[Sketch 877A]
877A. Doctor Gachet
the head with a white cap, very fair, very light, the hands also in light carnation, a blue frock coat and a cobalt blue background, leaning on a red table on which are a yellow book and a foxglove plant with purple flowers. It’s in the same sentiment as the portrait of myself that I took when I left for here.
Mr Gachet is absolutely fanatical about this portrait, and wants me to do one of him if I can, absolutely like that, which I also wish to do. He has now also come to understand the last portrait of the Arlésienne, one of which you have in pink — he comes back all the time, when he comes to see the studies, to these two portraits and he accepts them fully, but fully as they are. I hope to send you a portrait of him soon. Then I painted two studies at his house which I gave him last week. One aloes with marigolds and cypresses, then last Sunday white roses, vines and a white figure in it.
I’ll very probably also do the portrait of his daughter, who is 19, and with whom I can easily imagine Jo will quickly make friends.
So I’m looking forward to doing the portraits of all of you in the open air, yours, Jo’s and the little one’s.
I still haven’t found anything interesting in the way of a possible studio, and yet I’ll have to take a room to put in the canvases which are surplus at your apartment and which are at Tanguy’s. For they still need a great deal of retouching. But anyway, I live from day to day — the weather is so fine. And my health is good, I go to bed at 9 o’clock but I get up at 5 o’clock most of the time.
I have hopes that it won’t be disagreeable to be together again after a long absence. And I also hope that I’ll continue to feel much surer of my brush than before I went to Arles. And Mr Gachet says that he would consider it highly improbable that it should recur, and that it’s going completely well. But he, too, complains bitterly of the state of things everywhere in the villages where the least foreigner has come, that life there becomes so horribly expensive. He says that he’s astonished that the people where I am lodge and feed me for that, and that I’m still fortunate, compared to others who have come and whom he’s known. That if you come, and Jo and the little one, you can’t do better than stay at this same inn. Now nothing, absolutely nothing keeps us here but Gachet — but the latter will remain a friend, I’d assume. I feel that at his place I can do not too bad a painting every time I go there, and he’ll certainly continue to invite me to dinner each Sunday or Monday.
But up to now, however agreeable it is to do a painting there, it’s a chore for me to dine and lunch there for, the excellent man goes to the trouble of making dinners in which there are 4 or 5 courses, which is as abominable for him as it is for me, for he certainly doesn’t have a strong stomach. What has held me back a little from saying something about it is that I see that, for him, it reminds him of the days of yore when people had family dinners, which anyway we too well know.
But the modern idea of eating one, at most two courses is, however, certainly progress, and a healthy return to true antiquity.
Anyway père Gachet is a lot, yes a lot like you and I. I was pleased to read in your letter that Mr Peyron asked for news of me when he wrote to you. I’m going to write to him this very evening that things are going well, for he was very kind to me and I’ll certainly not forget him. Dumoulin, the one who has Japanese paintings at the Champ de Mars, has come back here, and I very much hope to meet him.
What did Gauguin say about the last portrait of the Arlésienne that’s done after his drawing? You’ll end up seeing, I would think, that it’s one of the least bad things I’ve done. Gachet has a Guillaumin, naked woman on a bed, which I consider very beautiful, he also has a very old Guillaumin portrait by him, very different from ours, dark but interesting.
But his house, you will see, is full, full like an antique dealer’s, of things that aren’t always interesting, it’s terrible, even. But in all of this there’s this good aspect, that there would always be what I need there for arranging flowers or still lifes. I’ve done studies for him, to show him that should he not be paid in money we’ll nevertheless still compensate him for what he does for us.
Do you know an etching by Bracquemond, the portrait of Comte, it’s a masterpiece.
I’d also need as soon as possible 12 tubes zinc white from Tasset and 2 medium tubes geranium lake.
Then as soon as you could send them I’d be absolutely set upon copying all of Bargue’s Etudes au fusain again, you know the nude figures. I can draw them quite quickly, let’s say the 60 sheets that there are in a month, so you might send a copy on loan, I’d make sure not to stain or dirty it. If I neglected to keep on studying proportions and the nude I’d find myself in a bad position later on. Don’t think this absurd or futile.
Gachet also told me that if I wanted to give him great pleasure he would like me to redo for him the copy of Delacroix’s Pietà, which he gazed at for a long time. Later he’ll probably give me a hand with the models, I feel that he’ll understand us completely, and that he’ll work with you and me without reservation, with all his intelligence, for the love of art for art’s sake. And he’ll perhaps have me do some portraits. Now to have clients for portraits one must be able to show different ones that one has done. That’s the only possibility I can see of placing something. But however, however, certain canvases will one day find collectors. Only I think that all the fuss created by the large prices paid lately for Millets &c. has further worsened the state of things as regards the chance one has of merely recouping one’s painting expenses. It’s enough to make one dizzy. So why are we thinking about it, it would stupefy us. Better still, perhaps, to seek a little friendship and live from day to day. I hope that the little one will continue to be well, and you two also until we see each other again, more soon, I shake your hand firmly.
