The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

by Vincent Van Gogh

  Towards the end of August Van Gogh received permission to resume his painting. He thought that Trabuc, the chief attendant at the asylum, a ‘real Midi type’, looked like an etching of a Spanish nobleman, and while working on a self-portrait he also recalled that portraits by the seventeenth-century masters Rembrandt and Carel Fabritius take on ‘something unutterably radiant and comforting’. His rereading of Le conscrit by the Flemish writer Hendrik Conscience had a similar effect on him. As in the past, he identified himself with the situations described in books. Dostoevsky’s Memoirs from the House of the Dead persuaded him to return to his painting of the interior of the hospital at Aries which he had left unfinished, and he drew a parallel between his own depressed mental state and that of the Russian writer ‘who also suffered from a nervous illness […] which brought on terrible attacks from time to time’.

  Meanwhile, Dr Peyron, his doctor at the asylum, reported to Theo, ‘His suicidal tendencies have gone, the only thing that still troubles him is having unpleasant dreams […].’

  604 [F] [part]

  [5 or 6 September 1889]

  My dear brother,

  I have already written to you, but there are still quite a few things you said to me that I haven’t answered yet. Firstly, that you have rented a room in Tanguy’s house & that my canvases are there, which is very interesting - provided you aren’t paying too much - the expenses go on all the time and the canvases still take so long to bring anything in - it often frightens me.

  Be that as it may, I’m sure it’s a very good step, and I thank you for taking it, as for so many other things. It is curious that Maus had the idea of inviting young Bernard & me for the next Vingtistes exhibition. I should like to exhibit with them very much, though I’m conscious of my inferiority by the side of so many tremendously talented Belgians.

  This Mellery, now, is a great artist And has been one for a number of years. But I shall try my best to do something good this autumn.

  I am working away in my room without interruption which does me good and chases away what I imagine are abnormal ideas.

  Thus I’ve done the canvas of the Bedroom again. That’s certainly one of my best studies - and sooner or later it must definitely be relined. It was painted so quickly and has dried in such a way that the turpentine evaporated straight away and the paint hasn’t stuck firmly to the canvas at all. That will also have happened with other studies of mine painted very quickly and with a very full brush. Anyway, after some time this thin canvas deteriorates and cannot take a lot of impasto. You’ve got some excellent stretchers, damn it, if I had some like that to work with, I’d be a lot better off than with these battens you get here which warp in the sun.

  They say - and I am very willing to believe it - that it is difficult to know oneself- but it isn’t easy to paint oneself either. So I am working on two self-portraits at the moment - for want of another model.

  Because it is high time that I did a little figure work. In the one I began the first day I got up, I was thin and deathly pale. It is dark purple-blue, and the head whitish with yellow hair, thus with a colour effect.

  But I have since started another, three-quarter length on a light background.

  Then I’m retouching this summer’s studies - in fact, I am working morning, noon and night.

  Are you well? - damn it, I really wish that you were 2 years further on and that these early days of marriage, however lovely they may be at times, were behind you. I’m quite convinced that a marriage grows better with time and that it’s then that your constitution improves.

  So take things with a pinch of northern phlegm, and look after yourselves, both of you. This confounded life in the art world is exhausting, it seems.

  Day by day my own strength is returning, and already I feel I have almost too much of it again. For one doesn’t need to be Hercules to remain hard at work at the easel.

  What you told me about Maus having been to see my canvases made me think a lot about the Belgian painters these last few days and also during my illness. As a result I was overwhelmed with memories as by an avalanche, and I tried to recall the whole of that school of modern Flemish artists until I felt as homesick as a fish out of water.

  Which isn’t any good, as our way lies - forwards - and retracing our steps is both impossible and impermissible. In other words one can think about the past without being swamped by an over-melancholic nostalgia.

  Anyway, Henri Conscience may not be a perfect writer by any means, but no two ways about it, what a painter! And what loving-kindness in what he said and hoped for. There’s a preface in one of his books on my mind all the time (the one to Le consent), where he writes that he has been very ill, and says that during his illness, despite all his efforts, he felt his affection for mankind draining away, but that his feelings of love returned on long walks in the countryside.

  The inevitability of suffering and despair - well, here I am, bucked up again for a time - and I thank him for it.

  I am writing you this letter bit by bit in the intervals when I am worn out with painting. The work is going fairly well. I’m struggling with a canvas I started a few days before my illness -a reaper. The study is all yellow, extremely thickly painted, but the subject was beautiful and simple. For I see in this reaper - a vague figure toiling away for all he’s worth in the midst of the heat to finish his task - I see in him the image of death, in the sense that humanity might be the wheat he is reaping. So it is, if you like, the opposite of the sower which I tried to do before. But there is no sadness in this death, this one takes place in broad daylight with a sun flooding everything with a light of pure gold.

  Well, here I am, at it again. But I won’t give in, and shall try once more on a new canvas. Ah, I could almost believe that I have a new spell of lucidity before me.

  So what next - carrying on here for the next few months, or moving elsewhere - I don’t know. It’s just that the attacks, when they come, are no joke, and running the risk of having a bout like that at your place or at anyone else’s is a serious matter.

