The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

by Vincent Van Gogh

  I am beginning to appreciate the beauty of the women here better, so my thoughts return to Monticelli over and over again. Colour plays a tremendous part in the beauty of these women - I’m not saying that their figures are not beautiful, but that is not the native charm. That is to be found in the grand lines of the colourful costume, worn just right, and in the tone of the flesh rather than the shape. It won’t be easy doing them the way I’m beginning to feel about them. But what I am sure of is that by staying here I shall make progress. And in order to do a picture which is really of the south, a little skill is not enough. It is observing things for a long time that gives you greater maturity and a deeper understanding.

  I didn’t think when I left Paris that I should ever find Monticelli and Delacroix so true. It is only now, after months and months, that I am beginning to realize that they didn’t dream it all up. And next year I think you’ll see the same subjects again, orchards, the harvest, but - with a different colouring, and above all, a change in treatment. And these changes and variations will go on.

  My feeling is that I must work at a leisurely pace. Indeed, what about practising the old saying, One should study for ten years or so, and then produce a few figures? That is what Monticelli did, after all. Hundreds of his pictures should be considered as nothing more than studies. But still, figures like the woman in yellow, or the woman with the parasol, the little one you have, or the lovers that Reid had, those are complete figures and one can only admire the way they were drawn. For in them Monticelli achieves drawing as rich and magnificent as that of Daumier and Delacroix. Certainly, at the price Monticellis are fetching, it would be an excellent speculation to buy some.

  The day will come when his beautiful drawn figures will be considered very great art.

  As for the beauty of the women and their costume, I’m sure the town of Aries was infinitely more glorious in the past. Everything has a blighted, faded quality about it now. Still, if you look at it for a long time, the old charm re-emerges.

  And that is why I can see that I will lose absolutely nothing by staying where I am and contenting myself with Watching things go by, like a spider in its web waiting for flies.

  I can’t force things, and now that I’m settled in, I’ll be able to profit from all the fine days and all the opportunities for catching a real picture now and then.

  Milliet is lucky, he has as many Arlesiennes as he wants, but then, he can’t paint them, and if he were a painter, he wouldn’t have them. I shall just have to bide my time without rushing things.

  I’ve read another article on Wagner - Love in Music - I think by the same author who wrote the book on Wagner. How we need the same thing in painting!

  It seems that in the book My Religion, Tolstoy implies that whatever happens in a violent revolution, there will also be an inner and hidden revolution in the people, out of which a new religion will be born, or rather, something completely new which will be nameless, but which will have the same effect of consoling, of making life possible, as the Christian religion used to.

  The book must be a very interesting one, it seems to me. In the end, we shall have had enough of cynicism, scepticism and humbug, and will want to live - more musically. How will this come about, and what will we discover? It would be nice to be able to prophesy, but it is even better to be forewarned, instead of seeing absolutely nothing in the future other than the disasters that are bound to strike the modern world and civilization like so many thunderbolts, through revolution, or war, or the bankruptcy of worm-eaten states.

  If we study Japanese art, we discover a man who is undeniably wise, philosophical and intelligent, who spends his time – doing what? Studying the distance from the earth to the moon? No! Studying the politics of Bismarck? No! He studies… a single blade of grass. But this blade of grass leads him to draw all the plants - then the seasons, the grand spectacle of landscapes, finally animals, then the human figure. That is how he spends his life, and life is too short to do everything.

  So come, isn’t what we are taught by these simple Japanese, who live in nature as if they themselves were flowers, almost a true religion?

  And one cannot study Japanese art, it seems to me, without becoming merrier and happier, and we should turn back to nature in spite of our education and our work in a conventional world.

  Isn’t it sad that the Monticellis have never been reproduced in beautiful lithographs or vibrant etchings? I should love to see what artists would say if an engraver like the one who engraved Velasquez’s work made a fine etching of them. Be that as it may, I think it rather more our duty to try to admire and know things for ourselves than to teach them to others. But the two can go hand in hand.

  I envy the Japanese the extreme clarity of everything in their work. It is never dull and it never seems to be done in too much of a hurry. Their work is as simple as breathing, and they do a figure in a few sure strokes as if it were as easy as doing up your waistcoat.

  Oh, I still have to learn to do a figure in a few strokes. That will keep me busy all winter. Once I can do that, I shall be able to do people promenading along the boulevards, in the streets, masses of new subjects. While I’ve been writing this letter to you, I’ve already drawn a dozen. I’m on the right track, but it’s very complicated, as what I am trying to do in a few strokes is to provide the figure of a man, a woman, a child, a horse or a dog, with a head, a body, legs and arms that all fit together.

  For the moment, and with a hearty handshake,

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  One day Madame de Larebey Laroquette said to me, Monticelli, Monticelli, now he was a man who should have been at the head of a great studio in the south.

  I wrote to our sister the other day, and to you, you remember, that sometimes I felt I was continuing Monticelli’s work here. Well, now you can see we are setting up that studio in question.