Vincent
879 | Auvers-sur-Oise, Thursday, 5 June 1890 | To Willemien van Gogh (F)
My dear sister,
I ought to have replied to your two letters long since, which I received while still in St-Rémy, but the journey, work and a host of new emotions up to today made me put it off from one day to the next. It interested me very much that you’ve cared for patients at the Walloon hospital, that’s certainly how one learns heaps of things, the best and most necessary that one can learn, and I myself regret that I know nothing, in any event not enough, about all that.
It was a great happiness for me to see Theo again, to meet Jo and the little one. Theo was coughing more than when I left him more than 2 years ago, but while talking and when I saw him at close hand, however, I considered him certainly rather changed for the better, all things considered, and Jo is full of both good sense and good will. The little one is not sickly, but not strong either. It’s a good system that if one lives in a large town the woman gives birth in the country and spends the first months there with the little one. But there you are, for the first time especially, as the birth is frightening, they certainly couldn’t have done better or otherwise than they did. I hope that they’ll come here to Auvers for a few days soon.
For me the journey and the rest up to now have gone well, and coming back to the north distracts me a lot. Then I’ve found in Dr Gachet a ready-made friend and something like a new brother would be — so much do we resemble each other physically, and morally too. He’s very nervous and very bizarre himself, and has rendered much friendship and many services to the artists of the new school, as much as was in his power. I did his portrait the other day and am also going to paint that of his daughter, who is 19. He lost his wife a few years ago, which has greatly contributed to breaking him. We were friends, so to speak, immediately, and I’ll go and spend one or two days a week at his house working in his garden, of which I’ve already painted two studies, one with plants from the south, aloes, cypresses, marigolds, the other with white roses, vines and a figure. Then a bouquet of buttercups. With that I have a larger painting of the village church — an effect in which the building appears pur
plish against a sky of a deep and simple blue of pure cobalt, the stained-glass windows look like ultramarine blue patches, the roof is violet and in part orange. In the foreground a little flowery greenery and some sunny pink sand. It’s again almost the same thing as the studies I did in Nuenen of the old tower and the cemetery. Only now the colour is probably more expressive, more sumptuous. But in the last few days at St-Rémy I worked like a man in a frenzy, especially on bouquets of flowers. Roses and violet Irises.
For Theo and Jo’s little one I brought back a rather large painting — which they’ve hung above the piano — white almond blossoms — big branches on a sky-blue background, and in their apartment they also have a new portrait of an Arlésienne. My friend Dr Gachet is decidedly enthusiastic about this latest portrait of the Arlésienne, one of which I also have myself, and about a portrait of myself, and that gave me pleasure, since he’ll drive me to do figure work and I hope he’ll find me a few interesting models to do. What I’m most passionate about, much much more than all the rest in my profession — is the portrait, the modern portrait. I seek it by way of colour, and am certainly not alone in seeking it in this way. I WOULD LIKE, you see I’m far from saying that I can do all this, but anyway I’m aiming at it, I would like to do portraits which would look like apparitions to people a century later. So I don’t try to do us by photographic resemblance but by our passionate expressions, using as a means of expression and intensification of the character our science and modern taste for colour. Thus the portrait of Dr Gachet shows you a face the colour of an overheated and sun-scorched brick, with a reddish head of hair, a white cap, in surroundings of landscape, blue background of hills, his suit is ultramarine blue, this brings out the face and makes it paler, despite the fact that it’s brick-coloured. The hands, hands of an obstetrician, are paler than the face.
Before him on a red garden table yellow novels and a dark purple foxglove flower. My portrait of myself is almost like this too, but the blue is a fine southern blue and the suit is light lilac. The portrait of the Arlésienne is of a colourless and matt flesh tone, the eyes calm and very simple, the clothing black, the background pink, and she’s leaning her elbow on a green table with green books. But in the one Theo has, the clothing is pink, the background yellow-white, and the front of the open bodice is of white muslin, verging on the green. In all these bright colours, only the hair, the eyelashes and the eyes form dark patches.
[Sketch 879A]
879A–B (left to right). Marie Ginoux (‘The Arlésienne’); sketch after Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Inter artes et naturam (Between art and nature)
I can’t manage to do a good croquis of it.
At the exhibition there’s a superb painting by Puvis de Chavannes.
[Sketch 879B]
The figures are dressed in bright colours and one doesn’t know if they’re costumes from now or clothes from antiquity; two women are talking (also in long, simple dresses). On one side, artistic-looking men on the other, in the centre a woman, her child in her arms, is picking a flower from an apple tree in blossom. One figure will be forget-me-not blue, another bright lemon, another soft pink, another white, another violet, the ground a meadow dotted with little white and yellow flowers. Blue distance with a white town and a river. All humanity, all nature simplified, but how it could be, if it isn’t already.
This description doesn’t say anything — but by seeing the painting, by looking at it for a long time one would think one was present at an inevitable but benevolent rebirth of all things that one might have believed in, that one might have desired, a strange and happy meeting of the very distant days of antiquity with raw modernity.
I was also pleased to see André Bonger again; he looked strong and calm, and my word reasoned with great accuracy on artistic things, it pleased me very much that he’d come during the days when I was in Paris.
