Contents
Preface
11
Introduction
12
Note to the Reader
14
Vincent van Gogh’s Stay in Auvers-sur-Oise
17
May 20–July 29, 1890
Paintings and Studies by Vincent van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise
69
May 20–July 29, 1890
Johanna Bonger’s Legacy
249
October 4, 1862–September 2, 1925
Chronology
292
Photography Credits
293
Index
301
g. 18
more correct to say he sold everything. That is i s the very essence o his agreement with Theo. The latter sent him money, and Vincent sent him paintings in exchange. These works, as Vincent would constantly repeat, were his brother’s property; they belonged to him because he had paid or them. No other painter o his time was able to make such a bargain. Theo was very well paid, and he could aord to send his brother close to 200 rancs per month, a sum that he oten supplemented or occasional expenses that arose with such regularity as to lose all “occasional” “occasional” characteristics. In order to ully understand Vincent’s nancial situation, we need to simply compare him to “Postman” Roulin, who was not really a postman, but a warehouse “stockman” or “courier.” It was a modest position, but the 135 rancs per month that it paid was enough or him to eed his wie and three children. The discussion o Vincent Vincent’s ’s supposed poverty should end with this simple observation. Even i Vincent presented himsel in a rather fattering light in his letter to Mr. and Mrs. Ginoux, it remains a act that he had recently shown his work in Brussels and in Paris, and that the laudatory criticism rom Albert Aurier in Le Mercure de France and Isaacson in the Low Countries were starting to make him known among the more enlightened members o the art world. This makes a second well-established myth crumble as well: that van Gogh was misunderstood. How can one be misunderstood i one is completely unknown? How many times does one read that van Gogh’s contemporaries understood nothing o his art, that they held it in contempt, that they roundly rejected it? The ew exceptions reerred to above, perhaps a dozen paintings or so in all, do not oset the act that the vast majority o van Gogh’s Gogh’s masterpieces had not been seen by anyone aside rom Theo. Most o the lucky ew who had the privilege o seeing his work close up, at Theo’s or while they were drying in his studio in Arles or in Saint-Rémy had only good things to say. Even today, with the Internet, g. 19 it can take ve years or more or an artist to become recognized, and this does not shock anyone. Who today is recognized at the age o thirty-seven on an equal ooting with the memory that he will leave ater his death? So how can we have expected the “public” to give a proper value to masterpieces like Sunfowers in a Vase (g. 19) or Starry Night over the Rhône (g. 18) barely eighteen months ater their completion? The myth o Vincent van Gogh’s lack o recognition is absurd, and what is more, it presumes with an improbable arrogance that we are better capable o judging his work today than were his ignorant contemporaries, as i we had invented beauty. But what is more, this myth entails the denial o two essential qualities o van Gogh’s paintings: their accessibility and the immediacy o the eects they produce. These qualities, o course, did not take up residence in the paintings ater his death.
25th day Paul Gauguin to Vincent Paris June 13, 1890
g. 20
Do you remember our conversations o old in Arles when it was a question o ounding the studio o the tropics. I’m on the point o carrying out this plan, i I obtain a small sum necessary to ound the establishment. I’ll then go to Madagascar with a gentle, moneyless tribe that lives rom the soil. I have very precise inormation rom various sides. I’ll turn a little earthen and wooden hut into a comortable house with my ten fngers; I’ll plant all things or ood there mysel, hens, cows etc . . . and in a short time I’ll have my material lie assured there. Those who want to come there later will fnd all the materials there or working with very ew expenses. And the studio o the tropics will perhaps orm the St. John the Baptist o the painting o the uture, reimmersed there in a more natural, more primitive and above all less putrefed lie.
