Then I feel tempted to begin again with the simpler colours, the ochres for example.
Is a Van Goyen ugly because it’s painted all in oils with very little neutral colour, or a Michel?
My undergrowth with ivy is completely finished, I want very much to send it to you immediately, as soon as it’s dry enough to be rolled up.
With a really strong handshake to you and your wife.
Ever yours,
Vincent.
782 | Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, on or about Tuesday, 18 June 1889 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
Thanks for your letter of yesterday. I too cannot write as I would wish, but anyway we live in such a disturbed age that there can be no question of having opinions that are firm enough to judge things.
I would have very much liked to know if you now still eat together at the restaurant or if you live at home more. I hope so, for in the long run that must be the best.
As for me, it’s going well — you’ll understand that after almost half a year now of absolute sobriety in eating, drinking, smoking, with two two-hour baths a week recently, this must clearly calm one down a great deal. So it’s going very well, and as regards work, it occupies and distracts me — which I need very much — far from wearing me out.
It gives me great pleasure that Isaäcson found things in my consignment that please him. He and De Haan appear very faithful, which is sufficiently rare these days for it to be worthy of appreciation. And that, as you say, there was another who found something in the yellow and black figure of a woman, that doesn’t surprise me, although I think that its merit lies in the model and not in my painting.
I despair of ever finding models. Ah, if I had some from time to time like that one, or like the woman who posed for the Berceuse, I’d do something quite different.
I think you did the right thing by not exhibiting paintings of mine at the exhibition by Gauguin and others. There’s reason enough for me to abstain from doing so without offending them as long as I’m not cured myself.
For me it’s beyond doubt that Gauguin and Bernard have great and real merit.
It’s still perfectly understandable, though, that for beings like them, really alive and young, who must live and try to carve out their path, it’s impossible to turn all their canvases to the wall until it pleases people to admit them somewhere in the official pickle. One causes a stir by exhibiting in the cafés, which I don’t say isn’t in bad taste. But for myself, I have that crime on my conscience, and to the point of doing it twice, having exhibited at the Tambourin and at avenue de Clichy. Not counting the disturbance caused to 81 virtuous cannibals of the good town of Arles and to their excellent mayor.
So in any case, I am worse and more blameworthy than they are in that regard (causing a stir quite involuntarily, my word).
Young Bernard — according to me — has already made a few absolutely astonishing canvases in which there’s a gentleness and something essentially French and candid, of rare quality.
Anyway, neither he nor Gauguin are artists who could look as if they were trying to go to the World Exhibition by the back stairs. You can be sure of that. It’s understandable that they couldn’t keep silent. That the Impressionists’ movement has had no unity is what proves that they’re less skilled fighters than other artists like Delacroix and Courbet.
At last I have a landscape with olive trees, and also a new study of a starry sky.
Although I haven’t seen the latest canvases either by Gauguin or Bernard, I’m fairly sure that these two studies I speak of are comparable in sentiment. When you’ve seen these two studies for a while, as well as the one of the ivy, I’ll perhaps be able to give you, better than in words, an idea of the things Gauguin, Bernard and I sometimes chatted about and that preoccupied us. It’s not a return to the romantic or to religious ideas, no. However, by going the way of Delacroix, more than it seems, by colour and a more determined drawing than trompe-l’oeil precision, one might express a country nature that is purer than the suburbs, the bars of Paris. One might try to paint human beings who are also more serene and purer than Daumier had before him. But of course following Daumier in the drawing of it. We’ll leave aside whether that exists or doesn’t exist, but we believe that nature extends beyond St-Ouen.
Perhaps, while reading Zola, we are moved by the sound of the pure French of Renan, for example.
And after all, while Le Chat Noir draws women for us after its own fashion, and above all Forain does so in a masterly way, we do some of our own, less Parisian but no less fond of Paris and its elegances, we try to prove that something else quite different exists.
Gauguin, Bernard or I will all remain there perhaps, and won’t overcome but neither will we be overcome. We’re perhaps not there for one thing or the other, being there to console or to prepare for more consolatory painting. Isaäcson and De Haan may not succeed either, but in Holland they’ve felt the need to state that Rembrandt did great painting and not trompe l’oeil, they also felt something different.
If you can get the Bedroom lined it’s better to have it done before sending it to me.
I have no more white at all at all.
You’ll give me a lot of pleasure if you write to me again soon. I so often think that after a while you’ll find in marriage, I hope, the means to gain new strength, and that a year from now your health will have improved.
What I’d very much like to have here to read from time to time would be a Shakespeare. There’s one priced at one shilling, Dicks’ Shilling Shakespeare, which is complete. There’s no shortage of editions, and I think the cheap ones have been changed less than the more expensive ones. In any case I wouldn’t want one that cost more than three francs.
Now, whatever is too bad in the consignment, put it completely to one side, pointless to have stuff like that; it may be of use to me later to remind me of things. Whatever is good will show up better by being part of a smaller number of canvases. The rest, if you put them in a corner, flat between two sheets of cardboard with old newspapers between the studies, that’s all they’re worth.
