The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

by Vincent Van Gogh

  My views may sometimes be incongruous, that may well be so, but I do believe that there must be some truth in them and in their action and direction.

  It was not primarily for selfish reasons that I tried to get them to open up the house to me again, even to give me a studio. What I do feel is that, though we do not see eye to eye in many things, Father, you and I have the will to pull together, either all the time or by fits and starts. Our estrangement having already lasted so long, it can do no harm to place some weight on the other side, so that to the eyes of the world, too, we do not look more divided than we actually are, so that to the eyes of the world we do not seem to have gone to extremes.

  Rappard said to me, ‘A human being is not a lump of peat, since a human being cannot bear being flung into an attic to be forgotten there.’ And he pointed out that he considered it a great misfortune for me not to be able to live at home. Do please give that some thought.

  I believe a little too much emphasis has been laid on the charge that I acted wilfully or recklessly - well, you know that better than I do - when in fact I was forced to do certain things and could not act differently from the way they saw me act or wanted to see me act. And it was their biased view that my objectives were base, &c, which made me grow cold and feel quite indifferent towards many people.

  One more thing, brother - at this time of your life you would do well to reflect deeply on this: I believe you are in danger of taking a distorted view of a great many things, and I think you will have to examine your perspective on life very carefully and that your life will improve as a result. I am not saying this as if it were something I know and you do not, I am saying it because I am coming to see more and more how terribly hard it is to tell where one goes right and where one goes wrong.

  Partly under the influence of a letter from Anthon van Rappard, Van Gogh decided to remain in Nuenen, where he concentrated on painting weavers at work in their little cottages. At a time of growing industrialization, cottage weavers were becoming a dying race, and it was typical of Van Gogh’s hankering after the authentic and original country life a la Millet that he should single out those old-fashioned ‘contraptions of looms with their rather complicated machinery, and the small figure sitting in the middle’. Although the subject had been used by seventeenth-century painters and by contemporaries of Van Gogh’s such as Liebermann and Serusier, Van Gogh felt convinced that he was tackling an original theme. At the same time, he was worried about his mother, who had fractured her femur.

  The mangle room in the parsonage at Nuenen, rather unfortunately placed between the sewer and the manure heap, was being converted into a studio. During a brief visit to The Hague, where Van Gogh saw to the removal of his prints, studies and other possessions, he found time for a final meeting with Sien: ‘Now that we are separated, we shall remain separated, but in retrospect we regret not having chosen a middle path, and even now there is still a mutual attachment which has roots or founddtions that are too deep to be transitory.’

  Although Theo had helped him support Sien during the Hague period, it began to dawn on Vincent that his brother had also played a significant role in the breakup of the relationship. He now held Theo partly responsible for his departure for Drenthe. Finding Sien living ‘in great misery’, he came to realize how much power Theo exerted over him with his financial support.

  In early March1884, Vincent broached another delicate subject: how much effort had Theo really put into selling his work? And did Theo’s remittances give him the right to make Vincent feel from time to time that he was calling the tune? Worse still, Vincent was gradually coming to think that there was a lack of even the slightest spark of warmth in their relationship: ‘Now everything is getting grimmer and colder and more dreary around me.’

  358 [D]

  [c. 1 March 1884]

  My dear Theo,

  Thanks for your letter - Mother is doing well - at first the doctor said it would take half a year for the leg to heal - now he speaks of a good 3 months - and he told Mother, ‘But we have your daughter to thank for that, for I have rarely, very rarely, come across care as good as she gives.’ What Wil does is exemplary, exemplary, I shan’t easily forget it.

  Almost everything fell on her shoulders from the beginning and she has spared Mother a great deal of misery. To give just one example, it is undoubtedly thanks to her that Mother has so few bedsores (which had been absolutely dreadful in the beginning and in quite an advanced condition). And I assure you that the chores she has to do are not always pleasant.

  Now look, when I read your letter about the drawings I immediately sent you a new watercolour of a weaver and five pen drawings. I must also tell you frankly that for my part I’m sure you’re right to say that my work must improve a great deal, but at the same time I also think that your efforts to do something with it could become a bit more determined. You have never yet sold a single thing I have done - whether for a lot or a little - in fact, you haven’t even tried.

  Look, I’m not angry about it, but we need to speak our minds now for once. I could certainly not put up with it in the long run. You, for your part, can also continue to speak frankly.

  As far as saleability or unsaleability is concerned, that’s a dead horse I don’t intend to go on flogging. Anyway, as you can see, my answer is to send you some new ones - and I shall be very happy to go on doing so - I should like nothing better. Only be unsparing for once with your candour - which is what I much prefer - about whether you intend to bother with them or whether your dignity will not allow you. Leaving the past aside, I have to face the future, and regardless of what you think about them I shall definitely try to do something with them.

  The other day you told me yourself that you are a dealer - all right - one does not indulge in sentimentality with a dealer, one says, ‘Sir, if I give you some drawings on commission, may I then count on your showing them?’ The dealer must know for himself whether his answer will be yes, no, or something in between. But the painter would be mad to send them on commission if he could tell that the dealer looked on his work as something that ought not to see the light of day.

