His stay in Drenthe lasted for no more than a few months. The weather was unfavourable and the loneliness unbearable in the end. Moreover, his desertion of Sien and her children filled him with pangs of conscience. Acquaintance with the Drenthe landscape, on the other hand, seemed to exert a magical pull on him, and gave him cause for yet more lyrical descriptions - for instance, of a visit to the small village of Zweeloo.
340 [D]
[probably Friday, 16 November 1883]
Dear brother,
Must just tell you about a trip to Zweeloo, the village where Liebermann stayed for a long time & did studies for his painting at the last Salon, the one with the washerwomen. Where Termeulen and Jules Bakhuyzen spent some time as well.
Imagine a ride across the heath at 3 o’clock in the morning in a small open cart (I went with the man with whom I’m lodging, who had to go to Assen market), along a road, or ‘diek’ as they call it here, which had been banked up with mud instead of sand. It was even better than the barge.
When it was just starting to get light, and the cocks were starting to crow everywhere round the huts scattered over the heath, everything, the few cottages we passed - surrounded by wispy poplars whose yellow leaves one could hear falling - a stumpy old tower in a little churchyard with an earth bank & a beech hedge, the flat scenery of heath or cornfields, everything was exactly like the most beautiful Corots. A stillness, a mystery, a peace as only he has painted it. When we arrived at Zweeloo at 6 o’clock in the morning it was still quite dark - I had seen the real Corots even earlier in the morning.
The ride into the village was so beautiful. Enormous mossy roofs of houses, stables, covered sheepfolds, barns. The very broad-fronted houses here are set among oaktrees of a superb bronze. Tones in the moss of gold-green, in the ground of reddish or bluish or yellowish dark lilac-greys, tones of inexpressible purity in the green of the little cornfields, tones of black in the wet tree trunks, standing out against the golden rain of swirling, teeming autumn leaves, which hang in loose clumps -as if they had been blown there, loose and with the light filtering through them - from the poplars, the birches, the limes and the apple trees.
The sky smooth and bright, shining, not white but a barely detectable lilac, white vibrant with red, blue and yellow, reflecting everything and felt everywhere above one, hazy and merging with the thin mist below, fusing everything in a gamut of delicate greys.
I could not find a single painter in Zweeloo, however, and people said that they never turn up in the winter. Whereas I, on the contrary, hope to be there this winter. Since there were no painters, I decided not to wait for my landlord’s return, but to walk back instead & do some drawings on the way. So I began to make a sketch of the little apple orchard where Liebermann did his large painting. And then back along the road we had driven down early in the morning. Right now the whole area round Zweeloo is nothing but young corn, sometimes as far as the eye can see, the greenest of greens I know. With a sky above of a delicate lilac-white producing an effect I think cannot be painted, but which, as I see it, is the keynote one must understand in order to find the key to other effects.
A black stretch of earth, flat, unending, a clear sky of delicate lilac-white. The earth sprouts that young corn as if growing a mould of it. That is what the good, fertile lands of Drenthe really are - and all in a misty atmosphere. Think of Brion’s Le dernier jour de la creation - well, yesterday it felt as if I understood the meaning of that painting. The poor soil of Drenthe is the same, except that the black earth is even blacker - like soot - not lilac-black like the furrows, and overgrown in a melancholy way with perpetually rotting heather & peat.
I notice it everywhere - chance effects on that infinite background: in the peat moors, the turf huts; in the fertile areas, those most primitive hulks of farmhouses & sheepfolds with low, very low little walls and enormous mossy roofs. Oaks all around. Journeying through these parts for hour after hour, one feels that there really is nothing but that infinite earth, that mould of corn or heather, that infinite sky. Horses and men seem as small as fleas. One is unaware of anything else, however large it may be in itself, one knows only that there is earth & sky.
