The olive trees with white cloud and background of mountains, as well as the Moonrise and the Night effect —
These are exaggerations from the point of view of the arrangement, their lines are contorted like those of the ancient woodcuts. The olive trees are more in character, just as in the other study and I’ve tried to express the time of day when one sees the green beetles and the cicadas flying in the heat.
The other canvases — the Reaper &c. aren’t dry. And now in the bad season I’m going to make a lot of copies, for really I must do more figure work. It’s the study of the figure that teaches one to grasp the essential and to simplify.
When you say in your letter that I’ve never done anything but work, no — that’s not right — I myself am very, very discontented with my work, and the only thing that consoles me is that experienced people say that one must paint for 10 years for nothing. But what I’ve done is only those 10 years of unfortunate studies that didn’t come off. Now a better period could come, but I’ll have to strengthen the figure work, and I must refresh my memory by very close study of Delacroix, Millet. Then I’ll try to sort out my drawing. Yes, every cloud has a silver lining, it gives one more time for study.
I’m also adding a study of flowers to the roll of canvases — not much, but anyway I don’t want to tear it up.
All in all the only things I consider a little good in it are the Wheatfield, the Mountain, the Orchard, the Olive trees with the blue hills and the Portrait and the Entrance to the quarry, and the rest says nothing to me, because it lacks personal will, feeling in the lines. Where these lines are close together and deliberate the painting begins, even if it may be exaggerated. That’s what Bernard and Gauguin feel a little bit, they won’t ask for the correct shape of a tree at all, but they absolutely insist that one says if the shape is round or square — and my word, they’re right —
Exasperated by certain people’s photographic and inane perfection. They won’t ask for the correct tone of the mountains but they’ll say: for Christ’s sake, were the mountains blue, then chuck on some blue and don’t go telling me that it was a blue a bit like this or like that, it was blue wasn’t it? Good — make them blue and that’s enough! Gauguin is a genius sometimes when he explains that, but as for the genius Gauguin has, he’s very timid about showing it, and it’s touching how he likes to say something really useful to young folk. What an odd fellow all the same.
It gives me great pleasure that Jo is well, and I think you’ll feel much more in your element thinking of her pregnancy, and naturally having concerns about it too, than if you were alone without these family concerns. For you’ll feel more in nature.
When one thinks of Millet and Delacroix, what a contrast. Delacroix without a wife, without children, Millet completely in his family, more than anyone.
And yet what similarities there are in their work.
So Jouve has still kept his big studio and he’s working on decorations.
That one came very close to being an excellent painter. It’s money troubles with him, in order to eat he’s forced to do a thousand things other than painting, which costs him more money than it brings in when he makes something beautiful.
And he quickly loses his touch for drawing with the brush. This probably comes from the old training method, which is the same as the current one — in the studios — they fill in outlines. And Daumier was always painting his face in the mirror to learn how to draw!
Do you know what I think about quite often — what I used to say to you back in the old days, that if I didn’t succeed I still thought that what I had worked on would be continued. Not directly, but one isn’t alone in believing things that are true. And what does one matter as a person then? I feel so strongly that the story of people is like the story of wheat, if one isn’t sown in the earth to germinate there, what does it matter, one is milled in order to become bread.
The difference between happiness and unhappiness, both are necessary and useful, and death or passing away … it’s so relative — and so is life.
Even in the face of an illness that’s unsettling or worrying, this belief is absolutely unshaken.
I’d have liked to see those Meuniers.
Well, let it be understood that if I were to write to you again expressly and briefly that I wanted to come to Paris, I would have a reason for that, which I’ve explained above, that in the meantime there’s no great hurry, and I’m quite confident, after warning you, to wait for the winter and the crisis which may recur then. But if I have another fit of religious exaltation, then no delay, I’d like to leave immediately without giving a reason. Only we have no right, at least it would be indiscreet, to meddle in the nuns’ management or even to criticize them. They have their own belief and ways of doing good to others, sometimes it works very well. But I don’t warn you lightly. And it isn’t to regain more freedom or something else that I don’t have. So let’s wait very calmly until an opportunity presents itself to find a place.
It’s a great advance that my stomach is working well, and so I don’t think that I’ll be as sensitive to the cold. Then I know what to do when the weather is bad, as I have this plan to copy several things that I like.
I’d very much like to see Millet reproductions in schools, I think there would be children who became painters if only they saw good things.
Give my warm regards to Jo, and handshake, more soon.
Ever yours,
Vincent
811 | Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, on or about Monday, 21 October 1889 | To Anna van Gogh-Carbentus (D)
Dear Mother,
I wanted to write to you one more time while you’re still in the old house, to thank you for your last letter and the news of Cor’s safe passage.