  Well, my dear fellow, we both live in the real world, and precisely because we do not want to put a spoke in each other’s wheel we must speak candidly. If you say, ‘I can’t be bothered with them’ - all right, I won’t be angry, but I’m not obliged to take you for an infallible oracle either, am I? You say the public will take offence at this little smudge or that, &c, &c. Now listen, that may well be true, but you, the dealer, are even more upset by that sort of thing than the public in question, as I have observed so often, and you set out with that idea.

  I, too, must make my way somehow or other, Theo, and with you I am still in precisely - precisely - the same position I was a few years ago. What you say about my current work - ‘it is almost saleable, but’ - is literally the same thing you wrote to me when I sent you my first Brabant sketches from Etten.

  That’s why I tell you - it’s a dead horse. And I have to conclude that you’ll go on saying the same thing for ever - and that I, who have been consistently chary of going to the dealers up to now, am going to have to change my tactics and try my very best to get my work sold.

  It’s become very clear to me by this time that you couldn’t care less about my doings, but while you couldn’t care less, I cannot help thinking it is rather wretched of you, and I dread certain things that are bound to occur - namely that people will say, how strange, don’t you do any business with your brother or with Goupil? Well, what I’ll say then, is - it is beneath the dignity of Ces Messieurs1 G. & Cie, Van Gogh & Cie. That may well give them a bad impression of me - for which I am quite prepared by now - but I also foresee that I shall grow cooler and cooler towards you.

  I have now painted the little old church, and another weaver. Are those studies from Drenthe as bad as all that? I don’t feel disposed to send you the painted studies I have done here, no, we won’t start with them - you can see them if you co
me here in the spring.

  What you write about Marie is quite understandable - if a woman isn’t all milk & water, I can well imagine her not showing much enthusiasm for moping about in the company of cantankerous fathers as well as spiritual sisters. In any event, a woman no less than a man would feel sorely tempted to end the stagnation quand même2 - stagnation which may start out as splendid resignation, but which, alas, one will generally be made to regret as soon as one feels one is going to freeze solid in the end. Once I read a passage by Daudet about spiritual women. ‘Ces deux visages se regarderent - elles échangérent un regard médiant froid feriné - qu’a-t-il? Toujours la méme chose - elle.’3 There you have it, that singular look of Pharisees and devout ladies. Yes, and as for us - what’s always the matter with us, too, is - la même chose.

  So, what am I to make of what you say about my work - say, the studies from Drenthe. Some of them are very superficial, and I said as much myself. But why do I get chided for those painted out of doors, quietly, calmly and simply, in which I was trying to express nothing but what I saw? What I get is: aren’t you too obsessed with Michel?*

  You would no doubt say exactly the same thing about the old churchyard. And yet, faced neither by the churchyard nor by the turf huts did I think of Michel, I was thinking of the subject I had before me. A subject that I believe would indeed have stopped Michel short, and touched him, had he passed by.

  As far as I am concerned, in no way do I put myself on a par with Master Michel - and I most certainly do not imitate Michel either.

  Well, perhaps I shall try to sell something in Antwerp, and I’m going to put a few of those very same Drenthe studies in a black wooden frame - I’m approaching a carpenter here about it - I prefer to see my work in a deep black frame, and he makes them cheaply enough.

  Don’t take offence at my mentioning it, brother. I am trying to put something quiet and calm into my work. You see, I approve just as little of it lying about unseen as I would of seeing it displayed in fluted frames in the leading shops.

  Now is the time to start taking that middle course, in my view, so I must know fairly definitely how I stand with you, or rather I must tell you again that, although you are still evading the question, I’m sure that you are not, in fact, going to show the work, and I don’t think you’ll be changing your mind for the time being either. I won’t enter into whether or not you are right about this.

  You will tell me that other dealers will treat me in just the same way, except that you, although you cannot be bothered yourself with my work, nevertheless provide me with money, and other dealers will certainly not do that, and that without money I shall be completely stuck. I shall reply that things are not as cut and dried as that in real life, and that I shall try to get by, living from day to day.

  I told you beforehand that I wanted to settle matters this month, and so I must. Anyway, seeing that you may already be planning to come here in the spring, I am not going to insist that you take a final decision immediately, but I must tell you that as far as I am concerned, I cannot leave matters as they are. Everywhere I go, and especially at home, a constant watch is being kept on what I do with my work, whether I get anything for it, &c. In our society virtually everybody looks out all the time for that son of thing, trying to find out everything about it. And that’s quite understandable. But being permanently in a false position is a wretched business for me. Allons4 - things cannot be allowed to remain as they are. Why not? Because they can’t, that’s why.

  Seeing that I am as cool as can be towards Father, towards C. M. - why should I act any differently towards you, once I’ve noticed that you use the same tactics of never speaking your mind? Do I consider myself better than Father or you? Most probably not, most probably I distinguish less and less between good and bad - but I do know that this tactic does not behove a painter, and as a painter one should speak one’s mind and cut through a few knots. Well, I believe qu’une porte doit etre ouverte ou fermée.5

  Anyway, I’m sure you do understand that a dealer cannot be neutral towards painters - that it makes absolutely no difference whether you say no with or without beating about the bush, and that it’s probably even more annoying when you dress it all up in compliments.

