IK

M
 WHO WAS?
General Editor of the Series: Jean Leymarie
Who was
 Van Gogh?
BRIGHTON
 TEXT BY JEAN LEYMARIE
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY JAMES EMMONS

Color Plate on the Title Page:

Pollard Willows at Sunset, detail. Aries, October 1888.

Canvas. KrSller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, Holland.

Distributed in the United States by

TIIK WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
•.'•-'.'{I West llnth Street, Cleveland, (tluo 14102

j 1968 by Editions d'Arl Albert skira, Geneva

Librar} ol Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-20496
 CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 7

In Search of Himself 9

Under the Gray Skies of the North ... 19

The Light of Paris 57

Aries and the High Yellow Note .... 85

Saint-Remy and the Starry Night .... 141

Auvers and the Final Cycle 173

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 199

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES 201

LIST OF WORKS REPRODUCED AND MENTIONED 205

.
 "So we are right in clinging to the artists
rather than the pictures."

Van gogh is one of the men to whom the funda- acceptance of self-sacrifice and death he transformed
mental question that gives its general title to solitude into universal communion. At the age of

this series applies most aptly and indeed most twenty-seven, in the black winter of the Borinage,
insistently. Not only the forty self-portraits painted among the most sorely disinherited workers in the

or drawn in less than five years, but the continuous world whose destitution he shared and whose
self-portrait inseparable from his life which his whole sufferings he consoled, the decisive soul-struggle took

work in fact represents, together with the voluminous place within him.

correspondence in which that work is reflected and There, exacerbated by the revelation of human
elucidated, constitute one of the most dramatic and misery and social injustice, his religious frenzy
searching explorations of self ever attempted, on a rose to fever pitch and, without losing its momen-
par with Dostoevsky's writings, a desperate, tanta- tum or changing its nature, reversed its direction

lizing quest for a lost identity: "There is something and turned into an artistic vocation. It was at

within me, what is it then?" the bottom of the mine, where his passionate sense

For years the man groped for his way, stumbling of human brotherhood led him to descend, that at

and foundering, meeting with the failures and frus- last the painter within him was stirred to life and
trations which prepared his soul and spirit to serve discovered, smoldering under the coals before blazing

his art with the full measure of devotion. "How then forth, what was to be his consubstantial element, fire.

can I make myself useful, what end can I serve?" Thrown back on painting as on a last hope of salva-

Yearning with his whole being to give himself to tion, but ever faithful to the letter and the spirit of

something, but a thrall to his own ardor, thwarted the Bible's central message, which epitomizes his
in love and in his humanitarianism by the very own struggle for fulfillment, he worked his way up
vehemence of his flame, he found himself barred from "from darkness to light" and went from the mists of
the "true life" to which he aspired, by which he the North to the limpid clarity of the South in order

meant a man's natural life with wife and children. to see the North with fresh eyes and to immerse
The only way left open to him, "to extricate himself himself in it "without ever letting the fire of his

from life," was the way of art, where in his deliberate spirit go out."
 The pages that follow are an attempt to chart by No doubt there have been greater artists than this

the coordination of pictures and text, the latter as unsuccessful missionary forced by failure to become
dense and discreet as possible, the historical and a painter, while never ceasing to be a man among
spiritual course of Van Gogh's life, with its radiant the humblest of men, but his spiritual destiny has a

ascension and tragic fall. "There are some circum- human significance over and above the artistic

stances in which it is better to be the vanquished venture he embarked on. It is because of that
than the vanquisher, Prometheus than Jupiter." Each significance, evident and relevant to all of us, that

successive stage of his career has its genuine necessity his tragic life appeals to us today like a kind of sacred
and its full significance as part of a unitary cycle legend answering to a need deeply and widely felt,

whose rhythm and sequence are best understood in and at the same time the triumphant yellow of the

the light of what Van Gogh himself said of Poussin's sunflowers with which he identified himself shines
art: "Everything in it is at once reality and symbol." over the world like the torch of modern art.

In a century of iron and coal, when the well-to-do I should like to dedicate this book to the memory
went dressed in black, when downtrodden miners of Charles Mauron of Saint-Remy-de-Provence and
seldom saw the light of day. Van Gogh succeeded to express by the same token all my gratitude and
in capturing sunlight in all its glory and opening affectionate admiration to civil engineer Vincent
men's eyes to the radiant energy of the universe. van Gogh, Theo's son and Vincent's godson and
"I should like to paint in so simple a way that anyone nephew, president of the Vincent van Gogh Founda-
with eyes can see clearly what is meant." tion in Amsterdam.
 In Search of Himself

There is something within me, what is it then?

Jgfeg
', 1

i5&N

">"
 IN SEARCH OF HIMSELF

Vincent van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, a year before him, to the very day, had not lived;

at the parsonage of Zundert, a village in Dutch and, a further coincidence which shows the stability
Brabant near the Belgian frontier. Both his father of the population in this rural area, his birth was
and his grandfather were Protestant ministers; recorded at the registry office under the same number.
among his ancestors were a sculptor and several twenty-nine. His dead brother's grave stood right
goldsmiths; and three of his uncles, who, especially at the entrance of the churchyard at Zundert. near
his uncle Vincent, were instrumental in giving him the little church where the pastor, his father, read
a start in life, were art dealers. He was born, then, the service; so that Vincent, as soon as he could
into a family penetrated with art and religion, the read, had the odd experience of seeing his own
two aspirations between which he long oscillated, name on a tombstone.

and which he finally fused together. Such cases are familiar to psychoanalysts, and it

A member of the liberal group of Groningen, his is certain that, born as he was to parents in mourning
father Theodorus (1822-1885) resigned himself to who in effect substituted him for their dead child,

accepting the humblest country parishes, making up his relations with his mother were distorted from the
for his lack of eloquence and qualifications by his start, and so gave rise, with his attachment to Theo,
kindliness and devotion to duty. From his mother the second boy four years his junior, to the sense of

Anna Cornelia Carbentus (1819-1906), a much more anguish and guilt that grew upon him in later years.

spirited person, daughter of a bookbinder to the Vincent stepped into another's place, he was himself
King in the Hague, he inherited his highly strung another. Who was he then and how could he redeem
nerves, his love of letter writing, his aptitude for himself from this usurpation?

drawing. The eldest of two brothers and three "How then can I make myself useful, what end
sisters, he was marked by fate at his birth. He was can I serve? There is something within me. what
named after a previous child who, born exactly is it then?" Such was the source of the soul-searchings

that tormented him all his life, the quest for a lost

identity, the craving to sercc even to the point of

Self-Portrait Studies. Paris, 1886-1888. Pen and Pencil. self-sacrifice.

11
 Little is known of his country childhood, but that in his letters show how deeply he was marked by his

he was solitary and uncommunicative. His ''dream- boyhood impressions of Zundert and its environs,

iness," as his elders described it, and his physical which came back to him with hallucinating precision
—red hair cropped short over a bony,
peculiarities during the crisis at Aries, by the poetic melancholy

solemn face — him apart from others. "Xot only

set of the windswept moors with their villages of trim

his kin were strangers to him, but he was still a gardens and thatched cottages.
stranger to himself," wrote his sister Elizabeth, who At sixteen, still uncertain of his vocation, he had

also describes him, however, as a boy in close to start earning his own living, for his father was
communion with nature, spending hours alone in poor and the family large. His uncle Vincent
the fields observing plants, insects and birds, probing obtained a position for him as clerk in the art gallery
into the mystery of life. After attending the local at the Hague which he himself had founded and then

school, he was sent to boarding schools in neigh- sold to the big Parisian firm of Goupil, of which it

boring towns, at Zevenbergen and Tilburg. He felt became the Dutch branch under the management
keenly this first separation from his home and his of Tersteeg. He began work on July 30. 1869. Like
native village, to which he returned with intenser Gauguin, who began his career as a bank clerk in

appreciation during the holidays, coming now into Paris in 1871, he was at first a model employee.
closer contact with his brother Theo, whom he took In August 1872 he had a visit from Theo, now
with him in his long rambles. "There will always fifteen, and was struck by his finesse and maturity.
remain within us something of the Brabant fields They began to write to each other, and the letters

and heath," he confided to him later. Many allusions they exchanged until their death are among the most
interesting and moving ever penned. On January 1,

The Sower, after Millet. Cuesmes, August 1880. Pen and 1873, Theo too went to work for Goupil, first at the

Wash heightened with green and white. Brussels office, then at the Hague, and the similarity

From Cuesmes in the Borinage. on September 7, 1880. of their jobs brought the two brothers still closer

Van Gogh wrote to Theo: "As regards the Sower. I hove together. In June, Vincent was promoted and
already drawn it five times, ttvice small and three times transferred to the London branch. On his way he
on a larger scale, and even so it preoccupies me so much
stopped in Paris, conscious of becoming "a real
that I shedl come hack to it again." And in fact, except
cosmopolitan" or. as he added, ""quite simply a
at Antwerp and Paris, it reappears in even/ phase of his
career. drawings made at
man." Though homesick, he liked London, its parks
Of the initial set of five rjf it

Cuesmes. only this one survives, based on a print of Millet's

and museums, the Thames embankment and the
famous painting (now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts). surrounding countryside. "Admire as much as you
Van Gogh's painted version oj Millet's picture was made can: most people do not admire enough." he advised
at Saint-Remy in November 1889. He then revealed the
Theo, overwhelming him with the names of fifty
deep signified nee this theme had always had for him:
modern artists cited pell-mell, among them Millet,
"I feel so much that the story of people is like the story of

wheat : if one is not sown in the soil, there to sprout, what who remained the object of his greatest admiration.

does it matter, one is ground up to make bread." He adds: "Keep your love of nature, for that is the

13
true way to learn to understand art . . . Painters English colleague, Harry Gladwell. He lost interest

understand nature... and teach us to see her." in his work. Absorbed in his aspirations, he found
In his enthusiasm and candor he fell in love in everything connected with business more and more
London with his landlady's daughter, Ursula Loyer, distasteful. At the busiest time of year, with
who ran a day-nursery with her mother, the widow Christmas sales in full swing, he suddenly left the
of a French pastor. When in June 1874, just before gallery and went off to spend the holidays with his

taking his holidays, he asked her to marry him, parents in their new parsonage at Etten. On his

carried away by the reading of Michelet, his breviary return, he was dismissed with three months' notice.

of love, he found that she was already secretly "When the apple is ripe," he remarked philosoph-
engaged and his dream collapsed. The shock of this ically, "a soft breeze makes it fall from the tree."

rebuff has left no trace in his letters to Theo, which He returned to England in April 1876 as coach,
in fact ceased during the critical period from with board and lodging but no salary, in a dismal
August 1874 to February 1875, but seven years school at Ramsgate, run by "a ghost always dressed
later, likening a man's life to a boat whose sails are in black," the Reverend Mr Stokes. In June he
his passions, he confessed that his boat had sunk in moved to Isleworth, one of the poorer suburbs of
his twentieth year. His parents noticed his growing London, where a Methodist minister named Jones,
moodiness and sent his eldest sister back to England who kept a boarding school, engaged him as school-

with him, where she hoped to find work. A few master and acting curate. One of his duties was to
weeks in Paris in the fall failed to raise his spirits or collect the monthly fees from the children's parents
check the trend of his mind toward religious who lived in the slums of the East End and White-
mysticism. His last letter from London ends on this chapel. There he saw working-class life at its most
profession of faith taken from Renan: "To act in the squalid; there he sounded the depths. He had been
world, your ego must die within you . . . Man is not prepared for this decisive experience by his wide
here on earth only to be happy, he is not even here reading— including George Eliot and Dickens — in

to be simply honest. He is here to achieve great the literature of human suffering: it touched his

things for his fellow men, to attain nobility and rise conscience to the quick and inspired in him a

above the vulgarity in which almost all individuals boundless sympathy with the humble and disin-
drag out their lives.'' herited. In one of his sermons which he recopied for
His mind was in a state of religious fervor and Theo, on the theme. "We are strangers on the

self-abnegation when, in May 1875, he was trans- earth" and "our life is a pilgrim's progress," he
ferred to Paris. There lie eagerly visited the Louvre, evokes, for those who are far from their native place,

the Luxembourg museum, the Salmi, the Corot "the golden hours of our early days at home.'"

retrospective exhibition, and attended a sale of Christmas to VanGogh, in the course of his wandering

Millet's drawings, but his thoughts dwelt constantly life, always meant home and family; and so at

mi religion and iii the evenings he shut himself up in Christmas time, 1S7(>. he returned to his father's
his room to read and discuss the Bible with a young parsonage at Ktteu.
Miners' Wins carrying Bags. Etten, April 1881. Pen Drawing

Id
 ^=^

His Uncle Vincent found him employment as a bowels of the earth, like the miners, are receptive to
booksellers clerk at Dordrecht, but he only held the the Gospel message and cling to it." The black
job from January 21 to April 30, 1877. He had made country of the Borinage, the country of Verhaeren
up his mind to follow in the family tradition and be and Constantin Meunier, is at once the most mystical
a minister like his father and many of his ancestors. and the most socialistic area in Belgium.
With this object he went to Amsterdam on May 9. He stopped first at the little town of Paturages,

