The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

by Vincent Van Gogh

  605 [F] [postscript omitted]

  [7 or 8 September 1889]

  My dear Theo,

  I think what you say in your letter is quite right, that Rousseau and artists such as Bodmer are in any case men, and that one would want the world to be peopled with men like them -indeed, yes, that’s how I feel as well.

  And that J. H. Weissenbruch knows & does the muddy towpaths, the stunted willows, the foreshortenings & the skilful & strange perspectives of the canals, as Daumier does the lawyers, I think that’s perfect. Tersteeg has done well to buy some of his work. The reason people like that don’t sell is, I think, because there are too many dealers trying to sell other things with which they deceive & mislead the public.

  Do you know that even today, when I chance upon the story of some energetic industrialist, or even more of some publisher, I still feel the same indignation, the same rage as I used to when I was with G. & Cie.

  Life passes in this way, time does not return, but I am working furiously for the very reason that I know that opportunities for work do not recur.

  Especially in my case, where a more violent attack could destroy my ability to paint for good.

  During the attacks I feel cowardly in the face of the pain and suffering - more cowardly than is justified - and perhaps it is this moral cowardice itself, which previously I had no desire to cure, that now makes me eat for two, work hard, and limit my relations with the other patients for fear of falling ill again - in short, I am trying to recover, like someone who has meant to commit suicide, but then makes for the bank because he finds the water too cold.

  My dear brother, you know that I came to the south and threw myself into work for a thousand reasons - looking for a different light, believing that observing nature under a brighter sky might give one a more accurate idea of the way the Japanese feel and draw. Wanting, finally, to see this stronger sun, because one has the feeling that unless one knows it one would not be able to understand the pictures of Delacroix, as far as execution and technique are concerned, and because one feels that the colours of the prism are veiled in the mists of the north.

  All this remains more or less true. Then if one adds that heartfelt leaning towards the south Daudet described in Tartarin, and the fact that from time to time I have also found friends and things to love here, then you will understand that however horrible I find my illness, I have the feeling that I have formed ties here that are a little too strong - ties which could later make me long to come back and work here again. Despite all this it could be that I shall be returning to the north fairly soon.

  Yes, for I shall not conceal from you that in the same way that I am at present eating ravenously, so I have a terrible craving to see my friends again and the countryside of the north.

  Work is going very well, I am discovering things I have sought in vain for years, and, aware of that, I am constantly reminded of that saying of Delacroix’s you know, that he discovered painting when he had neither breath nor teeth left. Oh well, with my mental illness, I think of so many other artists suffering mentally, and tell myself that it doesn’t stop one from carrying on one’s trade as painter as if nothing had gone wrong.

  When I see that here the attacks tend to take an absurdly religious turn, I might almost believe that this actually necessitates a return to the north. Don’t say too much about it to the doctor when you see him - but I don’t know whether it comes from living so many months both at the hospital in Aries and here in these old cloisters. In fact, I really shouldn’t live in such surroundings, the street would be better. I am not indifferent, and even as I suffer, religious thoughts sometimes give me great consolation. I had a piece of bad luck this last time during my illness - that lithograph of Delacroix’s, La Pieta, along with some other sheets, fell into some oil and paint and was ruined.

  I was very sad about it - so I have been busy painting it and you will see it one day on a size 5 or 6 canvas. I have made a copy of it which I think has some feeling. Besides, having seen Daniel and Les odalisques and the portrait of Bruyas and La mulatresse in Montpellier not long ago, I am still under the impression they made on me.

  That is what uplifts me, and also reading a fine book such as one by Beecher Stowe or by Dickens. But what disturbs me is the constant sight of these good women, who both believe in the Virgin of Lourdes and make up that sort of thing, and realizing that one is a prisoner of an administration that is only too willing to cultivate these unhealthy religious aberrations when it should be concerned with curing them. So I say again, better to go, if not into penal servitude, at least into the army.

