The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

by Vincent Van Gogh

  I’m sure that it depends more on my work than on anything else whether or not I succeed one day. Provided I can just keep going, well then, I shall fight my fight quietly in this way & no other - by calmly looking through my little window at natural things & drawing them faithfully and with love. For the rest, I shall just adopt a defensive attitude against possible molestation, but beyond that I love drawing too much to want to be distracted by anything else. The peculiar effects of perspective intrigue me more than human intrigues.

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  Tersteeg’s dark shadow looms up frequently in the letters written during this period, but Van Gogh hoped that by ‘getting on quietly with my work’ he might gradually be able ‘to make up for having lost the friendly disposition of Mauve, H. G. T. & others’ with ‘an entirely new circle of acquaintances’.

  Meanwhile, the Muse alone kept Vincent company. He painted watercolours of ‘landscapes with a complicated perspective, very hard to draw - but for that very reason there is real Dutch character & sentiment in them’. And much as he tried later, with his Potato Eaters, to produce the kind of picture peasants themselves might have painted, so he now drew a depot at Rijnspoor railway station in ‘just the way it seems to me the little level-crossing keeper with his smock & his little red flag sees it & must feel when he thinks what dreary weather it is today’.

  Although Van Gogh badly needed money, he resolutely refused to compromise, and his reluctance to paint ‘saleable’ watercolours remained as marked as ever: ‘I would just as soon be, say, a hotel waiter as the kind of watercolour manufacturer some of the Italians are.’

  He felt certain that the results of his assiduous nature studies would be appreciated in the long run: ‘Sooner or later, feeling and love for nature always find a response in people interested in art. The painter’s duty is to immerse himself wholly in nature and to use all his intelligence for putting his feelings into his work, so that it becomes intelligible to others. But to my mind, working for the sake of sales is not exactly the way to do it, all it does is pull the wool over art lovers’ eyes. And that is something true [artists] have never done, the sympathy they earn sooner or later arriving as the result of their sincerity.’

  Life and literature again mirrored each other. Both brothers were immersed in the work of émile Zola, and wrote to each other about what they felt on reading his Le ventre de Paris, Vincent linking the humanity of that work to his own concern for Sien.

  By now he was yearning for a reunion with Theo, referring nostalgically to the memorable walks they had taken in their youth and looking forward to recapturing ‘the kind of mood we were in in the days of the Rijswijk mill’. He was embarrassed about his increasingly Robinson Crusoe-like appearance, but that evidently did not spoil a successful meeting of the brothers at the beginning of August 1882. This visit gave Vincent, for the first time in many months, the happy feeling of ‘again having the prospect of a year of steady work free of calamities. Moreover, because of what you have given me, I have a new horizon in my painting once more.’

  Van Gogh was now able to procure decent painting materials and equipment, and although for the time being drawing was still ‘the backbone of painting, the skeleton supporting all the rest’, he took great pleasure in his first studies in oil.

  To his surprise, he was able to achieve a ‘pleasing aspect’ - and perhaps a more saleable product - in the new medium, with less difficulty and more quickly than he had with laborious drawing.

  Van Gogh’s first experiences with oil - seven canvases in one week -again gave him cause for enthusiastic descriptions of nature all round The Hague. Much as he would later brave the mistral in Aries while out painting, so he now allowed the sand to whistle round his ears on Scheveningen beach: ‘It blew so hard that I could scarcely stay on my feet and could see scarcely anything through the clouds of sand.’

  Theo tried gently to persuade Vincent to be a little more tolerant of his parents, and hoped to effect a reconciliation. Van Gogh’s parents had meanwhile moved to Nuenen, and it is striking that Theo’s account of their picturesque new surroundings should have focused on precisely those same elements Vincent would later choose for his work in the area. ‘I should certainly love to do a little old church & churchyard like that,’ Vincent replied, ‘with sandy graves and old wooden crosses.’ Vincent heard about the Brabant weavers from his sister Wil, and even Theo’s descriptions of Montmartre seem visionary in the light of Vincent’s later work.

  227 [D]

  Sunday afternoon [20 August 1882]

  My dear Theo,

  I have just had a nice letter from home which gave me very real pleasure, and from which it is clear that your visit & the things you said about me & my work have had a reassuring effect on them. This is bound, I think, to have welcome repercussions, and I should like to thank you in particular for the way in which you spoke about me, although it seems to me that you had more good things to say than I deserve as yet.

  They seem very taken at home with their new surroundings & are still full of your visit. And so, for that matter, am I, because several things you told me make me think of you even more than before, and certainly not with less affection. In particular, what you told me about your health gives me cause to think of you often.

  I am well, it is doing me good just carrying on and not letting things get in my way. But you will understand that I am not completely over it yet, and at times, especially in the evening when I’m exhausted, it does trouble me a little, though luckily it is no longer so bad that I am unable to get on with the work.

