While his landscapes were piling up against the walls of his studio, Vincent’s real ambition was still to become a portrait painter: ‘Taking it all in all, that is the only thing in painting that moves me to the depths, and it makes me feel closer to infinity than anything else.’ In portraiture lay ‘the great simplicity’. Both as an ‘obstinate colourist’ and also in pursuit of his humanitarian ideals, he felt that he might still be able to make a valuable contribution to art in that genre. He was thinking of painting a symbolic portrait ‘of an artist friend who dreams great dreams’ with a mysterious, starry night in the background. He quickly discovered the perfect model in the Belgian painter Eugene Boch, whom he saw, moreover, as a suitable marriage partner for his sister Wil.
The pleasant warmth of the south and his satisfaction with his portrait of the peasant Patience Escalier made him forget that ‘things are extremely grim these days, materially speaking’.
5 20 [F]
[11 August 1888]
My dear Theo,
Before long you will be making the acquaintance of Mr Patience Escalier - a typical ‘man of the hoe’, a former Camargue herdsman, now a gardener at a farmhouse in the Crau.
I shall be sending you this very day the drawing I did after that painting, just like the drawing I did after the portrait of the postman, Roulin.
The colouring of this peasant portrait isn’t as dark as the Nuenen potato eaters, but our so civilized Parisian Portier1 -presumably so called because he chucks the pictures out through the door - will find himself once more faced with the same problem. You have changed since then, but you will find that he has not. It really is a pity that there are not more pictures with clogs in Paris. I don’t think my peasant will do any harm, for instance, to your Lautrec,2 and I even make so bold as to imagine that the Lautrec would appear still more distinguished by the contrast, and that mine would gain by the odd association, because that sunlit, sunburned quality, weatherbeaten by the full sun and open air, would come even more into its own alongside the face powder and the fashionable clothes.
How wrong the Parisians are in not acquiring a taste for things that are out of the ordinary, for Monticellis, for barbotine. Still, one shouldn’t be discouraged because Utopia isn’t round the corner. It is just that what I learned in Paris is deserting me and that I am going back to the ideas I had in the country before I knew the impressionists. And I shouldn’t be very surprised if before very long the impressionists were to find fault with my way of working, which has been enriched by the ideas of Delacroix rather than theirs.
For instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of colour to express myself more forcefully. Well, so much for theory, but let me give you an example of what I mean.
I should like to paint the portrait of an artist friend who dreams great dreams, who works as the nightingale sings, because it is his nature. This man will be fair-haired. I should like to put my appreciation, the love I have for him, into the picture. So I will paint him as he is, as faithfully as I can - to begin with.
But that is not the end of the picture. To finish it, I shall be an obstinate colourist. I shall exaggerate the fairness of the hair, arrive at tones of orange, chrome, pale yellow. Behind the head - instead of painting the ordinary wall of the shabby apartment, I shall paint infinity, I shall do a simple background of the richest, most intense blue that I can contrive, and by this simple combination, the shining fair head against this rich blue background, I shall obtain a mysterious effect, like a star in the deep blue sky.
I used the same approach in the portrait of the peasant. Without wanting in this case, however, to conjure up the mysterious brilliance of a pale star in the blue of infinity. But by imagining the marvellous man that I was about to paint right in the middle of the sweltering midday heat of harvest, I arrived at the flashing orange colours like red-hot iron and the luminous tones of old gold in the shadows.
Ah, my dear brother - and the worthies will see only caricature in this exaggeration. But what does that matter to us? We have read La terre and Germinal, and if we paint a peasant we want to show that what we have read has, in the end, become a small part of us.
I don’t know if I can convey the postman as I feel him. This man is a revolutionary like old Tanguy. He is probably considered a good republican, because he heartily detests the republic which we now enjoy, and because all in all he is somewhat doubtful and a little disillusioned with the republican idea itself But one day I saw him singing the Marseillaise, and I thought I was watching ‘89, not next year, but the one 99 years ago. It was a Delacroix, a Daumier, straight out of old Holland. Unfortunately he cannot pose, and a painting demands an intelligent model.
