You must know, too, that if you put them in this order:
[Sketch 776A]
776A. Triptych with ‘La berceuse’ and two versions of ‘Sunflowers in a vase’
that is, the Berceuse in the middle and the two canvases of the sunflowers to the right and the left, this forms a sort of triptych. And then the yellow and orange tones of the head take on more brilliance through the proximity of the yellow shutters. And then you will understand that what I was writing to you about it, that my idea had been to make a decoration like one for the far end of a cabin on a ship, for example. Then as the size gets bigger, the summary execution gets its raison d’être. The middle frame is then the red one. And the two sunflowers that go with it are those surrounded by strips of wood.
You see that this framing of simple laths does quite well, and a frame like that costs only very little. It would be perhaps good to frame the green and red vineyards, the sower and the furrows and the interior of the bedroom with them too.
[Sketch 776B]
776B. Trees with ivy in the garden of the asylum
Here’s a new no. 30 canvas, commonplace again, like one of those chromos from a penny bazaar that depict eternal nests of greenery for lovers.
Thick tree-trunks covered with ivy, the ground also covered with ivy and periwinkle, a stone bench and a bush of roses, blanched in the cold shadow. In the foreground a few plants with white calyxes. It’s green, violet and pink.
It’s just a question — which is unfortunately lacking in chromos from a penny bazaar and barrel organs — of putting in some style.
Since I’ve been here, the neglected garden planted with tall pines under which grows tall and badly tended grass intermingled with various weeds, has provided me with enough work, and I haven’t yet gone outside.
However, the landscape of St-Rémy is very beautiful, and little by little I’m probably going to make trips into it. But staying here as I am, the doctor has naturally been in a better position to see what was wrong, and will, I dare hope, be more reassured that he can let me paint.
I assure you that I’m very well here, and that for the time being I see no reason at all to come and board in Paris or its surroundings. I have a little room with grey-green paper with two water-green curtains with designs of very pale roses enlivened with thin lines of blood-red. These curtains, probably the leftovers of a ruined, deceased rich man, are very pretty in design. Probably from the same source comes a very worn armchair covered with a tapestry flecked in the manner of a Diaz or a Monticelli, red-brown, pink, creamy white, black, forget-me-not blue and bottle green.
Through the iron-barred window I can make out a square of wheat in an enclosure, a perspective in the manner of Van Goyen, above which in the morning I see the sun rise in its glory.
With this — as there are more than 30 empty rooms — I have another room in which to work.
The food is so-so. It smells naturally a little musty, as in a cockroach-ridden restaurant in Paris or a boarding school. As these unfortunates do absolutely nothing (not a book, nothing to distract them but a game of boules and a game of draughts) they have no other daily distraction than to stuff themselves with chickpeas, haricot beans, lentils and other groceries and colonial foodstuffs by the regulated quantities and at fixed times.
As the digestion of these commodities presents certain difficulties, they thus fill their days in a manner as inoffensive as it’s cheap. But joking apart, the fear of madness passes from me considerably upon seeing from close at hand those who are affected with it, as I may very easily be in the future.
Before I had some repulsion for these beings, and it was something distressing for me to have to reflect that so many people of our profession, Troyon, Marchal, Meryon, Jundt, M. Maris, Monticelli, a host of others, had ended up like that. I wasn’t even able to picture them in the least in that state.
Well, now I think of all this without fear, i.e. I find it no more atrocious than if these people had snuffed it of something else, of consumption or syphilis, for example.
These artists, I see them take on their serene bearing again, and do you think it’s a small thing to rediscover ancient members of the profession.
Joking apart, that’s what I’m profoundly grateful for.
For although there are some who howl or usually rave, here there is much true friendship that they have for each other. They say, one must suffer others for the others to suffer us, and other very true reasonings that they thus put into practice. And between ourselves we understand each other very well, I can, for example, chat sometimes with one who doesn’t reply except in incoherent sounds, because he isn’t afraid of me.
If someone has some crisis the others look after him, and intervene so that he doesn’t harm himself.
The same for those who have the mania of often getting angry. Old regulars of the menagerie run up and separate the fighters, if there is a fight.
It’s true that there are some who are in a more serious condition, whether they be filthy, or dangerous. These are in another courtyard. Now I take a bath twice a week, and stay in it for 2 hours, then my stomach is infinitely better than a year ago, so I only have to continue, as far as I know. I think I’ll spend less here than elsewhere, since here I still have work on my plate, for nature is beautiful.
My hope would be that at the end of a year I’ll know better than now what I can do and what I want. Then, little by little, an idea will come to me for beginning again. Coming back to Paris or anywhere at the moment doesn’t appeal to me at all, I feel that I’m in the right place here. In my opinion, what most of those who have been here for years are suffering from is an extreme sluggishness. Now, my work will preserve me from that to a certain extent.
The room where we stay on rainy days is like a 3rd-class waiting room in some stagnant village, all the more so since there are honourable madmen who always wear a hat, spectacles and travelling clothes and carry a cane, almost like at the seaside, and who represent the passengers there.