He was given board and lodging by his Uncle Jan, near Mons, where he earned a meagre living as a
director of the shipyards. An uncle on his mother's copyist. Lodging with a pedlar named Van der
side, Pastor Strieker, supervised his studies and he Haagen, he taught and catechized the children and
was coached by a kindly teacher, Dr Mendes da visited the sick. In January 1879 he was given a
Costa, who published his recollections of this unusual temporary post as pastor, for six months, in the

pupil. Obliged to apply himself to Greek and Latin, neighboring town of Wasmes. There, living in the
to bend his mind to drills when he aspired with all midst of so much distress —a typhus epidemic, a
his heart to become "an inward spiritual man" with mine explosion, a drastic reduction of salaries
the roots and simplicity of a "man of nature," he he served as he had never served before, devoting
kept at it with dogged persistence for fifteen months himself heart and soul to his parishioners. In a

before finally admitting defeat. It was against the frenzy of self-sacrifice and compassion, like the
grain. For him there could be no teacher but life, 'lunatics of God" in Dostoevsky's novels, he save
no school but "the great university of human away everything he had, his money, his clothes. He
affliction"; for him the classical languages and the left his room in the house of the baker Denis and
sciences led nowhere. Theory irked him; he yearned slept for a time on the bare boards of a shed, where
to be up and doing. his father was shocked to find him. He sat up with
He secured admittance on three months probation
7

the sick and injured, cured and converted some of

tn a school for lay preachers at Laeken. near them, went down into the most dangerous mines,
Brussels. He came out on November 15, 1878, but made common cause with strikers, harangued the
was given no appointment. Acting on his own he miners with his face and hands as black as their
chose to go out as a preacher to the mining villages own with coal dust, and presented Christ to them as

of the Borinage, one of the poorest and grimmest "a brother in sorrow." But this man of fire did not
regions in the Low Countries, to bring into the have the gift of speech. The consistory inspector,
darkness of the mines the lighl and consolations of moreover, judged his zeal excessive and disapproved
the faith. "You know." he explained to Theo, "that of his shabby clothes. For these reasons his tem-
one of the fundamental truths not only of the t'.uspel porary appointment was not renewed.
hut of the whole Bible is that lighl shines in the Thus the official Church, whose narrow conven-
darkness. Through darkness to light. Well, who tions he had bitterly denounced, rejected the selfless

needs it most at the present time? Experience has Christianity he tried to put into practice. This
shown that those who work in darkness, in the failure precipitated a serious moral crisis. He went

Hi
to Brussels to lay his case before a member of the his early drawings have come to light. His six years
evangelical committee, Pastor Pietersen —who, as with the Goupil gallery and assiduous visits to the
it happened, was an amateur watercolorist, and museums in London, Paris and the Low Countries
Van Gogh showed him some drawings he had just had familiarized him with art and trained his eye.

made. He then returned to the Borinage, going to He collected prints and read technical books. While
Cuesmes, near Mons. There Theo visited him and, in England he began to adorn his letters with
misjudging his low spirits, sermonized him and sketches and even at the height of his religious

urged "remedies that are worse than the evil itself." obsession his interest in art never waned. During
Setting himself against his brother and his whole his theological studies in Amsterdam he was deeply
family, Van Gogh went through the terrible winter affected by the news of Daubigny's death. "For the
of 1879-1880 alone and destitute. For him it was the work of such men, when you understand it, touches
turning point. He tramped the roads for a week, you more deeply than you realize yourself." The
suffering from cold and hunger, sleeping in barns, first drawing to reveal his power of expression
on his way to the village of Courrieres, in northern accompanied his letter to Laeken of November 15,

France, where he intended to visit the painter of the 1878, and represents a dingy taproom frequented by
humble, Jules Breton, whom he admired. But at the colliery workers. He could not help seeing the
"chilling and irritating" sight of his brand-new poverty-stricken miners in their dismal surroundings
studio, he turned away from Breton's door without as characteristic "motifs" and soon made many
knocking. It was on his way back from this harrowing drawings of them. By August 5, 1879, he had filled

excursion that his spirits revived as he glimpsed the up half of an album sent to him by Tersteeg. In the

possibility of deliverance by way of art. In July summer of 1880, sensing his vocation, he set to work
1880, after an estrangement of nine months, he seriously, unaided, but with dogged determination.
received a small remittance from Theo, who was He methodically copied the sets of pictures by
now at the Goupil gallery in Paris. At this, he wrote Millet (which he did again, in colors, at Saint- Remy)

to his brother, in French, the long and poignant known as the Hours of the Day and the Labors of the
confession in which he laid his heart bare, soberly Fields. He got Tersteeg to send him Bargue's
reviewed his past failures, and looked forward to manual Exercices au fusain (Exercises in Charcoal
better things. His confidence restored, Theo pro- Sketching), which he asked for again at Auvers-sur-

mised him financial aid. Two months later he wrote Oise shortly before his death. His first steps were

to Theo with a new sense of purpose. "I cannot tell made under the technical and spiritual aegis of
you how happy I am to have taken up drawing again. Millet. By September 7, 1880. he had made five

I had long been thinking of it, but I always consi- drawings (only one has survived, reproduced here)
dered the thing impossible and beyond my reach." after Millet's Sower, a figure that to him always
He had of course been drawing off and on since seemed one of the great symbols of humanity. He
he was a boy, but with no special talent, merely started working through Baigue's Cours complet de

as a pastime or an occasional distraction. Several of dessin (Complete Drawing Course), but when he got

17
to Part Three, devoted to Holbein's portrait draw- He studied anatomy, making careful drawings of

ings, his room at Cuesmes, in the house of the miner every part of a complete skeleton. Working from
Decrucg, was too narrow for him to set them out, models, he made a dozen character sketches after

and with winter coming on he could no longer work the manner of English illustrations. He took up and
in the garden. So he moved to Brussels, taking a worked over some of the Borinage themes, like a
room in a small hotel near the station on October 15. group of miners' wives bowed under the weight of

He had felt the need, moreover, to be among the bags slung over their shoulders; a crucifix

pictures again and to get advice and guidance from standing in a strictly realistic landscape as the last

someone more advanced than himself. Through echo of his missionary zeal. Van Rappard had to

Theo, he was introduced to a young Dutch aristocrat, leave Brussels, and Van Gogh saw no point in

Ridder Anton van Rappard (1858-1892), a pupil at staying on alone in the city, where the cost of living
the Academy, who invited him to his studio and put a strain on his budget. Spring was at hand and
taught him the laws of perspective. There seemed to he yearned for the country. As Theo was about to go
be nothing in common between the well-to-do to Holland and he was eager to show him what he
nobleman and the penniless wanderer, but they soon had been doing, he asked him to negotiate his return

found they had similar tastes in art: both were to the parsonage at Etten. He arrived there on
interested above all in the direct rendering of real April 12, 1881, not hounded by failure as before, but
life. Their friendship lasted five years and gave rise with a definite goal before him and the determination
to an abundant and valuable correspondence. to reach it.
 Under the Gray Skies of the North

Everything depends on the sense I have of the infinite

variety of tones of the same family.

;
"

mpmi

sp*

w*WBtb
^m

I have made up my mind to paint a

variant of the thatched cottage. I have
been much impressed by the subject;
these two ruinous cottages, covered by a
single roof of rushes, have reminded me
of two decrepit human beings who form
but a single being and hold each other up.
For me, anyhow, the most admirable
thing I know in the way of architecture
is the cottage with a roof of moss-grown
thatch, with its blackened hearth. So I am
very particular.

Thatched Cottage at Nightfall. Nuenen, May 1885. Canvas.

Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam.
 UNDER THE GRAY SKIES OF THE NORTH

He was glad
in the
to return to Etten, a small village

neighborhood of Zundert, in Dutch

whenever he could: "I have read too much not
work on systematically to get at least an idea
to

of

Brabant, where he had grown up. Thanks to Theo's modern literature." In his eyes art and literature
good offices, his parents gave him a cordial welcome went together; in them, moreover, he saw the key
and left him free to do as he pleased. His letters to a new moral philosophy.
became lively and cheerful, in contrast with the old Van Rappard and Theo each came through Etten
tone of gloomy preachifying. While continuing his in the early summer of that year, 1881, and gave
methodical copy exercises from manuals and prints, him encouragement. He made a portrait drawing

he immersed himself at once in the daily life around from life of his favorite sister Willemien and did a
him, the rural life he had known and loved since portrait of his father from a photograph. In August
childhood. He set himself to record it directly and he spent four days at the Hague, got in touch with
truthfully, "to study and draw everything con- his cousin Mauve, who was a painter, and met other
nected with rural life." He sketched the features of well-known painters, Bosboom, de Bock and Willem
the landscape, the thatched cottages, the barns and Maris. Mauve took an interest in his work, showed
mills, a fen, the timber felled by the woodcutters. him great kindness and urged him to go on at once
He made detailed drawings of the carts, ploughs, to figure painting.

harrows, wheelbarrows ; of the forge and smithy, the After returning to Etten he persuaded some of
carpenter's shop, the sabot factory. He did not feel the countryfolk to cooperate and in September
able to tackle oil painting until he had mastered the started on a series of men and women posing for
art of drawing in all of its various techniques, which work in the fields and in the house. His Uncle
he experimented with one after another: pencil, pen. Vincent sent him a box of watercolors and with these
charcoal, reed pen, sepia, Indian ink, watercolor, he colored his drawings. The rugged style of his
stump. He set his books in order and acquired more figures is re-echoed in his studies of treetrunks. and
in October he drew the "willow as if it were a living

being." The many long letters he wrote in November

The Sower. Etten, 1881. Pen Drawing. deal almost exclusively with a second unhappy love

23

»
 affair, which had broken the even current of his (two of which have been preserved) and some figures
life since late summer. Pastor Strieker's daughter in watercolors. During this winter in the Hague,

Kee Vos, his Amsterdam cousin, a widow with a he went to Amsterdam several times, trying to see
four-year-old boy, had then come to the parsonage. his cousin Kee, but she kept out of his way. During
He played with the child and fell in love with its his last visit he made the propitiatory and sacrificial

mother (the maternal relationship always underlay gesture so characteristic of the man; he only con-

his attitude to women), but when he declared his fessed it to Theo several months afterwards. Finding
love he was rebuffed with a "No, never, never!" her parents, the Strickers, seated at table, with Kee
Should he give her up or press his suit? He chose to out of sight, he stretched out his hand over the flame
press on in his love as he had pressed on in his art, of the oil lamp and begged them to let him gaze on
and thereby to give more depth to his art, for her for as long as he could bear the flame. Pastor
"nothing roots us deeper in reality than true love." Strieker blew out the lamp and dismissed him from
His insistence drove the young woman back to the house, into the dark and cold. "I then felt an
Amsterdam, where he showered letters on her which immense void open up in my heart," he wrote. But
she sent back unopened. Still he held on. believing no such rebuff could check the gathering momentum
that she acted less by her feelings than by inhuman of his progress as an artist.

scruples which held her captive and which he He returned to Etten for the Christmas holidays.
trusted he could break down. He quarreled with —
On Christmas day a day he always thought of as
those around him and blamed his family for reproving bringing light, but all his life a fateful day for him
his behavior instead of trying to understand and he fell into a violent quarrel with his father who, on
help him. The conflict, latent since his failure in the his declining to go to church, angrily turned him out
Borinage, flared up with his father, who chided him of the house. He left Etten at once and went back
for his obstinacy and criticized the books he read as to the Hague.
"immoral." The man he had idealized so long as a In addition to the two extant oil paintings
perfect model fell from his pedestal and stood mentioned above, some fifty drawings, including
revealed in his narrow-mindedness and his antiquated eight varied studies of sowers, date from this period

prejudices. All his affections were soon to be con- at Etten, when he turned from an amateur into a
centrated on Then, but first he transferred his professional, with the advantages and the drawbacks
admiration for a brief while, necessary to his attendant on a late development. The figures, still

artistic progress to Mauve, whom he lauded to the angular and stiff ("I need her" —meaning Kee — he
skies and whom he joined in the Hague late in wrote to Theo. "to soften and sweeten them"), have
November 1881. gained in breadth, lint their proportions are ill

Mauve gave him a cordial welcome, scoffed at adjusted and he cannot yet Bel them moving. "Not
clergymen, and initiated him in the "secrets" of oil until a year or two from now will 1 manage to show
painting. Under Mauve's guidance he painted his a sower Bowing." In his landscapes, on the other
lirst pictures, live still lifes of fruit and utensils hand, for example the l'mid m the Heath, while

L'l
 Pond in the Heath. Etten. June 1881. Pen and Lead Pencil.

This splendid drawing is one of the artist's first successful marsh where there were some waierliiies, near the Roosendaal
works. It is mentioned in a June 1881,
letter of written road." The contemporary figure drawings are still angular
after the painter Van Rappard had paid him a visit at and stiff, with a rude expressionistic tension. In the land-

Etten: "We went on several excursions together, among scape drawings however, in spite of inevitable weal'
others into the heath out toward Seppe and to a place called Van Gogh revealed already an innate sense of spare which
Passievaart, a great marsh. There Rappard painted a large he shared with the Dutch old masters and a calligraphic
study which has many qualities. Moreover he made a dozen diversification of the line according to each detail which
small sepias, there and in the Liesbosch. While he was links him up already with the Oriental tradition he only
painting, I made a pen drawing of another spot in the came to know and admire much later.

25
 there are faults of perspective, the sense of space and
the beauty of the detail are rendered with an almost
Oriental mastery.
In a suburb of the Hague, near the Rhine station,
he rented a room with an alcove which he used as a
studio. Here he arranged his most precious posses-
sion, which he added to and pored over continually
his print collection, mostly English prints, which
were as important in this early phase as Japanese
prints were later. The Hague was then the center of

an artistic and literary revival known as the 1880

movement. The local school of painting was flourish-

ing. Its style was based on the compassionate

naturalism of Jozef Israels, and Mauve, with Mesdag
and the Maris brothers, was one of its leading

representatives, and perhaps the most refined

exponent of the technique to which they all limited

themselves: chiaroscuro and tonal variations, with

colors excluded. Van Gogh rejoiced at having such an

instructor. His friendship with Mauve did him good

and helped him on his way, but they soon fell out.