The cold and calculating Gauguin, who had been living with his riend Amédée Schuenecker since February 1890, starts his letter with some unconvincing apologies. He expresses regret at not having written beore to his “riend.” He has a new project and is looking or a way to nance nanc e it. The van Gogh brothers, or whom he has but little respect, had the virtues o both being nancially secure and o admiring his work. Theo had already bought and sold some o his paintings. Vincent still thought o him as an immensely talented painter, displaying a level o oresight that Gauguin did not share. The painter o the Vision o the Sermon ( Jacob Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) Angel) (g. 20) plays to Vincent’s every emotion: his love o work on the land, his dreams o a new art, a biblical reerence, economy o means, simplicity . . . Beore setting out his arguments he brings Vincent back to the time when the two painters dreamed o wider vistas together in Arles, the town Gauguin had fed, never to return, when his riend’s dream turned into a nightmare. The same person who paid more attention to his personal appearance than anyone else now relies on artice bordering on the ridiculous to present himsel in this hypocritical letter as a natural man, seeking to sacrice himsel on the altar o the ne arts, so selfess he can only hope to pave the way or the coming o a Saint John the Baptist o painting . . . Fortunately Vincent was much more clear-sighted than his colleague, and did not seriously consider participating in this project. Vincent had become resigned to his ate, which he does not judge too harshly. He knows he has suered greatly, but he is just as aware that this suering was a deliberate choice. A decade previously, when he was still convinced that he should become a pastor or evangelical, suering had been one o
35
fg. 50
On May 20, 1890, Vincent van Gogh let Paris, where he had just spent three days with his brother Theo, his sister-in-law Johanna, and little Vincent, his our-month-old godson. He was thirty-seven years old. He was an accomplished artist, who had exhibited his work and was admired by Signac, Monet, Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec. The stipend that he received rom his brother provided him with enough material comort that he did not need to be worried about keeping a roo over his head, about his meals, his paints, or his canvases. He had just spent a year in a sanatorium and had let it eeling cured o the mental illness that had periodically laid him low. Vincent Vincent had a specifc project in mind. He elt ready to take on the challenge he had set or himsel: to paint in the North with a new eye, transormed by two years spent in the burning sun o the Midi. As a precautionary measure, he would stay in a village that was also home to a doctor, Doctor Gachet, who was a riend to painters and had agreed to put his expertise at Vincent’s disposal. Van Gogh would spend seventy days in Auvers-sur-Oise. Auvers-sur-Oi se. He would paint almost eighty canvases there beore ending his lie. This period is oten described as a tragic one or Vincent. But today, based on a critical reading o his letters, we can rule out any simplistic image o the painter as tormented. In Auvers-sur-Oise, Vincent van Gogh was possessed above all o a urious desire and an absolute need to paint. Not everyone is capable o painting close to eighty paintings in seventy days. Vincent van Gogh managed to do so due to the alignment o several ortuitous circumstances that enables him to develop his work. First o all, it was the result o ten years o daily eort, at once physical, creative, and intellectual. Second, ater a year o rest in the sanatorium in Saint-Rémy-deProvence, Vincent was in Olympic orm. His physical condition was urther enhanced by a powerul motivation: to continue to show his amily and his riends in Paris that his art deserved all his energies and all his time, which he wanted to pursue in a village near Paris with its own cultural signifcance. Finally, Doctor Gachet’s presence aorded him a measure o security, allowing him to take risks as he expanded the limits o painting as a medium, in a state o euphoria made possible by the recent public recognition o his talent. Thus all the pieces were in place or a veritable explosion o production and creativity in Auvers, both resulting rom and enabling the method o painting that he had patiently constructed. This method was innovative, even revolutionary: the Dutchman had managed to evolve past the pointillism he had assimilated in Paris in 1886 to achieve a new, modern way o uniting orm and color.
Seurat’s pointillism, or example, that Vincent had amiliarized himsel with in 1887, consists o the juxtaposition o points o color whose relations and proportions combine to create an optical eect. In this technique, orm emerges out o a mixture o colors. In Arles, van Gogh oten drew with sharpened reeds, which are notably not able to hold much ink. Since the reed could not be used to draw long lines, Vincent juxtaposed short strokes and points to build up orms or to indicate materials. He achieved similar eects using small brushes ull o color and placing similarly short strokes or points one next to the other on ca nvas, with great confdence and without hesitation or subsequent touch-up. Little by little, these strokes became fgurative. They became branches, leaves, little tuts applied in a single touch, at once orm and color: they signiy. In order to realize the chromatic concepts that he calculated well in advance and to avoid mixing colors on his palette, van Gogh had to envision his exact needs in terms o tubes o paint. The results o this method and o this extraordinary drive to work are collected in their entirety in the ollowing pages, with the exception o the drawings. The ame, the success, and the fnancial value attached to these works is ully justifed. They would be equally striking even i van Gogh had only ever painted in Auvers. Almost sixty o the paintings rom his stay there can now be ound in the greatest museums in the world. Finally, Vincent’s suicide, oten considered a tragedy without equal, is not actually so exceptional. Gérard de Nerval, Robert Schumann, Stean Zweig, Primo Levi, Maria Callas, Ernest Hemingway, Nicolas de Staël, Ian Curtis, Frida Kahlo, Mark Rothko, Émile Cioran, Guy Debord . . . the list o artists who have killed themselves is unortunately a long one. And let us keep in mind that all o Vincent’s work was sold in his lietime, not just one solitary painting as we so oten hear. Vincent sold everything to his patron, dealer, protector, and riend: Theo van Gogh. fg. 51
Peter Knapp
71
3 e n u J , y a d s e u T So much ink has fowed on the subject o Church at Auvers that it has become an icon o Vincent van Gogh’s work— one that is impossible to ignore. The time and place o its execution are incontrovertible, as the painting is described in detail in one o his letters. Even the time o day, in this case early- or mid-aternoon, is indicated by the position o the church’s shadow on the grass. The size o the painting is itsel unusual—the work is painted on a larger canvas than any other work rom the time in Auvers. Perhaps van Gogh wanted to use it because he judged that it was the most appropriate or this composition.