I’m obliged to ask you for some more colours, and especially some canvas. When I send you the 4 canvases of the garden I have on the go you’ll see that, considering that life happens above all in the garden, it isn’t so sad. Yesterday I drew a very large, rather rare night moth there which is called the death’s head, its coloration astonishingly distinguished: black, grey, white, shaded, and with glints of carmine or vaguely tending towards olive green; it’s very big.
[Sketch 776C]
776C. Giant peacock moth
To paint it I would have had to kill it, and that would have been a shame since the animal was so beautiful. I’ll send you the drawing of it with a few other drawings of plants.
You could take the canvases which are dry enough at Tanguy’s or at your place off the stretching frames and then put the new ones you consider worthy of it onto these stretching frames. Gauguin must be able to give you the address of a liner for the Bedroom who won’t be expensive. This I imagine must be a 5-franc restoration, if it’s more then don’t have it done, I don’t think that Gauguin paid more when he quite often had canvases of his own, Cézanne or Pissarro lined.
Speaking of my condition, I’m still so grateful for yet another thing. I observe in others that, like me, they too have heard sounds and strange voices during their crises, that things also appeared to change before their eyes. And that softens the horror that I retained at first of the crisis I had, and which when it comes to you unexpectedly, cannot but frighten you beyond measure. Once one knows that it’s part of the illness one takes it like other things. Had I not seen other mad people at close hand I wouldn’t have been able to rid myself of thinking about it all the time. For the sufferings of anguish aren’t funny when you’re caught in a crisis. Most epileptics bite their tongues and injure them. Rey told me that he had known a case where someone had injured his ear as I did, and I believe I’ve heard a doctor here who came to see me with the director say that he too had seen it before. I dare to believe that once
one knows what it is, once one is aware of one’s state and of possibly being subject to crises, that then one can do something about it oneself so as not to be caught so much unawares by the anguish or the terror. Now, this has been diminishing for 5 months, I have good hope of getting over it, or at least of not having crises of such force. There’s one person here who has been shouting and always talking, like me, for a fortnight, he thinks he hears voices and words in the echo of the corridors, probably because the auditory nerve is sick and too sensitive, and with me it was both the sight and the hearing at the same time which, according to what Rey said one day, is usual at the beginning of epilepsy.
Now the shock had been such that it disgusted me even to move, and nothing would have been so agreeable to me as never to wake up again. At present this horror of life is already less pronounced, and the melancholy less acute. But I still have absolutely no will, hardly any desires or none, and everything that has to do with ordinary life, the desire for example to see friends again, about whom I think however, almost nil. That’s why I’m not yet at the point where I ought to leave here soon, I would still have melancholy for everything. And it’s even only in these very last days that the repulsion for life has changed quite radically. There’s still a way to go from there to will and action.
It’s a shame that you yourself are still condemned to Paris, and that you never see the countryside other than that around Paris.
I think that it’s no more unfortunate for me to be in the company where I am than for you always the fateful things at Goupil & Cie. From that point of view we’re quite equal. For only in part can you act in accordance with your ideas. Since, however, we have once got used to these inconveniences, it becomes second nature.
I think that although the paintings cost canvas, paint &c., at the end of the month, however, it’s more advantageous to spend a little more thus, and to make them with what I’ve learned in total, than to abandon them while one would have to pay for board and lodging all the same anyway. And that’s why I’m making them. So this month I have 4 no. 30 canvases and two or three drawings.
But no matter what one does, the question of money is always there like the enemy before the troops, and one can’t deny it or forget it.
I retain my duties in that respect as much as anyone. And perhaps some day I’ll be in a position to repay all that I’ve spent, because I consider that what I’ve spent is, if not taken from you at least taken from the family, so consequently I’ve produced paintings and I’ll do more. That is to act as you too act yourself. If I had private means, perhaps my mind would be freer to do art for art’s sake, now I content myself with believing that in working assiduously even so, without thinking of it one perhaps makes some progress.
Here are the colours I would need
Thanking you for your kind letter, I shake your hand warmly, as well as your wife’s.
Ever yours,
Vincent.
779 | Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Sunday, 9 June 1889 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
Thanks very much for the consignment of canvases, colours, brushes, tobacco and chocolate, which reached me in good order.
I was very glad of it, for I was pining for work a little. Also, for a few days now I’ve been going outside to work in the neighbourhood.
Your last letter was dated 21 May, if I remember rightly. I’ve had no news of you yet since then, except that Mr Peyron told me he’d received a letter from you. I hope that you’re in good health, and your wife too.
Mr Peyron intends to go to Paris to see the exhibition and then pay you a visit.
What can I tell you that’s new, not much. I have two landscapes on the go (no. 30 canvases) of views taken in the hills.
