The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

by Vincent Van Gogh

  When his sister Wil wrote to tell him of the death of their uncle Vincent in Prinsenhage, he replied on 31 July 1888, adding an account of the most important works he had produced during the summer.

  In his despair about ever making his mark as a painter, he sometimes placed a very low value on his work: ‘A canvas painted by me is worth more than a blank canvas. I can claim no more than that.’

  514 [F] [part]

  [c. 25 July 1888]

  My dear Theo,

  Thank you for your kind letter. If you remember, mine ended with ‘we are getting old, that is the fact of the matter, and all the rest is imagination and simply does not exist’. Well, I said that more for myself than for you. And I said it because I feel it is absolutely essential for me to take action accordingly, not perhaps by working harder but with greater seriousness.

  You mention the emptiness you sometimes feel, and that’s exactly what I feel myself

  Consider, if you will, the times in which we live to be a true and great renaissance of art, the worm-ridden official tradition still holding sway yet ultimately impotent and idle, the new painters still isolated, poor, treated as madmen, and because of this treatment actually going insane, at least as far as their social life is concerned - then remember that you are doing exactly the same job as these primitive painters, since you provide them with money and sell their canvases, which enables them to produce others.

  If a painter ruins himself emotionally by working hard at his painting, and renders himself unfit for so much else, for family life, &c, &c, if, consequently, he paints not only with colour but with self-sacrifice and self-denial and a broken heart, then your own work is not only no better paid, but costs you, in exactly the same way as a painter, this half-deliberate, half-accidental eclipse of your personality.

  What I mean is that though you are indirectly involved in painting, you are more productive than I am, for instance. The more completely you are involved in dealing, the more of an artist you become. And so I hope the same thing for myself… the more wasted and sick I become, a broken pitcher, the more I may also become a creative artist in this great renaissance of art of which we speak.

  All this is certainly so, but eternally continuing art, and this renaissance - this green shoot sprung from the roots of the old sawn-off trunk, these are matters so spiritual that we can’t help but feel rather melancholy when we reflect that we could have created life for less than the cost of creating art.

  You will be doing well if you can make me feel that art is alive, you who love art perhaps more than I do.

  I tell myself that it isn’t the fault of art, but my own, that the only means of regaining my confidence and peace of mind is to do better.

  And that brings us back again to the end of my last letter - I myself may be getting old, but it would be sheer fantasy to think that art has had its day.

  Now, if you know what a ‘mousm6’ is (you will find out when you read Loti’s Madame Chrysanthéme), I have just painted one. It took me a whole week, and I haven’t been able to do anything else, because I still haven’t been too well. That is what annoys me - had I felt well, I would have been able to run off some more landscapes in the meantime, but to do justice to my mousme I had to conserve my mental energies. A mousme is a Japanese girl - Provençal in this case - 12 to 14 years old.

  That makes 2 figures I’ve got now, the Zouave and her.

  Look after your health, take baths, especially if Gruby has advised you to, for in 4 years’ time - which is how much older I am than you - you will realize that reasonably good health is essential for anyone who wants to work. Now, for those of us who work with our brains, our one and only hope of not running out of steam too soon is to prolong our lives artificially by observing an up-to-date health regime as rigorously as we can. I, for one, do not do all I ought to. And a little good humour is worth more than all the medicines in the world.

  […]

  Bernard has sent me 10 sketches including his brothel. Three of them are in the style of Redon, for whom he feels an enthusiasm I myself do not really share. But there is a woman washing herself, very Rembrandtesque or á la Goya, and a landscape with figures, very strange. He expressly forbade me to send them to you - however you will be receiving them by the same post.

  I’m sure Russell will take other things of Bernard’s.

  I’ve seen some work by this Boch now, it’s strictly impressionist, but not strong, he’s still too preoccupied with the new technique to be himself. He will gain in strength and his personality will come out, I think. But MacKnight does watercolours to match those by Destrée - you remember, that revolting Dutchman we used to know. However, he has washed a few small still lifes, a yellow pot on a purple foreground, a red pot on green, an orange pot on blue - better, but still pretty poor.

