The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

by Vincent Van Gogh

  From Aries, Van Gogh kept in touch by letter - for the most part through Theo - with the young painter and poet émile Bernard, with whom he had explored the suburbs of Paris and who shared his love of Japanese art, incorporating it systematically into his own stylized paintings.

  Bernard, for his part, had close ties with Paul Gauguin, who was having problems with his health at the time and was seriously short of money. Van Gogh then had the idea of establishing a sort of painters’ cooperative with the aim of achieving better prices for his own and for that of his fellow artists’ work. This seemingly strange combination of a cloistered fellowship of painters á la japonaise with a pragmatic financial arrangement, reveals that during his stay in Paris Vincent must have absorbed something of his brother’s business acumen. Indeed, his plans even included a role for Herman Tersteeg, the head of Goupil’s Hague branch.

  468 [F]

  [10 March 1888]

  My dear Theo,

  Thank you for your letter and the enclosed 100 fr. note. I very much hope that Tersteeg will be coming to Paris soon, as you seem to expect. It would be most welcome with things in the state you say they’re in, everyone with their backs to the wall and in such financial straits. I’m very interested in what you write about the Lançon sale and the painter’s mistress. He’s done work of much individuality, his drawing often reminds me of Mauve’s. I’m sorry not to have seen the exhibition of his studies, just as I also very much regret not having seen the Willette exhibition.

  What do you think of the news that Kaiser Wilhelm has died? Will that speed things up in France, and will Paris stay calm? It seems unlikely. And what effect will all this have on the picture trade? I read that there seems to be some talk of abolishing import duties on pictures in America, is that true?

  It might be easier to get a few dealers and art lovers to agree to buy the impressionist pictures than to get the artists to agree to equal shares in the price of the pictures sold.

  Even so, the artists could not do better than combine forces, give their pictures to the association, and share the proceeds of any sales, the society thus guaranteeing that its members can go on living and working. If Degas, Claude Monet, Renoir, Sisley and C. Pissarro would take the initiative and say, Look here, the five of us will each hand over 10 pictures (or rather, we’ll each hand over work to the value of 10,000 fr., estimated by expert members co-opted by the society such as Tersteeg and yourself, the said experts also investing capital in the form of pictures), and we furthermore undertake to hand pictures over every year to the value of… And we invite the rest of you, Guillaumin,1 Seurat, Gauguin, &c., &c., to join us (your pictures subjected to the same expert valuation).

  Thus the great impressionists of the Grand Boulevard, by giving pictures that would become general property, would preserve their prestige, and the others would no longer be able to reproach them for keeping to themselves the advantages of a reputation no doubt acquired in the first place by their personal efforts and their individual talent - but in the second place also enhanced, consolidated and maintained by the paintings of a whole battalion of artists who have been working in unremitting poverty.

  Be that as it may, it is to be hoped that this will come off and that Tersteeg and you will become the society’s expert members (perhaps together with Portier?).

  I’ve got two more landscape studies. I hope the work will go on steadily from now on and that I’ll be able to send you a first batch in a month - I say in a month, because I want to send you only the best, and because I want them to be dry, and because I want to send at least a dozen of them at a time, on account of the freight charges.

  I congratulate you on the purchase of the Seurat2 - with what I’m going to send you, you might try to arrange another exchange with Seurat as well.

  You do realize that if Tersteeg joins you in this business, the two of you could easily persuade Boussod & Valadon to grant a sizeable credit for the necessary purchases. But it is urgent, or else other dealers will pull the carpet from under your feet.

  I’ve made the acquaintance of a Danish artist3 who talks about Heyerdahl and other people from the north, Kroyer, &c. What he does is dry, but very conscientious, and he is still young. He saw the impressionist exhibition in the Rue Lafitte some time ago. He’ll probably come to Paris for the Salon, and wants to do a tour of Holland to see the museums.

  I approve of your exhibiting the Books with the Indépendants - you should give this study the title ‘Romans parisiens’.