I must now tell you that things are extremely grim these days, materially speaking. Whatever I do, life is very expensive here, almost like Paris, where you don’t get much for 5 or 6 francs a day.
When I have models, I have to make great sacrifices as a consequence. No matter, I shall continue. And if by chance you should happen to send me a little more money sometimes, I assure you it would benefit the pictures, not me. The only choice I have myself is between being a good painter or a bad one. I choose the first. But the needs of painting are like those of a ruinously expensive mistress, one can do nothing without money, and one never has enough of it. Painting should thus be done at public expense instead of overburdening the artist.
But there, we should keep our own counsel, because no one is forcing us to work, indifference towards painting being inevitably pretty general, pretty well permanent.
Fortunately, my stomach has recovered so much that I have lived 3 weeks of the month on ship’s biscuits with milk and eggs. The pleasant heat is restoring my strength. I certainly did the right thing coming south now instead of waiting until my complaint was past curing. Yes, I am as well as other men now, which I have been no more than briefly in the past, in Nuenen for instance - and it is not unpleasant. By ‘other men’ I mean something like those labourers on strike, or old Tanguy, old Millet, the peasants. When you are in good health you should be able to live on a piece of bread while doing a full day’s work and have enough strength left over to smoke and have a drink, because you need that under those conditions. And yet be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all. Ah, those who don’t believe in the sun here are quite godless.
Unfortunately, along with the good god sun, there is the devil mistral 3 quarters of the time.
Saturday’s post has been, damn it, and I was quite sure that your letter would come, but you can see I’m not getting in a state about it. With a handshake,
Ever yours,
Vincent
531 [F] [postscript omitted]
[3 September 1888]
My dear Theo,
I spent the day with the Belgian again yesterday - he has a sister who belongs to the Vingtistes too1 - it wasn’t good weather, but it was a very good day for talking. We went for a walk anyway, and saw some very beautiful sights at the bullfights and outside the town. We talked more seriously about the idea of my keeping my lodgings in the south while he set up some sort of base among the collieries. Then Gauguin and I and he, supposing the importance of a picture justified the journey, could change places - sometimes being up north, but in a familiar area where there would be a friend, and sometimes down south.
You’ll see him soon, this young man with the Dantesque appearance, because he is coming to Paris, and you’d do him a good turn by putting him up, if the room is free. He looks very distinguished, and I’m sure he’ll become so as far as his pictures are concerned. He likes Delacroix, we talked a lot about Delacroix yesterday, and what do you think, he knew that tempestuous sketch of La Barque du Christ.
Well, thanks to him, I’ve finally got a first sketch for that picture I’ve dreamed of for so long - the poet. He posed for me. His fine head with that green gaze stands out in my portrait against a starry sky of deep ultramarin
e. The clothing consists of a short yellow jacket, a collar of unbleached linen, gaily coloured tie. He gave me two sittings in one day.
I had a letter yesterday from our sister, who has seen all sorts of things. Ah, if she could marry an artist, it would be no bad thing. In fact, we must continue to urge her to sort out her personality rather than her artistic talents.
I’ve finished Daudet’s L’Immortel. I rather like the sculptor Védrine’s saying that achieving glory is something like shoving the lighted end of a cigar into one’s mouth while smoking. Now I like L’Immortel decidedly less, far less than Tartarin.2
It seems to me, you see, that L’Immortel isn’t as wonderfully colourful as Tartarin, because, for all that mass of finely drawn, exact observation, it reminds me of the dreary pictures by Jean Béraud, so dry, so cold. Now Tartarin is truly great, with the greatness of a masterpiece, just like Candide.
