Ever Yours

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Ever Yours Page 105

by Vincent Van Gogh


  My God, my God, the good people among artists who say that Delacroix is not of the true orient! Look, is the true orient then what Parisians like Gérôme do?

  Because you paint a bit of sunny wall, even from life and well and true according to our northern way of seeing, does that also prove that you’ve seen the people of the orient? Now that’s what Delacroix was seeking there, which didn’t prevent him at all from painting walls in the Jewish wedding and the Odalisques.

  Isn’t that true — and then Degas says that it’s too expensive to drink in the bars while doing paintings, I don’t say no, but would he then have me go into the cloisters or the churches, there I’m the one who’s afraid.

  That’s why I make an effort at escape through the present letter, with many handshakes to you and Jo.

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  I still have to congratulate you on the occasion of Mother’s birthday, I wrote to them yesterday but the letter hasn’t gone off yet, because I wasn’t in the mood to finish it.

  It’s funny that the idea had already come to me 2 or 3 times before to go to Pissarro’s, this time, after you’ve told me of his recent misfortunes, I don’t hesitate to ask it of you.

  Yes we must be done here, I can no longer do both things at once, working and doing everything in my power to live with the odd patients here — it’s unsettling. I’d like to force myself to go downstairs, but in vain. And yet it’s almost 2 months since I’ve been out in the open air.

  In the long run here I would lose the faculty to work, now there I begin to call a halt, and so I’ll send them packing, if you agree. And paying for it what’s more, no, then one or the other of the artists fallen in misfortune will consent to set up house with me.

  Fortunately, you can write that you’re well, and Jo too, and that her sister is with you. I’d very much like to be back myself when your child arrives — not with you, certainly not, that isn’t possible, but in the area around Paris with another painter.

  I could, to mention a third, go and stay with the Jouves, who have a lot of children and a whole household.

  You’ll understand that I’ve tried to compare the second crisis with the first, and I say only this to you: it appears to me to be some kind of influence from outside rather than a cause that comes from within myself. I may be mistaken, but whatever the case I think you’ll consider it right that I’m a little horrified by all religious exaggeration. I can’t help thinking of good André Bonger, who himself let out loud shouts when anyone wanted to try out some unguent or other on him. Good Mr Peyron will tell you heaps of things, about probabilities and possibilities of involuntary actions. Good, but if he’s specific I’ll believe none of it. And we’ll see then what he specifies, if it’s specific. The treatment of the patients in this hospital is certainly easy to follow, even on a journey, for they do absolutely nothing about it, they leave them to vegetate in idleness and feed them with stale and slightly spoiled food. And I’ll tell you now that from the first day I refused to take this food, and until my crisis I ate nothing but bread and a little soup, which I’ll continue to do as long as I remain here. It’s true that after this crisis Mr Peyron gave me some wine and meat, which I willingly accept in these first days but wouldn’t want to make an exception to the rule for a long time, and it’s right to respect the establishment according to their ordinary regime. I must also say that Mr Peyron doesn’t give me much hope for the future, which I find justified, he makes me really feel that everything is doubtful, that nothing can be ensured in advance. But I myself am counting on it recurring, but only work preoccupies me so thoroughly that I think that with the body I have it will continue like this for a long time. The idleness in which these poor unfortunates vegetate is a plague, and there you are, it’s a general evil in the towns and country areas under this stronger sun, and having learned differently it’s a duty to resist it, certainly for me. I finish this letter by thanking you again for yours and asking you to write to me again soon, and many handshakes in thought.

  804 | Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Thursday, 19 September 1889 | To Willemien van Gogh (F)

  My dear sister,

  More than once already I’ve tried — in the interval since my last letter — to write to you and to Mother. So I thank you for having again written me such a kind letter. How right I think both of you were, Mother and you, to have left Breda for a while after Cor’s departure. Certainly grief mustn’t build up in our hearts like the water of a turbid pool. From time to time I feel like that inside, as if I have a very turbid soul, but that’s an illness, and for people who are well and active, certainly they must do as you have done.

