The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Page 32
You’ll certainly see that it has originality. Regards, I’m sorry it wasn’t ready for today - best wishes once again for your health and peace of mind, believe me, with a handshake,
Ever yours,
Vincent
I’m still working on some smaller studies that will go off at the same time. Did you ever send that copy of the Salon issue?
No matter how profoundly his painting technique and use. of colour were to develop under the influence of Impressionism, Van Gogh never disowned his first ‘masterpiece’. An attempt in Saint-Rémy to return to the same theme with a new technique came to no more than a few sketches
In homage to Pastor van Gogh, Vincent painted his father’s tobacco pouch and pipe in the foreground of a still life with honesty. Touchily, he returned a letter of condolence from Van Rappard, who had made slighting remarks about the lithograph of The Potato Eaters. The letter had indeed been very tactless - Van Rappard’s suggestion that ‘such work can’t be meant seriously’ and his view that the peasant woman in the background had a ‘coquettish’ little hand, were bound to go down badly with the deadly serious Van Gogh. Van Rappard’s final thrust, ‘And after working like that you still dare to invoke the names of Millet and Breton’, must have been particularly galling. To Van Gogh, the letter was ‘so supercilious and so full of insults […] that I am as good as certain that I have lost him as a friend for ever’. The art dealer Portier and the painter Serret, upon seeing the lithograph in Paris, had had criticisms to make, too, but they had also shown some appreciation.
At the beginning of June, Van Gogh sent a small packing case to Paris with two new and important paintings: The Cottage and Country Churchyard owith Old Church Tower. He likened the cottages in which the Brabant peasants lived to the bird’s-nests he was collecting at the time, and said of the Country Churchyard: ‘I have left out some details - I wanted to express by those ruins that the peasants have been laid to rest for centuries among the very fields in which they toiled when they were alive. I wanted to express how very simple death & burial are, just as easy as the falling of an autumn leaf- nothing but a bit of earth turned over, a small wooden cross. Where the grass of the churchyard ends, over the little wall, the fields around it form a last line against the horizon - like the horizon of a sea. And now the ruins tell me how faith and religion moulder away, no matter how firmly grounded they are - but that the lives & deaths of the peasants are always the same, steadily sprouting and withering like the grass and the little flowers that grow in that churchyard there. “Les religions passent, Dieu demeure [Religions pass, God remains],” is a saying of Victor Hugo’s, whom they have also just buried.’ How much Van Gogh was attached to the French tradition in all things may also be gathered from the fact that he provided both these works with official French titles, namely La chaumu¨re and Cimetiere depaysans. His output at this time also included several watercolours and twelve painted studies, amongst them a head inspired by Zola’s Germinal.
During the second half of June he decided to send Van Rappard a strongly worded reply to his criticism of the lithograph of The Potato Eaters.
R5 2 [D] [letter from Vincent to Anthon van Rappard]
[second half of June 1885]
Dear friend Rappard,
One or two things have happened to cause me to write to you, more to explain myself than because I enjoy doing it.
With regard to the abrupt return by me of your last letter, there were two reasons for that, each of which I considered well founded.
In the first place, supposing your remarks about the lithograph that I sent you were correct, supposing I could raise no objections to them - even then you wouldn’t have been justified in condemning all my work in such an insulting [manner], or rather, in dismissing it in the way you did.
And secondly - seeing that you have received more friendship, not only from me but from my family, than you have given, you certainly cannot claim as of right that, on an occasion such as my father’s death, we were obliged to send you anything other than a circular letter. Least of all myself, seeing that, even before that, you had failed to reply to a letter of mine. Least of all myself, seeing that on the occasion of my father’s death, though you did express your sympathy in a letter addressed to my mother - it was such that, when it arrived, it made the family wonder why you had not written to me instead! I wasn’t looking for a letter from you then, nor am I now.
You know that I haven’t been on the best of terms with my family for years. During the first few days following my father’s death I had to correspond with the nearest relatives. But as soon as other members of the family arrived, I withdrew completely. So any possible omissions must be blamed on my family, not on me. And I must tell you that you are still an exception, because I especially asked the family whether they had sent you a notification, only to be told that they had forgotten. Enough of this now, mdre than enough.
The reason I am writing to you again has nothing to do with answering your criticisms on that subject. Nor is it to repeat my comments on what you said about painting - you might care to reread your letter. If you still think you were right, if you really mean that ‘when you set your mind to it, you express yourself damned well’, well, then, the best thing is simply to leave you to your delusions.
To get to the point, the reason I am writing to you - though it was not I who insulted you in the first place but you who insulted me - is just that I’ve known you too long to believe this to be a reason for breaking off all contact. What I have to say to you is as one painter to another, and that will be so for as long as you and I go on painting - whether we keep up our acquaintance or not.
There was mention of Millet. All right, my friend, I shall answer you. You wrote, ‘And someone like that dares invoke Millet and Breton.’ My answer is simply that I advise you in all seriousness not to fight with me. As far as I am concerned, I suit myself - understand? - but I have no desire to pick a quarrel with anyone right now, not even you. You can say whatever you like - but were you to have any more such observations they would be like so much water off a duck’s back. Let’s leave it at that for the moment.
