I hope that the painting of the women in the olive trees will be a little to your taste — I sent the drawing of it to Gauguin just recently and he told me that he thought it good, and he knows my work well, and he isn’t embarrassed to say so when it isn’t right. You would naturally be quite free to take another of them in its place if you wished, but in the long run I almost dare believe that you’d return to this one. It hasn’t been at all cold here lately, and next month I’ll go and work outdoors with all my strength. Ah, speaking of the difference between the city and the fields, what a master Millet is. That fellow, so wise, so moved, does the countryside in such a way that even in town one continues to feel it. And then he has something unique and so good right down to his depths that it consoles one to look at his works, and one wonders if he did them this way expressly to console us. Now, better than in the beginning, I see the real countryside of Provence — and as regards people it’s so very very much the same thing as in our native country, while it manifests itself quite differently, while the farming practices and labours of the fields aren’t the same as in our northern heaths and fields. I think a lot about Holland and about our youth back then — precisely because here I feel right in the middle of the countryside. However I’m getting old, you know, and it seems to me that life passes more quickly and the responsibilities are more serious, the question of working to make up for lost time more critical, the day more difficult to do and the future more mysterious, and my word a little more gloomy too.
One of these days I also hope to write a line to Mother, we all owe a great deal to you, to you who care for her so faithfully and will keep her for us for as long as possible.
I imagine that Theo is probably going to be very happy one of these days, only I do have something of an idea that the days of vigil before and during have their great anxieties. Which, moreover, I cannot completely refrain from sharing. And from what he writes to me, Jo is so brave and so lively. Anyway, that is moreover how one should always take things. I like friend Gauguin so much because he has found the means to make both children and paintings at the same time, at the moment he’s horribly in distress and has this worry that one of his children has had a misfortune and he not there and in no condition to come to its aid.
Have you met Emile Bernard now — I’d very much like him to come and see some of my canvases one of these days, I ought to write to him, but just now I’m expecting a letter from him at any moment. He must have a lot of difficulty getting by, he’s a complete Parisian by birth, that one, and he’s an example of vivacity for me, he looks as if he comes straight out of Daudet, but then much more immature, and naturally much more incomplete.
However my dear sister, how much more practical and solid are the ideas of doctors, mechanics, in fact of heaps of people, than those of artists. I myself often sigh deeply that I should have been better than I am. I’ll shut up quickly so as not to discourage myself. Anyway, one can’t retrace one’s steps, and the steps one has taken have a lot of influence on the future. I hope that you’ll see lots of beautiful things, and above all that you’re well now.
Have you read anything these last few days or lately: I haven’t at all.
If you have a spare half hour I recommend myself heartily to have news from you. I kiss you affectionately in thought.
Ever yours,
Vincent
Above all, tell me what you think of Isaäcson, myself I think very highly of him, and heartily recommend him to you.
849 | Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Saturday, 1 February 1890 | To John Peter Russell (F)
My dear friend Russell
Today I’m sending you a little roll of photographs after Millet which perhaps you may not know.
In any event, it’s to recall us, my brother and myself, to your good memory. Do you know that my brother has since married and that any day now he’s expecting his firstborn? May it go well — he has a very nice Dutch wife.
How it pleases me to write to you after a long silence. Do you remember the time when, almost simultaneously, you I think first and I afterwards, met our friend Gauguin? He’s still struggling on — and alone, or almost alone, like the good fellow he is. Am sure, though, that you don’t forget him.
He and I are still friends, I can assure you, but perhaps you’re not unaware that I myself am ill, and have more than once had serious nervous crises and delirium. This was why, having had to go into an asylum for the insane, he and I separated. But prior to that, how many times we talked about you together! Gauguin is currently still with one of my fellow-countrymen called De Haan, and De Haan praises him a great deal and doesn’t find it at all bad to be with him.
You will find article on canvases of mine at the Vingtistes, I assure you that I myself owe a lot to things that Gauguin told me as regards drawing, and hold his way of loving nature in high, very high esteem. For in my opinion he’s worth even more as a man than as an artist. Are things going well with you? And are you still working a lot?
Although being ill isn’t a cause for joy, I nevertheless have no right to complain about it, for it seems to me that nature sees to it that illness is a means of getting us back on our feet, of healing us, rather than an absolute evil.
If you ever come to Paris, take one of my canvases from my brother’s place if you wish, if you still have the idea of making a collection for your native country one day. You’ll remember that I’ve already spoken to you about it, that it was my great desire to give you one for this purpose. How is our friend MacKnight? If he’s still with you, or if there are others with you whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, give them my warm regards. Above all, please remember me to Mrs Russell and believe me, with a handshake in thought,
Yours truly,
Vincent van Gogh
c/o Doctor Peyron
St-Rémy en Provence.