I would especially ask you to air my studies of this place as much as possible, as they are still not completely dry. If they remain shut away or in the dark, the colours will pay for it.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea if you could put the portrait of the young girl, the harvest (the large landscape with the ruin in the background and the range of mountains), the small seascape, and the garden with the weeping tree and the conifer shrubs, on stretchers. I am rather attached to those. You can tell by the drawing of the small seascape that it has the most detail.
I am having 2 oak frames made for my new peasant’s head and for my poet study. Ah, my dear brother, sometimes I know so well what I want. I can well do without God in both my life and also in my painting, but, suffering as I am, I cannot do without something greater than myself, something which is my life - the power to create.
And if, deprived of the physical power, one tries to create thoughts instead of children, one is still very much part of humanity. And in my pictures I want to say something consoling, as music does. I want to paint men and women with a touch of the eternal, whose symbol was once the halo, which we try to convey by the very radiance and vibrancy of our colouring.
Portraits conceived in this way do not turn into Ary Scheffers just because there is a blue sky in the background, as in the Saint Augustine, and Ary Scheffer is scarcely a colourist.
Instead, they would be more in tune with what Eug. Delacroix tried and managed to do in his Tasso in Prison, and in so many other pictures representing a real man. Ah, portraiture, portraiture with the mind, the soul of the model - that is what really must come, it seems to me.
We talked a lot yesterday, the Belgian and I, about the advantages and disadvantages of this place. We are very much in agreement about both. And about how important it is for us to be able to travel, sometimes north, sometimes south.
He is going to stay with MacKnight again, so as to live more cheaply. That does, however, have one disadvantage for him, I think, because living with an idler makes one idle.
I’m sure you would enjoy meeting him. He is still young. I think he’ll be asking your advice about buying Japanese prints and Daumier lithographs. So far as the latter are concerned, the Daumiers, it would be a good thing to get some more of them, because we might not be able to get them later on.
The Belgian was saying that he paid 80 francs for board and lodging with MacKnight. So what a difference living together makes - I have to pay 45 a month just for my lodging. And then I always come back to the same calculation, that living with Gauguin, I should spend no more than living on my own, and be no worse off for it. But we have to bear in mind that their accommodation was very poor, not so much in terms of sleeping arrangements as in opportunities for working at home.
So, I am always caught between two currents of thought, firstly, material difficulties, turning this way and that to make a living, and then, the study of colour. I keep hoping that I’ll come up with something. To express the love of two lovers by the marriage of two complementary colours, their blending and their contrast, the mysterious vibrations of related tones. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a dark background. To express hope by some star. Someone’s passion by the radiance of the setting sun. That’s certainly no realistic trompe Poeil, but something that really exists, isn’t it?
Goodbye for now. I’ll let you know another time when the Belgian may call, because I’ll be seeing him again tomorrow. With a handshake,
Ever yours,
Vincent
[…]
With undiminished fervour, Van Gogh pursued his dream of setting up an ‘atelier du Midi’, an artists’ house in the south. Following a ‘cry for help’ from Gauguin in the second week of September he urged Theo anew to conclude the financial arrangement with Gauguin and so speed his departure for Aries. But as Gauguin continued to vacillate, Van Gogh’s thoughts turned to Bernard as a possible alternative. Meanwhile the furnishing of the Yellow House proved a heavy drain on his funds.
Van Gogh was in great form, though, painting away ‘without giving thought to a single rule’, full of self-confidence: ‘I am rushing ahead like a painting locomotive.’ He found a new subject in the small public park in front of his house, which not only reminded him of similar themes in Manet’s work but into which he projected a world of ideas going back to the Renaissance poets Petrarch and Boccaccio. The south had taught him, moreover, that night can often be more colourful than day, and during three nights in September he completed his reproduction of the refuge of the ‘night owls’, the Night Cafe, where he had been living since May. He had first mentioned the subject to Theo at the beginning of August, and as happened so often when he was engaged on a special painting assignment, he described the result as ‘ugly’: ‘[…] the painting is one of the ugliest I have done. It is similar to the Potato Eaters and yet different. I have tried to depict man’s terrible passions with red and green.’ In his choice of colour, he based himself- despite his respect for such pointillists as Seurat and Signac - on the school he had tried to emulate before he came to Paris, with Delacroix and Monticelli as his mentors. He identified himself more and more emphatically with the second of these two: ‘I sometimes really think that I am continuing in the footsteps of this man.’