Van Gogh's insistence on total communion and his

domineering character made all relations with him

difficult, except in the case of humble folk with whom
his kindness and patience were inexhaustible.

Dissatisfied with most of the local painters he met.

J^^ he nevertheless had fruitful exchangee with some of
..'
(
them, Weissenbruch among the older men. Breitner
»*w **( •

and later J. van der Week among the younger.

.... ...... _ -
In reading Sender's biography of Millet, he came
across the motto he made his own : "Art is a combat;
you have to throw your life into it."

Toward the end of January 1882— according to

him after Mauve had "deserted" him. but he may

have known her since December, after his dismissal

View from Ins Studio Window. The Hague, 1883. Pern, from the Stricken' household he picked up in the

26
Behind the Schenkweg. The Hague, May 1882.
Pencil heightened with white.

Thaw. The Hague, March 1883. Watercolor.

fH5^l

Roofs. The Hague, July 1882. Watercolor

heightened with white. $?•
 w*m

street a drunken prostitute, ill, pregnant, and already

the mother of a five-year-old girl. All the springs of

pity within him gushed forth. He took her in and

tried to reclaim her. "I should think any man worth
his shoe leather would have done the same in such

a case." Christine —Sien for short —became his

model and companion. This poor outcast, unattrac-

tive, already past her prime, who reminded him of

the nurse at Zundert, did not displace in his heart

the memory of Kee, "but when love is dead," he
wrote, "does not charity become more alive?"

Evangelically pure and in line with the same

vocation that drove him to live with the miners of
the Borinage, a connection so scandalous in the eyes

of society alienated his family and friends. It

expressed his desire to break away from the norms of

bourgeois life. It confirmed his realization that, with
his own nature and circumstances working against

him, he had come down in the world: "I have no

choice but to drop out of my sphere of life, from

which anyhow I have been excluded for a long time."

Turned out of his father's house, thwarted in his

love for his cousin, he found now that a plot was

afoot to place him under a guardian.

Van Gogh shared with his period the Tolstoyan

cult of the fallen woman, victim and accuser of

Society. It was a figure that appeared in many

Mother and Child. The Hague, April 1883. Charcoal and
novels he had read and it struck his imagination.
Lead Pencil heightened with white and bistre wash.
But his attachment to Sien had other causes too:
his disdain for conventional beauty, his profound
sympathy for true forms, for people buffeted by life.

"To me," he admitted, "she is beautiful and I find

in her exactly what I need. There is something to be

gotten out of her." And for his work, at that stage

at least, she proved a helpful "auxiliary." more help-

ful in a wav than Kee would have been. Pregnant.

28
worn down by the life she had known, she posed

for him as often as he liked, quite unaffectedly,

and in April, sitting dejectedly in the nude, with her

withered charms, she inspired the two drawings
given significantly enough, in homage to the English
illustrators he admired, the title Sorrow. The first,

in charcoal, which he sent to Theo as his best effort

to date, shows Sien giving way to her despair in the

full flush of spring, among blossoming trees which

anticipate the orchards of Aries. The line, in its

rigorous naturalism, has the angular accents of Late Sorrow. The Hague, April 1882. Lead Pencil.

Gothic art, with a foretaste too of Jugendstil. In the

second, larger version in lead pencil, much admired
by Weissenbruch, the romantic landscape dis-

appears: the figure alone remains, tensely confined

within its expressive outlines.
His Uncle Cornells of Amsterdam now com-
missioned him to make two sets of drawings, views

of the Hague. To help to sell them, he suggested to

his nephew that he should represent the tourist

attractions rather than the poverty-stricken back

streets he was so fond of. Van Gogh bristled up and
refused to change his manner or his motifs, for

"I care less about earning than about deserving."

Yet he had not a penny of his own. He was entirely

dependent on Theo's generosity for his own upkeep

and Sien's. A visit from Van Rappard at the end of

May "cheered him up." In June he spent several

weeks in hospital with a venereal disease. As soon
as he was released, in early July, he hastened to
the maternity hospital in Leyden and, as senti-

ments without acts were meaningless in his eyes.

brought Sien, her little daughter and her newborn

baby, a boy, back to the Hague, installing all three

of them in his new lodgings, in the same street two

doors awav from his old room, which had been

\* Sox ^OVA-
 Above. Willem Maris: Winter Landscape.
Canvas. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

Below. Jozef Israels : Towing the Boat. Canvas.

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

Anton Mauve: Horses by a Fence. 1575. Canvas,

Musewn, Amsterdam.
Stedelijk

30
31
 mmmm

damaged by rain. He now had weather-proof, well- on his canvas and stayed on till the storm passed

lighted rooms, with a large attic. "The undertaking "because of the deep, admirable tone of the wet
is beyond my means," he confessed to Van Rappard, ground." These attempts were still rudimentary and
but "if we did not venture not to draw back from he soon had to give them up for lack of money, but
certain things, we would not be worthy to live." To the conviction grew on him that he had "the sense
Theo, whose visit he was expecting, he described the of color" and that a "great creative power" lay
simple joys of his "working man's household" and within him, waiting to be tapped. In November he
the stimulating effect on his work of having a real turned to lithography and dreamed of setting up
studio, anchored in life, "a studio with a cradle and a non-commercial association to circulate works of
a baby's chair." With a joiner's help he made himself art among the people. During the winter he worked

a perspective frame such as Diirer and the old harder than ever at drawing, concentrating now not
masters had used. To Theo he explained in detail on outlines but on volume, mass and chiaroscuro.
how it worked, with its horizontal, vertical and He fitted his studio windows with adjustable shutters
slanting wires, and its system of supports. "The letting in more light or less, as he desired. And he
curious effects of perspective," he wrote, "intrigue realized now the importance of Daumier, "perhaps
me far more than human intrigues," and this device a match for them all."

enabled him to master them easily. He drew with In May 1883 Van Rappard, to whom he was to
delighted wonder the view from his room or the pay a return visit in Utrecht, called on him and spoke
attic above over the houses below and the dockyards enthusiastically of the Drenthe province. He took
and meadows in the distance. "The lines of roofs and up oil painting again as the weather grew finer, but
rainpipes recede now like a charm," he noted with acknowledged with sombre disillusionment that Sien
satisfaction in describing a splendid watercolor had not mended her ways. Her apathy and sloven-
painted from his window. Perspective, which in the liness seemed irremediable. Egged on by her mother,
art of his contemporaries was giving way to surface she schemed behind his back, itching to take up her
patterning or being dissolved in the atmosphere, old life again. He excused her by saying, "How
assumed in his work a particular importance, not could she be good if she has never seen what is

merely as a means of representing depth but as the good?" Unable to bring himself to leave her, he
expressive structure of space. thought of moving with her into the country. She
Theo came in Augusl L882, persuaded him not to refused to go, and early in September, shortly after
marry Christine but failed to detach him from her, a visit from Theo to whom he had appealed for help,
ganged his progress and his ardor, and seeing him he left her and went off alone to Drenthe in northern
ready to tackle oils left him something over to buy Holland, his heart bleeding, especially because of the
colors and canvases with. He painted in a blustering two children, to whom he had become attached.
wind on the beach at Scheveniniren and the sand of "I must go forward all the same." He only had seven
the dunes gol mixed with his colors. Working in the years to live, and with clairvoyant lucidity he
woods, he knelt in the mud to gel a low horizon line foretold his fate: "I think 1 can conclude that my

32
body will hold out for a few years more, say six to of them in various media, were the essential work of
ten. . . I do not intend to spare myself. . . The world this period: many studies of Sien and her children,

means little to me, except that I have a debt toward old men at an almshouse whom he called "orphan-
it and also the obligation, having wandered through men," landscapes and urban views, genre scenes and
itnow for thirty years, to leave it out of gratitude sketches of people at work. "What is drawing? How
some memento in the form of drawings or pictures does one arrive at it? It is the action of breaking one's
which have not been undertaken to chime in with way through an invisible iron wall which seems to
one tendency or another, but to express a sincere stand between what one feels and what one is able
human feeling." to do." He deliberately put the same "convulsive"
The twenty decisive months at the Hague coin- expression into both his studies of trees and roots
cided with "the earthquake of one's thirtieth year" and his figure studies, and the latter are rather
(Kierkegaard). It was during this time of troubles, "heads of the people" than "types of beauty." They
of enormous spiritual outpouring (accounting for one are more alive and better proportioned than at

third of his letters), of intense reading (Balzac, Etten, and better integrated in their setting. But his
Hugo, Dickens all reread, the Goncourts and Zola stumbling block was still movement and the grouping
discovered), that he worked out or arrived at most of of figures. Significant motifs appear — the empty
his aesthetic, philosophical and social ideas, to him chair, the cradle, the figure with its head bowed in

inseparable from human conduct. "While trying to its hands —which he later used in his paintings.

go deeper into art, I try at the same time to go The wild region of Drenthe in northwestern
deeper into life, for the two go together." Holland, then an unfrequented part of the country.
There are about twenty paintings from this was beginning to attract artists, as Brittany was in

period, executed at two different times. He began France. Mauve and Van Kappard made stays there
in August 1882 with some small seascapes and forest so did the German painter Max Liebermann, whom
views, handled compactly, with thick outlines. The Van Gogh was interested in and whose art. as Theo
palette he chose changed little during his Dutch pointed out, was close to his own. He stopped at the

period: silver white, Naples yellow, yellow ochre, town of Hoogeven, from where he could make
red ochre, burnt ochre, Sienna, Prussian (or cobalt) excursions. He was struck at once less by the
blue, ivory black, and vermilion — in other words, picturesque strangeness of the country and its

black and white, the three basic colors and the scale ethnographic peculiarities than by its primitive

of dark tones. The following summer he blended his majesty, a "nature with so much nobleness, dignity

brushstrokes and was more attentive to painterly and gravity," which revived in his eyes the older

values, to "the mysterious aspect nature assumes presence of Ruisdael and the more recent examples
when seen through the eyelashes." He painted the of Barbizon. His accounts of a canal boat trip as far

Tree lashed by the Wind, the symbol of his own as the German frontier and a cart ride to Zweeloo are
solitude and his struggle against society, and among the finest descriptions of landscape ever

sketched a Sower. The drawings, nearly two hundred written: thev form an cars videndi of an intensity

33
Sheet of
Pen Sh
Drettiht . 188 I.
equal to that of the ars amandi constituted by his filled with panic at the advent of winter, he made his

letters from Etten. Here, as in so many environ- way to the vicarage at Nuenen where his father had
ments he found himself in, he thought he was fixed been pastor since August 1882 —the prodigal son

for life. "The Drenthe province is so beautiful, it who had squandered not his earthly goods but "the
takes me so much, so completely, it satisfies me so treasures of his heart," as Wilhelm Uhde put it,

absolutely, that if I could not stay here always I "in the orgies of poverty, in the bacchanalia of
would rather I had never seen it," self-sacrifice."

But his love of nature, fully satisfied though it was, This three months' ramble over heaths vaster than
did not allay his eagerness to paint people, and the those of Brabant marked the birth within him of

inhabitants, unhospitable and mistrustful, refused "something better," of a deeper intimacy with the
to pose for him. By the time the autumn splendors mystery of nature. It produced several drawings,
had faded, he was out of colors and brushes. The some large sketches in his letters to Theo (like the

rains came and kept him indoors, in the brooding Man with a Harrow, tugging at it with more violence
solitude of his room, where he was haunted by the than a horse, in a dynamic perspective, anticipating
spectre of Kee and more tangible memories of Sien. Munch) and about ten paintings: thatched cottages
He felt acutely "the torture of loneliness." He urged with moss-grown walls, a peat barge, a peasant
Theo to leave the doubtful gains of business, to join burning grass, which he framed in black to emphasize
him, to become a painter with him, like the brothers the contrast between the harsh but delicately shaded

Van Eyck. Early in December, exhausted, penniless, earth colors and the clear skv.

l^^i I^U^/.AXIJU^A \J e^lst I C*s\ y- C^lAx -tA,

j L+* WuVl(.uAi/ Vlom
«L<vi UJemotAW «^ u wj>v~ / fc-'- ' -

Man with a Harrow. Drenthe, 1883.