However, in one’s capacity of a small speck watching other small specks - leaving the infinite aside - one discovers that every small speck is a Millet. I passed a little old church, exactly, but exactly like L’église de Gréville in Millet’s little painting in the Luxembourg. Here, instead of the small peasant with the spade, though, there was a shepherd with a flock of sheep alongside the hedge. In the background was a vista, not of the sea, but of a sea of young corn, a sea of furrows instead of waves. The effet produit1 was the same. Then I saw ploughmen, hard at work, a sand cart, shepherds, roadmenders, dung carts. In a small roadside inn, I drew a little old woman at her spinning wheel, a small dark silhouette out of a fairy-tale - a small dark silhouette against a bright window through which one saw the bright sky and a little path through the delicate green and a few geese pecking at the grass.
And then, when dusk fell, imagine the silence, the peace!
Imagine then a short avenue of tall poplars with autumn leaves, imagine a wide muddy road, all black mud, with heath stretching to infinity on the right, heath stretching to infinity on the left, a couple of black triangular silhouettes of turf huts, the red glow from small fires shining through the small windows, with a few pools of dirty, yellowish water reflecting the sky, in which fallen trees lie rotting into peat. Imagine that sea of mud at dusk with a whitish sky overhead, thus everything black against white. And in that sea of mud a shaggy figure - the shepherd - and a mass of oval shapes, half wool, half mud, jostling one another, pushing one another out of the way - the flock. You see them coming, you stand in their midst, you turn round and follow them. Laboriously and reluctantly they work their way up the muddy road. The farm beckons in the distance, a few mossy roofs and piles of straw & peat among the poplars. The sheepfold is again like a triangular silhouette, the entrance dark. The door stands wide open like a dark cave. The light of the sky glimmers once more through the chinks in the boards behind it. The whole caravan, masses of wool and mud, disappears into the cave - the shepherd and a little woman with a lantern shut the doors behind them.
That return of the flock in the dusk was the finale of the symphony I heard yesterday. The day passed like a dream, I had been so immersed in that heart-rending music all day that I had literally forgotten to eat & drink - I had had a slice of black bread and a cup of coffee in the little inn where I had drawn the spinning wheel. The day was over and from dawn to dusk, or rather from one night to the next, I had lost myself in that symphony. I came home and as I sat by the fire it occurred to me that I felt hungry, no, I realized I was ravenous.
But now you can see what it is like here. One feels just as if one were at, say, an exhibition des cent chef-d’oeuvres.2 What does one bring back from such a day? Merely a number of rough sketches. Yet there is something else one brings back - a quiet delight in one’s work.
Be sure to write soon. It is Friday today, but your letter has not yet arrived, I’m waiting for it eagerly. It takes time to get it [the money] changed, too, because it has to go back again to Hoogeveen and then here again. We’re not sure how it’s going to work out, otherwise I should tell you now: perhaps the simplest thing would be to send the money once a month. In any case, write again soon. With a handshake,
Ever Yours,
Vincent
324 [D]
[c. 15 September 1883]
My dear Theo,
Now that I have been here for a few days and have done a good deal of walking about in various directions, I can tell you more about the area in which I have ended up. I am enclosing a quick little sketch of the first study I painted here, a cottage on the heath. A cottage made entirely of turfs and sticks. I have seen the inside of some 6 or so like this, too, and more studies of them will follow.
I can’t convey the way they look outside in the dusk or just after
sunset better than by reminding you of a certain painting by Jules Dupre, which I think belongs to Mesdag and shows two cottages, their moss-covered roofs standing out surprisingly deep in tone against a misty, hazy evening sky. That could have been here.
Inside, these cottages, dark as a cave, are very beautiful. There are drawings by certain English artists who have worked on the moors in Ireland that portray most realistically what I have found here. Alb. Neuhuys does the same with somewhat more poetry than is apparent at first sight, but he never does anything that is not basically true.