I’m sending you a roll of drawings.
Handshakes to you, to Jo and to our friends.
Ever yours,
Vincent
The drawings Hospital in Arles, the weeping tree in the grass, the fields and the olive trees, are a continuation of those from Montmajour from back then. The others are hasty studies done in the garden.
There’s no hurry for the Shakespeare, if they don’t have an edition like that, it won’t take an eternity to have one sent.
Don’t be afraid that I would ever venture onto dizzy heights of my own free will, unfortunately, whether we like it or not, we’re subject to circumstances and to the illnesses of our time. But with all the precautions I’m now taking, it will be difficult for me to relapse, and I hope that the attacks won’t start again.
784 | Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Tuesday, 2 July 1889 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
Enclosed I’m sending you a letter from Mother, naturally you know all the news it contains. I think it’s very logical of Cor to go there. What is different there from staying in Europe is that down there one doesn’t have to undergo the influence of our large cities, as one does here, so old that everything in them seems to be in its dotage and tottering. So instead of seeing one’s vital forces and natural, native energy evaporate in circumlocution, it’s possible that one might be happier far from our society. Even if it were otherwise, the fact remains that it’s to act uprightly and in accordance with his upbringing for him not to hesitate to accept this position. So now it isn’t to tell you all this news that you know that I’m sending you the letter. But it’s for you to observe in it a little how remarkably firm and regular the writing is when one thinks that it’s true what she says, that she’s ‘a mother approaching 70’. And as you’ve already written to me, and our sister has too, that she seems to have got younger, I see it myself from this v
ery clear writing and in her tighter logic in what she writes, and the simplicity with which she appreciates facts. I believe now that this rejuvenation has obviously come to her from the fact that she’s happy that you’ve got married, which she’d wanted for so long; and I congratulate you that your marriage can give you and Jo the rather rare pleasure of seeing your mother growing young again. It’s really for that that I’m sending you this letter. Because, my dear brother, it’s sometimes necessary later to remember — and it’s so timely that, at the very moment when she’ll have the great pain of being separated from Cor — and it will be hard on her, that — she should be consoled by knowing that you’re married. If the thing were possible you shouldn’t wait fully a whole year before returning to Holland, for she’ll be longing to see you again, you and your wife.
At the same time, having married a Dutchwoman, that could in a few years, sooner or later, warm up business relations with Amsterdam or The Hague again.
Anyway, once again I haven’t seen a letter from Mother indicating so much inner serenity and calm contentment as this one — not for many years. And I’m sure that this comes from your marriage. It’s said that pleasing one’s parents brings a long life.
I now thank you very much for the consignment of colours, deduct them from the order placed since, but if it’s at all possible, not for the quantity of white. I thank you also very cordially for the Shakespeare. It will help me not to forget the little English I know — but above all it’s so beautiful.
I’ve begun to read the series I know the least well, which before, being distracted by something else or not having the time it was impossible for me to read, the series of the kings. I’ve already read Richard II, Henry IV and half of Henry V. I read without reflecting on whether the ideas of the people of that time are the same as ours, or what becomes of them when one places them face to face with republican or socialist beliefs &c. But what touches me in it, as in the work of certain novelists of our time, is that the voices of these people, which in Shakespeare’s case reach us from a distance of several centuries, don’t appear unknown to us. It’s so alive that one thinks one knows them and sees it.
So what Rembrandt alone, or almost alone, has among painters, that tenderness in the gazes of human beings we see either in the Pilgrims at Emmaus, or in the Jewish bride, or in some strange figure of an angel as in the painting you had the good fortune to see — that heartbroken tenderness, that glimpse of a superhuman infinite which appears so natural then, one encounters it in many places in Shakespeare. And then serious or gay portraits like the Six, like the traveller, like the Saskia, it’s above all full of that. What a good idea Victor Hugo’s son had of translating all of it into French so that it’s thus within the reach of all. When I think of the Impressionists and of all these present-day questions of art, how many lessons there are precisely for us in there.
So from what I’ve just read the idea comes to me that the Impressionists are right a thousand times over. Yet even they must think about it for a long time and always. If it follows from that that they have the right or the duty to do themselves justice, and if they dare call themselves primitives, certainly they’d do well to learn to be primitive as people a little, too, before pronouncing the word primitive like a title that would give them rights to whatsoever. But those who would be the cause of the Impressionists being unhappy, well naturally the case for them is serious, also when they make light of it.
And then it would appear that waging a battle seven times a week couldn’t go on.
It’s amazing, though, how L’abbesse de Jouarre, when you think of it, holds its own even beside Shakespeare.
I think that Renan treated himself to that in order to be able to say beautiful words for once in full and at his ease, because these are beautiful words.
So that you may have an idea of what I have on the go I’m sending you ten or so drawings today, all after canvases on the go.
The latest one begun is the wheatfield where there’s a little reaper and a big sun. The canvas is all yellow with the exception of the wall and the bottom of purplish hills. The canvas with almost the same subject differs in coloration, being a greyish green and a white and blue sky.