Pen Drawing.
 To return home, Van Gogh had to swallow his zeal of his Borinage days, he looked after her with

pride. His father had changed parish several times, selfless devotion and painted for her a picture of the
though always within Brabant and its country tree-shaded church with people coming out after
districts. I\uenen was a village situated in a pre- the service.
dominantly Catholic region, east of Breda, near the In May he rented two rooms from the Catholic
town — today heavily industrialized — of Eindhoven. sacristan Shafrath, so as to have a larger, more
The presence of a "dauber" in the parsonage of a independent studio. He painted some weavers
village full of busybodies was unusual enough in hunched over their shuttles in semi-darkness, like

itself, but doubly so when that dauber was an men at grips with some instrument of torture, and
eccentric entirely possessed by his mania who one of them gave him a lamp like the one pictured
openly flouted all social and vestimentary con- in Millet's Vigil. A careful study of the writings of

ventions, and the accepted forms of piety. Though Charles Blanc and Fromentin, and of the work of the
his parents meant well, a clash of wills was inevitable. old masters, and that of Millet, Corot and Delacroix
Van Gogh resented their uncomprehending attitude helped him to see his way more clearly and fostered
to his work above
; all, he could not forgive them for his development. To Van Rappard, who was still

expressing no regret for their past behavior to him. bent on a traditional perfection of finish, he explained
He had his studio in a washroom and took his meals the fundamental difference between "technical
apart, usually in silence, with a sense of being skill," of which one had to beware, and "expressive
received in the house like "a big shaggy dog with force," at which he aimed. To Theo, who had been
dirty paws." won over to the bright colors of the French painters,
Going back to the Hague on a brief trip to collect he justified his use of bitumen and bistre, added to
his belongings, he looked up Sien and the children his initial palette, and the luminosity to be obtained

and was concerned at finding them in poor health. from dark values by the play of broken tones. In
He brooded over his grievances against Theo, whom August he got into another emotional involvement
he accused of a "languid friendship," of being quite and it took a dramatic turn. A neighbor. Margot
unhelpful (apart from his remittances), and the Begeman, a woman ten years older than he, kind-

painful tension between the two brothers lasted for hearted but not very good-looking (Van Gogh
months. He became more friendly with Van Rappard, likened her to "a Cremona violin ruined by bungling
who paid two long visits to the parsonage in the restorers"), often came to the parsonage while his

spring and fall of 1884. In January his mother, mother was bedridden. She fell in love with him and
with whom he had never been very close, broke her wanted to marry him. His family intervened and
leg in alighting from a train. Filled again with the blamed her severely. The poor woman lost her head
and tried to poison herself. Van Gogh went to see her

People coming out of Church at Nuenen.

in the hospital at Utrecht but, toughened now by
Nuenen, January 1884. fa urns. the knocks of fate, he surmounted the crisis by
Vincent van Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam. working harder than ever.

37
The Parsonage at Nuenen.
Nuenen. 1885. Canvas.
it van Gogh Foundation.
Amsterdam.

The Garden of Que Parsonage

in Winter.
\n, m a. 1884.

Pen and Lead Pencil.

^^MH
The Watermill.
Nuenen, November 1884.
Canvas on wood.
A.T. Smith ('nihil inn. London.

The Old Tower at Nuenen.

Nuenen, May 1885. Canvas.
Vincent ran Gogh Foundation,
Amsterdam.
 .! Lane in Autumn. Nuenen, 1885. Canvas. Camille Corot : The Church at Marissel near Beauvais. 1866.
I)r II'. Nolsi Treniti Estate, Rotterdam. ('a urns. Lmi m . Paris.

At this time, in the summer of 1884, he met a They came to an agreement, Van Gogh undertaking
former Eindhoven goldsmith named Hermans, who to make six full-size designs for the panels which
collected antiques, dabbled in painting and intended Hermans would then copy on the walls under his

to decorate his dining room with religious scenes in guidance. Four of them are extant, painted in warm
the pseudo-Gothic style then in fashion. Van Gogh, grays. At the Hague Van Gogh had given drawing
with the dining room in mind which Millet had lessons to the geometer Fumee. At Eindhoven,
decorated in Paris in the Boulevard llaussniann in besides Hermans in whose home they often met to

1864, suggested instead six scenes illustrating painl still lifes composed of his antiques, he gave
agricultural labors at different seasons of the ve;ir. lessons to three amateur painters: the railway clerk

40
Van de Wacker; Gestel, son of a printer, who and by now he was already engrossed in the problems
procured him the stones for his first attempts at of color. He had not seen any pictures for a long time
lithography ; and the tanner Kerssemakers, the most and in October he went with Kerssemakers on a
gifted, who recorded his memories of this apprentice- three-day visit to the Amsterdam museum. He stood
ship. The autodidact as mentor —here is a curious longest in front of Rembrandt's Jewish Bride,
and little known episode in Van Gogh's life. "painted with a hand of fire," and the dazzling
Winter is the season when models are most easily Company of Civic Guards by Frans Hals (and Pieter
found. He set himself to make a series of figure Codde), on which, thinking of Delacroix, he com-
drawings and studies of hands and to paint a series mented at length in terms which might almost be
of fifty heads of peasants, which he dashed off with by Manet, He admired the riot of colors heightened
vigor and precision. "If I'm worth something later, by the supreme quality of the grays and blacks, and
I'm worth it now too, for wheat is wheat, though Hals's way of "laying on the color at one touch."
citydwellers take it at first for grass." On March 26, On returning to Nuenen he received the two volumes
1885, on coming home from a walk, his father of the Goncourts' study of French eighteenth-
dropped dead at the door of the parsonage, stricken century painters. He especially admired Chardin
with apoplexy. Theo came for the funeral and in their and, reading that his color was made of "streaks of

grief the two brothers were reconciled. He showed yellow and sweepings of blue," juxtaposed on the
Theo the sketch for his Potato Eaters, the major canvas and blending at a distance, he at once drew
composition that was to occupy him for two months the parallel with Vermeer. So he discovered, on his

"a picture," he said, "which I have felt and expe- way, the precursors and sponsors of Impressionism.
rienced." He renounced his portion of the estate, His autumn landscapes, superior to those of the year
broke loose from the family, and from May on made before, confirmed his mastery of "the infinite

his home in the sacristan's house. In June he read variety of tones of the same family." But divining
Zola's Germinal. It shook him and prompted him to too that "color expresses something by itself." he
paint as boldly and accurately as he could "the head was ready now for a further stage of development.

of a woman harrowing. .
." He spent the summer in "I urgently desire to see Rubens." On November 28,

the fields with the toiling peasants. "How good it is 1885, he arrived in Antwerp, home of the great

to be deep in the snow in winter; in autumn deep Flemish colorist.

in the yellow leaves : in summer, amid the ripe wheat The Nuenen period, during which he worked
in spring, in the grass. . . and to say to oneself: this equally hard at painting and drawing, marks the

has always been, this will always be." real beginning of his creative activity. He now
In September, after the village priest had for- arrived at a coherent style in which, as he himself

bidden the members of his flock to pose for him, then said of Poussin, "everything is at once symbol
he fell back on still lifes treated as "studies in color." and reality." Figures, landscapes and still lifes

Theo, on another visit to Nuenen, told him about the present a complete picture of rural life in Brabant,
revolution in this domain brought about in Paris, a life of toil and stolid resignation.

41
Weaver. Nuenen, February 1884.
Ink and Lead Pencil.

Nwnen, Man / ss '

Weaver.
Pen Drawing heightened with white.
Weaver. Xuenen, January- April 1884. Watercolor. Vincent ran Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam.

43
 The landscapes —not quite fifty in number —show
the characteristic features of the village: the little

church isolated against a boundless horizon, the

parsonage seen from the front by day and from the
back in moonlight, the adjoining garden buried in

snow or quivering with life in spring, the watermill,

the tower in the graveyard before and after its

"decapitation," the thatched cottages which he called

"nests of men," the rows of trees in autumn, the

fields at dusk. Landscapes open to human purposes

and imbued with moral certainties and the melan-
choly of the region. "Yesterday the sky was gray and
everything gray." Two canvases of May 1885, both
signed, which he thought of repainting from memory
at Saint-Kemy, stand out particularly: the Thatched

Cottage at Dusk, two huts huddling together under

the same roof of rushes, like two old men holding
each other up; and, in the churchyard where his
father lay, the old Ruined Tower, image of "crumbling

faith on solid foundations."

The still lifes —just over forty of them —are no

less revealing. Although done as technical exercises,

they are not aesthetically disinterested like those of

Jean-Francois Millet: Man Digging, see>i from behind. Manet or Cezanne, nor highly finished and genteel
Barbizon, about 1850-1853. Lead Pencil on bistre paper.
like those of the Dutch golden age. They express,

directly and forcibly, the peasant way of life and

its basic instincts, food and sexuality. They were
painted at two different times and comprise four sets
of pictures. It was by painting still lifes that Van
Gogh had learned to handle oils in December 1881
under Mauvc's guidance. Three years later, in Octobei
1SS4. when instructing pupils of his own at Kind-
hoven. lie painted, in Hermans' house, an initial

group of still lifes for their guidance. He ehose not

luxury objects bul ordinary household utensils,

a jus of gin, bottles, a mortar, massive forms with

contrasting tones on a neutral ground.

44
Woman scouring Pots.
Nuenen, Summer 1885. Lead Pencil.

Peasant Mowing, seen from behind.

,\ Nuenen, 1885. Lead Pencil.

43
Still Life icith the Bible. Xuenen, October 1885.
Canvas. Vincent van Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam.

Still Life with Apples and Tico Pumpkins.

Xuenen. September 1885. Co
Kroller-M tiller Museum. Otterlo.

Still Life icith Boicls. Xuenen. September 1885.

Canvas on icood.

Gogh Foundat

mber-October 1885.
'•lerlo.
 >' •»

Peasant Woman with a Cup.

*****
/» ~y Nuenen, 1SS5.
4 W *lJtS\^S2 tkJLA^M-^Ai Pen Drawing.
 In the fall of 1885, after he had been deprived
of his models by the village priest, he painted with
greater ease and fluidity a second group of still

lifes, representing potatoes, fruit and birds' nests,

deliberately isolated from their natural context and
shown on an "abstract" black ground. The potatoes
and birds' nests, obviously symbolic, form a series

of "variations in gray and brown" powerfully

modulated in a kind of fantastic twilight. Local
Jozef Israels : The Frugal Meal. Drawing.
forms are insistently emphasized, now according to
the density of "the masses which have weight and
Center. Frans Hals : The Civic Guards of St George
consistence and which you would feel if they were
(detail). 1639. Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem.
flung at your head," sometimes by the intricate

linear patterning of leaves, moss and brushwood

Below: Study of Hands for the Potato Eaters.
which time and again bring to mind similar motifs in Nuenen, January 1885. Lead Pencil.
Diirer's watercolors. Van Gogh had studied and
collected birds' nests from his boyhood, and
Kerssemakers relates that the cupboard in his studio

at Nuenen was full of them. The fruit still lifes, with

red and yellow apples surrounded by green, are
more richly colored, though the main emphasis is

still on volume and chiaroscuro. The same technical

and moral reasons that at Nuenen prevented him
from painting a summer landscape account for the
absence or extreme rarity now of flower pieces, of
which he was to paint so many in Paris. One Nuenen
still life is exceptional in its size, subject and quality,

the Still Life with the Bible; it conveys the mounting

artistic and spiritual tension Van Gogh was laboring

under at the end of his Dutch period. Represented in

the picture together are two books, which in them-

selves represent two worlds : his father's monumental

Bible exemplifying the Dutch tradition, opened not
at random but at a specific verse of Isaiah, and a
modern novel whose title is equally legible, La joie

de vivre by the naturalistic novelist Zola, who had

 I >$Sfc
Honored Daumier : Soup. Watercolor, Charcoal and Pen.

become his idol at Nuenen. On the one hand, the work, the peasant's inescapable lot, does not seem to
memento mori made up of the extinguished candle exist in the art of the old masters between Brnegel
and the great brown and white Bible standing out and Millet As Van Gogh saw it. "to record the
on a dark ground; on the other, the novel on the peasant at work is the essentially modern objective.

edge of the table in its bright yellow cover, the sun the heart of modern art itself, something that neither
color of his future destiny. the Greeks nor the Renaissance nor the old Dutch
The figure paintings — as numerous as the still lifes school ever did."
and landscapes combined fall into two groups: The village lived in a closed economy, all its needs
character studies of local heads, "rugged, flat, low- being met by the local craftsmen. Among these.

browed and thick-lipped," and studies of movement Van Gogh was chiefly interested in the weavers, who
showing people at work, indoors and out. Work, hard were being forced out of business by the mills. Their

50
The Potato Eaters. Nuenen, Mini 1885, Canvas.
Vincent van Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam

51
 fate aroused his sympathies and he was fascinated by he designed for Hermans he had had to coordinate
the strange craft which, confining them in ill-lit five or six figures as best he could, and admitted that
rooms, called for much the same care and patience two or three were as many as he could cope with.

as the painter's art. He saw no more than that on the small family
His eyes were opened to the weavers' existence farmsteads of Brabant and his eager concentration
during his pathetic journey on foot to Courrieres in on the individual unfitted him for group scenes. So
the winter of 1880, and he vowed then to paint them it was by a determined effort of synthesis that in

some day, in connection with the miners. "The man the Potato Eaters, the only large picture he ever
from the depth of the abyss, de profundis, that is the painted, he combined the many studies of heads and
miner; the other, looking dreamy, pensive, almost hands he had accumulated during the winter. He got
like a sleepwalker, that is the weaver." Between the idea for the picture while taking his meals in
January and July 1884 he made ten paintings and the de Groot family, and the son and daughter sat
many drawings, often heightened with watercolor, for him. It represents the consecration of manual
in which he continually varied the posture of the labor by a meal in common under the lamp — a sort
weaver, the complex perspective of the loom and the of rustic Last Supper whose rugged truthfulness
intensity of the lamplight or the daylight coming in conveys a vehement grandeur. The impetus behind
through narrow windows. The loom of solid oak rises it came from Millet, Rembrandt. Delacroix and also

up, a solemn and imposing piece of architecture Zola, but the direct sources for the choice and
which the "sweaty hands" subdue and humanize: arrangement of the figures seem to have been
"This medley of beams and slats must now and then Charles de Groux's Grace before Meat and Jozef
heave a sigh or moan." Israels' Fruijnl Meat. In March 1885 he sketched out
To these painstaking studies of luminist geometry.
with their vigorous accents of color, especially in
the blues ("the local people wear by instinct the

most beautiful blue I have ever seen," the black

;

of a Woman. Antwerp, December 18S3.