As for what you have said more than once - that I care nothing for the shape of the figure - it is beneath me to take it seriously, and, my dear fellow, it is beneath you to say anything as uncalled for as that. You have known me for years - have you ever seen me work otherwise than after the model, shouldering the often very heavy expenses, when I am poor enough in all conscience? What you wrote, not in your last letter, but repeatedly and ad nauseam in previous ones, was about ‘technique’, and was the reason for my writing the letter to which you did not reply. What I said then and say once more, is that there is the conventional meaning increasingly assigned to the word technique, and there is the real meaning, knowledge. Well, Meissonier himself says, ‘la science - nul ne l’a’.1 Now, to start with, la science is not the same as ‘de la science’,2 and that you will not deny. But not even that is the crux of the matter.
Take Haverman, for instance, of whom they say - you too -that he has such a lot of technique. But not just Haverman - how many others don’t have the sort of knowledge of art that H. has? Jacquet among the French painters, perhaps, and he is better.
My contention is simply this, that drawing an academically correct figure, and having a steady, well-judged brushstroke, has little to do, or at least less than is generally supposed, with the needs - the pressing needs - of contemporary painting.
If instead of saying, H. has a lot oftechnique’, you said, H. has a lot of ‘métier’,3 I should agree with you for once. You will probably know what I mean when I say that, when Haverman sits down in front of a beautiful lady’s or young girl’s head, he will make it more beautiful than almost anyone else, but sit him in front of a peasant and he won’t have even the faintest idea where to start. His art, or what I know of it, seems especially suited to subjects one can easily dispense with - especially suited to subjects that are almost the precise opp
osite of Millet’s and Lhermitte’s, and more in line with Cabanel - who for all his ‘m6tier’, as I call it, has achieved little that will last or take us forward.
And, I implore you, do not confuse this with the style of a Millet or Lhermitte. What I said and will go on saying is this - the word technique is being applied far too often in a conventional sense, and used far too often in bad faith. The technique of all those Italians and Spaniards is praised, and they are people who are more conventional, and more stuck in routine, than most. And I’m afraid that with people like Haverman, ‘metier’ all too quickly turns into ‘routine’. And then, what is it worth then?
What I should like now to ask you is - what is your real motive for breaking with me? The reason I am writing to you again is precisely because I love Millet, Breton and all those who paint peasants and the people, and I count you among them. I don’t say this because I gained much from our friendship, for, my friend, I got precious little out of it - and, forgive me for telling you bluntly for the first and last time, I know no more arid friendship than yours.
But firstly I am not doing it for that reason, and, secondly, that, too, might have improved. But having created my own opportunity now for finding models, &c, I am not so petty-minded as to keep it to myself. On the contrary, if any painter, no matter who, should come to these parts, I should be happy to invite him in and to show him the ropes - precisely because it isn’t always that easy to find models prepared to pose, and because not everyone thinks that having a pied-á-terre somewhere is a matter of indifference. And I’m telling you this because, if you would like to come and paint here, there’s no need for you to feel embarrassed because we have fallen out. And even though I’m living in this studio on my own now, you could come here as well.
Perhaps, though, you will tell me condescendingly that you don’t care one way or the other - well, then, so be it. I am so used to insults that they really run off me like water off a duck’s back, so someone like you will probably find it hard to understand, for instance, how completely cold a letter like yours leaves me. And since I couldn’t care less about it, I have no hard feelings either. But more than enough clear-headedness and calmness of mind to answer you as I do now. If you want to break with me - that’s all right with me. If you want to stay here and paint - you can ignore this spot of bother in our correspondence. What you produced the last time you were here had and still has my full support, and, friend Rappard, it is because you worked so damned well the last time and because I think you may perhaps be anxious for the opportunity here to remain open, that I am writing to you.
It’s up to you - I’m putting it plainly - and while fully appreciating your painting, I do worry that you may not be able to stay the course in the future. I sometimes fear that because of the influences to which you cannot help being exposed by virtue of your social position and station in life, you may not remain as good in the long run as you are at present - in your work as a painter, that is, the rest is no business of mine.
So as one painter to another, I say to you that if you would like to come and look for subjects here, things will be just as they used to be. You can come here and, even though I’m on my own, you can stay here just as before. I thought that perhaps you’d got some satisfaction out of it’, you see, and might again, and I just wanted to tell you so. If you can do equally well elsewhere, so be it, I shall have no reason to grieve, and then farewell.
You write nothing about your work, nor I about mine. Take it from me, there’s no point in arguing with me about Millet. Millet is someone I will not argue about, although I do not refuse to discuss him. Regards,
Vincent
Letters went back and forth, until Van Gogh decided in late July to put an end to their ‘ridiculous’ quarrel. The disagreement now struck him as resembling ‘the dispute between some pair of God-fearing preachers’. He accepted that Van Rappard had not acted from malice, but had felt compelled in all conscience to voice his opinions.