  What Gauguin will be doing, what I shall be doing as well, will be in keeping with Monticelli’s fine work, and we shall try to prove to the good people that Monticelli did not die slumped across the café tables of the Canebiére, but that the little fellow is still alive.

  And the thing won’t end with us, we shall merely start it off on a fairly solid basis.

  Not only Monticelli but Corot, too, seemed to provide Van Gogh with a precedent for his plan to share a house with a fellow artist - Corot, that amiable artist, ‘on finding Daumier on the verge of despair, made such good provision for him that the other approved of everything’. Although Van Gogh had met Gauguin no more than fleetingly during his stay in Paris, he felt it his duty to help him. He considered him ‘a very great master and a most superior person as to character and intelligence’.

  At the beginning of October 1888, Gauguin wrote to say that he and Bernard had finished their self-portraits for Van Gogh. Gauguin had given his portrait a symbolic dimension by depicting himself as Jean Valjean, the main character in Victor Hugo’s Let misèrables. He described the portrait to Vincent as the ‘mask of a shabbily dressed and accomplished rogue like Jean Valjean […] disowned by society, outlawed, yet with all his love and strength - isn’t that also the picture of the contemporary impressionist? And because I have lent him my features, you have a portrait not just of myself, but of all of us, poor victims of society who take revenge by doing good.’

  In his reply to Gauguin, Van Gogh expressed his diffidence at receiving so important a work as a present and added that he had finished his own self-portrait as a ‘bonze’ and proposed to give it to Gauguin in return. He also gave detailed descriptions of the other works he had completed in this period as decorations for the Yellow House, namely The Green Vineyard and The Poet’s Garden. In passing, the letter also throws interesting light e-. Van Gogh’s last days in Paris.

  [F] [letter from Vincent to Paul Gauguin]1

  [3 October 1888]

  My dear Gauguin,

  This morning I received your excellent letter, which I have again sent on to my brother. Your view
of impressionism in general, of which your portrait is a symbol, is striking. No one could be more anxious than I am to see it - but I am sure even now that this work is too important for me to take in exchange. But if you would like to keep it for us, my brother will, if you agree, buy it at the first opportunity - and I immediately asked him to do so - so let’s hope it happens before long.

  For we are trying once more to make it as easy as possible for you to come here soon.

  I must tell you that even while working I think continually about the plan of setting up a studio in which you and I will be permanent residents, but which both of us want to turn into a shelter and refuge for friends, against the times when they find that the struggle is getting too much for them.

  When you left Paris, my brother and I stayed on together for a time, which will always remain an unforgettable memory for me. The discussions ranged further and wider - with Guillaumin, with the Pissarros, father and son, and with Seurat, whom I had not met before (I visited his studio just a few hours before my departure).

  These discussions often dealt with something so near to my brother’s heart and to mine, namely what steps to take in order to safeguard the material existence of painters, to safeguard their means of production (paints, canvases) and to safeguard their true share in the price their pictures fetch these days - though not until long after they have left the artists’ possession.

  When you’re here, we can mull over all these discussions.

  Anyway, when I left Paris I was in a sorry state, quite ill and almost an alcoholic after driving myself on even while my strength was failing - and then withdrawing into myself, still bereft of hope.

  Now, hope is vaguely beckoning on the horizon again, that flickering hope which used sometimes to console my solitary life.

  I should so much like to imbue you with a large share of my faith that we shall succeed in starting something that will endure.

  When we have had a talk about those strange days spent in discussion in run-down studios and the caf£s of the Petit Boulevard, you will understand the full scope of this idea of my brother’s and mine - as yet unrealized when it comes to setting up a society.

  Still, you will appreciate that in order to remedy the terrible situation of the last few years something is needed, either along the precise lines we proposed or else very much like them. That much we have taken for our unshakeable foundation, as you will gather when you have the full explanation. And you will agree that we have gone a good way beyond the plan we have already communicated to you. That we have gone beyond it is no more than our duty as picture dealers, for you probably know that I, too, spent several years in the trade and do not despise a profession in which I used to earn my living. Suffice it to say that I’m sure that, although you have apparently cut yourself off from Paris, you haven’t stopped feeling a fairly close rapport with Paris.

  I am having an extraordinary spell of feverish activity these days. Right now I am tackling a landscape with a blue sky above an immense green, purple and yellow vineyard, with black and orange vines. Little figures of ladies with red parasols and little figures of grape pickers with their small cart make it even gayer. Grey sand in the foreground. Another size 30 square canvas to decorate the house.

  I’ve a portrait of myself, all ash grey. The ashen colour -which has been obtained by mixing Veronese green with orange lead - on a pale Veronese background, all in harmony with the reddish-brown clothes. Not wishing to innate my own personality, however, I aimed rather for the character of a bonze, a simple worshipper of the eternal Buddha. Though I have taken rather a lot of trouble with it, I shall have to go over it again if I want to express the idea properly, and I shall have to recover even further from the stultifying effect of our so-called state of civilization if I am to have a better model for a better picture.

  One thing that gives me enormous pleasure is the letter I received yesterday from Boch (his sister is one of the Belgian Vingtistes), who writes that he has settled down in the Borinage to paint miners and coal mines there. He nevertheless intends to return to the south - to vary his impressions - and if he does he is certain to come to Aries.