  This week I painted a couple of fairly large studies in the woods, trying to improve on them and develop them further than the first. The one which I think comes off best is nothing more than a patch of dug-over ground… white, black and brown sand after a downpour. So that the clods of earth catch the light here & there and stand out more strongly. After I’d been sitting for a while drawing the piece of ground, there was a thunderstorm with a tremendous downpour that went on for a good hour.

  I was so keen to get on with it that I stayed at my post and took what shelter I could behind a large tree. When it was finally over and the crows were beginning to fly about again I wasn’t sorry I had waited because of the glorious deep tone the woodland soil had taken on after the rain. As I had begun before the storm on my knees, with a low horizon, I now had to kneel in the mud, and it is because of adventures like that, which occur quite often in various forms, that I see nothing odd about wearing an ordinary workman’s suit, which is less easily ruined. The result this time was that I could take the piece of ground back with me to the studio, although when we were speaking together once about one of his own studies, Mauve rightly said that it is a hard job to draw those clods of earth and get some perspective into them.

  The other study from the woods is of large green beech trunks on a ground with dry leaves and the small figure of a girl in white. The big difficulty there was to keep it bright and to get some space between the trunks standing at various distances, the position and relative thickness of the trunks changing with the perspective. In short, to do it in such a way that one could breathe and walk about in it and smell the wood.

  I particularly enjoyed doing these two. As much as something I saw at Scheveningen. A large stretch of dunes in the morning after the rain, the grass a relatively deep green, and on it the black nets spread out in enormous circles, creating deep reddish-black, green and grey tones on the ground. On this sombre ground there sat or stood or walked, like strange dark ghosts, women with white caps and men spreading or repairing the nets. Here nature was as gripping, curious, sombre and severe as the most beautiful Millet, Israels or De Groux one can imagine. Over the landscape a simple grey sky with a bright streak above the horizon.

  Despite the showers of rain, I also made a study of it on a sheet of oiled torchon paper.

  There is much still to be gone through before I am able to do it as well as I would like, but
in nature it is things such as these that move me most.

  How beautiful it is outside when everything is wet from the rain - before, in and after the rain. I really shouldn’t let a single shower pass.

  This morning I hung all the painted studies up in the studio. I just wish I could talk to you about them.

  As I had thought and expected, being so busy has meant buying quite a lot of things, and the money has nearly all been spent on them. For two weeks I’ve been painting from early morning till late at night, so to speak, and if I carry on like this it will turn out too expensive unless I manage to sell.

  If you could see the results, I think it’s quite possible you would say that I ought to carry on, not just at times when I particularly feel like it, but regularly, as an absolute priority, even though it might mean more expense. But though I myself enjoy doing it immensely, the heavy expenses will probably prevent me for the time being from doing as much painting as my ambition and inclination demand; still, I don’t think I shall lose by spending a great deal of my time on drawing, which I do with no less pleasure.

  Even so, I am in two minds. Painting comes easier to me than I imagined, and perhaps the right course would be to put all my effort into it, toiling away at the brush before anything else, but I must confess I’m not sure. At any event, I am sure that charcoal drawing is something I am going to have to study more than ever now. I have enough to do to keep me going, and even if I do have to exercise some restraint with my painting, it won’t mean that I shall be working any the less hard.

  The reason I have now painted a fairly large number of studies in so short a time is that I keep at it, literally keep at it all day, scarcely taking time off even to eat or to drink.

  There are small figures in several of the studies. I have also been working on a larger one and have scraped it all off twice already, something you might have thought rash had you seen the first effect. But it wasn’t rashness, it was because I feel that I can do even better by toiling away and trying things out, and I am absolutely determined to do better, no matter how much time or trouble it may take. The landscapes I am doing now definitely call for figures, they are studies for backgrounds which have to be done very thoroughly because the tone of the figure and the effect of the whole depend upon it.

  What I find such a pleasant surprise about painting is that you can, with the same effect you put into a drawing, take something home with you that conveys the impression much better and is much more pleasing to look at. And at the same time more accurate, too. In a word, it is more rewarding than drawing. But it is absolutely essential to be able to draw the proportions correctly and to position the objects fairly confidently before you start. If you make a mistake here, it will all come to nothing.

  I am looking forward to autumn. By then I must have made sure of a supply of paint and of various other things. I am exceedingly fond of those effects with yellow leaves against which the green beech trunks stand out so beautifully, and the figures no less.

  Recently I read part of a rather melancholy book, Letters and Diary by Gerard Bilders. He died at about the age at which I began, and when I read that, I did not regret starting late. He was certainly unhappy and often misunderstood, but at the same time I can see a great weakness in him, something morbid in his character. It is like the story of a plant that sends up shoots too soon, cannot withstand the frost, and one fine night is stricken by it to the roots and withers. At the beginning all is well, he flourishes under his teacher as in a hothouse and makes quick progress, but later, in Amsterdam, he is virtually alone and for all his skill cannot bear it there and finally ends up back home with his father, utterly disheartened, dissatisfied, listless, does a bit of painting and then finally dies of consumption or some other disease in his 28th year.