Canvas. Alfred Wijler Collect* '•
York.
and blue linen cloth which he himself wove along
with the weavers), was added the following March At A nl tier ii. in December 1885, Van Gogh engaged as a

model a girl he picked up in a cafe mid painted tiro lifesize

a series of women spinning and housewives at
studies nj lur head, one full face mid th profit;
their window, seen full-face or in profile, lighted hfith he afterwards gave in Entile Bernard in Paris. As
from in front or from behind. nmi pared nith lu> ' 1 under the impact
The weavers are necessarily indoors, usually of Rubens'S influence, his colors hare brightened up. Hi

seated, with only the bust and arms visible. The described Hum as follows: "An intense flesh color. I

in the mik. and jet-black hair— a black I made up out of

peasants work in the fields with their whole body
catmint and Prussian blue; a dull whits for (he bloui
bent over, gnarled forms deriving from Millet, but
. I bright red noU in (he jet-black hair.
.
" // tried to
more brutally realistic, with no restraints of style or truthfully tin expression "al once voluptuous and woe-
any glorification of the subject In the wall panels "
Of] tin girl's pi

52
s+^ /~-^c "-i-.t.' ^<-r

Rembrandt: Tower of ikf Westerkerk in Amsterdam, Van Gogh: The Tower of the Cathedral. Antwerp.
from the Prinsengraeht. About W>4i>. Pen <nu\ Bistre Wash. December 1SS5. Lead Pencil.

on cardboard a group of four figures silhouetted in fifth figure, the peasant woman with a larsre white
a violenl chiaroscuro, which he showed to Theo cap, gave rise to the central group of three women.
during his visit. His father's death, for which he marking the ascendancy of the matriarchal tradition

unconsciously assumed responsibility, interrupted to which Van Gogh remained strongly attached.
the work for several days, hut it also gave him the He then made a lithograph of it and sent a print

necessary independence and boldness to tackle a to Van Rappard — who. however, criticized it with
large-scale composition. In April he painted "from such unexpected asperity that Van Gogh was
life" an initial version on wood in which the grouping disgusted. Their friendship cooled and was broken off

and Betting are fully worked out. The addition of a in September. In early May he painted in his studio.

.,1
from memory, "by heart," as he expressly says, the him for his renewed intimacy with the soil at
final version on canvas, a little larger and with Nuenen. From there he plunged into the cosmopolitan
slight changes, which he presented to Theo as the bustle of Antwerp for three months. This prepared
summing up of his artistic and social preoccupations him for the fevered life of Paris, his first stop on the
at Nuenen: "a true picture of the peasants," painted way to the South.
in the very colors of the soil they till and of the On an Antwerp bookstall he came across a sheaf
crops they live on. His concern with objectively of Japanese prints. He bought them and pinned
symbolic truth thus coincided with the rugged them up on the walls of his room. He then realized
expressiveness of his style. There is no communica- that there was something oddly Japanese about the
tion between the five haggard figures assembled great seaport, with its ballet of forms and colors in

singly around the table, but the "russet yellow" the everchanging light. He took in the extravagant
glow of the lamp in the greenish penumbra gives the Baroque decor from the days of Rubens, whose
picture, optically and spiritually, a unified focus. pictures he eagerly studied in the museums and
Nearly 250 drawings, out of a total of about 800 for churches. He admired the forthright simplicity of
his whole career, show the astounding progress he his technique, his power of "really conveying a mood
made at Nuenen —vigorous drawings built up of gladness, serenity or sorrow by the combination
around dynamic nuclei of shadows and lights of colors." He added to his palette the "divine"
according to the principle laid down by Delacroix: splendor of tones hitherto overlooked, cobalt and
begin not on the contour but in the middle. The emerald, and carmine "spirited and warm as wine,"

large charcoal drawings in deep black of peasants at which Rubens mixed with white to obtain the
work, made just before he left Nuenen, number supreme coloring of female flesh tints. He took to
among his finest works Vanbeselaere, author
; of the using brushes of better quality. His brushwork
standard study of his Dutch period, does not became freer, as he applied the paints in fluid,

hesitate to compare them, for their internal force blended touches. At Antwerp, and indeed wherever
and monumental tension, to Michelangelo's sublime he went, he fell in with the spirit of the place,
figures in the Sistine Chapel. The names of Michel- frequenting the low haunts of sailors and prostitutes.
angelo and Daumier — already associated by Balzac "For the same reason as when I paint peasant
recur in the letters of this period. women, I want them to be peasant women, when
In leaving his native land for good, Van Gogh they are whores I want them to have the expression
abandoned neither his basic concern with man nor of whores." He was looking for a Rubensian blonde,
his fundamentally Nordic outlook. He abandoned but hit on a model with jet-black hair set off by a

only the local forms, whose possibilities he had bright red ribbon, with an air at once "voluptuous

exhausted. The alternation between town and and woe-begone" which he did his best to render.

country was indispensable to his development. His In the vain hope of selling; them, he drew and
three months on the solitary moors of Drenthe, after painted views of the harbor, the cathedral, the

his emotional involvements at the Hague, prepared Steen, but roundly declared himself a portraitist at

oo
heart: "I would rather paint the eyes of men than and drawing. But he soon grew impatient with the
cathedrals, because there is something in men's eyes outdated methods of his teachers. His health, more-
that is not in the cathedrals, however majestic and over, had been impaired by a winter of overwork and
imposing they may be." And now that he was privation. Into his curious and macabre Skull with

uprooted from his native soil, he examined his own a Cigarette is one to read defiance, sarcasm or fear?
face with its haunted, questing eyes, and so began By the end of February he could bear it no longer,
the series of self-portraits. and resolving to carry on his work in a more
After submitting samples of his work, he was advanced milieu, he left abruptly for Paris where,
admitted on February 18, 1886, to the Antwerp on his arrival, he sent a message to Theo fixing a
school of fine arts. He attended classes in painting rendezvous in the Salon Carre of the Louvre.
 The Light of Paris

The air of France clarifies one's ideas and does one good,
much good, a world of good.
w
m

I'M
 / don't know ivhat impression Paris
might make on you. The first time I saw
it, it was mostly the sad things about it

that I felt. . . And this is how I felt for

a long time, though later I came to
realize that Paris is a hotbed of ideas,
and that people here are trying to get out

of life everything that it is possible to get

out of it. Beside this city, all other cities

become small; Paris seems as great as

the sea. But one always leaves in it a
large piece of one 's life.

Montmarire. Paris, 18S7. Canvas.

Stedelijk Museum. Amsterdam.
fa* «# *
 THE LIGHT OF PARIS

Since his father's death Van Gogh had been a famous set of pastels, of female nudes at their toilet,

thinking of joining his brother in Paris, both to and Odilon Redon some drawings in black and white,
reduce his expenses and to give a fresh stimulus to with a mysterious power of fascination. In June
his art. Having waited until he felt ready, he could Monet and Renoir, who were beginning to overcome
hardly have chosen a better moment to go to Paris. the indifference or derision of the public, were invited
Important things were happening in literature and to take part in the fifth International Exhibition in

music the battle over Lohengrin and the publication

: the sumptuous premises of the Georges Petit Gallery,
of Rimbaud's Illuminations, Zola's UCEuvre, the alongside such famous and fashionable artists as
symbolist manifesto of Jean Moreas, and various Besnard and Boldini. Petit was setting up as the rival

avant-garde magazines. These events, together with of Durand-Ruel, who had helped and defended the
several influential exhibitions, made the year 1886 Impressionists from the beginning, and who had just

a significant turning point. returned from an exhibition tour in the United States.
The official Salon, dominated by Puvis de Cha- In August, at the second Salon des Independants.
vannes, was followed on May 15 by the eighth and the Douanier Rousseau exhibited for the first time
last exhibition of the Impressionists, which marked and Seurat, again showing La Grande Jatte, was
in fact the final breakup of the initial group or its supported by a growing group of Divisionists. Van
division into what Pissarro called "romantic Impres- Gogh had not been to Paris for ten years: he had
sionists" and "scientific Impressionists" or Neo- yet to go beyond Delacroix and the Barbizon £rroup.

Impressionists. Monet, Renoir and Sisley refused to Now, within the space of a few weeks, he was met
take part, while Pissarro espoused the theories of by these dazzling revelations and in Theo he had
Seurat, whose Grande Jatte dominated the exhibition, a guide who was familiar with all that was sfoing- on
and secured the admission of Gauguin. Degas showed in Paris. Employed by Boussod and Valadon. the
sons-in-law and successors of Goupil. whose main

gallery was in the Place de l'Opera. Theo was in

View from Van Gogh 's Room in the Rue Lepic. Paris, 1887. charge of the branch in the Boulevard Montmartre.
Camus. Vmceni ran Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam. There, on the mezzanine floor, he had obtained

61
 permission to exhibit the still disparaged canvases By then an artists' colony, Montmartre still retained

of the Impressionists and those of their unjustly its countrified aspect, which delighted him; it still

neglected predecessors like Daumier. had its windmills, like those of his native Holland,

Until he could find lodgings of his own, Van Gogh but above them was a more limpid sky, whose tender
shared Theo's flat in the Rue de Laval (now Rue clarity purified his palette. "There is only one Paris,"
Victor-Masse), near Pigalle, but it was too small to he wrote to his English friend Levens in Antwerp.
work in. For this reason, and in order to meet some "The air of France clarifies one's ideas and does one
artists and to work from the nude, he enrolled at once good, much good, a world of good." He discovered
in Cormon's studio located nearby, which was then Paris, the exhilarating freedom of Bohemian life,

very popular. Every morning he worked there from the joyful world of light and the senses to which he
the living model. Among his younger fellow students had been blind before, in the grip of his religious

was a friend of Lautrec's, Francois Gauzi, who has obsessions. He took his meals with Theo in small
recorded that Van Gogh worked with "feverish neighborhood restaurants, crowded with picturesque
haste," not even pausing when the model took a rest. people, like the one run by La Mere Bataille in the

He went back in the afternoons, usually alone, to Rue des Abbesses, where Jaures, Mendes and Coppee
copy the casts of antique statuary, "when the empty could be seen. They were often joined by two other
studio became for him a kind of cell," wrote Emile Dutchmen, the landscape painter A. H. Koning
Bernard who, not yet having met the newcomer, (1860-1944), who in 1888 took over Van Gogh's room
found him one day "wearing a hole in his sheet of after he had gone to Provence, and the collector

paper by dint of rubbing it with an eraser." Among Andre Bonger, a fervent admirer of Odilon Redon
the students at Cormon's he became friendly with and Theo's future brother-in-law ,who shared the new
Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), Louis Anquetin (1861- flat with Vincent when Theo went back to Holland
1932) and the Australian painter John Russell (1858- for his summer holidays. Both Koning and Bonger
1931), whom he considered "a very serious and able had business connections with the English dealer
man," and who became a friend of Monet, Rodin and Alexander Reid, with whom they were on friendly
the young Matisse. To Matisse, besides advice, terms and who also seems to have lodged with Theo.
Russell gave two drawings which Van Gogh later Van Gogh made two portraits of Reid, one in half-

sent to him from Aries. length, the other showing him sitting in a corner of
in June 1886 the two brothers moved to 54 Rue the flat in the Rue Lepic: the latter gives a glimpse
Lepic, on the dopes of the Butte Montmartre, where of the comfortable furniture and the wall decorated
they had a larger flat on the third floor. One room, with two views of Montmartre and a figure of the
with a panoramic view over the roofs of the city, was Nuenen period. The physical resemblance between
((inverted into a studio. Van Gogh gave up going to Reid and Van Gogh was so close that for a long time
Cormon's studio, which iii any case was temporarily these two portraits were assumed to be self-portraits.
dosed, and painted the view from his window, many Reid, moreover, shared Van Gogh's cult of Monticelli

flower pieces, and motifs in the vicinity of the house. (1824-1886), the last romantic painter who, on June

<!:>
29th of that very year, died at Marseilles alone and how Van Gogh would lose his temper as soon as he
insane. Monticelli's fiery paintings could be seen at began to argue," wrote Coquiot. "Guillaumin was re-

Delarbeyrette's, a dealer in the Hue de Provence. minded of Tasso among the Madmen. Vincent would
Through his brother, Van Gogh met most of the throw off his coat, kneel down the better to explain
Impressionists, Monet, Renoir, Degas, above all himself, and nothing could calm him."
Pissarro, the eldest of them all who at the heart of All Theo's patience and self-abnegation were
the movement maintained Millet's fervid attachment required to endure living in common with his

to the soil. Van Gogh was instinctively attracted to unsociable brother, who quarreled with callers and
him. The moral conscience and artistic guide of his devastated the apartment. Theo made no mention of

time, Pissarro was generous and clairvoyant enough these difficulties to his mother, but he opened his

to shape the development of Cezanne and Gauguin, heart to his sister: "The flat is almost untenable. .

to back Seurat, and to sense Van Gogh's genius. it is as if there were two beings within him, one

Prone to theories but averse to systems, respecting marvelously gifted, delicate and tender, the other
the individual temperament and knowing, as he selfish and hard-hearted . . . What a pity he should
wrote to Durand-Ruel on November 8, 1886, that be his own enemy." His sister advised him to leave
"the sole originality lies in the character of the Vincent to his fate, but after thinking it over Theo
drawing and the vision peculiar to each artist," he replied that he "had no right to act otherwise."
initiated Van Gogh in his own methods, in the Vincent was well aware of his faults of character and
impressionist handling of light and the divisionist it hurt him to live at Theo's expense. He realized

laws of color, and also introduced him to his son how very much he owed to Theo, for he wrote to his
Lucien, who was following in his steps. sister the following summer: "If I did not have Theo,
To a dealer named Portier, who lived in the same it would be impossible for me to achieve with my
building as Theo, Van Gogh gave some canvases and work what I have to achieve, but because I have
drawings on a sale-or-return basis. They attracted him as a friend I believe I can still accomplish much
the attention of Guillaumin, whom Portier then and carry on."
introduced to Van Gogh. They became friends and In November, through Russell. Van Gogh met the

Van Gogh often went to see Guillaumin in the He English painter A.S. Hartrick, who published valua-

Saint-Louis, where he occupied Daubigny's old studio ble recollections of this period; and through Theo
at 13 Quai d'Anjou. Guillaumin had won the esteem he met Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), whose masterful
of Cezanne, with whom he had painted in the open personality and powerful style of painting at once

air, and Van Gogh admired him both as a man with cast a spell over him. Gauguin had just come back
"ideas in better order than those of other people" from his first stay in Brittany (where he saw much
and as a landscapist capable also of doing portraits of Hartrick and Emile Bernard) and for a few months,
and stepping up the intensity of his colors. Guillau- until he left for Panama and Martinique in April

min felt a genuine affection for Van Gogh but feared 1887, devoted himself almost exclusively to cera-

his outbreaks of violence and irritability. "He recalled mics with Chaplet. "'an artist equal to the Chinese.'"