How I think of Reid as I read Shakespeare, and how I’ve thought of him several times when I was iller than at present. Finding that I’d been infinitely too harsh and perhaps discouraging towards him in claiming that it was better to love painters than paintings. It isn’t up to me to make distinctions like that, not even when faced with the problem that we see our living friends suffering so much from the lack of enough money to feed themselves and pay for their colours, and on the other hand the high prices that are paid for the canvases of dead painters. In a newspaper I was reading a letter from a collector of Greek objects to one of his friends, which contained this phrase ‘you who love nature, I who love all that the hand of man has made, this difference in our tastes deep down creates the unity in it’. And I found that better than my reasoning.
I have a canvas of cypresses with a few ears of wheat, poppies, a blue sky, which is like a multicoloured Scottish plaid. This one, which is impasted like the Monticellis, and the wheatfield with the sun that represents extreme heat, also thickly impasted, I think that this would explain to him more or less, however, that he couldn’t lose much by being our friend. But that’s true on our side too, and precisely because we were perhaps right to disapprove of his method we ought on our side to take a step towards reconciliation. Anyway, I daren’t yet write now for fear of saying too many foolish things, but when I’m more certain of my pen I’d very much like to write to him one day. It’s the same for other friends, but I really have told myself that I should wait as long as possible before being able, even in the best of circumstances, to arrive at this ‘being a little more certain of myself’.
I still have canvases in Arles that weren’t dry when I left, I very much want to go and get them one of these days in order to send them to you. There are half a dozen of them. The drawings appear to me to have little colour this time, and this is very probably due to the over-smooth paper.
Anyway, the Weeping tree and the Courtyard of the hospital at Arles are more coloured, but that though will give you an idea of what I have on the go. The canvas of the reaper will become something like the Sower of the other year.
As later the books of Zola will remain beautiful precisely because they have life.
What also has life is the fact that Mother is happy that you’re married, and I think that this cannot be disagreeable to yourselves, you and Jo. But the separation from Cor will be so hard for her that it’s difficult to imagine. It is precisely in learning to suffer without complaining, learning to consider pain without repugnance, that one risks vertigo a little; and yet it might be possible, yet one glimpses even a vague probability that on the other side of life we’ll glimpse justifications for pain, which seen from here sometimes takes up the whole horizon so much that it takes on the despairing proportions of a deluge. Of that we know very little, of proportions, and it’s better to look at a wheatfield, even in the state of a painting. I shake your hands firmly and will have news of you soon I hope. Good health to you both.
Ever yours,
Vincent
785 | Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Tuesday, 2 July 1889 | To Willemien van Gogh (F)
My dear sister,
In recent days I already began another letter in reply to yours, but I became aware that I didn’t have sufficient mastery of my mind to write. I thank you and Lies for the Rod book which I’ve finished and which I’ll return to you soon. The terrible title, Le sens de la vie, terrified me a little, but as it’s happily scarcely spoken of in this volume, I was quite content to read something which has a family resemblance to Souvestre’s Le philosophe sous les toits or with Monsieur, madame et bébé by Droz. The moral of it is that in some cases a gentleman ends up preferring to live with a nice, devoted wife and his child, to the life of the restaurant, boulevard and café which he
had previously led without too much excess. That’s undoubtedly very pleasant.
It is indeed remarkable that good Mrs du Quesne’s illness came to an unexpected end after all. It must have been a day of great deliverance for her all the same.
If you say in your letter that when you see so many others in life who come and go, seeking their own path, appearing to you perhaps to be making more headway than you, what can I tell you, that I too sometimes have a feeling of stupefaction in the face of my own life, and as regards several other lives of workers in my profession besides. I’ve just sent Theo a dozen drawings after canvases which I have on the go, while all the rest of my life is absolutely as inept as it was at the time when, at the age of 12, I was at a boarding school where I learned absolutely nothing.
An enormous number of painters who certainly couldn’t do my 12 canvases either in 2 months or in 12 are regarded as artists and as intelligent people in town or in the countryside. But believe me, I say this in order to be explanatory and not because I would see any urgency or possibility or desire to change things. We scarcely know life, we’re so unaware of its hidden aspects, anyway we’re living in an age when everything appears to be in its dotage and tottering, and it isn’t unfortunate to find a duty which forces us to stay calmly in our corner, occupied with a little simpler toil, with certain duties that retain some raison d’être.
In these days in which we live we risk coming back from a battle ashamed of having done battle.
So my friend who was with me in Arles and a few others have thus organized an exhibition in which, in good health, I would have taken part.
And what have they been able to do — almost nothing — and yet in their canvases there was something brand new, good, something to give me pleasure and make me enthusiastic for example, me, I can assure you of that. Among artists, we no longer know what to say to each other, we don’t know if we ought to laugh or cry about it, and doing, my word, neither one thing or the other, we are happiest when we find ourselves in possession of a little paint and canvas, the thing we also lack sometimes and which at least we can work on. But any idea of a regular life, any idea of awakening in ourselves or in others gentle ideas or sensations, all of this must necessarily appear pure utopia to us.
Ever Yours Page 102