  I reproach myself with my cowardice, I ought to have defended my studio better, even if it meant coming to blows with the gendarmes & the neighbours. Others would have used a revolver in my place, and had one killed gawking idiots like that, as an artist one would certainly have been acquitted. It would have been better had I done that, but I was cowardly and drank - ill too, but I wasn’t brave.

  I’m also very frightened in the face of the suffering brought on by these attacks, and so I don’t know if my zeal is anything other than what I said, it is like that of someone who means to commit suicide, but then struggles for the shore because he finds the water too cold.

  But listen, to be in board and lodgings as Braat was when I saw him that time - happily long ago - no, and no again.

  It would be different if old Pissarro or Vignon, for instance, would care to take me in. Well, I’m a painter myself - it could be arranged, and it would be better if the money went to feed painters than to the excellent nuns.

  Yesterday I asked M. Peyron point-blank, since you are going to Paris, what would you say if I suggested that you be kind enough to take me with you? His reply was evasive - that it was too sudden, that he would have to write to you beforehand.

  But he is very kind and very indulgent towards me, and while he doesn’t have the final say here, far from it, I have him to thank for many liberties.

  After all, one shouldn’t only make pictures, one should see people too, and every now and then, by associating with others, recuperate a little and stock up on new ideas.

  I’ve abandoned any hope that it won’t come back - on the contrary, we must face the fact that I will have an attack from time to time. But at those times I could go into an asylum or even into the town prison where they usually have an isolation cell.

  Don’t be anxious, in any case - the work is going well, and look, I don’t need to tell you that I’ve still got a lot of things to do, wheat fields, &c.

  I’ve done the portrait of the attendant and have got a copy of it for you. It makes a fairly curious contrast with the portrait I’ve done of myself, in which the look is vague and veiled, whereas he has a military air and small, lively, black eyes.

  I have given it to him, and I’ll do his wife as well, if she wants to pose. She is a woman whose looks have faded, a poor soul, resigned to her fate, nothing out of the ordinary and so insignificant that I simply long to paint that dusty blade of grass. I talked to her sometimes when I was doing some olive trees behind their little house, and she told me then that she didn’t believe I was ill

  - in fact, you would now say the same if you saw me working, my mind clear and my fingers so sure that I drew that Pieta by Delacroix without taking a single measurement, though there are those four hands and arms in the foreground - gestures and postures that are not exactly easy or simple.

  Please send me the canvas soon, if at all possible, and I think I’m also going to need 10 more tubes of zinc white.

  All the same, I’m sure that if one is brave then recovery comes from within, through the complete acceptance of suffering and death, and through the surrender of one’s will and love of self. But that’s no good to me, I like to paint, to see people and things and everything that makes our life - artificial, if you like. Yes, real life would be something else, but I don’t think I belong to that category of souls who are ready to live, and also ready to suffer, at any moment. />
  What an odd thing the touch, the stroke of the brush, is.

  In the open air, exposed to the wind, to the sun, to people’s curiosity, one works as best one can, one fills one’s canvas regardless. Yet that is how one captures the true and the essential - the most difficult part. But when, after some time, one resumes the study and alters the brushstrokes in keeping with the objects - the result is without doubt more harmonious and pleasant to look at, and one can add whatever serenity and happiness one feels.

  Ah, I shall never be able to convey my impressions of some of the figures I have seen here. Certainly, this is the new road, this road to the south, but men from the north find it difficult to follow. And I can already see myself one day in the future enjoying some small success, and missing the solitude and the anguish as I watched the reaper in the field below through the iron bars of my cell. It’s an ill wind…

  To succeed, to enjoy lasting good fortune, one must have a different temperament from mine. I shall never do what I could have done and ought to have wanted and pursued.

  But, having these dizzy spells so often, I can never be more than fourth or fifth rate. Although I am well aware of the worth and originality and superiority of Delacroix or Millet, for example, I can still say, yes, I too am something, I too can achieve something. But I must take these artists as my starting point, and then produce the little I am capable of in the same way.