I believe that he’ll work there with enthusiasm and have some enjoyment in his life now and then. What he writes to you reminds me of what my friend Gauguin told me about Panama and Brazil. I didn’t know that Isaäcson is also going to the Transvaal. You know that I never met him personally — but I did write to him recently because he more or less intended to write about my work in a Dutch newspaper, which I asked him not to do, but at the same time to thank him for his loyal sympathy, because from the beginning we often thought about each other’s work and have the same ideas about our old Dutch and the present-day French painters.
And I also like De Haan’s work a lot.
Now I can inform you that what I promised you is entirely ready — that’s to say five of my landscape studies and a small portrait of myself and a study of an interior. I’m afraid it will disappoint you, though, and a few things seem unimportant and ugly to you. Wil and you can do with them as you wish, and give the other sisters a couple of them if you like, that’s why I’m sending a couple more.
But this is something that doesn’t concern me, only I wanted to make sure that there were things of mine in the family, and am only trying to form a few things into a sort of ensemble that I would prefer to see stay together so that in time it becomes rather more important. Only, I can understand in advance that you won’t have room for all 6, and so do with them as you wish. But I advise you to keep them together, at least for a while, since then you’ll be better able to judge which you like best in the long run.
I’m sorry that Aunt Mina is suffering so, as you write; it’s a good many years since I saw her.
I certainly agree with you that it’s a good deal better for Theo like this than before, and just hope everything goes well with Jo’s confinement, then they’ll be set up for quite a while. It’s always good to experience how a human being comes into the world, and that leads many characters to more peace and truth.
The countryside here is very beautiful in the autumn, and the yellow leaves. I’m just sorry there aren’t more vineyards here, though I did go and paint one a few hours away. What happens is a large field turns entirely purple and red, like the Virginia creeper at home, and next to it a square of yellow and a little further on a patch that’s still green
.
All that beneath a sky of magnificent blue, and lilac rocks in the distance. Last year I had a better opportunity to paint that than now.
I would have liked to include something like that with what I’m sending you, but I’ll have to owe it to you till another year.
You’ll see from the little portrait of myself that I include that although I saw Paris, London and so many other large cities, and that for years at a time, I still look more or less like a peasant from Zundert, Toon or Piet Prins, say, and I sometimes imagine that I feel and think like that too, only the peasants are of more use in the world. It’s only when they have all the rest that people get a feeling for, need for paintings, books etc. So in my own estimation I definitely reckon myself below the peasants. Anyway, I plough on my canvases as they do in their fields.
Otherwise things are wretched enough in our profession — that’s always been so, in fact — but it’s really very bad at present.
And yet there have never been such prices paid for paintings as nowadays.
What keeps us working is friendship for one another and love of nature, and anyway, when one’s taken the trouble to become master of the brush, one can’t stop painting.
Compared with others I’m still among the fortunate ones, but just imagine what it must be like when someone starts in the profession and has to give it up before he’s done anything, and there are many like that.
Reckon on 10 years needed to learn the profession, anyone who gets through 6, say, and pays for them and then has to give up, if you knew how miserable that is and how many there are like that. And the high prices one hears about, paid for work by painters who are dead and weren’t paid like that in life, it’s a sort of tulip mania from which the living painters get more disadvantage than advantage. And it will also pass like tulip mania.
One can reason, however, that although tulip mania is long gone and forgotten, the flower growers have remained and will remain. And so I regard painting in the same way, that what remains is a sort of flower growing. And as to that I reckon myself fortunate to be in it. But the rest!
These things to prove to you than one mustn’t be under any illusions. My letter must go off — at the moment I’m working on a portrait of one of the patients here. It’s strange that when one is with them for some time and is used to them, one no longer thinks about their being mad. Embraced in thought by
Your loving
Vincent
816 | Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, on or about Sunday, 3 November 1889 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
Enclosed I’m sending you a list of colours I need as soon as possible.
You gave me very great pleasure by sending me those Millets, I’m working on them zealously. I was growing flabby by dint of never seeing anything artistic, and this revives me. I’ve finished The evening and am working on The diggers and the man who’s putting his jacket on, no. 30 canvases, and The sower, smaller. The evening is in a range of violets and soft lilacs, with light from the lamp pale citron, then the orange glow of the fire and the man in red ochre. You will see it. It seems to me that doing painting after these Millet drawings is much rather to translate them into another language than to copy them. Apart from that I have a rain effect on the go, and an evening effect with tall pines.
And also a leaf-fall.
My health is very good — except often a lot of melancholy however — but I feel much much better than when I came here, and even better than in Paris. Also, as for the work the ideas are becoming firmer, it seems to me. But then I don’t quite know if you’d like what I’m doing now. For despite what you say in your previous letter, that the search for style often harms other qualities, the fact is that I feel myself greatly driven to seek style, if you like, but I mean by that a more manly and more deliberate drawing. If that will make me more like Bernard or Gauguin, I can’t do anything about it. But am inclined to believe that in the long run you’d get used to it.
