the same price for it as for the negresses (400 I think) that would certainly be good too. But naturally you have to choose from all of them, and I haven’t seen the Breton things. He’s explained several of them to me, and they must be fine.
I’ve done a rough sketch of a brothel, and I’m in fact planning to do a brothel painting.
Gauguin came here on 20 Oct., so we must reckon that he received 50 francs from you last month.
Yes, I think that for the exhibition of my work we must express ourselves clearly. As for you, you’re with the Goupils, you aren’t authorized to do business outside the firm. So since I’m absent I do not exhibit.
I repeat, I’m indifferent as regards Tanguy’s place, provided Tanguy is fully aware that he has no right over my canvases, none.
So, my position is clear at least, which isn’t a matter of absolute indifference to me. With a little more work I’ll have sufficient not to need to exhibit at all any more, that’s what I’m aiming at.
I myself have also finished a canvas of a vineyard, all purple and yellow with little blue and violet figures and a yellow sun.
I think you’ll be able to place this canvas next to Monticelli’s landscapes.
I’m going to set myself to work often from memory, and the canvases done from memory are always less awkward and have a more artistic look than the studies from nature, especially when I’m working in mistral conditions.
I don’t think I’ve yet told you that Milliet has left for Africa. He has a study of mine for troubling to take the canvases to Paris and Gauguin gave him a little drawing in exchange for an illustrated edition of Madame Chrysanthème. I’ve still not received the exchanges from Pont-Aven, but Gauguin assures me that the canvases were done.
The weather’s windy and rainy here, and I’m very happy not to be alone, I work from memory on bad days, and that wouldn’t work if I were alone.
Gauguin has also almost finished his night café. He makes a really interesting friend — I must tell you that he knows how to cook perfectly, I think that I’ll learn that from him, it’s really convenient.
We’re very satisfied with making frames with simple strips of wood nailed on the stretching frame and painted, which I’ve started doing.
[Sketch 718A]
718A. Example of a simple frame, with The red vineyard
Do you know that Gauguin is partly the inventor of the white frame? But the frame made from four strips of wood nailed on the stretching frame costs 5 sous, and we’re certainly going to perfect it. It serves very well, since this frame doesn’t stick out at all and is one with the canvas.
More soon, I shake your hand firmly and send my regards to the Dutchmen.
Ever yours,
Vincent
Gauguin sends his warm regards, and asks you to keep back from the price of the first painting you sell the amount necessary for the stretching frames, which he wants with keys, and also what Bernard will ask from you for a commission he gave him.
721 | Arles, on or about Monday, 19 November 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
Gauguin’s canvas, Breton Children, has arrived, and he’s altered it very, very well.
But although I quite like this canvas, it’s all the better that it should be sold, since the two he’s going to send you from here are thirty times better.
I’m speaking of the women picking grapes and the woman with the pigs. The reason for this is that G. is beginning to overcome his liver or stomach trouble that has bothered him lately.
Now I’m writing to you in reply to what you were telling me, that you would frame a small canvas of a pink peach tree I think, to place it with those gentlemen.
I don’t want to leave any doubt about what I think of that.
First, if you yourself would like to place either a bad or good thing of mine there, my word if that will make you happier, then of course you have and will have carte blanche either now or later.
But if, on the other hand, it’s either for my pleasure or for my own benefit, I’d be of the opinion that it’s completely unnecessary.
If you were to ask me what would give me pleasure, it’s quite simply one single thing, that you keep for yourself what you like from what I do, in the apartment, and that you don’t sell any of it now.
The rest, the stuff that gets in the way, send it to me here for this good reason, that everything I’ve done from nature is chestnuts pulled out of the fire.
Gauguin, in spite of himself and in spite of me, has proved to me a little that it was time for me to vary things a bit — I’m beginning to compose from memory, and all my studies will still be useful to me for that work, as they remind me of former things I’ve seen.
So what does selling any of it matter if we’re not absolutely pressed for money?
For in addition, I’m sure even now that you’ll eventually see things that way.
As for you, you’re with the Goupils, but I certainly am not, after however working there for 6 years we were absolutely dissatisfied on both sides with everything, them with me, me with them. It’s an old story, but all the same that’s how it is.
So continue on your way, but as far as the business is concerned it seems to me incompatible with my previous behaviour to come back there with a canvas of such innocence as this little peach tree or some other thing like it. No. If in a year or two I have enough to make an exhibition of my own, let’s say thirty or so no. thirty canvases —
And if I said to them, will you do it for me, Boussod would certainly send me packing. Knowing them alas a little too well, I think that I won’t approach them. Not that I’d ever try to ruin anything, on the contrary, you must admit that I urge on all the others there zealously.