  The village where they are staying is pure Millet, poor peasants, nothing more, absolutely rustic and homely. This feature completely escapes them. I believe that MacKnight has civilized his brute of a landlord, converting him to civilized Christianity. At any rate, this scoundrel and his worthy spouse shake your hand when you go there - it’s a café, of course - and when you order a drink they have a way of refusing money, ‘Oh, I couldn’t take money from an artisst,’ with two s’s. Anyway, it’s their own fault it’s so dreadful round there, and this Boch must have become quite stupid in MacKnight’s company.

  I think MacKnight must have some money, but not much. That’s how they contaminate the village. If it weren’t for that, I’d go over there quite often to work. What they should not be doing there is passing the time of day with polite society - well, the only people they know are the station master and a score of bores, and that’s the main reason why they are getting nowhere. I’ve already said all this to Mourier, who at one time thought MacKnight had great feeling for ‘the man of the soil’.

  Naturally, these simple and naive country folk make fun of them and despise them. Whereas, if they went about their work instead of clinging to these village layabouts with their detachable collars, then they’d be welcome in the peasants’ homes and let their owners earn a few coppers. Then this blessed Fontvieille would be a treasure-trove for them’, for the natives are - like Zola’s humble peasants - innocent and gentle beings, as we know.

  No doubt MacKnight will soon be doing little landscapes with sheep, for chocolate boxes.

  Not just my pictures but I myself have become especially haggard of late, almost like Hugo van der Goes in the painting by émile Wauters. Except that, having had all my beard carefully shaved off, I think I’m as much the very placid abbot in that picture as the mad painter so cleverly portrayed in it. And I’m not displeased at falling somewhere between the two, for one must live, especially as there is no getting away from the fact that there may be a crisis one of these days if your situation with the Boussods were to change. All the more reason for keeping up contacts with artists, on my part as much as on yours.

  For the rest, I think I have spoken the truth: that I would be doing no more than my duty should I ever manage to pay back in kind the money you have laid out. And in practice that means doing portraits.

  As for drinking too much… I have no idea if it’s a bad thing. Take Bismarck, who, think what you like, is very practical and very intelligent - his good doctor told him that he drank too much and that he’d been putting a severe strain on his stomach and his brain all his life. B. stopped drinking at once. He has gone downhill ever since and is still getting no better. He must be laughing up his sleeve at his doctor, whom, luckily for him, he did not consult sooner.

  So there we are. With a hearty handshake,

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  The portrait of the young girl is on a white background strongly tinged with Veronese green, the bodice is striped blood-red and violet. The skirt is royal blue with large yellow-orange dots. The matt flesh tints are yellowish-grey, the hair purplish-blue, the eyebrows and the eyelashes black, the eyes orange and Prussian blue
, & an oleander branch between her fingers, for the 2 hands are in the picture.

  Bear in mind that we don’t have to change our minds about helping Gauguin if the proposal is acceptable as it is, but we do not need him. So don’t think that working by myself worries me, and be sure not to press the matter on my account.

  W5 [D] [letter from Vincent to Wil]

  [31 July 1888]

  Dear sister,

  I want to answer your letter of this morning straight away.

  I shall probably learn from Paris by tomorrow what Theo is going to do, whether or not he can get away. I have no doubt he’ll go to you if he can. It is always a shock when somebody one knows sets out on the great journey to that other hemisphere of life, whose existence we surmise. And it goes without saying that my best wishes accompany today’s traveller.

  I am hard at work here - for me, the summer here is extremely beautiful, more beautiful than any I ever experienced in the north, and yet the people here complain loudly that it is not the same as usual. Now and then it rains in the morning or the afternoon, but infinitely less than in our part of the world. The harvest has long since been brought in. There is a lot of wind here, though, a very spiteful, whining wind - le mistral - a great nuisance most of the time if I have to paint in it, when I lay my canvas flat on the ground and work on my knees. Because the easel won’t keep steady.