I saw some superb figures in the country - striking in their sobriety. A woman’s breast, for instance, has that heaving movement which is the exact opposite of volupte,1 and sometimes, when the creature is old or ailing, can arouse compassion or respect. And the melancholy which things in general have here is of a healthy kind, as in drawings by Millet. Fortunately, the men here wear short breeches, which show the shape of the leg and give the movements more expression.
To mention one of the many fresh impressions and feelings I have gained on my exploratory outings, let me tell you for instance about the barges drawn by men, women, children, white or black horses, laden with peat, in the middle of the heath, just like the ones you see in Holland, say on the Rijswijk towpath.
The heath is magnificent, I’ve seen sheepfolds and shepherds more beautiful than those in Brabant. The ovens are more or less as in Th. Rousseau’s four communal,2 and stand in the gardens under old apple trees or among the celery and the cabbages. Beehives, too, in many places.
One sees many individuals who have something wrong with them - I think it can’t be very healthy here, perhaps because of foul drinking water. I’ve seen a few girls of perhaps 17 or even younger with something lovely and youthful about them, whose features were striking, but more often than not they look fane3 at an early age. Still, this doesn’t detract from the fine and noble bearing of some of the figures, even if they do appear quite faded when seen from close to.
There are 4 or 5 canals in the village, to Meppel, to De-demsvaart, to Coevorden, to Hollands Veld. Following them, one now and then sees a curious old mill, farmhouse, boatyard or lock. And always the bustle of peat barges.
To give you an example of the true character of these parts: as I sat painting that cottage, two sheep and a goat came and started to graze on the roof of the house. The goat climbed up on to the ridge and looked down the chimney. The woman, who had heard something on the roof, rushed out and flung her broom at the said goat, which leapt down like a chamois.
The two hamlets on the heath where I went and where this incident occurred are called Stuifzand and Swartschaap.4 I’ve been to various other places too, and you’ll have some idea now of how primitive it all still is here - Hoogeveen is apres tout5 a town and yet right next to it one has shepherds, those ovens, those turf huts, &c.
I sometimes think with a great deal of melancholy of the woman and the children. Would that they were provided for - one could say it is the woman’s own fault, and it would be true, yet I fear that her adversity will be greater than her fault. I knew from the start that her character was tainted but I had hoped it could be reformed, and now that I no longer see her and can ponder some of the things I saw in her, I am more and more convinced that she was too far gone to be reformed. And that only increases my sense of pity, which gives way to a feeling of melancholy because it is not in my power to help matters.
Theo, when I see a poor woman like that on the heath, with a child on her arm or at her breast, my eyes grow moist. I am reminded of her, and her weakness, her slovenliness, only add to the likeness. I know that she is no good, that I have every right to do as I am doing, that I could not stay with her there, that I really could not take her with me, indeed that what I did was sensible, wise, whatever you like, but That doesn’t alter the fact that it cuts right through me when I see a poor little figure like that, feverish and miserable, and it melts my heart.
How much sadness there is in life. Still, it won’t do to become depressed, one should turn to other things, and the right thing is work, but there are times when one can only find peace of mind in the realization: I, too, shall not be spared by unhappiness.
Goodbye, write soon and believe me,
Ever yours,
Vincent
330 [D] [part]
[c. 3 October 1883]
My dear Theo,
This time I am writing to you from the remotest corner of Drenthe, where I have arrived following an endless passage by barge through the heathland.
I don’t think I shall be able to do justice to the countryside because words fail me, but imagine the banks of the canal as miles and miles of, say, Michels or Th. Rousseaus, Van Goyens or Ph. de Konincks. Level planes or strips, varied in colour, that grow narrower & narrower as they approach the horizon. Accentuated here & there by a turf hut or small farmhouse or a few stunted beeches, poplars, oaks - peat stacked up everywhere and barges constantly passing by with peat or bulrushes from the marshes. Here and there skinny cows, subtle in colour, quite often sheep and pigs.