Thank you again for your letters, more soon, I kiss you in thought.
Ever yours,
Vincent
889 | Auvers-sur-Oise, Tuesday, 17 June 1890 | To Theo van Gogh (F)
My dear Theo,
Thanks much for your letter of the day before yesterday, and for the 50-franc note it contained. I waited for the consignment of colours and canvas from Tasset, which has just arrived, and for which I also thank you very much, to answer the question regarding the difference between Tanguy and Tasset colours. Well, it’s absolutely the same thing, in the Tasset tubes there are some from time to time, especially for the white, that aren’t filled properly. However, when Tanguy for his part also fills them badly too, — certainly without doing so deliberately — the tubes of cobalt, for example like the one I have in my hands — so I’m talking only based on the same fact that exists on both sides — I just don’t see why one would have any very serious things to reproach the other with.
Is there a difference in the invoices? That’s what would interest me more. And then in the colours there is adulteration as in wines. How can one judge correctly when, like myself, one knows nothing of chemistry. I’d nevertheless consider it very good that, should père Tanguy be going to extraordinary lengths for us by putting his time and his effort into packing up and dispatching the canvases that are in his attic, then you should get paint from him, even if it’s a little worse than the other. It would only be fair.
But what he says about a difference in the tubes, I repeat, it’s pure imagination on his part. And the reason why we went to Tasset’s is that the latter’s colours are in general less insipid. Now this difference isn’t important, and if Tanguy has the good will to pack up the canvases stored at his place — fair that he has the order for the colours.
It was with pleasure that I made the acquaintance of the Dutchman, who came yesterday. He looks much too nice to be doing painting in the current conditions. If he nevertheless persists in wanting to do it I told him that he would do well to go to Brittany with Gauguin and De Haan, because he’ll live there on 3 francs a day instead of 5 francs, and will have good company. That I myself also hope very much to join them, since Gauguin is going there. I was really pleased to learn that they’re going to renew their attempt there. Certainly you’re right that it’s better for Gauguin than staying in Paris. Very pleased, too, that he likes the head of that Arlésienne. I really hope to do a few etchings of subjects from the south, let’s say 6, since I can print them free of charge at Mr Gachet’s; he’s very willing to run them off for nothing if I do them. It’s certainly a thing that must be done, and we’ll act in such a way that in some way it forms a sequel to the Lauzet-Monticelli publication, if you approve. And Gauguin will probably engrave a few of his canvases in combination with me. His painting which belongs to you, and especially for the rest of the Martinique things.
Which plates Mr Gachet will also print off for us. Of course we’ll leave him free to run off copies for himself. Mr Gachet will come one day to see my canvases in Paris, and then we’d choose the ones to be engraved. At the moment I have two studies on the go — one a bouquet of wild plants, thistles, ears of wheat, leaves of different types of greenery. One almost red, the other very green, the other yellowing.
The second study a white house amid greenery with a star in the night sky and an orange light at the window and dark greenery and a sombre pink note.
That’s all for the moment. I have an idea for doing a more important canvas of Daubigny’s house and garden, of which I already have a small study.
I was really pleased that Gauguin is going off with De Haan again. Naturally this Madagascar plan seems to me hardly possible to carry out, I would much prefer to see him leave for Tonkin. If, however, he went to Madagascar I’d be able to follow him there. For one should go there in twos or threes. But we aren’t there yet. Certainly the future is very much in the tropics for painting, either in Java or in Martinique, Brazil or Australia, and not here, but you feel that it hasn’t been proved to me that you, Gauguin or I are those people of that future. But certainly once again, there and not here, one
day, probably soon, one will see Impressionists working who will hold their own with Millet, Pissarro. Believing in that is natural, but going there without the means of existence or a relationship with Paris, a mad impulse when for years on end one has rusted away while vegetating here. Well. Thanks again, and good handshake to you and your wife, and good health to the little one, whom I’m really longing to see again.
Yours truly,
Vincent.
896 | Auvers-sur-Oise, Wednesday, 2 July 1890 | To Theo van Gogh and Jo van Gogh-Bonger (F)
My dear Theo and dear Jo.
I’ve just received the letter in which you say that the child is ill; I’d very much like to come and see you, and what holds me back is the thought that I’d be even more powerless than you are in the given state of distress. But I can feel how very exhausting it must be, and would like to be able to lend a hand. By coming straightaway I fear I would increase the confusion. However, I share your anxieties with all my heart. It’s a real pity that at Mr Gachet’s the house is so cluttered with all sorts of things. Otherwise I think it would be a good plan to come and lodge here — at his house — with the little one, at least for a good month — I think that the country air has an enormous effect. In the street here there are kids born in Paris and really sickly — who however are well. Coming here to the inn would be possible too, it’s true. So that you aren’t too alone I could come myself to stay at your place for a week or fortnight.
That wouldn’t increase the expenses. For the little one, truly I’m beginning to fear that he must be given air, and especially the little bustle of the other children of a village. Surely, Jo too, who shares our anxieties and risks, I think that from time to time she must take this distraction of the country.
Ever Yours Page 112