Meanwhile another four pictures of small cottages were ready to be dispatched to Paris. Van Gogh sent them ‘just as they come, off the heath’. He also composed several still lifes with bird’s-nests chosen from a small collection he had built up: ‘My whole heart is in la nich6e et les nids [the brood and the nests], especially those human nests, those cottages on the heath and their inhabitants.’
He wanted above all to paint the figure again, but had no money to pay models. Basing his position on Courbet’s saying that he could not paint angels because he had never seen one, Van Gogh set his face against the Salon artists who thought nothing of painting exotic and historical subjects quite outside their own experience. The portrayal of working people was to his mind one of the most important thematic innovations of contemporary art, the ‘essential modern’ aspect. Even ‘the old Dutch masters, who depicted so many conventional actions’, fell short in this respect the figures portrayed by Terborch and Ostade, or Velàsquez’s water carrier, did not actually work. He did not care for academic accuracy in the presentation of the figure. On the contrary, he preferred painting such ‘aberrations, reworkings, transformations of reality, as may turn it into, well - lies, if you like - but truer than the literal truth’.
418 [D]
[July 1885]
My dear Theo,
I wish the 4 canvases I wrote to you about had gone. If I keep them here for much longer, I might paint them over again and I think it’s better if you get them just as they come, off the heath. The reason I haven’t sent them is that I don’t want to send them to you carriage forward at a time when you say that you yourself might be short of cash, and I cannot afford the carriage myself
I have never seen the little house in which Millet lived - but I imagine that these 4 little human nests are of the same sort. One is the residence of a gentleman popularly known as ‘the mourning peasant’ - the other is inhabited by a worthy soul who, when I went there, was up to nothing more mysterious than digging her potato-clamp, but who must be capable of practising witchcraft -she goes by the name of ‘the witch’s head’, anyway.
You’ll remember that Gigoux’s book tells how it came about that 17 of Delacroix’s pictures were turned down all at the same time. That shows - to me at least - that he and others of that period were faced with connoisseurs and non-connoisseurs alike, who neither understood them nor wanted to buy anything by them - but that they, who are rightly called ‘les vaillants’1 in the book, didn’t talk of fighting a losing battle but went on painting.
What I wanted to say again is that if we take that story about Delacroix as our starting point, we still have a lot of painting to do.
I find myself faced with the necessity of being that most disagreeable of people, in other words of having to ask for money. And since I don’t think that sales will pick up in the next few days, the situation seems rather dire. But I put it to you, isn’t it better for both of us, aprés tout,2 to work hard, no matter what problems that may entail, than to sit around philosophizing at a time like this?
I can’t foretell the future, Theo - but I do know the eternal law that all things change. Think back 10 years, and things were different, the circumstances, the mood of the people, in short everything. And 10 years hence much is bound to have changed again. But what one does remains - and one does not easily regret having done it. The more active one is, the better, and I would sooner have a failure than sit idle and do nothing.
Whether or not Portier is the right man to do something with my work - we need him now at any rate. And this is what I have in mind. After, say, a year’s work, we shall have put together more than we have now, and I know for sure that my work will fare better the more I can add to it. People who show some liking for it now, who speak of it as he does, and show it from time to time are useful, because if I work for, let’s say, another year and they are able to add a few more things to their collection, that will speak for itself even if the collectors themselves have nothing at all to say.
If you happen to se
e Portier, tell him that, far from giving up, I intend sending him much more. You, too, must go on showing my work if you meet people. It won’t be all that long before we have more important things to show.
You yourself will have seen - and it is something that pleases me enormously - that I-man shows, or shows by just a few who belong together, are becoming increasingly popular. I’m sure that in the art world this has more avenir3 than other ventures.
It’s a good thing people are beginning to realize that a Bouguereau does not do well next to a Jacque - or a figure by Beyle or Lhermitte next to a Schelfhout or Koekkoek. Scatter Raffaelli’s drawings about and judge for yourself if it’s still possible to get a good idea of that singular artist. He - Raffaelli -is different from Regamey, but I think he has just as much personality.
If I kept my work with me, I am sure I should go on repainting it. Sending it to you and Portier just as it comes from the countryside or from the cottages, I may well include an example that isn’t any good - but some things will have been saved that would not have been improved by frequent repainting.
Now supposing you had these 4 canvases and a few smaller studies of cottages, someone who saw nothing else of mine would be bound to think that I painted nothing but cottages. And likewise with the series of heads. But peasant life involves so many different things, that when Millet speaks of ‘travailler comme plusieurs négres’,4 this is truly what has to be done if one wants to assemble a body of work.
One may laugh at Courbet’s saying, ‘Peindre des anges! qui est-ce qui a vu des anges?’5 But to that I should like to add, ‘des justices au harem, qui est-ce qui a vu des justices au harem?’6 And Benjamin Constant’s painting, Des combats de taureaux, ‘qui est-ce qui en a vu?’7 And so many other Moorish and Spanish things, cardinals, and then all those historical paintings they keep on doing yards high and yards wide! What is the use of it all and what are they doing it for? Within a few years most of it looks dull and dreary and more & more boring. But still, perhaps they are well painted, they could be that.