In general the figures that now & then put in an appearance on the flats are full of character, and sometimes they have an enormous charm. I drew, amongst others, a little woman on the barge, wearing crape round her casque brooches because she was in mourning, and then a mother with a baby - the latter had a purple cloth round its head. There are lots of Ostade types amongst them, physiognomies that put one in mind of pigs or crows, but now and then a little figure who is like a lily among the thorns.
In short, I am very pleased with this trip, for I am full of what I have seen.
This evening the heath was uncommonly lovely. There is a Daubigny in one of the Boetzel Albums which conveys the effect precisely. The sky was of an inexpressibly delicate lilac-white -the clouds not fleecy, for they were joined together more, but in tufts covering the whole sky in tones of more or less lilac-grey-white, with a single small break through which the blue gleamed. Then, at the horizon, a glorious red streak, the surprisingly dark stretch of brown heath underneath and a host of little low-roofed huts against the brilliant red streak.
In the evening this heath often has the kind of effect the English call ‘weird’1 and ‘quaint’.2 The fantastic silhouettes of Don Quixote-like mills or curious monsters of drawbridges are profiled against the vibrant evening sky. Such villages look wonderfully cosy in the evening sometimes, with the reflections of little lighted windows in the water or in the mud & puddles.
[…]
In Drenthe Van Gogh regained his old conviction that Theo, too, must become an artist and turn his back on the corrupt world of the art trade. At the time Theo was in dispute with his employers, Messrs Boussod & Valadon, the new owners of Goupil, and Vincent made use of this psychological moment, pressing his brother to abandon ‘the world of convention and speculation’: ‘I see something in you of a person who is in conflict with Paris. I don’t know how many years in Paris have gone by - but part of your heart is there. I have nothing against that, but something - a je ne sais quoi - is still vierge [untouched]. That is the artistic element. It appears weak now - but that new shoot will sprout, and sprout quickly. I am afraid the old trunk is too deeply split, and I advise you to sprout in an entirely new direction or I fear the old trunk shall yet prove not to be viable.’ The ‘two brother painters’ theme dominated a whole series of letters he wrote from Drenthe.
244 I
‘In my view it would be an erreur de point de vue [error of judgement] were you to continue in business in Paris. The conclusion then: two brother painters. Would that suit your nature? You may be involved in a difficult and fruitless struggle against it, a struggle that would impede your own liberation, just because you doubt whether you can do it. I know this, alas, from my own experience.
‘Apres tout [When all is said and done], no matter how much we may be our own enemies, I am beginning to appreciate more and more: “L’homme s’agite, Dieu le méne [Man proposes
and God disposes].” An infinitely powerful force prevails over our doing right and wrong. The same is true of your circumstances - be sensible about them - perhaps even sensible enough, in the end, to become a painter. Ultimately I should feel so reassured were you to take up a brush that I should consider the momentary calamity and shipwreck of lesser importance than the certain knowledge that your future is moving in a direction you will never regret.’
We do not know what arguments Theo raised against Vincent’s urgent appeals, but one thing is clear: Theo was playing for time.
In late November it became too cold to paint outside. Though Van Gogh had insisted that he would like to settle in Drenthe for good, loneliness made him decide otherwise in the end: ‘Taking a house on one’s own is so terribly melancholy and bleak.’ His brother’s uncertain financial position dominated the last letters from Drenthe.
At the beginning of December Van Gogh went to stay with his parents in Nuenen for a few days. His difficult relationship with them, his banishment by his father and his parents’ attitude to the Sien affair formed the theme of his first letters from Nuenen. But though he felt that his family had come to look on him as a shaggy dog who might bite in a fit of madness, he decided not to return to Drenthe, and to take up temporary residence with his parents in the village parsonage.
346 [D]
[c 15 December 1883]
Dear brother,
I sense what Father and Mother instinctively (I do not say intelligently) think about me. They shrink from taking me into the house as they might from taking in a large shaggy dog who is sure to come into the room with wet paws - and is so very shaggy. He will get in everyone’s way. And his bark is so loud. In short, he is a filthy beast
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh Page 26