Gauguin in Arles: Battle of the Titans
The young artists who had gathered round Paul Gauguin in Pont-Aven in Brittany saw him as the man of the future. In the early years of Impressionism he had become friendly with several key players, such as Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro, and had abandoned his wife and children to make a name for himself in Paris. Gauguin, who was anything but insecure, did his best to cultivate a virile image. In fact, he could justifiably be seen as the exact opposite of Van Gogh, yet they did have several things in common: a late calling to art, the ambition to make an important contribution to the renewal of art, and a constant lack of money. The imbalance in their relationship lay in the fact that Van Gogh revered Gauguin, whereas Gauguin’s attitude towards Van Gogh was sooner one of affable condescension. Moreover, during the two months they were together, Gauguin succeeded in selling several of his works—a poignant reminder of his superiority.
At first Van Gogh was happy to have the company of ‘a really great artist and a really excellent friend’ (719). They painted outdoors, on the edge of Arles near an old Roman graveyard (Les Alyscamps), as well as in the brothels of Arles, where Gauguin, according to Van Gogh, enjoyed great success, and in the previously mentioned ‘night café’. During a spell of bad weather, they worked together in the small studio in the Yellow House, where Van Gogh, who always based his works on reality, obeyed Gauguin’s mantra to work from memory and the imagination. It was a side road that led to a number of works that stand apart in Van Gogh’s oeuvre, such as Reminiscence of the garden at Etten, Woman reading a novel and The sower.
They also discussed art and literature, of course, and the fundamental differences in their artistic notions became increasingly clear: ‘The discussion is excessively electric. We sometimes emerge from it with tired minds, like an electric battery after it’s run down’ (726).
The low point came on the evening of 23 December, exactly two months after Gauguin’s arrival. In the Yellow House, Van Gogh cut off part of his ear, which he brought to a prostitute in the nearby red-light district. He was taken to a hospital the next morning (fig. 15). Theo, who learned of the incident from a telegram sent by Gauguin, set off that same evening for Arles to be with Vincent. One day later—on Christmas Day—Theo returned to Paris in the company of Gauguin. The dream of a shared studio, which had briefly come true, had now been shattered.
15. The hospital in Arles
Silent Suffering: Seeking New Balance, Arles 1889–1890
The crisis in late December 1888 heralded a long period of mental turmoil for Van Gogh. His collapse marked the first of a series of attacks of mental illness: at intervals of one to several weeks, he repeatedly spent a few days in complete confusion, plagued by unbearable fears and hallucinations, not knowing what he was doing. During most of his hospital stay he was under strict surveillance, if only because the people near the Yellow House no longer wanted him near them, and had even submitted a petition to that effect to the mayor. Van Gogh felt betrayed by his neighbours, but, powerless to act, he was forced to resign himself to the situation: ‘If I didn’t restrain my indignation I would immediately be judged to be a dangerous madman’, he admitted (750). Gauguin, too, had betrayed him, not only by departing so hastily from Arles, but also by refusing—on the day after the incident, when he was still in town—to visit Van Gogh in the hospital, even though his friend had expressly requested it.
Van Gogh’s strategy for survival in this lonely situation was, inevitably, to accept his sad fate and put it in perspective. He frequently quoted Pangloss, the pseudo-philosopher from Voltaire’s Candide, saying that everything always turned out for the best in this best of all possible worlds. At times he joked wryly about his condition: having already contracted his insanity, at least he could not catch it again. He explained away things he could have blamed on others, and tried to cling to more positive thoughts.
Vincent expressed deep respect for the medical profession and was filled with feelings of both gratitude and guilt towards Theo, who had invested so much money in him and now could only fear that the ‘undertaking’ would never pay off; ‘but above all it seemed sad to me that all that had been given to me by you with so much brotherly affection, and that for so many years, it was however you alone who supported me, and then to be obliged to come back to tell you all this sad story’ (760). No matter how hard Theo tried in his letters to assuage his brother’s guilty feelings, they pressed down on Vincent like a lead weight. Moreover, he was convinced that everything would change for the worse in April 1889, when Theo was to marry Jo Bonger, for Theo would then have less money available, certainly if he gave up his job at Boussod, Valadon & Cie—a possibility the brothers had discussed.