63
 Adolphe Moulin in.- Vase <>j Flowers. 1875-1880. Canvas. Red Gladioli and White Gillyflowers in a Vase. Paris, 1886.
Vina ni van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam. Canvas. Boymans-Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam.

Soon after arriving in Paris, Van Gogh was greatly struck he wrote in Thin from Aries asking him to draw the attention

by some paintings by Monticelli which he saw in the shop of Ins Dutch cotteagu* Tersteeg to leed import-
nf the dealer Delarbeyrette, in the Rue de Provence. This ance of this painter and the splendor in particular of (he
strange painter, who led » romantic Bohemian life, died in bouquet reproduced here: "
What if you told him thai wt haw
Marseilles this same year, on Jurn 29, 1886, in solitude, in our collection ii bouquet of flowers Hint is more artistic

on II" Hi' of insanity.

i •
'izanne was one of his fi w friends
< and more beautiful than a bouquet by Dial? That Monticelli
and miliums. Van Gogh came under Monticelli's influence sometimes took a bouquet <>/ flowers as his motif in order
and took over Ins heavily impasted brushwork and his In bring together on n single panel the whole range <>/ his

sumptuous palette in (he first flower pieces which hi set richest and best balanced tones." He declared in September:
himself i" do in Paris «> color exercises. In March 1888 "At linns I really In Inn I continue tlmi num."

64
In his essay on "The Origin of the Work of Art" the German across country." The idea of this motif, a fairly frequent

philosopher Heidegger took this famous picture as a prime one in his work, may have been suggested by a drawing of

example: the painting reveals better than the object itself Millet's reproduced in Sensier's biography, which Van Gogh
what a pair of shoes actually is in its peasant essence. read for the first time at the Hague in March 1882. Each
"In the dark intimacy of the holloic of the shoes is recorded of these two shoes has a distinct form and personality .-

the fatigue of the laborer's steps. In the rude and sturdy the one on the left leans toward its fellow and touches it

heaiiness of the shoe is asserted the slow, relentless tread with its upper edge and its lace.

Shoes. Paris, 1886. Canvas. Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam.

65
 «-

A. H. Koning: Windmill in Mnntmartre. Undated. Paul Signac: Vieir of Montmartre. 1S84. Canvas.
Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam. Musi'c Carnaralet. Paris.

The necessity of incising his pottery with sharp lines friend in Paris, the modest and legendary I'ere

led Gauguin to simplify contours and tend toward Tanguy, of whom he painted an initial portrait in
an ornamental stylization. Having fallen out with January 1887. A native of Brittany and a former
Seurat, he also avoided his old mentor Pissarro and Communard, this kindly old man. who served paint-
became friendly with Degas. It was no doubt Gauguin ing with the same devotion as he served his socialist

who gave Van Gogh a taste for absinth and opened ideal, ran a little color shop in the Hue Clauzel. the

his eyes to the petty quarrels dividing artists into haunt of all the advanced artists of that day and
opposing clans. the only place in Paris where Cezanne's pictures could

During the winter Van Gogh established cordial be seen. In this shop, where Pere Tanguy accepted
relations with the man who remained his staunchest his customers' unsaleable canvases in return for

66
 Le Moulin de la Galette. Paris, 18S6. Canvas.
Museo National de Bellas Aries, Buenos Aires.

artists' materials, Van Gogh struck up a friendship The 1887 International Exhibition at the Georges

with two eager and intelligent painters who did much Petit Gallery again brought together most of the
to stimulate him, Paul Signac (1863-1935), who had Impressionists, who were divided in their reaction to
been converted to Seurat's methods, and Emile Renoir's change of style and his vast linear composi-
Bernard (1868-1941), who gravitated around Gauguin tion The Bathers. At the same time the Millet

and, technically, sometimes showed him the way. retrospective gave Van Gogh a chance to reappraise

There too he met Charles Angrand (1854-1926), a the work of his favorite master, whose greatness in

Pointillist with a style of his own, whose peasant his eyes was secure from changing tastes. "Though
themes and richly worked pigments were much to nowadays the manner of painting is quite different,
Van Gogh's liking. the work of a Delacroix, a Millet, a Corot. remains
Henri <!<'

Toulouse-Lautrec:
Vincent van Qogh
during his Slay
in Paris.

Paris, 1887. Pastel

 large popular restaurant he and Bernard, Anquetin
and Koning (possibly Gauguin as well) were allowed

to hang a hundred of their canvases. Several other

artists dropped in to see this unusual exhibition,

among them Seurat, who now met Van Gogh for the

first time. "Unfortunately," wrote Emile Bernard,

"this socialist exhibition of our inflammatory can-

vases came to a sorry end. There was a violent row-

between Vincent and the proprietor, so that Vincent

lost no time in fetching a pushcart and carrying the
whole exhibition over to his studio in the Rue Lepic."

Woman at the "Tambourin" Cabaret.

Paris, early 1888. Canvas.
Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec : Young Woman sitting at a

Table (" Poudre-de-riz" ) . 1889. Canvas.
Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam.

unaffected by these changes." He held aloof from the

Salon des Independants, perhaps because of the feud
between Bernard and the group centering on Seurat.
He deplored these "disastrous civil wars" in the art

world and dreamed of a fraternal community of art-

ists, exhibiting their work in places where ordinary
people could see them, like the neighborhood wine
shops and eating houses. For this scheme he succeed-
ed in winning the support of a restaurant owner in
Montmartre, at the corner of the Avenue de Saint-

Ouen and Avenue de Clichy, and on the walls of this

 Georges Seurat: The Suburbs. 1883. Canvas. Pierre Levy Collection, Troyes

Van Oogh admired both the art and the personality of Seurat, and it was
in him, significantly enough, that he paid Ins last visit just before I
Paris for Aries. For, contrary I" the usual assumption, Seurafs rigorous
scientific approach appealed much more to Van Oogh, always con
with method, than the empirical nonchalance of On Impressionists.

70
 The Hiith Factories at Clichy. Paris, 1887. Canvas. City Art Museum of Saint Louis. Gift of Mrs Mad- ('. Steinberg.

Van Gogh here adopted not only the more or less pointillist break-up of
the brushstroke and the principle of contrasting complementary colors to
which he largely adhered hereafter, but also the motif of the industrial land-
scape of the big-city suburb taken up by Seurat and developed in particular
by his followers Signac and Luce.
 Restaurant Interior. Paris, 1887. Canvas. KroUer-MiMer Museum, Otterlo.

hah or anything ebe, I consider it a real discovery; but

-As for PoinlUlism, whether for a

already be foreseen thai no more than any ofter "ill this technique beeom a wmmtd dogma."

72
The Asnieres Bridges. Paris, 1887. Canvas. E.G. Biihrle Collection, Zurich.
A similar attempt (in which Bernard, Anquetin
and Lautrec joined) to exhibit in a cabaret in the

Boulevard de Clichy, Le Tambourin, frequented by

artists and writers, also failed, because of Van Gogh's
squabbles with the Italian woman who ran the
cabaret, Agostina Segatori, an ex-model; she seems

to have become his mistress and he painted a portrait

of her. Van Gogh's aim was to found, alongside the

Impressionists of the "grand boulevard" (that is,

the Boulevard Montmartre) featured in Theo's

gallery, a rival group of Impressionists of the "petit
boulevard" (that is, the Boulevard de Clichy)

including Gauguin, Seurat, Signac, Lautrec, Anque-

tin, Bernard, Angrand and himself. He is said to have
exhibited too in the lobby of the Theatre Libre,
recently founded by Antoine in the Rue Pigalle, and
in the offices of the Revue Independante, opened by
Feneon to avant-garde artists.

In addition to playing the role of a general promo-

ter, Van Gogh often discussed with Theo the "steps

to be taken to safeguard the material existence of

artists" and encouraged Theo in his efforts to discover

and support deserving painters. When in November

1887 Gauguin returned sick and penniless from
Martinique, Theo bought several canvases and
ceramics from him. In January 1888 he organized a
small exhibition of works by Gauguin, Guillauinin

and Pissarro. by which Van Gogh was much struck.

In February Gauguin went out to Brittany a tew

Above: Still Life with n Plaster Statuette. Paris, Summer

1887. Canvas. KroUer-MiUler Museum, Otterlo.

H, lmr: Paul Sigruu .

still Life with n Hook.
]SSo. ('minis. Xiiliiiiinlijiilmr. Slmitlirh, Mus<>„. Berlin.
 Vii

** '

4
"I

'if

T/se Yellow Books (Parisian Novels). Paris, 1887. Canvas. Private Collection, Switzerland.

(0
days before Van Gogh left for Aries. Van Gogh Out of two hundred paintings only two are dated,
justified his removal to Provence as being necessary the first portrait of Pere Tanguy (January 1887) and
to his artistic development but the real reason is the self-portrait at the easel (1888). Van Gogh con-
probably to be found in a letter to his mother of fessed to Levens: "I have been in Cormon's studio for

December 1889: "And to you, but not to him, I can three or four months but I did not find it so useful

say now that it is a good thing I didn't stay in Paris, as I had expected it to be." He drew and painted the
for we would have become too deeply attached to nude from models and casts; he exercised his hand
each other. Well, such is not the aim of life." Vincent by making street sketches in the manner of Jongkind
had left Paris because his presence any longer would and Raffaelli. By June 1886 he had been cured of his
have stood in the way of what he unconsciously academic illusions, and under the stimulus of his new
dreaded most of all —Theo's marriage. On the eve contacts a rapid change came over his style as he
of his departure he asked Emile Bernard to help him passed from a sombre luminist expressionism to the
arrange his room "in such a way that my brother gay and vibrant luminosity of Impressionism and its

may think I'm still there." The next day Theo derivatives, free of emotional ardors or social tensions.

accompanied him in his only visit to Seurafs studio The letter to his sister Willemien voices his pre-
and then saw him off at the Gare du Midi. occupations at this time: "Last year I painted almost
The two years in Paris, the most stirring period of nothing but flowers, so as to get into the habit of
his career and the richest in contacts, are also the using some other color than gray, such colors, that is,

most difficult to follow chronologically, for now that as pink, pale or raw green, light blue, violet, yellow,

the two brothers were living together the correspond- orange, a nice red. This summer, while painting

ence breaks off, so making it all the more regrettable landscapes at Asnieres, I saw more colors there than
that he and Van Rappard should have fallen out just before. I am now trying to do some portraits." As
before he left Nuenen. The letters from Provence technical exercises, inspired by Fantin-Latour.
occasionally refer to the Paris period. Written from Renoir and above all Monticelli, and covering the
Paris itself are three letters to Theo (summer of 1886 whole new range of colors, he painted fifty studies of

and 1887), one letter to Levens (summer of 1886), flowers of all kinds, pink and white roses, yellow

one to Bernard (summer of 1887) and one to his sister chrysanthemums, white lilacs on a black ground,
Willemien (fall of 1887). To these direct sources may orange tiger flowers on a blue ground, violet dahlias
be added the recollections published by Bernard, on a yellow ground, red gladioli in a blue vase on a
Gauguin and Hartrick and those garnered by Coquiot yellow ground. Besides other still lifes of food and
from Signac, Guillaumin and Angrand, and by drink he painted two curious sets, each consisting of

Tabarant and Fels from Suzanne Valadon. four or five pictures, which have a moving symbolic
value: the shoes of the "traveler without baggage,"
battered by long walking, and the sunflowers cut from

An Italian Woman (Agostina Segatori?). Paris, 1887. their stems and arrayed on the table like sprouting

Canvas. Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris. stars, just before the lyrical outburst of Aries.
 f^

^--w^^sK^ !
M Le Pere Tanguy. Paris, 1887. Canvas. Musee Rodin, Paris.

In Paris Van Gogh visited regularly the storerooms of the along with landscapes after Hokusai and Hiroshige,
dealer Bing in the Rue de Provence and bought at moderate reappears among the Japanese prints in the background of
prices several hundred Japanese prints still preserved in his portrait of Pcre Tanguy. "Japanese art on the decline

Theo's estate. Besides the writings of the Goncourt brothers in its own country," declared Van Gogh, "takes root again
and Loti's novel Madame Chrysantheme, he read eagerly in the French impressionist artists." He referred continually
all the magazines and publications available on the Oriental to this great spiritual and technical example: "I envy the
arts. On May 1, 1886, appeared a special double issue of Japanese the extreme clearness which all things harp for
Paris Illustre on Japan. Van Gogh made a tracing, also them. Never is it boring and never does it seem hastily made.
preserved, of the cover figure of a Japanese courtesan Their work is as simple as breathing and they set out a
("Oiran" ) by Kesai Yeisen and then painted a free copy figure in a few sure lines with the same ease as if it were

of it, modifying the decorative setting around it. This figure, as simple as buttoning up your waistcoat."