For yes, one must feel the wholeness of a country — isn’t that what distinguishes a Cézanne from something else. And Guillaumin, whom you mention, he has so much style and a personal way of drawing. Anyway, I’ll do as I can.
Now that most of the leaves have fallen the landscape looks more like the north, and then I really feel that if I went back to the north I would see it more clearly than before.
Health is a big thing, and a lot depends on it, as regards work too.
Fortunately those abominable nightmares no longer torment me.
I hope to go to Arles in the next few days.
I’d very much like Jo to see The evening, I think that I’ll send you a consignment shortly, but it’s drying very badly because of the dampness of the studio. Here the houses have scarcely any cellar or foundations, and one feels the damp more than in the north.
At home they’ll have moved by now, I’ll add 6 canvases for them to the next consignment. Is it necessary to have them framed, perhaps not, for it isn’t worth it. Above all, don’t frame the studies I send you from time to time, that can be done later, pointless for them to take up too much room.
I’ve also done a canvas for Mr Peyron, a view of the house with a tall pine tree.
I hope that your health and Jo’s continue to be good.
I’m so happy that you’re no longer alone, and that everything’s more normal than before.
Is Gauguin back, and what’s Bernard doing?
More soon, I shake your hand firmly, and Jo’s, and our friends’, and believe me
Ever yours,
Vincent
I’m trying to simplify the list of colours as much as possible — thus I very often use the ochres as in the old days.
I know very well that the studies drawn with long, sinuous lines from the last consignment weren’t what they ought to become, however I dare urge you to believe that in landscapes one will continue to mass things by means of a drawing style that seeks to express the entanglement of the masses. Thus, do you remember Delacroix’s landscape, Jacob’s struggle with the angel? And there are others of his! For example the cliffs, and the very flowers you speak of sometimes. Bernard really has found perfect things in there. Anyway, don’t be too swift to adopt a prejudice against it.
Anyway, you’ll see that there’s already more character in a large landscape with pines, red ochre trunks defined by a black line than in the previous ones.
820 | Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, on or about Tuesday, 19 November 1889 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
Thanks for your letter, and am very glad that you write that Jo is staying well. The great event is nearing now, I think of you both very often. For you, when you write about seeing so many paintings that you would wish not to see any for a while, this clearly proves that you’ve had too many business worries. And then — yes there’s something in life other than paintings, and this something else one neglects and nature seems to avenge itself then, and besides, fate is bent on thwarting us. I think that in these circumstances one must keep to the paintings as much as duty demands but no more. As for the Vingtistes, here’s what I’d like to exhibit:
1 and 2
the two pendants of sunflowers
3
The ivy, upright
4
Orchard in blossom (the one Tanguy’s exhibiting at the moment, with poplars crossing the canvas)
5
The red vineyard
6
Wheatfield, rising sun, which I’m working on at the moment.
Gauguin wrote me a very kind letter and speaks animatedly of De Haan and of their rough-and-ready life at the seaside.
Bernard also wrote to me, complaining about a heap of things while resigning himself like the good boy he is, but not happy at all; with all his talent, all his work, all his sobriety, it appears that home is often a hell for him.
Isaäcson’s letter gives me great pleasure, I enclose my reply which you will read — the ideas are beginning to link together a little more
calmly, but as you’ll see from it I don’t know if I should continue to paint or leave painting alone.
If I continue, certainly I’m in agreement with you that perhaps it’s better to attack things with simplicity than to seek abstractions.
And I’m not an admirer of Gauguin’s Christ in the Garden of Olives for example, a croquis of which he sent me. Then as for Bernard’s, he promises me a photograph of it, I don’t know, but I fear that his biblical compositions will make me wish for something else. Lately I’ve seen women picking and gathering olives, no way for me to get a model, so I didn’t do anything about it. However now isn’t the moment to ask me to approve of friend G’s composition — and friend Bernard has probably never seen an olive tree. Now he therefore avoids conceiving the least idea of the possible and of the reality of things, and that isn’t the way to synthesize. No, never have I got involved in their Biblical interpretations. I said that Rembrandt and Delacroix had done this admirably, that I liked that even better than the primitives, but then stop. I don’t want to begin on that chapter again. If I remain here I wouldn’t try to paint a Christ in the Garden of Olives, but in fact the olive picking as it’s still seen today, and then giving the correct proportions of the human figure in it, that would perhaps make people think of it all the same. Before I’ve done more serious studies than I have up to now I don’t have the right to get involved in this. And then the Pre-Raphaelites went a long way in that category of ideas. When Millais painted his Light of the World it was serious in another way. Really, there’s no comparison. Not to mention Holman Hunt and others, Pinwell and Rossetti.
Ever Yours Page 106