  My dear brother - I always write to you in between bouts of work, & I am working like one truly possessed, more than ever I am in the grip of a pent-up fury of work, and I’m sure it will help to cure me. Perhaps something along the lines of what Eug. Delacroix spoke of will happen to me - ‘I discovered painting when I had neither teeth nor breath left,’ in the sense that my sad illness makes me work in a pent-up fury - very slowly - but without leaving off from morning till night - and - that is probably the secret - to work long and slowly. But what do I know about it? Still, I think I’ve one or two canvases on the go which are not too bad, firstly, the reaper in the yellow wheat, and the portrait on a light background which should go to the Vingtistes, if indeed they remember me when the time comes. Actually, I care very little one way or another, it might be preferable if they did forget all about me.

  For my part, I do not forget how inspired I am whenever I give my memory of certain Belgians free rein. That is the positive side, and the rest is of no more than secondary importance.

  And here we are already in September, soon we’ll be in the middle of autumn, and then winter.

  I shall continue to work without let-up, and then if I have another attack around Christmas, we’ll see, and when that’s over, I can’t see any objection to my telling the administration here to go to hell, and to my returning north for a fairly long time. To leave now, when I believe I may well have another attack this winter, that’s to say in three months’ time, would perhaps be too foolhardy.

  It’s been 6 weeks since I put a foot outdoors, even in the garden. Next week, however, when I’ve finished the canvases I’m busy with, I’m going to have a go.

  But another few months and I’ll be so flabby and lethargic that a change will probably do me a lot of good.

  That’s the way I’m thinking at the moment, though of course nothing is settled.

  But I do believe that one shouldn’t stand on ceremony with the
people of this establishment, any more than with the proprietors of a hotel. We have rented a room from them for a certain length of time, and they are well paid for what they provide, and that’s absolutely all there is to it.

  Not to mention that they might like nothing better than for my condition to be chronic, and we would be unforgivably stupid to give in to them. They make far too many inquiries, to my mind, not only about what I, but also what you earn, &c.

  So let’s not quarrel with them and simply give them the slip.

  I am continuing this letter again at intervals. Yesterday I began the portrait of the chief attendant, and I may do his wife as well, since he’s married and lives in a little farmhouse a stone’s throw from the institution.

  A most interesting face. There’s a beautiful etching by Legros of an old Spanish nobleman - if you remember it, it will give you an idea of the type. He was at the hospital in Marseilles during 2 cholera epidemics, in short, he is a man who has seen an enormous amount of death and suffering, and he has an indefinable expression of quiet contemplation, so that I am irresistibly reminded of Guizot’s face - for there is something of that in this head, if different. But he is a man of the people and simpler. Anyway, you will see it if I succeed in doing it and if I make a copy of it.

  I am struggling with all my might to keep my work under control by telling myself that success would be the best lightning conductor for my illness. I make sure I don’t overdo things, and take care to keep myself to myself. It’s selfish, if you like, not getting used to my companions in misfortune here and not going round to see them, but still, I feel none the worse for it, for my work is making headway, and that’s what we need, for it is absolutely vital that I do better than before, as that was not enough.

  Supposing I get out of here one day, wouldn’t it be far better if I came back definitely capable of doing a portrait with some character than if I came back as I started? That’s clumsily put, for I’m well aware one cannot say, ‘I know how to do a portrait,’ without telling a lie, because that is an infinite objective. Still you will understand what I mean, that I must do better than before.

  At the moment my mind is working in an orderly way, and I feel completely normal - and when I look at my present condition, in the hope of generally having, between the attacks -if, unfortunately, it has to be expected that they will return from time to time - of having in between times, periods of lucidity and of working - when I look at my present condition, then I do indeed tell myself that it won’t do to become obsessed with being sick. And that I must steadfastly continue my humble career as a painter. And so, staying for good in an asylum would probably be going too far.

  A few days ago, I was reading in the Figaro about a Russian writer who also suffered from a nervous illness of which, moreover, he sadly died, and which brought on terrible attacks from time to time.1 But what is one to do? There is no remedy, or if there is one, it is to work with a will.

  I am dwelling on this longer than I should.

  All in all, I prefer to be definitely ill like this than to be the way I was in Paris when all this was coming on.

  You will also see that when you put the portrait with the light background that I’ve just done next to those portraits I did of myself in Paris, you really will see that I look saner now than I did then, indeed much more so.

  I am even inclined to believe that the portrait will tell you better than my letter how I am, and that it will reassure you - it took me a lot of trouble.

  And the reaper is also going well, I think - it is very, very simple.

  By the end of the month I’d go so far as to say you can count on 12 size 30 canvases, but in most ‘cases they will be the same picture twice over, a study and the final painting.

  Still, perhaps my journey to the south will yet bear fruit, for the stronger light and the blue sky teaches you to see, especially, or even only, if you see it all for a long time.

  The north will undoubtedly seem quite new to me, and I have looked at things so much here that I have become very attached to them, so I shall feel sad for a long time.