  What I don’t like about him is that even as he is painting he complains of terrible boredom and idleness as if it were something he could do nothing about - and that he goes on running around with the same little circle of friends he finds so oppressive, and continues with the diversions and way of life of which he is sick and tired. In short, though I feel sympathy for him, I would sooner read the life of old man Millet or of T. Rousseau or of Daubigny. Reading 1 book by Sensier about Millet buoys one up while Bilders’s makes one miserable.

  I invariably discover a catalogue of problems in any one of Millet’s letters, and yet ‘j’ai tout de même fait ceci ou cela’1 and then he always has other things in prospect which he absolutely must do and in fact does. With G. Bilders I often get the feeling of ‘I am in a bad mood this week and making a mess of things -and after going to this or that concert or play, I came away even more miserable than before’.

  What strikes me in Millet is that simple ‘il faut tout de même que je fasse ceci ou 9a’.2 Bilders, for his part, is very witty and can heave droll sighs about Manilas pointus3 which he likes best but cannot afford to buy, and about tailors’ bills, which he sees no chance of settling. He describes his anxiety over financial matters so wittily that he himself and whoever reads about it has to laugh. But no matter how wittily these things may be reported, I find them annoying and have greater respect for the private difficulties of Millet, who says ‘il faut tout de meme de la soupe pour les enfants’,4 and who doesn’t talk about Manilas pointus or about entertainments.

  What I’m trying to say is this. G. Bilders’s outlook on life was romantic, he was unable to get over his illusions perdues,5 and I, for my part, consider it something of a privilege not to have started until I had left my romantic illusions behind. I must now make up for lost time and work hard, but it is precisely when one has left one’s illusions perdues behind one that work becomes a necessity and one of the few pleasures left. And then there ensues much peace and quiet.

  I am sorry, though, that it may take a year before you’ll be able to see all the things I am painting side by side - even though I might send you something now and then - and before we’ll be able to discuss the ins and outs of what to do about it all. I think I can assure you that the things I have painted now will prove to be of use. Perhaps what was unsuccessful in January may succeed now.

  Above all, please don’t think I don’t care about earning money. What I’m trying for is the shortest means to that end - on the understanding that the work is of genuine and lasting merit, which I can only expect if I put something really good into it and make an honest study of nature, not if I work exclusively with an eye to saleability - for which one is bound to suffer later.

  Were you to say that my painting is likely to have a better chance, then, of course, I shouldn’t refuse to go on with it. But if it will not be saleable for a long time yet, then I should be the first to say: in the meantime we must practise the greatest possible economy, and by drawing one saves much expense and yet makes solid if slow progress.

  I can see a change in the things I have painted and I am writing to you about it because you should be able to tell better than I how that might affect their potential sale. It seems to me in any case that painted studies are more pleasing to look at than my drawings.

  However, I myself set less store by their more pleasing, less meagre effect, and see as my goal the expression of more severe and more virile things, for which I still have a great deal of hard work to do.

  But if you were to say: work on those small wooded views or landscapes or marines, then that needn’t stand in the way of my doing bigger and more serious things and I should have no objections. All I would have to know is that they are worth the brushes, the paint and the canvas, that it won’t be a waste of money doing a great many of them and that the costs can be recouped.

  Supposing that were to, or could, come about, then it might provide the means for tackling more difficult things. I should even work on them most assiduously in that case. I should want to begin by allowing them to mature a bit longer, to put more into them. Then, say in a couple of months’ time, I shall send you one and we can see.

  I’m sure that most painters hav
e managed to rise to greater heights in just this way.

  I shouldn’t want to do things that are bad in principle, untrue or misconceived, because I love nature too much. But we are faced with this problem: before I can attain something higher and better, I must produce a great many more studies. Which will turn out to be more profitable: to draw these studies or to paint them?

  If the painted ones should be unsaleable, then, of course, it would be more profitable to draw with charcoal or something else. But if it were possible to recover the costs of painted studies, then I want you to know that I would have no objections in principle to carrying on with them, now that I can see that they are turning out rather well and may have an outside chance. In principle I am only opposed to wasting paint on things that one could learn just as well in another way and while there is still no chance of selling them.

  I don’t want to push either of us into unnecessary expense, but it is plain that the painted things have a more pleasing aspect. That makes me unsure about what to do. My money hasn’t gone completely yet, but there isn’t much left - today is the twentieth, if I am not mistaken, and I have spent less rather than more than usual on household expenses this month. Admittedly I have had to pay a lot out all at once on painting materials, but much of that will last quite a long time. But everything is very expensive. I hope you’ll be able to send something soon. Accept a warm handshake in my thoughts, and believe me,

  Ever yours,

  Vincent

  The reason why I myself am very happy with the painting is not its more pleasing aspect, but because it sheds light on other problems of tone and form and material which used to have me floundering but which I can now tackle in this medium. And I can also see, for example, greater opportunity for trying once again to achieve something with charcoal.