  As I write to Mother I’ll send her a painting in let’s say around a month, and there’ll be one for you too.

  I’ve painted a few for myself, too, these past few weeks — I don’t much like seeing my own paintings in my bedroom, so I’ve copied one by Delacroix and a few by Millet.

  The Delacroix is a Pietà, i.e. a dead Christ with the Mater Dolorosa. The exhausted corpse lies bent forward on its left side at the entrance to a cave, its hands outstretched, and the woman stands behind. It’s an evening after the storm, and this desolate, blue-clad figure stands out — its flowing clothes blown about by the wind — against a sky in which violet clouds fringed with gold are floating. In a great gesture of despair she too is stretching out her empty arms, and one can see her hands, a working woman’s good, solid hands. With its flowing clothes this figure is almost as wide in extent as it’s tall. And as the dead man’s face is in shadow, the woman’s pale head stands out brightly against a cloud — an opposition which makes these two heads appear to be a dark flower with a pale flower, arranged expressly to bring them out better. I didn’t know what had become of this painting, but while I was in the very process of working on it I came across an article by Pierre Loti, the author of Mon frère Yves and Pêcheur d’Islande and Madame Chrysanthème.

  An article by him on Carmen Sylva.

  If I remember rightly, you’ve read her poems. She’s a queen — she’s queen of Hungary or another country (I don’t know which), and in describing her boudoir, or rather her studio where she writes and where she makes paintings, Loti says that he saw this Delacroix canvas there, which struck him greatly.

  He speaks of Carmen Sylva, making one feel that she’s personally even more interesting than her words, although she says things like this: A woman without a child is a bell without a clapper — the sound of the bronze would perhaps be very beautiful — but — …

  However, it does one good to think that a canvas like that is in such hands, and it consoles painters a little to be able to imagine that really there are souls who have a feeling for paintings.

  But there are relatively few of them.

  I thought of sending you yourself a sketch of it to give you an idea of what Delacroix is. This little copy of course has no value from any point of view. However, you’ll be able to see in it that Delacroix doesn’t draw the features of a Mater Dolorosa in the manner of Roman statues —

  And that the pallid aspect, the lost, vague gaze of a person tired of being in anguish and in tears and keeping vigil is present in it rather in the manner of Germinie Lacerteux.

  I consider it very good and very fortunate that you’re not absolutely enthusiastic about De Goncourt’s masterly book. So much the better that you prefer Tolstoy, you who read books above all to derive energies from them in order to act. I think you’re right a thousand times over.

  But I, who read books to seek in them the artist who made them, could I be wrong to like French novelists so much?

  I’ve just finished the portrait of a woman of forty or more, insignificant. The face faded and tired, pockmarked, an olive-tinged, suntanned complexion, black hair.

  A faded black dress adorned with a soft pink geranium, and the background in a neutral tone between pink and green.

  Because I sometimes paint things like that — with as little and as much drama as a
dusty blade of grass by the side of the road — it’s right, as it seems to me, that I should have an unbounded admiration for De Goncourt, Zola, Flaubert, Maupassant, Huysmans. But as regards yourself, don’t hurry, and continue boldly with the Russians. Have you read Ma religion by Tolstoy yet — it must be very practical and really useful. So go right to the very depths of that, since you like it.

  Lately I’ve done two portraits of myself, one of which is quite in character, I think, but in Holland they’d probably scoff at the ideas about portraits that are germinating here. Did you see at Theo’s the portrait of the painter Guillaumin and the portrait of a young woman by the same? That really gives an idea of what one is searching for. When Guillaumin exhibited his portrait, public and artists laughed at it a great deal, and yet it’s one of the rare things that would hold up alongside even the old Dutchmen Rembrandt and Hals.