  I would be so glad to learn that you had managed to persuade Tersteeg - do be patient with him, anyway.

  I had to get 50 frs.’ worth of bits and pieces when your letter arrived. I’ll be starting this week on 4 or 5 things.

  I think every day about this artists’ association, and the plan has developed further in my mind, but Tersteeg must be in on it, and much depends on that. Right now the painters would probably let themselves be persuaded by us, but we can get no further until we have Tersteeg’s help. Without that we’d have to listen to the lamentations of one and all from morning to night and each one would be forever coming round individually demanding explanations and axioms, &c. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if Tersteeg took the view that one could not do without the artists of the Grand Boulevard - and that he will advise you to persuade them to take the initiative in the association by handing in pictures which would then become common property and cease to belong to them alone. A proposal which, in my opinion, the Petit Boulevard would be morally obliged to support.

  And these gentlemen of the Grand Boulevard will only hold on to their present high reputation by forestalling the not unfounded criticisms of the lesser impressionists who will say, ‘Everything goes into your own pocket’ To that they may well reply, ‘Not at all, on the contrary, we are the first to say our pictures belong to the artists.’ If Degas, Monet, Renoir and Pissarro were to say that - (even leaving plenty of latitude for their personal views on how best to implement the scheme) - they would be doing better than by saying nothing at all and letting things slide.

  yours,

  Vincent

  At the end of March, spring arrived in all its splendour. While for the first time his work was being shown in Paris at the exhibition of the Independants, together with that of his Impressionist colleagues, Van Gogh was at work on a series of six fruit trees in blossom.

  Theo sent his brother regular supplies of paint and canvas. Vincent had realized that the colours the Impressionists had introduced tended to fade, ‘one more reason for simply making them too bright - in time they will just lose colour’. The grey palette of the Hague School had definitely made way for the more powerful and expressive use of colour associated with Delacroix and Monticelli.

  Much as Claude Monet was working on a coherent series of paintings at the end of the 1880s, so Van Gogh, too, did not conceive his canvases of orchards as individual pictures, but as elements of a larger set. A small sketch of one such triptych conveyed a good idea of what he had in mind. He called one of the orchards Souvenir de Mauve, in memory of his cousin and teacher, who had died in February. Vincent felt sure of himself and was full of plans to make Holland sit up and take notice of his work. He proposed to send studies to Breitner and Tersteeg and to ‘give the 2 landscapes of Montmartre hung at the Indépendants to the Modern Museum in The Hague, since we have so many memories of The Hague’. He also wanted to exchange several canvases with colleagues. In the event, however, none of these paintings reached the Netherlands in Vincent’s lifetime - with the exception of Souvenir de Mauve, which went to Mauve’s widow.

  His collection of Japanese prints continued to be an enduring inspiration, and among the new subjects he planned to tackle was ‘a starry night with cypresses’, an idea he was not to implement until 1889, in Saint-Rimy.

  474 [F]

  [9 April 1888]

  My dear Theo,

  Thank you for your letter and the enclosed 100 fr. note. I have sent you some sketches of the pictures
intended for Holland. It goes without saying that the painted studies are more vivid in colour. Am hard at work again, still on orchards in bloom.

  The air here is definitely doing me good, I wish you could fill your lungs with it. One of its effects on me is quite amusing, a single small glass of cognac here goes to my head, so without my having to use stimulants to make my blood circulate, my constitution is under less strain. The only thing is, I’ve had a terribly weak stomach ever since I arrived, but that’s probably just a question of being patient.

  I hope to make real progress this year which, to be sure, I badly need to do. I’ve got a new orchard which is as good as the pink peach trees - apricot trees of a very pale pink. At the moment I’m working on some plum trees, yellowy white, with thousands of black branches. I am using up an enormous amount of canvases and paints, but I hope it’s not a waste of money for all that. Out of 4 canvases there’ll be perhaps one at the most which will make a picture, like Tersteeg’s or Mauve’s, but the studies might come in useful as exchanges, I hope. When can I send you something? I’m very keen to do two of the one I did for Tersteeg, as it’s better than the Asniéres studies.