Free copy by Van Gogh of the print opposite by Cover of "Paris Illustre,"
Kesai Yeisen. Paris, 1888. Canvas. Special Issue on Japan (May 1886).
Vincent van Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

IT i
Deux francs

N- 45 & 46
.
 To the fifty flower pictures, with their tall narrow horizon draws toward it the flowery waves of vege-

format, correspond fifty landscapes, mostly oblong tation and the compartmented movement of the

in format, which show the same brightening of his terrain. The sharp recession and convergence of the

palette. Like those painted at the Hague, the views two zones of parallel lines, the precise delineation of

over the rooftops from the upper window in the Rue objects in spite of atmospheric effects, the great

Lepic span several seasons, passing from compact empty expanse in the foreground attuned to the great
browns to vaporous nuances of silver gray sharply expanse of the sky —these are the familiar and
punctuated with pure tones. The characteristic distinctive devices used by Van Gogh. The urban
motifs of Montmartre, its street lamps and sloping landscapes he painted in the spring and summer of

alleys, its vacant lots, its windmills looming up at a 1887, while they owe much to Impressionism and
crossroads or on the crest of a hill, begin to appear Divisionism, are handled in a highly personal manner.

in the summer of 1886, treated in thick dark pig- Van Gogh often went out to Asnieres to work with
ments; by autumn the colors are brighter and more Emile Bernard, who had a studio there in his parents'

thinly applied; during the winter (the season being garden. "Setting out," wrote Bernard, "with a large
vouched for by the bare branches of the trees) he canvas stowed on his back, he would then divide it

achieved an extraordinary linear and chromatic up many compartments, according to the

into so

vivacity in small tremulous canvases like Gardens in motifs he came across. When he brought it back in
Montmartre and Festival in Montmartre. The shaggy, the evening it was full, like a small traveling museum
barking dog of ^vuenen had been transformed —to use in which all the emotions of his day were recorded."
Carl IN'ordenfalk's apt simile —into the singing bird Of this period Signac has written: "I used to meet
of Paris. As he took to using smaller canvases and him at Asnieres and Saint-Ouen. We would paint
marten's-hair brushes, his touch gained a new refine- together on the river banks, have lunch in a cafe
ment. The drawings made during this period are and walk back to Paris. Dressed in the blue tunic of

comparatively few and usually heightened with a zinc-worker, he had painted small dots of color

watercolors or color crayons, not only because the all over the sleeves. Walking close beside me, he would
conquest of color was his main concern but because shout and gesticulate, brandishing his large, freshly
now, in his work, there took place for the first time painted canvas and daubing the color over himself
a complete fusion between the luminous vibration and the passers-by."
achieved by Impressionism and the graphic sensi- The divisionist system worked out by Seurat
bility inherent in Van Gogh. The series of Mont- offered the first modern instance of a painted surface
martre pictures came to an end in 18S7 with a large entirely homogeneous, organized like a mosaic in

panoramic canvas (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) terms of an adjustable basic unit. GttUguin, Van Gogh
which shows how thoroughly he had assimilated the and Lautrec, like Matisse. Kandinskv and iVlaunav
Parisian techniques and how irrepressible neverthe- two decades later, hit simultaneously on a style of
less was his nostalgia for the vast and melancholy their own only altera sustained phase of Divisionism.

spaces of Holland. The central windmill on the tar to which l'issarro also succumbed, and Bernard too

80
(though he would never admit it). For Van Gogh, toward the simplification of form and color and the
who adopted it freely while working with Signac, structural unity of the surface, while maintaining the

Pointillism eased the transition from light to color. expressive characterization of objects which was so

This can be seen quite clearly in the last views painted peculiarly his own.

from his window, now in a vertical instead of a The change-over was made in conjunction with

horizontal format (one of these he presented to Emile Bernard and Anquetin (who were then in their

Lautrec), and in the Restaurant Interior with its walls most prolific phase) and under the leavening influence

lightly dotted with red, green, orange and blue, their of the Japanese prints they saw and studied in the
expanse broken by the pink and white masses of the Oriental attic of the dealer Bing in the Rue de
tablecloths set off by large bouquets; everything Provence. Bernard, young and eager to try out new
stands ready for the expected customers. Van Gogh approaches, and Anquetin, who painted two unusual
also painted outside views of these restaurants which pictures much admired by Van Gogh, one entirely
played an essential part in his life. in sunny shades of yellow (The Mower), the other
The industrial landscape with suburban building entirely in a scale of night blues (Avenue de Clichy),
plots and factories, treated by Seurat and some of his both experimented before Gauguin with "cloison-
disciples, like Luce, and in another key by Raffaelli, nism" and the breaking up of the picture surface

was also handled by Van Gogh in several canvases into zones of flat color.

and watercolors with intense colors and clear-cut Van Gogh's close connection with Japanese art
forms. But the contemporary motif which he took would require a special study (made in part by
up most insistently, because of its dynamic and Tralbaut). The influence exerted by Japanese prints

spatial possibilities, is that of the river bridges. Their to varying degrees on three successive generations

curving movement, receding into the picture at a low between Degas and Bonnard reached its climax in

angle, is rendered with astonishing structural bold- the years 1885-1890. It was instrumental in modifying

ness in his views of the Asnieres bridge, painted the conception of line, color, space and, above all.

differently the same year by Bernard and the follow- movement, which came to be regarded not as a

ing year by Signac. The Dutch critic A. M. Hamma- muscular force but as a change of position. Van Gogh
cher has pointed out the similarity between Signac's discovered Japanese prints in Antwerp. In Paris he

1883 still lifes of books and the pictures of books collected hundreds of them, which he exhibited at

which Van Gogh painted in Paris: in both cases, an the Tambourin cabaret. He was probably the only
oblique presentation from above, an angular tension artist to copy them directly and transpose into oils

of forms, a chromatic vigor in the planes brushed in their delicate and limpid substance. Better than any
by striated touches. The still life of the summer of other artist, he found in Japanese art. at the crucial

1887 with a plaster statuette, a rose branch, and two moment, his own "Orient": a technical example
modern novels by Maupassant and the Goncourts, backed up by a spiritual and social message, the

marks a turning point. Giving up the impressionist "true religion" he extolled in Provence, which for

or neo-impressionist fragmentation, he moved now him was "the equivalent of Japan."

81
 Portrait painting was his main objective in Paris combines his veneration for this Socratic old man
but his efforts in this direction were limited by the personifying true humanity —the deep-rooted tradi-
lack of models and the necessity of doing "exercises" tion of the Christian West — and his enthusiasm for
in the form of landscapes and still lifes. In addition to Japanese prints, sold also by Tanguy, which fill the
five or six unidentified figures, there are two portraits background of the picture —the decorative concep-
of Alexander Reid, two of (apparently) Agostina tion of the East. The radiant figure stands out
Segatori, one in blazing colors in which she looks out motionlessly against this shifting decor with the

haughtily in front view, another in which she sits majesty of an unapproachable emperor and the
pensively at a tambourine-table in her own cabaret, humility of simple people, their hands crossed in their
whose decorations may have been designed by Van lap, sitting for their photograph.
Gogh; and finally the two portraits of Pere Tanguy, Why is it that Vincent never did a portrait of Theo?
the second in two versions. In the masterly portrait The answer is to be found in the fact that more than
in the Musee Rodin, Paris, Van Gogh successfully half of the forty self-portraits, drawn or painted,

Self-Portrait at the Easel. Paris, 1888.

Canvas. Vincent van Gogh Foundation,
Amsterdam.

Paul Cteanne: Self-Portraii uith

Palette. 1885-1887. Ctmoas.
E.O. Btihrle Collection, Zurich,
belong to this Paris period when his work was Russell, an accurate physical likeness, which catches
changing so radically. The terrible struggle between him in profile and tellingly conveys his nervous
rooted personal values and the multiple solicitations tension and impulsiveness. Just before leaving Paris,

of the world around him threw him back upon he summed up his own image and the efforts of two

himself. With him. it was not a question, as it was years in the Self-Portrait at the Easel, a little larger

with his compatriot Rembrandt, of recording the than the other self-portraits and carefully composed.
signs of aging, but of checking and rechecking his The firm and forcible presentation derives from
threatened identity, taking the measure of his Cezanne. The volumetric head with red hair and
progress, and satisfying the urgent need for self- green eyes, the blue jacket and the yellow easel stand
appraisal and analysis for which letter writing no out against a light-colored ground. The left side of

longer provided an outlet. All these self-portraits, the face, overshadowed, is anxiously contracted over
small, sometimes very small pictures, form a set of the canvas he is working on. The right side turns into
variations on the expression of the face from different the light toward the spectator, above the palette
angles, with or without a hat. It is worth comparing tightly gripped in his hand, on which are ranged
them with the portraits of Van Gogh by his Parisian the pure colors of the spectrum ready for their
friends: the watercolor by Hartrick, less penetrating coming triumph —lemon yellow, vermilion, Veronese
than his written descriptions, the oil painting by green and cobalt blue.
 Aries and the High Yellow Note

The painter of the future is a colorist such as there

has never yet been.
 My dear brother, you know that I have

come to the South and that I have flung

myself into my work here for a thousand
reasons. Wanting to see another light,

believing that to see nature under a

brighter sky can give us a more accurate
idea of the way of feeling and drawing
of the Japanese. Wanting finally to see

this stronger sun . .

View of Aries. Aries, 1SS9. Canvas. Neue Staatsgalerie, Munich.

 'murmfw*

I
 ARLES AND THE HIGH YELLOW NOTE

Van gogh imagined Provence through the colors Far from shattering it, as might have been feared,
of its painters, Monticelli and Cezanne, and the their life in common in Paris had sealed the friendship
descriptions of its novelists, Zola and Daudet. As of the two brothers; above all it had deepened their

Aix belonged to Cezanne and Marseilles to Monticelli, mutual comprehension. Theo could no longer have
he fixed his choice —for unknown reasons—on Aries. any doubt that Vincent was a great painter and a
Arriving there on February 21, 1888, he was surprised great mind. Vincent in turn could appreciate the
to find the whole region blanketed with snow. But it intelligence and devotion with which Theo served
soon melted away, the almond trees burst into flower, contemporary art, like "a dealer-apostle." The
and the sun shone radiantly in a cloudless sky. exceptional relationship established between them
"This country," he wrote to Emile Bernard, "seems indeed formed that symbiosis analyzed in depth by
to me as beautiful as Japan for the limpidity of the Mauron and Kraus: the sharing between two comple-
atmosphere and the gay color effects." And the flat mentary personalities of the two functions, one
countryside with its irrigation canals and little social, the other creative, which in an age of high
drawbridges also reminded him, under a different output and alienation inevitably create a conflict in

sky, of Holland. He took board and lodging at the the isolated artist. By providing his brother with the
Hotel-Restaurant Carrel in the Rue de la Cavalerie means of subsistence and leaving him quite free,

at the entrance to Aries. The dormer window of his Theo shared in the creation of a work of which he
attic room looked over the towers of the old town, was the social sponsor, the moral support and the
but the tourist monuments attracted him less than most fervent admirer. But an equilibrium of this

the natural beauty of the surrounding country. kind, with its latent homosexual implications, could
"During the journey I thought of you at least as not but be disturbed both emotionally and materially
much as I did of the new country I was seeing." by Theo's marriage. From the beginning of his stay

in Aries, Van Gogh dreamed of founding a home in

Provence for struggling artists, for "the poor cab-

Almond Branch in Bloom. Aries, February 1888. Canvas. horses of Paris," and he returned insistently to his

Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam. chimerical scheme of a cooperative uniting the

89
 Impressionists of the older and the younger gene-
ration. "I always hope not to work for myself alone,

I believe in the absolute necessity of a new art of

color and design, and of a new artistic life."

The letters, from now on in French, which he wrote

not only to Theo but to his sister Willemien, to
Bernard, Gauguin and other painter friends, reveal
in detail, almost day by day, in varying lights, the
prodigious forward march of his art and thought.
Each of his letters, often illustrated with drawings

of his work in progress sketched in with the easy

rapidity of his handwriting and with the same move-
ment, became a hymn to the sun and a running
commentary, intensely rich and many-sided, on his

innermost thoughts and reactions to life. "I cannot

yet give you a letter such as I would like," he wrote

apologetically in March, for the sudden glory of the
The Drawbridge. Aries, March 1888. Pen drawing. flowering orchards plunged him into "a continual

The Bridge of Langlois. Aries, 1888. Black crayon. fever of work." To the memory of Mauve, of whose
death he learned with grief and dismay, he dedicated
the best canvas of the series and generously painted

for Tersteeg, in spite of the old conflicts between

them, the first version of the drawbridge. He became
friendly with the Danish painter Mourier-Petersen

and with the American painter Dodge MacKnight,

who was a friend of Russell's. Thanks to Theo, three
of his Paris paintings were exhibited at the Salon des
Independants and he was pleased, but "what I am
doing here," he wrote, "is superior to the Asnieres

campaign of last spring." A change had indeed come

over his style. He had moved away from Impres-
sionism in his search for "colors as in the stained-

glass windows and a design of linn lines." 1 lis injured

health had improved: "Here I have new things to

see and learn, and my body, being treated with
some kindness, does not refuse me its services."

90
The Drawbridge. Aries, May 1SSS. Canvas. WaUraf-Riehark Museum, Cologne.

91
 c

Orchard m Provence. Aries, April 1888. Reed pen heightened with watercolor.

View of Aries. Aries, 1888. Indian ink and reed pen.