  Something odd occurs to me - in Manette Salomon there is a discussion of modern art, and some artist or other, talking of ‘what will last’, says that what will last is ‘the landscape painters’ - that view has already been proved true to some extent, for Corot, Daubigny, Dupré, Rousseau and Millet do endure as landscape painters, and when Corot said on his deathbed, ‘I saw landscapes in a dream with skies all pink, it was charming,’ well, yes, we see those skies all pink in Monet, Pissarro and Renoir, so the landscape painters do last very well, it’s quite true. We’ll leave aside the figure painting of Delacroix and Millet.

  In any case, what is it that we are now beginning hesitantly to recognize as original and long-lasting? Portraiture. You might say that it’s old stuff, but it’s also quite new. We’ll talk about it again - but we must never stop being on the lookout for portraits, especially by such artists as Guillaumin - that portrait of the young girl by Guillaumin! - and take good care of my portrait by Russell which I’m so fond of. Have you framed Laval’s portrait? I don’t think you told me what you thought of it. I thought it splendid, that gaze through the glasses, such a frank gaze.

  My urge to do portraits is very strong these days, in fact Gauguin and I talked about this and similar matters until our nerves were strained to the point of stifling all human warmth.

  But I dare say some good pictures will come out of it, and that’s what we’re after. And I should imagine they’ll be doing some good work in Brittany. I got a letter from G., I think I already told you, and one day I should very much like to see what they are doing.

  I must ask you for the following painting requisites.

  Then I promised the attendant here a copy of Le Monde illustrè, No. 1684, 6 July 1889, in which there is a very pretty engraving after Demont-Breton.

  Aha! The reaper is finished. I think it’ll be one of those you’ll keep at home - it’s an image of death as the great book of nature speaks of it - but the effect I’ve been looking for is - ‘on the point of smiling’. It’s all yellow, except for a line of purple hills. A pale and golden yellow. I find it odd that I saw it like that through the iron bars of a cell.

  Well, do you know what I hope for, once I allow myself to begin to hope? It is that the family will be for you what nature, the clods of earth, the grass, the yellow wheat, the peasant, are for me, in other words, that you find in your love for people something not only to work for, but to comfort and restore you when there is a need. So, I beg you not to let yourself get too exhausted by business, but to take good care of yourselves, both of you - perhaps there will still be some good in the not too distant future.

  I’ve a good mind to do the reaper over again for Mother. If not, I’ll do another picture for her birthday - it will be coming later, as I’ll send it on with the rest.

  For I’m convinced Mother would understand it - since it is, in fact, as simple as one of those primitive woodcuts one finds in farmers’ almanacs.

  Send me the canvas as soon as you can, for if I still want to do other copies for the sisters, and if I am to make a start on the new autumn effects, I’ll have enough to fill my time from the beginning of this month to the end.

  I’m eating and drinking like a horse at present. I must say the doctor is taking very good care of me.

  Yes, I do think that it’s a good idea to do some pictures for Holland, for Mother and our two sisters. That will make three, that’s to say the Reaper, the Bedroom, the Olive Trees, Wheat Field and Cypress. It will even make four, for there’s somebody else I’m going to do one for as well.

  I shall work at that, of course, with as much pleasure as for the Vingtistes, and more calmly. Since I feel strong, you may be sure that I shall get through a lot of work.

  I am choosing the best from the 12 subjects, so that what they’ll get will have been thought about a bit and specially picked. And then, it’s a good thing to work for people who
don’t know what a picture is.

  A good handshake for you and Jo,

  Vincent

  […]

  Theo kept Vincent in touch with the latest work by Pissarro (‘the man [who] feels more at ease in clogs than in patent-leather boots’) and Gauguin, whose Belle angele had been ‘put on the canvas like the large heads on Japanese prints’. Theo also sent a short report of the exhibition by the Independants at which Vincent’s Starry Night and Irises compared quite well with the recent work of Seurat, Signac and Toulouse-Lautrec.

  In particular, Van Gogh’s work was seen and admired there by a number of fellow artists, such as the Belgians Thdodore van Rijsselberghe and Octave Maus, and the Dutch artists Isaac Israels, Jan Veth and J. J. Isaacson, the last of whom intended to write a review. Van Gogh’s work was now on show not only in Theo’s Paris apartment but also from time to time in the window of Pere Tanguy’s art and paint shop.

  Both brothers continued to hold painters of an earlier generation, such as Delacroix, Daumier and Rousseau among the French, and Weissenbruch among the Hague School, in high regard. Vincent’s ‘terrible craving’ for the countryside in the north was undoubtedly part and parcel of this feeling. To his brother, Vincent characterized his ambivalent attitude to life as that of ‘someone who has meant to commit suicide, but then makes for the bank because he finds the water too cold’. He wanted to escape from Saint-Remy, but his sympathies were torn between the north and the south. He sang the praises of the unsurpassed portrayal of the south by such painters as Delacroix and Fromentin. On the other hand, he was now firmly convinced that he himself would have to return to northern parts. Pont-Aven in Brittany, where most of his friends were staying, put him off, however ‘There are so many people there.’ In the circumstances, he felt that it would be more sensible for him to take lodgings with an artist’s family, such as that of the landscape painter Victor Vignon, or the Pissarros.