One is the countryside that I glimpse from the window of my bedroom. In the foreground a field of wheat, ravaged and knocked to the ground after a storm. A boundary wall and beyond, grey foliage of a few olive trees, huts and hills. Finally, at the top of the painting a large white and grey cloud swamped by the azure. It’s a landscape of extreme simplicity — in terms of coloration as well. It would be suitable as a pendant to that study of the bedroom that’s damaged.
When the thing depicted is stylistically absolutely in agreement and at one with the manner of depiction, isn’t that what creates the quality of a piece of art?
That’s why, as regards painting, a household loaf is above all good when it’s painted by Chardin.
Now Egyptian art, for example, what makes it extraordinary, is it not that those calm, serene kings, wise and gentle, patient, good, seem unable to be other than they are; eternally farmers who worship the sun. How I’d have liked to see an Egyptian house in the exhibition, built by the architect Jules Garnier — painted in red, yellow and blue with a garden divided regularly into beds by rows of bricks — the dwelling of the people we know only in the state of mummies or in granite.
But there you are, to get back to the point, since the Egyptian artists thus have a faith, working from feeling and instinct, they express all these intangible things: goodness, infinite patience, wisdom, serenity, with a few masterly curves and marvellous proportions. That’s to say once more, when the thing depicted and the manner of depicting it are in accord, the thing has style and quality.
Thus also the servant girl in Leys’s great fresco, when she’s engraved by Braquemond, becomes a new work of art — or Meissonier’s little reader when it’s Jacquemart who engraves him — since the manner of engraving and the thing depicted are as one.
As I want to keep this study of the bedroom, if you would send it back to me when I’m sent canvas, rolled up, I’ll repaint it. Initially I’d wanted to have it lined because I didn’t think I’d be able to do it again. However, as my mind has grown calmer since, I can indeed redo it now.
The thing is, among the number of things that one makes there are always some that one has felt or wanted more and which one wants to keep all the same.
When I see a painting that intrigues me, I can never help asking myself, ‘in what house, room, corner of the room, in whose home would it do well, would it be in its rightful place’.
Thus the paintings of Hals, Rembrandt, Vermeer are only at home in the old Dutch house.
Now the Impressionists — once again, if an interior isn’t complete without a work of art, neither is a painting if it isn’t at one with original surroundings, resulting from the era in which it was produced. And I don’t know if the Impressionists are worth more than their time, or rather aren’t yet worth as much.
In a word, are there souls and interiors of houses that are more important than what has been expressed by painting, I’m inclined to believe so.
I’ve seen an advertisement for a forthcoming exhibition of Impressionists called Gauguin, Bernard, Anquetin and other names. Am therefore inclined to believe that another new sect has been formed, no less infallible than the others that already exist. Was this the exhibition you were talking to me about? What storms in teacups.
I’m in good health — so-so, I feel happier with my work here than I could outside. By staying here a fairly long time, I’ll have acquired controlled behaviour, and in the long run the result will be more order in my life and less impressionability. And that would be something gained. Besides, I wouldn’t have the courage to begin again outside. I once went into the village — accompanied, at that. The mere sight of the people and things had an effect on me as if I was going to faint, and I felt very ill. In the face of nature it’s the feeling for work that keeps me going. But anyway, that’s to tell you that there must have been some over-strong emotion inside me that brought that about, and I have no idea what could have caused it.
I’m bored to death at times after work, and yet I have no desire to begin again.
The doctor who has just come by says that he won’t be going to Paris for a few weeks yet, so don’t expect his visit for the time being.
I hope that you’ll write to me soon.
This month
I’ll again really be in need of
8 tubes silver white
6 " Veronese Green
2 " Ultramarine
2 " Cobalt
2 yellow Ochre
1 red "
1 raw sienna
1 ivory black
It’s funny that every time I try to reason with myself in order to get a clear picture of things — why I came here, and that after all it’s only an accident like any other — a terrible terror and horror seizes me and prevents me from thinking. It’s true that it tends vaguely to diminish, but it also seems to me to prove that there is indeed something, I don’t know what, disturbed in my brain. But it’s astounding to be afraid of nothing like this, and not to be able to remember.
Only you can count on the fact that I’m doing everything I can to become active and perhaps useful again, in this sense at least, that I want to do better paintings than before.
Many things in the landscape here often recall Ruisdael, but the figure of the ploughman is lacking. In our country one sees men, women, children, animals at work everywhere and at all times of the year, and here not a third of that, and in addition they’re not the honest workers of the north. They seem to work the land in an awkward, lax way, without energy. Perhaps I’ve got hold of the wrong idea here, I hope so at least, since I’m not from round here. But it makes things colder than one would dare think from reading Tartarin, who had perhaps been expelled many years ago with his entire family.
Above all write to me soon, for your letter is very slow in coming, I hope that you’re well. It’s a great consolation for me to know that you’re no longer living alone.
If one month or another it should be too difficult for you to send me colours, canvas &c., then don’t send them, for believe me it’s better to live than to do art in an absent-minded way. And before everything else, your house must be neither sad nor dismal. That first and painting next.
Ever Yours Page 101