But as for me, my word I have an old grudge against them.
Be sure and certain that I consider you, as a seller of Impressionist paintings, to be very independent of the Goupils, that it will therefore always be a pleasure for me to urge artists to go there. But I don’t want Boussod ever to have a chance to say ‘this little canvas isn’t too bad for this young beginner’, as if never before …
On the contrary, I won’t come back to them, I’d prefer never to sell than to enter into it other than very straightforwardly. Now they’re not people to act straightforwardly, so it isn’t worth beginning again.
Be assured that the more clear-cut we are about this the more they’ll come to you to see them. You don’t sell them, so in showing my work you aren’t trading outside the firm of Boussod, V. & Cie. Thus you’re acting honestly, and that’s worthy of respect.
If one or the other wants to buy however, fine, all they have to do is
approach me directly. But be sure of this: if we can withstand the siege my day will come. I cannot and must not at this moment do anything other than work.
One thing however perhaps, I’m going to reply to Jet Mauve, tell her a whole heap of things about Gauguin &c. &c., send her some croquis, and indirectly Tersteeg will prick up his ears again. Gauguin and I often talk about the need to hold exhibitions in London, and perhaps we’ll send you a letter for Tersteeg to read. The thing is, should Tersteeg have an energetic successor — that day is approaching — the latter won’t be able to work with anything but new paintings.
Handshake — we’ll need some more colours.
I must also tell you that the month with the two of us together is going better on 150 each than I did on 250 just for myself. At the end of a year you’ll notice that this is working after all.
I can’t say anything more yet. I rather regret having the room full of canvases and having nothing to send when Gauguin sends his.
The thing is, regarding the impasto things, Gauguin has told me how to get rid of the grease by washing them from time to time.
What’s more, when that’s done I must work on them again to retouch them.
If I sent you any of them now, their colour would be duller than it will be later.
They all think that what I’ve sent was done too hastily. I wouldn’t deny it, and I’ll make certain changes.
It does me enormous good to have company as intelligent as Gauguin and to see him work. You’ll see that certain people are going to reproach G. for no longer doing Impressionism.
His two latest canvases which you’re going to see are very firm in the impasto, there’s even some work with the knife in them. And that will put his Breton canvases into the shade a little, not all, but some of them.
I hardly have the time to write, otherwise I’d already have written to those Dutchmen. I’ve had a letter from Boch, you know that Belgian who has a sister in the Vingtistes. He’s enjoying working up there.
I really hope that we’ll always remain friends with Gauguin, and in business with him, and if he succeeds in setting up a tropical studio that would be magnificent.
But that will take more money by my calculations than by his.
Guillaumin has written to Gauguin, he seems very hard up but must have done some fine work. He has a child now, but he was terrified by the confinement and says he’ll always have ‘the red vision’ of it before his eyes. Only Gauguin has replied to him very well, saying that he, G., had seen it 6 times.
Jet Mauve is in much better health, and as you perhaps know has been living in The Hague since last August, near the Jewish cemetery, so almost in the country.
You won’t lose anything by waiting a little while for my work, and we’ll calmly leave our dear pals to scorn the present ones.
Fortunately for me I know what I want better than they believe and am, basically, extremely indifferent to the criticism of working hurriedly.
In reply I’ve produced work these last few days even more hurriedly.
Gauguin was telling me the other day — that he’d seen a painting by Claude Monet of sunflowers in a large Japanese vase, very fine. But — he likes mine better.
I’m not of that opinion — only don’t think that I’m weakening. I regret as always, as you know, the scarcity of models, the thousand obstacles to overcome that difficulty.
If I were a completely different man and if I were wealthier I could force it, at present I’m not giving up and am plodding on quietly.
If at the age of forty I do a painting of figures like the flowers Gauguin was talking about I’ll have a position as an artist alongside anything.
So, perseverance.
In the meantime I can tell you anyway that the last two studies are rather funny. No. 30 canvases, a wooden and straw chair all yellow on red tiles against a wall (daytime). Then Gauguin’s armchair, red and green, night effect, on the seat two novels and a candle.
On sailcloth in thick impasto.
What I say about sending back studies, there’s no hurry at all, and I’m referring to the bad ones which, however, will serve me as documents — or those that are cluttering up your apartment. As to what I say in general about the studies, I’m set on just one thing: that the position is quite clear. Don’t trade on my behalf outside the firm; as for me, either I’ll never return to the Goupils, which is more than likely, or I’ll return straightforwardly, which is quite impossible.
One more handshake, and thanks for everything you’re doing for me.