  I myself still find photographs frightful and don’t like to have any, especially not of people whom I know and love.

  These portraits, first, are faded more quickly than we ourselves, while the painted portrait remains for many generations. Besides, a painted portrait is a thing of feeling made with love or respect for the being represented. What remains to us of the old Dutchmen? The portraits.

  Thus in Mauve’s family the children will always continue to see him in the portrait that Mesker did so very well of him.

  At this very moment I’ve just received a letter from Theo in which he answers me on the subject of what I’d said of my desire to return to the north for a while. It’s quite likely that this will happen, to say exactly when, that still depends on the opportunities there may be to go and live with some artist or another.

  But as we know several of them and it’s often advantageous to live in pairs, it won’t take long.

  Finally, I say ‘à bientôt’ to you, thanking you again very much for your letters.

  I don’t know yet which canvases I’ll send to you and Mother, probably a wheatfield and an olive grove with that copy after Delacroix.

  The weather outside has been splendid for a very long time, but I haven’t left my room for two months, I don’t know why.

  I would need courage, and I often lack it.

  And it’s also that since my illness the feeling of loneliness takes hold of me in the fields in such a fearsome way that I hesitate to go out. With time, though, that will change again. It’s only in front of the easel while painting that I feel a little of life.

  Anyway, that will change again, for my health is so good that the physique will win the day again.

  I kiss you affectionately in thought, and more soon.

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  805 | Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, on or about Friday, 20 September 1889 | To Theo van Gogh (F)

  My dear Theo,

  Thanks very much for your letter. First, it gives me very great pleasure that you, for your part, had also already thought of père Pissarro.

  You’ll see that there are other possibilities, if not there then elsewhere. Now business is business, and you ask me to answer categorically — and you’re right to do so — if I would consent to go into an asylum in Paris in the event of moving immediately for this winter.

  I answer yes to that, with the same calmness and for the same reasons as I entered this one — even though this asylum in Paris might not be ideal, which might easily be the case, for the opportunity to work isn’t bad here, and work my only distraction.

  But that being said, I’ll point out to you that in my letter I gave a very serious motive as a reason for wishing to move.

  And I insist on repeating it — I’m astonished that with the modern ideas I have, I being such an ardent admirer of Zola, of De Goncourt and of artistic things which I feel so much, I have crises like a superstitious person would have, and that mixed-up, atrocious religious ideas come to me such as I never had in my head in the north.

  On the assumption that, very sensitive to surroundings, the already prolonged stay in these old cloisters which are the Arles hospital and the home here would be sufficient in itself to explain these crises — then — even as a stopgap — it might be necessary to go into a lay asylum at present.

  Nevertheless, to avoid doing or appearing to do anything rash, I declare to you, after having thus warned you of what I might desire at a given moment — that is, a move — I declare to you that I feel sufficiently calm and confident to wait a while longer to see if there’ll be a new attack this winter.

  But if then I was to write to you: I want to get out of here, you wouldn’t hesitate and it would be arranged in advance, for you would know then that I’d have a serious reason, or even several, to go into a home that wasn’t run like this one by the nuns, however excellent they might be.

  Now if by some arrangement or another we might move sooner or later, then let’s begin as if almost nothing was wrong, at the same time being very prudent and ready to listen to the least thing that Rivet has to say, but let’s not set ourselves immediately to taking overly official measures as if it were a lost cause.

  As regards eating a lot, I’m doing so — but if I was my doctor I would forbid it.

  Not seeing any good for myself in really enormous physical strength, for if I absorb myself in the idea of doing some good work and wanting to be an artist and nothing but that, that would be the most logical thing.

  Mother and Wil, each for their part after Cor’s departure, have changed surroundings — they were darned right. Grief mustn’t build up in our souls like the water of a swamp. But it’s sometimes both costly and impossible to move.

  Wil wrote very well, it’s a great grief for them, Cor’s departure.