Waning Self-Confidence
Van Gogh had always placed great demands on himself in order to give his utmost to his art, but now that both his mind and his body had let him down, he no longer had any faith in the future. Up to now he had fervently believed that his work represented one small link in the chain of progression towards a new art, and this had provided him with the comfort he so urgently needed. But now he feared that he would never produce anything of importance and would remain, at best, a second-rate painter. He resigned himself to defeat.
The deterioration of his health had indeed caused a decline in Van Gogh’s artistic production in these months. He made repetitions of canvases he thought important, such as La berceuse, Portrait of the postman Roulin and Sunflowers in a vase. Direct references to his unfortunate situation are two self-portraits with bandaged ear, a portrait of Dr Félix Rey, and two paintings of the hospital in Arles: one of a ward and the other of the garden in the inner courtyard. Most of these works are undiminished in strength and betray no sign of suffering—but given the great effort it cost him to make them, it is no wonder that he was less productive in this period.
His neighbours kept their distance, which only increased his isolation, but he also encountered support. Roulin helped with practical matters, and occasionally informed Theo of Vincent’s condition. He had good talks with Dr Rey. Paul Signac visited him and sent a couple of letters, and the Reverend Frédéric Salles acted as a go-between, taking care of anything to do with the authorities. It was this clergyman who arranged Van Gogh’s admission to the psychiatric clinic of Saint-Paul de Mausole in nearby Saint-Rémy (fig. 16). Van Gogh realized that he was not capable of living on his own. At the beginning of May he sent Theo more than thirty paintings and one drawing, and on 8 May he let the ever-helpful Salles accompany him to the asylum.
16. The asylum Saint-Paul de Mausole in Saint-Rémy
Therapeutic Isolation: Saint-Rémy, May 1889–May 1890
The village of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence is twenty-five kilometres northeast of Arles. The asylum where Van Gogh would spend a year of his life lay to the south of the village, with a view of the small mountain chain called the Alpilles. Saint-Paul de Mausole was originally a twelfth-century convent, and the nursing staff still included a number of nuns. Van Gogh was given a small room with a barred window and an extra room in which to work (fig. 17). The treatment consisted of a two-hour bath twice a week, and moderation in eating, smoking and drinking. He had little contact with his fellow sufferers, most of whom seemed to be in considerably worse shape.
17. The view from Van Gogh’s room in Saint-Paul de Mausole
The very first letters Van Gogh wrote from the asylum make it clear that he felt safer there, and that this had a calming effect on him. He now found himself in an environment where he was no longer a danger to himself or anyone else. The severe cases all around him helped him put his own condition in perspective, and he began ‘to consider madness as being an illness like any other’ (772). The real cause of his illness has been the subject of much speculation; we will probably never know how he would be diagnosed today, since the necessary details are lacking. Dr Théophile Peyron, the attending physician, described Van Gogh’s attacks (in now-outdated terms) as ‘epileptic in nature’. At any rat
e, Vincent’s illness meant that after being perfectly all right for weeks or months on end, he would suddenly suffer an ‘attack’ that lasted days or even weeks. Between May 1889 and May 1890, Van Gogh had four such attacks, which left him in a state of complete mental derangement. He had no idea what he was doing and had self-destructive tendencies (such as eating dirt and paint), but the worst thing, as he said later, were the religious delusions. After these episodes he was downcast and lacked the will to live, and it took a long time for him to find his balance.