  So old Pissarro has been dealt two cruel blows all at once.1 As soon as I read about it, I thought of asking you if there would be any way of going and staying with him. If you paid him the same as here, he would find it worth his while, for I don’t need much - except for work. So ask him straight out, and if he doesn’t like the idea, I could easily go and stay with Vignon.

  I am a little afraid of Pont-Aven, there are so many people there. But what you say about Gauguin interests me very much. And I still tell myself that Gauguin and I will perhaps work together again. I know that G. can do even better things than he has done, but how to reassure him! I still hope to do his portrait. Have you seen that portrait he did of me painting sunflowers? My face has certainly brightened up since then, but it was really me, extremely tired and charged with electricity as I was then.

  Yet to see the country, one must live with the ordinary folk and in the cottages, the inns, &c. And I said that to Boch, who complained he had seen nothing that had tempted him or made an impression on him.

  I walked around with him for two days, and I showed him how to do thirty pictures as different from the north as Morocco would be. I’d be curious to know what he’s doing at the moment.

  And then, do you know why Eug. Delacroix’s pictures - the religious and historical pictures, La barque du Christ, La Pieta, Les croises, have this allure? Because Eug. Delacroix, when he did a Gethsemane, had been beforehand to see what an olive grove was like on the spot, and the same for the sea whipped up by a strong mistral, and because he must have said to himself, these people we know from history, doges of Venice, crusaders, apostles, holy women, were of the same type as, and lived in a similar way to, their present-day descendants.

  And I must tell you, and you can see it in La berceuse, however unsuccessful and feeble that attempt may be, if I had had the strength to continue, then I should have done portraits of saints and holy women from life which would have seemed to belong to another age, and they would have been drawn from the bourgeoisie of today and yet would have had something in common with the very earliest Christians.

  The emotions that are aroused are, however, too strong, so I’ll leave it at that - but later, later, I don’t promise not to return to the charge.

  What a great man Fromentin was - he will always be the guide for any who wish to see the east. He, the first to establish a link between Rembrandt and the south, between Potter and what he himself saw.

  You are right a thousand times over - I mustn’t think about all that - to calm down I must do things - even if they’re only studies of cabbages and lettuces, and after calming down, then - whatever I am capable of

  When I see them again, I’ll do some copies of those studies of the Diligence of Tarascon, the Vineyard, the Harvest, and above all of the Red Tavern, that Night Cafe which is the most characteristic of all as far as colour is concerned. But the white figure in the middle must be done all over again for the colour, and better composed. Still, I’d go so far as to say that this is the real south, and a calculated combination of greens and reds.

  My strength has been all too quickly exhausted, but in the distance I can see the possibility of others doing an infinite number of fine things. And again and again there is truth in the idea that to make the journey easier for others it would have been a good thing to set up a studio somewhere in this area.

  To make the journey in one go from the north to Spain, for example, is not a good thing, you will not see what you should see - you must get your eyes accustomed gradually to the different light.

  I really don’t need to see the Titians and Velasquezs in the galleries, I’ve seen so many types in the flesh that have given me a better picture of the south now than before my journey.

  My God, my God, those good people among artists who say that Delacroix is not of the true east. Now look, is the true east what Parisians like Gerome make of it? Because you paint a bit of sunny wall from nature, well and truly according to our northern way of seeing things, does that prove that you have seen the people of the east? That was what Delacroix was searching for, and it in no way prevented him from painting walls in La noce juive and Les odalisques.

  Isn’t that true? - and then Degas says that it costs too much to drink in the taverns and paint pictures at the same time. I don’t deny it, but would he rather I went into the cloisters or the churches? It is there that I myself get frightened. That’s why I make a bid to escape with this letter.