850 | Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Saturday, 1 February 1890 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
Today I’ve just received your good news that you’re a father at last, that the most critical moment has passed for Jo, finally that the little one is well. It does me, too, more good and gives me more pleasure than I could express in words. Bravo — and how pleased Mother is going to be. I also received a quite long and very serene letter from her the day before yesterday. Finally what I’ve certainly hoped for so much for a long time has happened. No need to tell you that I’ve often thought of the two of you the past few days, and it touched me greatly that Jo still had the kindness to write to me the night before. How brave and calm she is in her danger, that touched me greatly. Well this contributes a great deal to making me forget these last few days when I was ill, then I no longer know where I am and my mind wanders.
I was extremely surprised by the article on my paintings that you sent me, no need to tell you that I hope to go on thinking that I don’t paint like that, but rather I do see from it how I ought to paint. For the article is quite right in the sense that it indicates the gap to be filled, and I think that basically the writer writes it rather to guide not only me but also the other Impressionists, and even rather to make the breach in the right place. So he proposes a collective self, as ideal for the others as it is to me. He tells me simply that there’s something good here and there, if you like, in my very imperfect work as well, and there’s the consolatory side which I appreciate and which I hope I’m grateful for. Only it must be understood that I don’t have a strong enough back to carry out a job like that, and by concentrating the article on me, no need to tell you how I feel mired in flattery, and in my opinion it’s as exaggerated as what a certain article by Isaäcson said on your account about you, that at present artists declined to argue, and that a serious movement was silently being created in the little shop on boulevard Montmartre. I admit that it’s difficult to say, to express oneself otherwise — just as one can’t paint as one sees — and it’s therefore not to criticize Isaäcson’s boldness or that of the other critic, but as regards us, well, we’re posing a
little for THE model, and my word, that’s a duty and a job like any other. So if you or I were to gain some reputation or other, it’s a matter of trying to retain a certain calm, and if possible presence of mind. Why not say, WITH MORE REASON, what he says about my sunflowers about Quost’s magnificent and so-complete Hollyhocks and about his yellow irises, about Jeannin’s splendid peonies? And you, like me, foresee that being praised must have its other side, its reverse of the coin. But gladly I’m very grateful for the article, or rather ‘glad at heart’, as the revue song has it, since one can need it as one can truly need a medal. Then an article like that has its own merit as a critical work of art, as such I consider it worthy of respect, and the writer must use exalted tones, synthesize his conclusions &c.
But right from the start we must think of not putting your young family too much into the artistic environment. Old Goupil ran his household well in the Paris undergrowth, and I think that you’ll still think of him very often. Things have changed so much, for today his cold aloofness would be shocking, but his strength to weather so many storms, that though was something.
Gauguin proposed, very vaguely it’s true, founding a studio in his name, he, De Haan and I, but said that first he’s pursuing his Tonkin project vigorously, and he appears to have cooled about continuing to paint, I don’t know exactly why. And he’s the sort of man who would scarper to Tonkin, indeed, he has a certain need for expansion and finds the artist’s life — and to an extent he’s right — a mean one. With his experiences of several journeys, what can one say to him? So I hope that he’ll feel that you and I are indeed his friends without counting on us too much, which he doesn’t anyway. He writes with a lot of reserve, more serious than the other year. I’ve just written a line to Russell once again to remind him about Gauguin a little, for I know that Russell is very serious and strong as a man. And if I got back together with G., then we’d have need of Russell. Gauguin and Russell are people with a rustic background; wild no, but with a certain innate gentleness of the far-off fields, probably much more than you or I, that’s how I find them.
One must — it is true — believe in it a little from time to time in order to see it. If, for myself, I wanted to continue, let’s call it TRANSLATING certain pages of Millet, then in order to prevent people, not criticizing me, I couldn’t care about that, but bothering or obstructing me under the pretext that I’m manufacturing copies — then among the artists I need people like Russell or Gauguin to carry this task to a successful conclusion, to make something serious of it. To do the things by Millet that you sent, for example, the choice of which I consider completely right — I have scruples of conscience, and I took the pile of photographs and I sent them unhesitatingly to Russell so that I shouldn’t see them again until I’d thought long and hard about it. I don’t want to do it before first having heard something of your opinion, then also that of certain others on those that you’ll soon receive. Without that I’d have scruples of conscience, a fear that it might be plagiarism. And not now, but in a few months, I’ll try to get Russell’s honest opinion about the usefulness of the thing. In any case, Russell has outbursts, he gets angry, he says something true, and that’s what I need sometimes. You know that I found the Virgin so dazzling that I didn’t dare look. Immediately I felt a — ‘not yet’. Now the illness makes me very sensitive, and for the moment I don’t feel capable of continuing these ‘translations’ when it would involve such masterpieces. I’m stopping with the sower, which is in progress and isn’t coming along as would be desirable. However, being ill, I thought a lot about continuing this work, and that when I do it I do it calmly, you’ll see it soon when I send the five or 6 finished canvases. I hope that Mr Lauzet will come, I very much want to make his acquaintance. I trust in his opinion when he says that it’s Provence, there he touches on the difficulty, and like the other fellow he points out a thing to be done rather than one done. The landscapes with the cypresses! Ah, that wouldn’t be easy. Aurier feels it too when he says that even black is a colour, and about their flame-like aspect. I’m thinking of it but I don’t dare do it either, and say like Isaäcson, who is cautious, that I don’t yet feel that we’ve reached that point. It requires a certain dose of inspiration, a ray from on high which doesn’t belong to us, to do beautiful things. When I’d done those sunflowers I was seeking the contrary and yet the equivalent, and I said, it’s the cypress. I’m stopping there — I’m a little anxious about a woman friend who is still ill, it seems, and to whom I’d like to go, she’s the one whose portrait I did in yellow and black, and she had changed so much. It’s nervous crises and the complications of a premature change of life, very difficult in short. She looked like an old grandfather last time. I had promised to come back in a fortnight and was taken ill again myself.