At the end of September the weather changed. An article on Tolstoy filled him with thoughts of a ‘consoling’ inner revolution. For the time being, however, the philosophical appeal of Japanese art seemed to be stronger still. His ideal now was to live and to work as a Japanese painter might, ‘close to nature, like the ordinary man in the street’. He delighted in a new consignment of Japanese prints his brother had sent him and with which he decorated his studio. Much as Japanese artists were in the habit of exchanging their work with one another, so Van Gogh suggested to Gauguin and Bernard that they exchange portraits: ‘I should very much like to have the portrait of Bernard by Gauguin here, as well as the one of Gauguin by Bernard.’ His painter friends went along with this, inasmuch as each decided to paint a self-portrait, with a portrait of the other pictured in the background.
534 [F]
[9 September 1888]
My dear Theo,
I have just put the sketch of the new picture, the Night Cafe, in the post, as well as another that I did some time ago. I might finish by doing a few Japanese prints one day.
Now, yesterday I was busy with the furnishing of the house. Just as the postman & his wife had told me, the two beds will come to 150 fr. each if one wants them to be sturdily made. I found that everything they’d said about prices was true. So I had to change tack, and this is what I’ve done: I’ve bought one bed in walnut, and another in deal, which will be mine, and which I shall decorate later. Then I bought bedding for one of the beds, and two mattresses. If Gauguin, or someone else, comes, his bed will be ready in a minute. From the start I wanted to arrange the house, not just for me, but so that I’ll be able to put someone up.
Naturally, that swallowed up the greater part of the money. With the rest I bought 12 chairs, a mirror, and a few small necessities. Whi
ch means, in short, that I’ll be able to move in by next week.
For visitors, there’ll be the prettiest room upstairs, which I shall do my best to turn into something like the boudoir of a really artistic woman.
Then there will be my own bedroom, which I want to keep extremely simple, but with large, solid furniture, bed, chairs, table, all in deal.
Downstairs the studio and another room, also a studio, but a kitchen at the same time.
One day you’ll see a picture of the little house itself, in bright sunshine, or else with the window lit up and the starry sky.
From now on you can consider yourself the owner of a country house here in Aries. Because I’m very eager to arrange it so that you’ll be happy in it, and to turn it into a studio clearly designed as such. If, say, you came for a holiday here in Marseilles in a year’s time, it would be ready - and I intend the house to be filled with pictures from top to bottom by then.
The room you’ll stay in then, or which will be Gauguin’s if Gauguin comes, will have white walls hung with large yellow sunflowers.
In the morning, when you open the window, you’ll see the green of the gardens and the rising sun and the road into town.
And you’ll see these big pictures of bunches of 12 or 14 sunflowers crammed into this tiny boudoir with its pretty bed and everything else elegantly done. It will be something special.
And the studio - the red tiles on the floor, the walls and ceiling white, the rustic chairs, the deal table - hung, I hope, with portraits. There will be a feeling of Daumier about it - and I’ll go so far as to predict that it will be something very special.
Now please would you look out for some Daumier lithographs for the studio, and some Japanese things, but there is absolutely no hurry, and only when you happen to get duplicates of them. And also some Delacroixs, and some ordinary lithographs by modern artists. There is no hurry whatever, but I have it all planned. I really do want to make it - an artist’s house, but not affected, on the contrary, nothing affected, but everything from the chairs to the pictures full of character.
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh Page 42