  With many handshakes for you and Jo,

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  […]

  Theo continued to worry about the repercussions of Vincent’s frenetic activity: ‘I am always frightened when you work like one possessed, for that is bound to sap your strength.’ But Vincent had no choice, for as he told Wil, ‘It is only when I stand painting before my easel that I feel in any way alive.’ While he was still unable to work in the open, he found satisfaction in painting smaller versions of his own work for his family in the Netherlands, and in copying work by Rembrandt, Delacroix and above all Millet. As the series grew, he came to value it more and more. His pictures were not simply translations into colour of black-and-white prints and photographs, but had a strong interpretative element: ‘We painters are always expected to compose our work and to be nothing but composers. So be it, but things aren’t like that in music, and when someone plays Beethoven, he adds his personal interpretation - in music and particularly in song, the interpretation of a composer’s work matters, and there is no rule that the composer alone should play his own composition.’ Looking for solace, he improvised with colour, ‘searching for memories’ of Delacroix’s and Millet’s work - ‘but the memory, the vague harmony of colours that may not be completely right but approaches the right feeling, that is my own interpretation’. Much as, during his days in The Hague, he had earmarked his prints for distribution among the people, so he now had a social objective for his Millet copies - as soon as the series was large enough, he intended to present it to a school.

  In the autumn, lack of vineyards in the area around Saint-R6my led him to concentrate above all on olive trees, for him the equivalent of willows in the north: ‘I am doing all I can to catch them on canvas. They are silvery, sometimes more blue, sometimes whitish and bronze-green, against a yellow, purple-pink or orange to dull red-ochre ground. But very difficult, very difficult. Still, that suits me and working in an abundance of gold and silver appeals to me. And one day I shall no doubt do a personal impression of it, as the sunflowers were for the yellow tones.’

  In Paris, Dr Peyron had called on T
heo and diagnosed Vincent’s attacks as a form of epilepsy. Pissarro, who saw no possibility of taking Vincent into his family home, suggested that he go to Auvers, where he knew someone ‘who is a doctor and who paints in his spare time’. This was Dr Paul Gachet, a man on friendly terms not only with Pissarro but also with Cezanne and Guillaumin. Vincent was rather in favour of this idea.

  During the third week of October 1889, Van Gogh’s thoughts were often with his family in Holland. Now that illness had laid him so low, he hearkened back to ‘affections of the past’, and had an almost irresistible urge to send something of his work to Holland. He also wanted Margot Begemann to have one of his paintings as a keepsake. He had made four landscape studies and a small version of The Bedroom, whose literary inspiration he revealed to Wit ‘I wanted to achieve a simple effect of the kind one finds described in Felix Holt […]. Doing a simple thing with bright colours is not easy, however.’ On the wall above the bed could be seen the small self-portrait he had painted for his mother’s seventieth birthday, in which he looked like a peasant from Zundert, because ‘I plough my canvases as they do their fields’.

  A letter from Gauguin during the first half of November revived their old arguments about the painting of religious subjects. Gauguin had enclosed a small sketch meant to give Van Gogh some idea of his recently finished Le Christ dans k jardin des oliviers. Theo wrote that Bernard, too, had painted the same subject and that under the influence of the primitives he had added a kneeling figure surrounded by angels, distributing the various figures like pieces on a chessboard. Van Gogh’s reply to Theo was unequivocal: ‘[…] I have never had any truck with their [Gauguin’s and Bernard’s] biblical interpretations. I said that Rembrandt and Delacroix had done it admirably, that I thought more of that than I did of the primitives [Van Gogh was referring here to the work of Renaissance painters], but let’s leave it at that - I don’t want to broach that subject again. If I stay here, I shall not try to paint a Christ in the Garden of Olives, but shall paint the olive harvest as one can still see it today, and by giving the human figure its proper place in it, one might perhaps be reminded of it’ He went on to name Puvis de Chavannes, Millais, Pinwell, Rossetti and Holman Hunt as serious painters of religious subjects, a list from which he expressly excluded his French friends. Their work struck him as ‘bogus’ and ‘spurious’. Nor could he refrain from letting Gauguin and Bernard know immediately what he felt about it. Only the letter to Bernard has come down to us. After robust criticism of his ‘abstractions’, Van Gogh tried to convince his friend, on the basis of his own View of the Asylum, ‘that one can express anguish without making direct reference to the actual Geth-semane, and that there is no need to portray figures from the Sermon on the Mount in order to express a comforting and gentle motif.