According to Van Gogh, work was the best remedy. As on previous occasions, he now attempted in Saint-Rémy to pull himself together, exhorting himself, not without irony and self-reproach, to set to work again. At the same time he deliberately tried not to reflect too deeply on religious and metaphysical matters, which tempted him into territory where his thoughts might again become confused. But a fear that had manifested itself in Arles now gripped him even more firmly: the conviction that he would never recover—‘a broken pitcher is a broken pitcher’ (839)—and thus never again reach the heights attained during his best days in Arles.
Stylization and Truth
In spite of his shaky mental health and his limited field of action, Van Gogh made a number of astonishingly strong works during his first months in Saint-Rémy. Abandoning extremes of colour, he was now preoccupied with the phenomenon of ‘style’: ‘when the thing depicted and the manner of depicting it are in accord, the thing has style and quality’ (779). A picture dating from this period, Starry night, was one of his most thorough going experiments in this respect. Theo cautiously criticized the painting, and later Van Gogh admitted that he had gone too far in his striving for stylization. He realized that an overly systematic approach to line and brushstroke jarred with the demand he placed on all art, namely that the artist had to empathize with his subject, to feel it through and through, in order to endow the artwork with a deeply personal quality.
In the autumn of 1889 a remarkable epistolary discussion developed between Van Gogh, Gauguin and Bernard. The main issue was religious art. Van Gogh’s friends had arrived at a synthetic notion of the image, which combined elements in ways and proportions that were not always ‘realistic’. They created, for example, modern biblical scenes, based in part on the religious painting of previous centuries. Van Gogh had nothing good to say about it. He found it impersonal and unsound. ‘Because I adore the true, the possible’ (822): reality was the starting point; the art of today should not rely on an outdated idiom, but invent a new one. Heated discussions of this kind put Van Gogh in great danger of losing himself.
Need for Family
Meanwhile a lot had changed in Theo’s life. Soon after he married Jo, in April 1889, she became pregnant (fig. 18). For Vincent this news was both joyful and worrying, because Theo now bore an even greater burden, and might begin to think of Vincent as a millstone around his neck. It was precisely at this time that Vincent tried to strengthen the ties with his family in the Netherlands. Since leaving Paris, he had been corresponding with his sister Willemien (fig. 19), but now he occasionally wrote to his mother as well. This shows a need for contact with like-minded people he trusted, a need that also emerges from recurrent recollections of his youth in rural Brabant and other nostalgic remarks about the early days. In Saint-Rémy he made several works from memory that he called ‘souvenirs du Nord’ and ‘souvenirs de Brabant’, and he thought about making new versions of his Nuenen paintings The old church tower, The cottage and The potato eaters. He fell back on old values and certainties, and thus reread William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.
18. Jo van Gogh-Bonger and her son Vincent Willem, 1890
19. Willemien van Gogh, c. 1887
In January 1890, while working on Almond blossom, intended as a present for his future nephew, Van Gogh had another attack of his illness (the third in Saint-Rémy). Afterwards, as he began to recover, he received in the mail the birth announcement of Vincent Willem van Gogh, who had been born on 31 January 1890. He was not particularly pleased that the baby was named after him, and suggested—too late—that the boy should be named Theo anyway, after his father and grandfather.
Recognition
January 1890 saw another extraordinary event, but of a completely different kind. The Mercure de France, the leading French magazine for modern art and literature, published an article by Albert Aurier in his series called Les Isolés (The isolated ones), in which the art critic heaped praise on Van Gogh. In exalted language he expressed his admiration for the swirling lines, explosive colours, strange forms and unusual symbolism in Van Gogh’s work, which he had seen in Brussels at an exhibition mounted by Les Vingt, a society of avant-garde artists.
It seemed that recognition had come at last, yet Van Gogh experienced it as the previously mentioned cigar—stuck in his mouth by the lighted end—and felt ill at ease with all the attention he was receiving. He wrote to Aurier, expressing admiration for his prose and his apt description of what he had intended to achieve, but suggesting that it would have been better if the critic had ‘done justice to Gauguin’ before praising him (853). Van Gogh’s letter nevertheless shows how pleased he was that Aurier understood his work so well.