  I’ve done a study of a garden, almost three feet across, poppies & other red flowers set in green in the foreground, then a bed of blue campanula, then a bed of orange and yellow African marigolds, then white and yellow flowers, and finally, in the background, pink and lilac and dark violet scabious, and red geraniums and sunflowers, and a fig tree and a laurier rose1 and a vine. Right at the back, black cypresses against low white cottages with orange roofs - and a delicate green-blue strip of sky. Now I’m well aware that not one of the flowers has been properly drawn, that they are only small dabs of colour, red, yellow, orange, green, blue, violet, but the impression of all those colours next to one another is there - in the painting as in nature. Still, I imagine you might be disappointed and find it ugly if you saw it. You can tell that the subject is fairly summery, though.

  Uncle Cor has seen work of mine more than once, and he thinks it’s hideous.

  Right now I’m working on the portrait of a postman in his uniform of dark blue with yellow. A head a bit like Socrates, almost no nose, a high forehead, bald crown, small grey eyes, highly coloured plump cheeks, a big pepper-and-salt beard, large ears. The man is a well-known republican and socialist, argues quite well and knows a great deal. His wife gave birth to a child today, so he’s in fine fettle and beaming with satisfaction.

  Actually, I much prefer painting this sort of thing to doing flowers. But seeing that one can do the one without forgoing the other, I take my chances as they come.

  I’ve also done a portrait of a 12-year-old girl, brown eyes, black hair & eyebrows, yellowish matt complexion. She is sitting in a cane chair, has a blood-red and violet striped bodice, a deep blue skirt with orange polka-dots, and a branch of laurier rose in her hand. The background is light green, almost white.

  And I’m always on the lookout for the same thing - a portrait, a landscape, a landscape and a portrait. I hope I shall get the chance to paint the baby born today, too.

  I’ve also done a garden without flowers, or rather a stretch of grass, just mown, very green with the grey hay spread out in long rows, a weeping ash and some cedars and cypresses, the cedars yellowish and spherical, the cypresses tall, blue-green, and at the back, laurier rose and a corner of green-blue sky. The blue shadows of the shrubs on the grass.

  Also a portrait bust of a Zouave, blue uniform with red and yellow trimmings, sky-blue sash, blood-red cap with blue tassel, sunburnt, black hair cut short, eyes like a cat’s, missing nothing, orange & green, a small head on a bull-like neck. In this one the background is a bright green door and some orange bricks in the wall & the white plaster.

  As to your question about whether it’s true that I’m going to be sharing with somebody else, it seems quite likely, and with a first-rate painter, too, but one who, like the other impressionists, has a life full of care and is the proud owner of a liver complaint.2 Theo bought a large painting of his some time ago, of negresses in pink, blue, orange and yellow cotton clothes under tamarind, coconut and banana trees, with the sea in the distance.3 Like the description of Otaheite in Lori’s Le mariage. He’s been in Martinique, you see, working in the tropical scenery there.

  We’ve got a second painting of his, too, which he exchanged for one of my studies, a dried-up river with purple mud and puddles of water reflecting the pure cobalt blue of the sky, green grass.4 A negro boy with a white and red cow, a negress in blue, and some green forest. He works like one possessed and paints all sorts of things. At present he’s in Brittany.

  We shall be living together in order to economize and to keep each other company. Should either of us sell anything in the next few days, so that his journey can be paid for, he’ll come. It’s not impossible that something will still intervene, but it is looking quite on the cards. And even if it doesn’t happen and I have to go on working by myself, my doing work in the same direction as other people, albeit each in his own way, will ensure that there is some comradeship and might well give rise to interesting correspondence.