  This may be something you’ll understand better later on than you do at the moment. I pity dealers when they grow old -though they may feather their own nest, that isn’t any cure-all, at least it won’t be by then. Tout se paye,6 and things can often turn out to be an icy-cold wasteland then.

  But you may perhaps have different ideas about this. You may point out that it’s a bit sad as well when a painter dies miserably in hospital and is buried alongside the whores in the fosse commune,7 where many lie, aprés tout8 - especially when one bears in mind that dying is perhaps not as difficult as living.

  Anyway, a dealer can’t be blamed for not always having the money to help out, but in my opinion a certain worthy dealer can indeed be blamed if he’s all kind words but is ashamed of me in his heart and ignores my work altogether.

  So, frankly, I shall not blame you for telling me candidly that you don’t think my work is good enough, or perhaps that there are other reasons why you cannot be bothered with it, but if you put it away in a corner somewhere and do not show it, it isn’t kind to couple that with the assurance - which is not accepted -that you yourself see something in it. I don’t believe it - you mean hardly one word of it. And from the very fact that you yourself say that you know my work better than anyone else, I am entitled to conclude that you must have a very poor opinion of it indeed if you won’t soil your hands with it. Why should I force myself upon you? Well, regards.

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  Apart from a few years which I can scarcely comprehend myself, when I was confused by religious ideas, by some kind of mysticism - that period aside, I have always lived with a certain warmth. Now everything is getting grimmer and colder and more dreary around me. And when I tell you that in the first place I will not stand it, quite apart from the question of whether or not I can, I am referring to what I told you at the very beginning of our relationship.

  What I have had against you this past year is a kind of relapse into cold respectability which seems to me sterile and futile -the diametrical opposite of everything that is active, and of everything that is artistic in particular.

  I am putting this to you bluntly, not in order to make you miserable, but so that you can see, and if possible feel, what has gone wrong, why I can no longer think of you as a brother and a friend with the same pleasure as before.

  There needs to be more gusto in my life if I am to get more brio into my brush - exercising patience will not get me a hair’s breadth further. If you, for your part, do relapse into the above-mentioned state, don’t blame me for not being the same towards you as I was during, say, the first year.

  As to my drawings - at this moment it seems to me that the watercolours, the pen-and-ink drawings of weavers, the latest pen-and-ink drawings on which I am working now, are not on the whole so boring as to be utterly worthless. But if I should come to the conclusion myself that they are no good and Theo is right not to show them to anybody - then, then, it will be one proof more to me that I am right to object to our present false position, and I shall try all the harder to make a change quand meme, for better or for worse, just as long as things don’t remain the same…

  Now supposing I realized that you, in the belief that I had not yet made enough progress, were trying to do something to further that progress - for instance, Mauve having fallen by the wayside, to put me in touch with some other able painter - or, anyway, something, some sign or other that would prove to me that you really believed in my progress or had it at heart. But instead there is - the money, yes - but for the rest nothing but ‘just carry on working’, ‘have patience’, as cold, as dead, as arid and as insufferable as if Father, for instance, had said it. I cannot live on that, it is getting too lonely, too cold, too empty and too dull for
me.

  I am no better than the next man, inasmuch as I have the same needs and desires as everyone else, and it is perfectly natural for one to kick when one knows for certain that one is being kept dangling, being kept in the dark. If one goes from bad to worse - which is not impossible in my case - what difference does that make? If one is badly off, one simply must take the chance to better one’s lot.

  Brother, let me remind you once more how things stood with us when we first started together. I even felt free to draw your attention to the problem of women. I still remember taking you to Roosendaal station that first year and telling you then that I was so set against being alone that I would sooner be with a bad whore than be alone. You may perhaps remember that.

  At first the idea that our relationship might not last was all but intolerable to me. And I would have been tremendously pleased if it had been a simple matter to change things. But I cannot keep flying in the face of the evidence and fooling myself that it is. The resulting depression was one of the causes for my writing from Drenthe and urging you so strongly to become a painter. And it subsided the moment I saw that your dissatisfaction with business had disappeared, that you were once again on a better footing with Goupil. At first I thought that less than sincere of you - then later, and even now, I find it entirely understandable and consider it more a mistake on my part to have written, ‘become a painter’, than a mistake on your part to have resumed your business with gusto once things had become more acceptable and the machinations to make things impossible for you had ceased.

  It remains a fact, however, that I do feel depressed about the falseness of the position between us. At this moment it is of greater importance to me to sell for 5 guilders than to receive 1 o guilders by way of patronage.

  Now you have repeatedly written, very firmly, that neither in the first place as a dealer (I shall leave it at that for the moment and do not at any rate hold it against you), nor in the second place in your private capacity (which I do hold against you a little), have you taken, are you taking, or do you think you will be able to take for some time to come, the very slightest, smallest possible, step to further my work.