  It’s funny, just at the moment when I was making that copy of the Pietà by Delacroix I discovered where that canvas has gone. It belongs to a queen of Hungary or another country around there who has written poems under the name of Carmen Sylva. The article which talked of her and of the painting was by Pierre Loti, who made one feel that this Carmen Sylva was as a person yet more touching than what she writes — and yet she writes things like this: A woman without a child is like a bell without a clapper — the sound of the bronze would perhaps be very beautiful, but no one will hear it.

  At present I have 7 copies out of ten of Millet’s Travaux des champs.

  I can assure you that it interests me enormously to make copies, and that not having any models for the moment it will ensure, however, that I don’t lose sight of the figure.

  What’s more, it will give me a studio decoration for myself or another.

  I would like also to copy the Sower and the Diggers.

  There’s a photo of the Diggers after the drawing.

  And Lerat’s etching of the Sower at Durand-Ruel’s.

  In these same etchings is the Field under the snow with a harrow. Then The four times of the day, there are examples of them in the collection of wood engravings.

  I would like to have all of this, at least the etchings and the wood engravings. It’s a study I need, for I want to learn. Although copying may be the old system, that absolutely doesn’t bother me at all. I’m going to copy Delacroix’s Good Samaritan too.

  I’ve done a portrait of a woman — the orderly’s wife — which I think you’d like. I’ve done a repetition of it which wasn’t as good as the one from life.

  And I fear that they’ll take the latter, I would have liked you to have it. It’s pink and black.

  Today I’m sending you my portrait of myself, you must look at it for some time — you’ll see, I hope, that my physiognomy has grown much calmer, although the gaze may be vaguer than before, so it appears to me.

  I have another one which is an attempt from when I was ill. But I think this one will please you more, and I’ve tried to create something simple, show it to père Pissarro if you see him.

  You’ll be surprised what effect the Travaux des champs take on in colour, it’s a very intimate series of his.

  What I’m seeking in it
, and why it seems good to me to copy them, I’m going to try to tell you. We painters are always asked to compose ourselves and to be nothing but composers.

  Very well — but in music it isn’t so — and if such a person plays some Beethoven he’ll add his personal interpretation to it — in music, and then above all for singing — a composer’s interpretation is something, and it isn’t a hard and fast rule that only the composer plays his own compositions.

  Good — since I’m above all ill at present, I’m trying to do something to console myself, for my own pleasure.

  I place the black-and-white by Delacroix or Millet or after them in front of me as a subject. And then I improvise colour on it but, being me, not completely of course, but seeking memories of their paintings — but the memory, the vague consonance of colours that are in the same sentiment, if not right — that’s my own interpretation.

  Heaps of people don’t copy. Heaps of others do copy — for me, I set myself to it by chance, and I find that it teaches and above all sometimes consoles.

  So then my brush goes between my fingers as if it were a bow on the violin and absolutely for my pleasure. Today I attempted the Sheep shearer in a colour scale ranging from lilac to yellow. They are small canvases, around no. 5.

  I thank you very much for the consignment of canvases and colours. On the other hand, I’m sending you a few canvases with the portrait, the following

  Moonrise (wheatsheaves)

  Study of fields

  " of olive trees

  Night study

  The mountain

  Field of green wheat

  Olive trees

  Orchard in blossom

  Entrance to a quarry

  The first four canvases are studies that don’t have the effect of an ensemble like the others. Myself I quite like the Entrance to a quarry which I did when I felt this attack beginning, because to my taste the dark greens go well with the ochre tones, there’s something sad in them that’s healthy, and that’s why it doesn’t annoy me. That’s perhaps also the case with the Mountain. People will tell me that mountains aren’t like that, and that there are black contours as wide as a finger. But anyway it seemed to me that it expressed the passage in Rod’s book — one of the very rare passages of his in which I find something good — on a lost land of dark mountains in which one noticed the darkish huts of goatherds, where sunflowers bloomed.

 

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