  I saw another bullfight yesterday, where 5 men played the bull with banderillas and cockades. A toreador crushed one of his balls jumping the barricade. He was a fair man with grey eyes who showed great sang froid - they said he’ll be laid up for a long time. He was dressed in sky blue and gold, exactly like the little horsemen in our Monticelli with the 3 figures in a wood. The bullrings are quite beautiful when there is sunshine and a crowd.

  Good for Pissarro, I’m sure he’s right. I hope he’ll do an exchange with us one day. The same goes for Seurat. It would be a good deal getting a painted study by him. Anyway, I’m working hard, hoping we can bring something like this off.

  It’s going to be a hard month for you and me, but if you can possibly manage, it would be to our advantage to make the most of the orchards in bloom. I am into my stride at the moment and could do with another 10, I think, of the same subject.

  You know I chop and change in my work, and this passion for painting orchards won’t last for ever. After this it could be bullrings. Then I also have an enormous number of drawings to do, as I want to do some in the manner of Japanese prints. There’s nothing like striking while the iron is hot. Shall be exhausted after the orchards, as the canvases are sizes 25 & 30 & 20. We could never have too many of them, even if I turned out double the amount. It seems to me that this may well break the ice in Holland once and for all. Mauve’s death was a severe blow to me. You will see that the pink peach trees were painted with some passion. I must also do a starry night with cypresses or - perhaps over a field of ripe corn. There are some extremely beautiful nights here. I am in a constant fever of work.

  Am very curious to know what the result will be by the end of a year. I hope that by then I’ll be less dogged by ill-health. At present I suffer quite a lot on some days, but am not in the least worried as it is merely a reaction to last winter, which was out of the ordinary. And my blood is coming right, that’s the main thing.

  We must get to the point where the value of my pictures covers my expenditure, and even exceeds it, in view of how much has already been spent. Oh well, it will come. I don’t bring everything off, naturally, but the work is coming along. You haven’t complained about what I’ve laid out so far, but I warn you that if I continue to work at the same rate I shall find it very hard to make ends meet. It’s just that there is an inordinate amount of work.

  If there is a month or a fortnight when you feel hard pressed, let me know - I’ll immediately get down to some drawings, and that will cost us less. Just to tell you that you mustn’t put yourself out without good reason - there is so much to do here, all kinds of studies, not as in Paris, where you can’t even sit down where you want to.

  If you could possibly manage to spare a bit extra for one month, so much the better, because orchards in bloom are the sort of thing that stand some chance of selling or exchanging. But I haven’t forgotten that you have your rent to pay, that’s why you must warn me if things get too tight.

  I’m still going around all the time with the Danish painter, but he’ll be leaving soon. He’s an intelligent fellow, very dependable and well mannered, but his painting is still not up to much. You’ll probably see him when he passes through Paris.

  It was good of you to go to Bernard’s. If he does his service in Algeria, who knows, perhaps I’ll go there to keep him company. Is winter in Paris over at last?

  I think what Kahn says is perfectly true, that I haven’t taken tonal values into account enough, but they’ll be saying something very different later on - no less true. It’s impossible to deal with tonal values and colour. Th. Rousseau did it better than anyone else, but because of the mixing of the colours, the darkening with time has increased, and his pictures are now unrecognizable. One cannot be at the pole and the equator at the same time. One has to choose, which I hope I do, and it will probably be colour. Good-bye for now. A handshake to you, Koning and our friends,

  Vincent

  By the end of April the fruit trees had finished flowering and Van Gogh had no choice but to abandon this series. One year later he was to pick up the theme again. Because painting was proving too costly, he confined himself to drawings for a time. He experimented with a new technique which he associated with his beloved Japan - using the reed pen.