Anyway, for me the good news you’ve told me and that article and a heap of things mean that I’m personally feeling completely well today.
Now in thought I remain with you all as I finish my letter. May Jo long remain for us all that she is. Now as for the little one, why then don’t you call him Theo in memory of our father, that would certainly give me so much pleasure. Handshake.
Ever yours,
Vincent
I’m sorry too that Mr Salles didn’t find you. Thanks again to Wil for her kind letter, I’d have liked to reply to it today but I’ll put it back until a few days from now, tell her that Mother has written me another long letter from Amsterdam. How happy she’s going to be too.
If you see him, for the time being thank Mr Aurier very much for his article, naturally I’ll send you a line for him, and a study.
853 | Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Sunday, 9 or Monday, 10 February 1890 | To Albert Aurier (F)
Dear Mr Aurier,
Thank you very much for your article in the Mercure de France, which greatly surprised me. I like it very much as a work of art in itself, I feel that you create colours with your words; anyway I rediscover my canvases in your article, but better than they really are — richer, more significant. However, I feel ill at ease when I reflect that what you say should be applied to others rather than to me. For example, to Monticelli above all. Speaking of ‘he is — as far as I know — the only painter who perceives the coloration of things with such intensity, with such a metallic, gem-like quality’ — if you will please go and see a particular bouquet by Monticelli at my brother’s place — bouquet in white, forget-me-not blue and orange — then you will feel what I mean. But for a long time the best, the most astonishing Monticellis, have been in Scotland, in England. In a museum in the north however — the one in Lille I think, there must still be a marvel by him, far richer and certainly no less French than Watteau’s Departure for Cythera. At present Mr Lauzet is in the process of reproducing around thirty Monticellis. Here you have it, as far as I know there is no colourist who comes so straight and directly from Delacroix; and yet it is likely, in my opinion, that Monticelli only had Delacroix’s colour theories at second hand; in particular he had them from Diaz and Ziem. It seems to me that his, Monticelli’s, artistic temperament is exactly that of the author of the Decameron — Boccaccio — a melancholy man, an unhappy, rather resigned man, seeing high society’s party pass by, the lovers of his day, painting them, analyzing them, he — the outcast. Oh! He does not imitate Boccaccio any more than Henri Leys imitated the primitives. Well, this was to say that things seem to have strayed onto my name that you would do better to say of Monticelli, to whom I owe a great deal. Next I owe a great deal to Paul Gauguin, with whom I worked for a few months in Arles, and whom, besides, I already knew in Paris.
Gauguin, that curious artist, that stranger whose bearing and gaze vaguely recall Rembrandt’s Portrait of a man in the La Caze gallery, that friend who likes to make one feel that a good painting should be the equivalent of a good deed, not that he says so, but anyway it is difficult to spend time with him without thinking of a certain moral responsibility. A few days before we parted, when illness forced me to enter an asylum,
I tried to paint ‘his empty place’.
It is a study of his armchair of dark, red-brown wood, the seat of greenish straw, and in the absent person’s place a lighted candlestick and some modern novels. If you have the opportunity, as a memento of him, please go and look a little at this study again, which is entirely in broken tones of green and red. You may perhaps then realize that your article would have been more accurate and — it would seem to me — thus more powerful — if in dealing with the question of the future ‘painting of the tropics’ and the question of colour, you had done justice to Gauguin and Monticelli before talking about me. For the share that falls or will fall to me will remain, I assure you, very secondary.
And then, I would also have something else to ask of you. Supposing that the two canvases of sunflowers that are presently at the Vingtistes have certain qualities of colour, and then also that they express an idea symbolizing ‘gratitude’. Is this any different from so many paintings of flowers that are more skilfully painted and which people do not yet sufficiently appreciate, père Quost’s Hollyhocks, Yellow Irises? The magnificent bouquets of peonies which Jeannin produces in abundance? You see, it seems to me so difficult to separate Impressionism from other things, I cannot see the point of so much sectarian thinking as we have seen these last few years, but I fear its absurdity.
And, in closing, I declare that I do not understand that you spoke of Meissonier’s infamies. It is perhaps from that excellent fellow Mauve that I have inherited a boundless admiration for Meissonier; Mauve was endless in his praise for Troyon and Meissonier — a strange combination.
This is to draw your attention to how much people abroad admire, without attaching the slightest importance to what unfortunately so often divides artists in France. What Mauve often repeated was something like this, ‘if you want to do colour you must also know how to draw a fireside or an interior like Meissonier’.
Ever Yours Page 109