  How is your health? Good, I hope. Try above all to go out in the open air as much as possible. I still suffer odd bouts of not being able to take food, more or less as you used to. But by and large I muddle along steering clear of the rocks. ‘If you can’t be strong, be clever’, is a motto you and I, with our constitutions, should take to heart. Incidentally, work, when it does go well, helps a great deal.

  I find it tremendously beautiful here in the summer, the green is very deep and rich, the air thin and amazingly clear. And yet, the wide plain often reminds one of Holland - here, where there are hardly any mountains & rocks - if the colour were not so different. I particularly enjoy the colourful clothes, the women and girls dress in cheap, simple material, green, red, pink, yellow, havana brown, purple, blue, polka-dots, stripes. White scarves, red, green and yellow parasols. A strong sulphurous sun which shines down on it all, the great blue sky - it is all as tremendously cheerful as Holland is gloomy. What a pity everybody can’t have these two extremes.

  Now I must stop. Uncle’s death is an important event for you and for Mother, and especially for our aunt. The impression it has left on me is very strange, because, of course, my image of the man is made up of memories from so long ago, from much earlier years, and it seems most peculiar that someone one knew so intimately should have become such a stranger. No doubt you will understand that. Viewed in this way, life is very dream-like, and from the moment it becomes simpler again and the sick man sets out on his great journey, one regains a better understanding of it - no doubt my feelings about it all are similar to yours. Theo, too, will feel it very much, for he had much more to do with Uncle than I did.

  How is Mother right now? I think of you both often and wish you all the best from the bottom of my heart.

  Vincent

  I am up to my ears in work, and can seldom think of anything else. My address is

  2 Place Lamartine

  Aries

  B. d. Rh.

  If you can, do bear in mind those books and prints of mine I mentioned.

  The uncertainty about Gauguin’s arrival continued. Impatiently, Van Gogh considered going to Brittany himself. His plans for equipping and decorating the Yellow House suggest, however, that he had not yet given up all hope. On the contrary, he was painting away ‘with the enthusiasm of a Marseillais sitting down to his bouillabaisse’. In a letter to Bernard, who had meanwhile joined Gauguin at Pont-Aven, we read for the first time how Vincent intended to set off the place before Gauguin’s arrival: ‘[…] some six paintings of sunflowers, a decor in which the vivid or broken chrome yellows will stand out sharply against various blue backgrounds, fro
m the palest Veronese green to royal blue, in a frame of thin slats painted in red lead’. Writing to Theo, he went into further details about his project, which was rapidly expanding in both size and ambition.

  The tension between artistic and ‘real’ life was an important element of Vincent’s letters to Bernard in August. It was largely reflected in Van Gogh’s sexual preoccupations, the artist revealing himself as a new Pygmalion. To him, a beautiful woman was ‘a living miracle, while the pictures by da Vinci and Correggio only exist for other reasons. Why am I so little an artist that I keep regretting that the statue and the picture are not alive? Why do I understand the musician better, why do I appreciate the reasons for his abstractions better?’ The discussion then concentrates on their older colleague Edgar Degas, the master of the female nude, whose own appearance was in such contrast with the world from which he took his subjects. ‘Why,’ Van Gogh asked Bernard, ‘do you say Degas can’t get it up properly? Degas lives like some petty lawyer and doesn’t like women, knowing very well that if he did like them and bedded them frequently, he’d go to seed and be in no position to paint any longer. The very reason why Degas’s painting is virile and impersonal is that he has resigned himself to being nothing more than a petty lawyer with a horror of kicking over the traces. He observes human animals who are stronger than himself screwing and fucking away and he paints them so well for the very reason he isn’t all that keen on it himself At a time when Van Gogh was in such financial straits that he had to content himself with ‘the kind of 2-franc women who were originally intended for the Zouaves’, there was nothing for it but to ‘live like monks or hermits, with work as our overriding passion, and renouncing prosperity’. Had not the old Dutch masters, and Cezanne as well, led respectable lives, and had Balzac not claimed that ‘relative chastity is beneficial to the modern artist’?