  By now he had also decided to move - he had found a house in the place Lamartine and had rented its right wing, ‘which contains 4 rooms, or rather two with two small box rooms. It is painted yellow outside, whitewashed within, and in the full sun.’ In this ‘Yellow House’, not far from the Rhone, he dreamed of setting up a ‘studio of the south’. ‘If need be I could share this new studio with someone else and I wouldn’t mind that. Perhaps Gauguin will come south,’ he wrote on 1 May 1888.

  Meanwhile, he had just two colleagues in the neighbourhood, the American artist Dodge MacKnight, who lived in nearby Fontvieille, and the Danish painter Christian Vilhelm Mourier-Petersen. His first priority, though, was to do something about his poor health, the result of immoderate drinking in Paris and of his ‘rather too artistic way of life’. That involved furnishing his house and studio decently, at a cost he estimated at about 1,000 francs. However, money was scarce, it seemed furniture was not available for hire, and so he asked Theo if he could have his old bed from their Paris apartment, once the Dutch painter Arnold Koning, who had moved in with Theo, had left again. In an interesting passage, he voiced his belief that he bore an hereditary taint and belonged to a generation of weaklings.

  ‘My friend, though our neurosis, &c, is certainly due to our rather too artistic way of life, it is also part of an inescapable heritage, since in our civilization people grow weaker from one generation to the next. Take our sister Wil, she has never been given to drinking, or led a loose life, and yet we know a portrait of her in which she has the facial expression of a lunatic. Isn’t that proof enough that, if we face up to our true state of mind, we have to acknowledge that we are among those who suffer from a mental illness rooted quite a long way back in the past’ I think Gruby got hold of’the right end of the stick here: good food, healthy living, not taking much notice of women, in short living as if one were already in the throes of a disease of the brain or the spine, over and above the mental illness which is undeniably present. One would, of course, be taking the bull by the horns like this, not a bad policy. Degas is doing just that, and successfully, too. But don’t you agree that it’s a terribly hard business? And, all in all, doesn’t it do one an enormous amount of good to heed the wise counsel of Rivet and Pangloss, those distinguished optimists of the real and so jovial Gallic race, who leave your self-respect intact’ If we want to live and work we must be very careful and look after ourselves. Cold water, fresh air, simple, good food, decent clothing, a good night’s sleep and no worries. And no womanizing or living the good life whenever you feel the urge.’<
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  482 [F] [part]

  [c. 4 May 1888]

  My dear Theo,

  I’m dropping you another line to tell you that on reflection I think it would be better for me just to take a rug & a mattress and make a bed on the floor in the studio. It will be so hot all summer that this will be more than enough. When winter comes we can see whether we need to get a bed.

  As for the bed at your place, I think that as far as conversation and company are concerned, having a painter to stay with you is good for both you and the painter. So that even when Koning leaves there may well be someone to take his place. Anyway, why don’t you keep the bed with you?

  It’s quite possible that as far as the house is concerned, I might find something better either at Martigues, by the sea, or somewhere else. Only, what is so delightful about this studio is the garden opposite. But we’d do well to wait before doing any repairs to it or furnishing it halfway decently - it would be wiser

  - especially as, if we should get cholera here in the summer, I might up and go to the country. This is a filthy town with all its old streets!

  The women of Aries about whom people talk so much, don’t they - you know what I really think of them? They are indeed truly charming, but no longer what they must once must have been. They are more often like a Mignard than a Mantegna, because they’re now in decline. That doesn’t stop them from being beautiful, very beautiful, and I’m talking here only of the Roman type - a bit boring & run of the mill - but what exceptions there are! There are women like Fragonards and -like Renoirs. And some that one cannot pigeonhole as anything done in painting so far.

  The best thing one could do here, from every point of view, would be portraits of women and children. Only I don’t think that I am the man to do it, I’m not enough of a M. Bel Ami for that.