Ever yours,
Vincent
723 | Arles, on or about Saturday, 1 December 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
On my side, too, it’s more than time that I wrote to you with a rested mind for once. Thanks first of all for your kind letter and for the 100-franc note it contained. Our days pass in working, working always, in the evening we’re worn out and go to the café before retiring to bed early. That’s our existence. Naturally it’s winter here too, although the weather still continues to be very fine from time to time. But I don’t find it disagreeable to try to work from the imagination, since that permits me not to go out. Working in the heat of a stove doesn’t bother me, but the cold isn’t for me, as you know. Only I’ve spoiled that thing I did of the garden at Nuenen and I feel that habit is also necessary for works of the imagination. But I’ve done the portraits of an entire family, the family of the postman whose head I did before — the man, his wife, the baby, the young boy and the 16-year-old son, all characters and very French, although they have a Russian look. No. 15 canvases. You can sense how in my element that makes me feel, and that it consoles me to a certain extent for not being a doctor.
I hope to persevere with this and be able to obtain more serious sittings, which can be paid for with portraits.
And if I manage to do this entire family even better, I’ll have done at least one thing to my taste and personal.
At the moment I’m really in the shit, studies, studies, studies, and that’ll go on for some time yet — such a mess that it breaks my heart — and yet that’ll give me neatness when I’m 40. From time to time a canvas that makes a painting, such as that sower, which I too think is better than the first one.
If we can withstand the siege, a day of victory will come for us, even though we wouldn’t be among the people who are being talked about. It’s rather a case of thinking of that proverb, joy in town, grief at home.
What can you expect? Supposing that we still have a whole battle to fight, then we must try to mature calmly. You’ve always told me to do more quality than quantity. Now, nothing is preventing us from having a lot of studies classed as such, and consequently not having a whole heap of things for sale. And if sooner or later we’re obliged to sell, then selling at a slightly higher price the things that can hold their own from the point of view of serious research.
I think that — in spite of myself — I won’t be able to prevent myself sending you a few canvases shortly, say within a month. I say in spite of myself, for I’m convinced that the canvases gain from drying right through here in the south, to the point where the impasto is thoroughly hardened, which takes a long time — that’s to say a year. If I restrain myself from sending them that would certainly be best. For we don’t need to show them at the moment, I’m well enough aware of that.
Gauguin works a lot — I very much like a still life with yellow background and foreground. He’s working on a portrait of me which I don’t count as one of his undertakings that don’t come to anything.
At present he’s doing landscapes, and finally he has a good canvas of washerwomen, even very good as I see it.
You should receive two of Gauguin’s drawings in return for 50 francs which you sent him in Brittany. But old mother Bernard simply appropriated them.
Speaking of indescribable stories, this is indeed one. I think that she’ll give them back though in the end. Beware of the Bernard family, but you should kno
w that in my opinion Bernard’s work is very fine and that he’ll have some well-deserved success in Paris.
Very interesting that you met Chatrian. Is he blond or dark? I’d like to know that, since I know the two portraits.
In their work, it’s above all Madame Therèse and L’ami Fritz that I like.
As regards L’histoire d’un sous-maître, it seems to me that there’s more to find fault with than seemed possible to me at the time.
I think we’ll end up spending our evenings drawing and writing, there’s more to work on than we can do.
You know that Gauguin has been invited to exhibit at the Vingtistes. His imagination is already leading him to think of settling in Brussels, which would indeed be a means of finding himself in a position to see his Danish wife again. Since he has some success with the Arlésiennes in the meantime, I wouldn’t consider that as being absolutely without consequences.
He’s married and doesn’t much appear to be, in short I fear there may be an absolute incompatibility of character between his wife and himself, but naturally he’s more attached to his children, who judging from the portraits are very beautiful. We, on the other hand, aren’t too gifted in that respect. More soon, a handshake for you and for the Dutchmen.
Vincent
Gauguin will write to you tomorrow, he’s waiting for a reply to his letter and sends his warm regards.
726 | Arles, Monday, 17 or Tuesday, 18 December 1888 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
Yesterday Gauguin and I went to Montpellier to see the museum there, and especially the Bruyas room — there are many portraits of Bruyas, by Delacroix, by Ricard, by Courbet, by Cabanel, by Couture, by Verdier, by Tassaert, by others too. After that there are paintings by Delacroix, Courbet, Giotto, Paul Potter, Botticelli, T. Rousseau, very fine.
Bruyas was a benefactor to artists, and this is all I’ll say to you: in the Delacroix portrait, he’s a gentleman with a beard, red hair, who looks damnably like you or me, and who made me think of that poem by Musset … everywhere I touched the earth, an unfortunate man dressed in black came to sit beside us, a man who looked at us like a brother. It would have the same effect on you, I’m sure.
Ever Yours Page 94