In the following months a large part of his work consisted of ‘translations’ into colour of black-and-white prints sent by Theo after paintings by Millet, Delacroix and Rembrandt. He had begun work on these the previous autumn, since it was difficult to leave the clinic’s grounds, and there were scarcely any models available. Then, too, he felt the need to make these copies, because, as he wrote, ‘It’s a study I need, for I want to learn’ (805).
Gradually Van Gogh began to entertain hopes of leaving the asylum and spending some time in the north of France. There were two options: finding another clinic where he would be allowed to work, or going to live near someone who would keep an eye on him. Theo found a doctor willing to do this: Paul Gachet, who lived in Auvers-sur-Oise, a village about thirty kilometres north of Paris. Even though Van Gogh suffered another attack in April, he recovered with remarkable speed and did not want to wait longer than necessary to arrange his departure from Saint-Rémy. Dr Peyron and Theo thought it risky, but Vincent was dying of boredom and sorrow: ‘As for me, my patience is at an end, at an end, my dear brother, I can’t go on, I must move, even if as a stopgap’ (868).
And so it happened. Van Gogh viewed his stay in the south as a fiasco, but he left in the conviction that he had, in the end, managed to create a series of works that, taken altogether, truly reflected the character of Provence: the colour, the nature, the landscape, the people. Greatly relieved, he took the train to Paris on 16 May 1890.
Deceptive Peace and Quiet: Auvers-sur-Oise, May–July 1890
Vincent stayed briefly in Paris with Theo and his young family, and met several of his acquaintances, but it soon became too much for him. On 20 May he arrived by train in Auvers, a rural village on the banks of the river Oise, to the north of which extended hills with woods and fields. In this respect Van Gogh found everything his heart desired. He moved into the least expensive inn, run by Mr and Mrs Ravoux, where he rented a room and a place to store his personal belongings (fig. 20). He put himself under the supervision of Dr Gachet, who had obtained a PhD with a dissertation on the symptoms of melancholy. According to Vincent, however, the doctor was just as nervous and sick as Theo and he were. He soon considered Gachet a friend. For his part, Gachet—who in the course of his life had become acquainted with various Impressionists and other artists—soon came to admire Van Gogh’s work. As far as his medical supervision was concerned, Gachet confined himself to reassuring Van Gogh by telling him that he would do best not to take too much notice of his illness, and that he should work a lot and eat well. Van Gogh visited the doctor regularly, ate copious meals—which he abhorred—and made paintings in and around the house.
20. Auberge Ravoux, Auvers-sur-Oise
Looking Cautiously to the Future
Obviously it did Vince
nt good to be near Theo and his family. In this tremendously productive period, Van Gogh averaged a picture a day, painting portraits, still lifes and landscapes in a rather robust style that could almost be called rustic. Artist friends and more distant acquaintances—including Gauguin, Meijer de Haan and Joseph Isaäcson, as well as Anna Boch (the sister of Eugène), who bought Van Gogh’s painting The red vineyard at the exhibition of Les Vingt in Brussels—all expressed their growing appreciation for his work, which received positive reviews in several magazines.
Although Van Gogh dared not hope that his spells of insanity were a thing of the past, he began to look cautiously to the future. He wanted to make etchings (on Gachet’s press) after works he had painted in Provence, and perhaps even pay a visit to Gauguin.
Nonetheless, there were worries. The living conditions and health of Theo and his family were a particular source of concern for Vincent. He urgently advised them to pay regular visits to the countryside, preferably even moving there. It was Theo’s fervent desire as an art dealer to have more room to manoeuvre, to be able to do more for modern artists, but his employers at Boussod, Valadon & Cie were not inclined to give him that freedom. The question was whether Theo should go into business for himself, which would mean a very uncertain future, financially speaking. It was precisely this financial insecurity that troubled Vincent, and he was again plagued by his old feelings of guilt at being such a drain on Theo’s resources.
Ever Yours Page 5