  I consider my views of art excessively run of the mill compared with yours.

  I have always had coarse animal tastes.

  I neglect everything for the external beauty of things, which I cannot reproduce because I render it so ugly and coarse in my pictures, albeit nature seems so perfect to me.

  At present, however, my bony carcass is so full of energy that it makes straight for its objective. The result is a degree of sincerity, perhaps original at times, about what I feel, but only if the subject lends itself to my crude and clumsy touch.

  I feel sure that if from now on you were to consider yourself the head of this studio, which we shall try to ensure will become a refuge for many - little by little, as our unremitting labour provides us with the means of completing it - I’m sure that you would then feel more or less consoled for the present ordeals of penury and ill-health, seeing that we shall probably be devoting our lives to a generation of painters that will last a long while to come.

  This part of the country has already seen the cult of Venus - in Greece, primarily artistic - followed by the poets and artists of the Renaissance. Where these things could flourish, impressionism can as well.

  I have made a special decoration, the Poet’s Garden, for the room you will have (there is a first draft of it among the sketches in Bernard’s possession - it was later simplified). The ordinary public garden contains plants and shrubs that conjure up landscapes in which one can readily imagine Botticelli, Giotto, Petrarch, Dante and Boccaccio. I have tried to distil in the decoration the essence of what constitutes the immutable character of this country.

  And I set out to paint that garden in such a way that one is put in mind of the old poet from these parts (or rather from Avignon), Petrarch, and of the new poet from these parts - Paul Gauguin -

  However clumsy this attempt may be, it may show you perhaps that I have been thinking of you with very great emotion as I prepared your studio.

  Let us be of good heart about the success of our venture, and please keep thinking of this as your home, for I feel very sure that all this will last for a very long time.

  A warm handshake, and believe me,

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  I am only afraid that you will think Brittany more beautiful, indeed, that you will find nothing more beautiful here than Daumier, the figures here are often pure Daumier. It shouldn’t take you long to discover that antiquity and the Renaissance lie dormant under all this modernity. Well, you are free to revive them.

  Bernard tells me that he, Morel, Laval and somebody else will be making exchanges with me. In principle I am very much in favour of the system of exchanges between artists because I have seen the important part it played in the life of the Japanese painters. Accordingly, one of these days I shall be sending you what studies I have that are dry and that I can spare, so that you may have first pick. But I shall make no exchanges at all with you if it means that on your side it costs you something as important as your portrait, which is sure to be too beautiful. Truly, I wouldn’t dare, because my brother would gladly buy it from you for a whole month’s money.

  Following this bout of frantic activity Van Gogh was forced to take a rest for a few days. The painting campaigns of the summer and autumn had exhausted him to such an extent that he felt he was ‘reduced once more close to the deranged state of Hugo van der Goes in the painting by limile Wauters’. In the light of what happened later that year, Van Gogh’s remark has a sense of doom and foreboding. Meanwhile, he tried to get as much sleep as he could, and even that provided him with inspiration for a painting, namely Vincent’s Bedroom.

  554 [F]

  [16 October 1888]

  My dear Theo,

  I’m sending you a little sketch at long last to give you at least some idea of the direction my work is taking. Because I feel q
uite well again today. My eyes are still tired, but I had a new idea all the same and here is the sketch of it.

  As always a size 30 canvas.

  This time it’s simply my bedroom. Only here everything depends on the colour, and by simplifying it I am lending it more style, creating an overall impression of rest or sleep. In fact, a look at the picture ought to rest the mind, or rather the imagination.

  The walls are pale violet. The floor - is red tiles.

  The wood of the bed and the chairs is the yellow of fresh butter, the sheet and the pillows very light lime green.

  The blanket scarlet.

  The window green.

  The washstand orange, the basin blue.

  The doors lilac.

  And that’s all - nothing of any consequence in this shuttered room.

  The sturdy lines of the furniture should also express undisturbed rest.

  Portraits on the wall, and a mirror, and a hand towel, and some clothes. The frame - because there is no white in the picture - will be white.

  This by way of revenge for the enforced rest I have had to take.

  I shall work on it again all day tomorrow, but you can see how simple the conception is. The shadows and the cast shadows are left out and it is painted in bright flat tints like the Japanese prints.

  It will form a contrast to, for example, the Tarascon diligence and the Night Cafe.

  I am not writing you a long letter because I intend starting very early tomorrow in the cool morning light so as to finish my canvas.

  How are your aches and pains? Don’t forget to let me know.

  I hope you’ll write one of these days.

  One day I’ll do some sketches for you of the other rooms too.

  With a good handshake,

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  On 23 October 1888, just when Van Gogh was beginning to become annoyed at Gauguin’s reluctance to turn up, and was thinking of inviting Bernard as an alternative co-tenant for the Yellow House, Gauguin arrived in Aries. Gauguin claimed later that his stay in Aries had seemed to go on for ever, but the notorious association of the two painters in fact lasted for precisely nine weeks.