g. 60
With that I have a larger painting o the village church—an eect in which the building appears purplish against a sky o a deep and simple blue o pure cobalt, the stained-glass windows look like ultramarine blue patches, the roo is violet and in part orange. In the oreground a little fowery greenery and some sunny pink sand. It’s again almost the same thing as the studies I did in Nuenen o the old tower and the cemetery. Only now the color is probably more expressive, more sumptuous.
3 e n u J , y a d s e u T
fg. 66
I’ve done the portrait o Mr. Gachet with an expression o melancholy which might oten appear to be a grimace to those looking at the canvas. And yet that’s what should be painted, because then one can realize, compared to the calm ancient portraits, how much expression there is in our present-day heads, and passion and something like a warning shout. Sad but gentle but clear and intelligent, that’s how many portraits should be done, that would still have a certain eect on people at times. There are modern heads that one will go on looking at or a long time, that one will perhaps regret a hundred years aterwards. I I were ten years younger, with what I know now, how much ambition I would have or working on that. In the given conditions I can’t do very much, I neither requent nor would know how to requent suciently the sort o people I would like to infuence. I do hope to do your portrait one day.
e n u J
fg. 76
132
Bank of the Oise at Auvers stands apart rom the series o works rom Auvers in more than one way. First o all, its subject is an unusual choice or van Gogh during this period. It is the only painting that deals with polite society in any way. The scene it shows, a fshing excursion, could have taken place some Sunday aternoon. The fgures it contains recall Marguerite Gachet (p. 175) and the young girl portrayed in the middle o the felds (p. 179), but all these women really have in common with the others is to be wearing a hat and a white dress, which was hardly unusual or the time. The brightly painted skis enable combinations o complementary colors. The yellow boat in the oreground reinorces the blue o the second boat, and the green o the third brings out the red o the ourth. The painting is simply composed, with a horizon two-thirds o the way up. The space occupied by the Oise counterbalances this horizon’s height by extending across the lower third o the painting. The skis are arranged in a an-like manner. The last one is equipped with a sail and is painted bright red, drawing the eye to the background and giving depth to the painting. As is oten the case, what appears simple in van Gogh is in act the result o meticulous work and very balanced raming. The painting is not mentioned in the correspondence.
y l u J y l r a E
Child with Orange is inseparable rom van Gogh’s deep convictions about his brother’s living conditions and the welare o his amily. Little Vincent, named in honor o his uncle, had experienced health problems in June. Theo’s wie Jo had diculties breasteeding the child. In order to compensate or the shortage o mother’s milk, Theo had arranged or a donkey to be brought to the house several times a day, at regular intervals. This situation scandalized Vincent, who was convinced that a stay in the country, along with the eects o country air,, would stimulate his sister-in-law’s air sister-in-law’s lactation. In his letters, the painter repeatedly expressed his concerns or his little nephew and his desire to see him grow up in a healthy healthy,, ortiying environment. The portrait he made o a young blonde child with rosy cheeks, a broad smile, and a peaceul expression, surrounded by fowers, was no doubt intended to lend support to his arguments. The red in the child’s cheeks is heightened by the dominant green tones o the background, and the color o the orange completes the balance between the fowers, her hair, and her blue dress. The ruit is a symbol o health, o the bounty o nature and o air weather. It sits in the rm grip o chubby little hands. A ew yellow fowers in the oreground give depth to the ensemble.
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