92
This admirable drawing made with Indian ink and a reed countless buttercups — a yellow sea of them — these meadows
pen, purer in design than (he corresponding painting, even are bisected in the foreground by a ditch full of purple iris

succeeds in rendering an impression of light and color. flowers. They cut the grass while I was doing the painting.

"Of the town only a few red roofs and a tower can be seen, so it is only a study and not a finished picture, which I had
the rest is hidden by the green foliage of the fig trees, far away meant it to be. But what a motif, eh! Tins yellow sea with

in the background, with a narrow strip of blue sky above. a bar of purple irises, and at the back lh<
:

trim little town

The town is surrounded by vast meadows abloom with of pretty women!"

wm
,M,iA
mm, .
*
 Rembrandt: Thatched Cottage beside a Canal. 1652-1653.
Reed pen and bistre wash.

Theo, however, was not in good health ; and he was

in momentary conflict with his employers. Van Gogh
accordingly abandoned oils for a time, as being too
expensive, and began the masterly series of pen and
reed-pen drawings.
OK vr
At the beginning of May, to economize and be more
comfortable, he rented for fifteen francs a month an
'•*.»»

unfurnished four-room house on the Place Lamartine,

between the ramparts and the Tarascon road. White-
walled inside with red floor tiles, it was painted
yellow outside: he called it the "yellow house," for
him the color of sun and friendship. "Too conspi-
cuous," he noted, for him to have any girls in. >-... '..nil

Anyhow he had got into the habit by now of visiting

Street in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. June 1888.
the local maisons closes down by the Rhone, which Pen and reed pen.
were "much less dismal than similar places in Paris."
If any lingering hope of love and marriage had -.-..v^iV:

remained with him, he banished it now for good,

throwing himself heart and soul into painting.

"Which is not happiness and true life, but what will

you have? Even this life of art, which we know is not

the true life, seems to me so much alive, it would be
ungrateful not to be content with it." A wife and
home being denied him, he thought of his friends and
the fellowship of which he had always dreamed.
Gauguin, struggling to keep afloat in Brittany, had
appealed for help to Theo. Vincent suggested furnish-
ing the yellow house and inviting him to Provence,

where by going halves they could reduce expenses.

M Philips Koninck: Landscape with the River Waal at Beek.

1654. Canvas. Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen,

Boats at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Jutu 1888.

Reed pen and Indian ink.

 Haystacks in Provence. Irks. Jim 1888. < 'anvas. Kroll r-MiUler Must wm, Otterlo.

96
La Croat uith Market Garden?. Aries, June 1888. Camas. Vincent ran Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam.

97
Washerwomen. Aries, June 1888. Pen and reed pen.

The Fork. Aries, July 1888. Reed pen.

 Tht Sower. Aria, Summer 1888. Canvas. KroUer-MVller Museum, Otterb.

100

1
The Sower. Aries, December 1888. Canvas. Vincent van Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam.

101
 "It seems to me more and more," he wrote to
Emile Bernard, "that the pictures which must
be made if present-day painting is to be entirely

itself and rise to a height equal to the serene peaks

attained by the Greek sculptors, the German compo-
sers and the French novelists, exceed the powers of
an isolated individual." He felt that he was a link

in the chain of artists and that a magnificent flower-

ing was about to take place: "There is an art in store

in the future, and it must be so beautiful and so

young that if at present it costs us our youth, we

can only stand to gain in serenity."

In June he saw the triumph of summer. "In every-

thing there is now old gold, bronze, copper..."

He chose this moment to go down to the Mediterra-

nean. In mid June he traveled across Camargue and

spent a week on the coast at Saintes-Maries-de-la-
Mer. He came back convinced that color must be
"piled on even more" and determined to stay in the

South of France, which he called "the equivalent of

Japan." After a week's "hard work in the wheatfields

under a blazing sun.'" as hard as the toil of the

peasants themselves gathering in the harvest, he

turned to figure painting, took up again the Sower

theme and began the series of portraits for which
his new friends posed: the postman Roulin, so much

Claude Monet: Sunflowers. 1884. Canvas.

Durand-Ruel Collection, Paris.

"Oauguin was telling »" the other day that he had -

picture by Claude Monet of sunflowers in « Utrgt Jan

oase, very fine, hut he likes nunc better." The picture referred

t in by Oauguin was painted m 1880. In 1884 Monet also

inn, itnl some sunflowers in decorate Dn dining room of Ins
:

/in mi mill dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.

L02
Paul Gauguin: Portrait of Van Gogh painting Sunflowers. Aries, 1888. Canvas. Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam.

103
 Portrait "I an <>l<l Provencal Peasant (Patience EscaHer), Aries, August 1888. Canvas.
I. Chester Beatty Collection, London.

101
Rembrandt:
The Artist's Mother.

1639. Panel.
Kunsihistorisches
Museum, Vienna.
 like Tanguy; Milliet, a second lieutenant in the
Zouaves, to whom he gave drawing lessons; and the
Belgian painter Boch who lived in the neighboring

village of Fontvieille. His ardor grew with the heat

of the sun. "Now," he exclaimed in August, "we're
having a gloriously strong windless heat here, which
suits me well. A sun, a light that for want of a better

word I can only call yellow, pale sulphur yellow,

pale gold lemon. How beautiful yellow is!" Then he

took to painting the sunflowers, symbol of his
mastery and his sun worship. "I begin more and more
to seek a simple technique, which perhaps is not
impressionist. I should like to paint in so simple a

way that anyone with eyes can see clearly what

is meant." He reached the plenitude of his art at the
very time when Gauguin, surrounded at Pont-Aven
by Bernard, Laval and a whole colony of artists,

whose evolution Van Gogh followed with the closest

interest, took the decisive step toward "cloisonnism"

and "synthetism."
In September Van Gogh renewed his lease of the

yellow house. Theo, thanks to a small legacy from

one of his uncles, sent him an extra remittance of
Pen ini,i reed pen. 300 francs to furnish it. At the same time Theo signed
a monthly contract with Gauguin, whom he urged to
join Vincent. The latter, on September 18, left the

Cafe de l'Alcazar — the "night cafe"'— where he had

slept since May and moved into the yellow house,

which he had tried to furnish with "character."

with a rustic simplicity in his own room and an
elegant "boudoir" decor in Gauguin's room. The
pleasure of Bettling into his house, the splendor of

autumn and the stimulus of competing with Gauguin

set him working with an ardor verging on frenzy.
"I go on like a painting locomotive." In one day he
wrote two long letters to Theo. finished a canvas

100
 t^J^w = ~

Portrait of a Zouave. Portrait of the Postman Rotdin.

Aries, June 1888. Reed pen. Aries, August 1888. Pen.

begun the day before, and began and finished another. is these days and then I lose all thought and the
"Because never have I had such luck, nature here is picture comes to me as in a dream." After the fashion
extraordinarily beautiful." He read at the same time of Japanese artists, he exchanged portraits with
Whitman's Leaves of Grass and some articles on Gauguin, Bernard and Laval.
Tolstoy, painted a picture of his house in the sunshine, In early October he wrote to Theo: "I would like

and went out at night with lighted candles fastened to bring home to you this truth, that by giving money
to his hat to paint the stars. "I have a terrible to artists you are yourself doing an artist'.-' work,
luciditv at times, when nature is so beautiful as it and I would onlv desire that mv canvases become
 such that you yourself may not be too much dissa-

tisfied with your work." Gauguin, whom he awaited

impatiently as the first member and designated head
of that "studio of the South" in which he banked all

his hopes, put off his journey southward from week

to week. Pending his friend's arrival, with his nerves
increasingly on edge, he exerted himself to the
utmost, the better to resist the expected ascendancy
of Gauguin "by showing him beyond all doubt my
own originality."

After many delays, Gauguin, at heart a calculating

egoist, finally arrived in Aries on October 23, 1888.

He came not so much out of friendship to Vincent
but out of a sense of obligation to Theo, who had
helped him in his direst need and was now organizing
his first one-man show, for the month of November.
At first they got on quite smoothly, if Van Gogh is

to be believed: "We work a great deal and life

together goes very well." Gauguin was pleased at

first with his new surroundings, the admiring tribute
paid him by Van Gogh, and the good news from
Paris —words of praise from Degas and the sale of

several canvases. But he was soon airing his dissatis-

faction to Schuffenecker and Bernard. Once the

novelty wore off. a veiled contest began between the
two men, who were diametrically opposed both in

their temperament and their art. Vincent sees this

place in terms of Daumier. I see it however as Puvis

de Chavannes with color added. . . He is a romantic.

if* - t Above: .1 Corner

1888, Indian ink and reed pen.
<>j the Public Garden, Aries, September

Below: fund,,, with Thistles. Aria 1888.

to-/ «
ml in a
I ink.
k
^' ^
y
Entrance of the Public Garden at Aries. Aries, September 1888. Canvas. The Phillips Collection.
Washington.

109
 while I am rather inclined to a primitive state." where we work, and with me especially." And he
An excursion together in December to see the Mont- added, uncertain what Gauguin would decide on,
pellier museum brought all their latent antagonism but having urged him to stay, "the difficulties are

to the surface and Van Gogh had to admit that their within ourselves rather than anywhere else." The
talk was "highly charged with electricity." Gauguin next day, on Christmas eve, the catastrophe came.
made a portrait of Van Gogh painting sunflowers: After drinking absinthe the two men got into a
"It's me all right," Van Gogh had to acknowledge, violent quarrel. Threatened by Van Gogh, Gauguin
"but me turned into a madman." For his part, like left the house and went to a hotel. Van Gogh with-
Bernard at Pont-Aven, Van Gogh out of fear and drew to his room, slashed off the lobe of his left ear

respect dared not even ask Gauguin to sit for him. with his razor, and carried it as an offering to the
Instead, in a premonitory diptych, he painted a prostitute he liked best, Rachel: a gesture of sacri-

picture of his own chair and a picture of Gauguin's ficial self-mutilation in conformity with his nature
I
chair, with their respective attributes — two "vacant (remember how he had deliberately burned his hand
seats" which reveal the full extent of their contrast in Amsterdam), provoked possibly by auditory
and its implications. hallucinations and carried out in accordance with the
On December 23 Vincent wrote to Theo: "I do bullfighting rite in the city whose amphitheatre often
believe Gauguin has got a little out of humor with witnessed those rites. The strain of the previous
the good town of Aries, with the little yellow house months, the long days of work in the sun, irregular

Pieter Jansz. Saenredam: Tin Oid

Toirn Hull 0/ Amsterdam. !>>')?.

(
'minis. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam,
 m

Van Hugh's House at Aries (Thr Yellow Housp). Aries, September 1SSS. ('auras. Vincent ran Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam.

In May 1888 Van Gogh rented the small four-room yellow and Vermeer, but in high-pitched colors. "...The house
house near the station, on the Place Lamartine. It took and Us surroundings in sulphury sunshine, under a sky
him several months to furnish it and he moved in on of pure cobalt. The motif is an aicfully hard one! But that
September 18. If was there (hat he played host to Gauguin. is just why I want to bring it off. For it's terrific, these

He made a "portrait" of it in the tradition of the Dutch houses yelloir in the sun. and then thr in '-urn parable freshness
"
architectural picture so brilliantly illustrated by Saenredam of the blur. All the ground is yelloir too. . .

111
 meals and too much coffee, tobacco and alcohol went home, though he called at the hospital daily

("to attain the high yellow note I attained this sum- to have his wound dressed. It was during this period

mer, there was nothing for it but to step up the dose a of treatment that he painted the portrait of Rev,
little"), may well be enough to account for the crisis, in whom he found a friend, and probably also the self-
latent for years, in a nervous system so highly strung. portrait with a fur cap and a bandage round his face.

But the two immediate causes were undoubtedly Gau- He was relieved to find his creative powers un-

guin's irrevocable decision to leave, which meant the impaired. "In any case," he wrote to Koning, "when
collapse of his long-cherished dream of an artists' I was released from hospital I did the portrait of my
community, and the news he received the same day, doctor. And my painter's equilibrium is not in the
or anyhow expected, of Theo's engagement, which least upset." On the 17th, in a long letter to Theo,
meant the snapping of the ties on which his equili- he attempted a "recapitulatory" analysis of the
brium depended. Between Christmas (1888) and previous month's events, gave his own appreciation
Easter (1889), between Theo's engagement and his of the "illustrious chum" who in his hasty retreat
marriage (April 17), Van Gogh suffered several had acted like "the little Bonaparte tiger of Impres-
attacks of delirium which led him, on his own initia- sionism," and summed up his own situation as

tive, to ask for admittance to an asylum. As for follows: "So this time yet again there is nothing
Gauguin, learning the next day what had happened worse than a little more suffering and relative

and finding that Van Gogh's wound was not serious, anguish." The transfer to Marseilles on the 22nd
he wired Theo and took the first train to Paris, of the postman Roulin, who had been a devoted
abandoning his friend who. taken to hospital, at once friend and got his whole family to sit for him, was
asked to see him. It is difficult to reconstitute the a further blow to Van Gogh. Madame Roulin stayed
exact sequence of events during that tragic night; on a few days more before the final removal. During
Van Gogh could not, or would not, remember what this time she obligingly posed for several versions of
happened and the much later account published by La Berceuse in which, from the depths of his anguish
Gauguin in Avamt el Apres (190:5) cannot be accepted and solitude, a maternal nostalgia came to the
at fact v;ilue, in view of its literary pretensions and surface. Memories of his earliest days at Zundert
self- justifying bias. crowded into his mind during his convalescence.
Tended with sympathetic understanding by the "and for the remembrance of all that, only mother
house Burgeon l>r Felix Key and befriended by and I are left." (In the previous October he had
Pastor Salles, Van GrOgh was well enough by January painted a portrait of his mother from a photograph
1st to go for a walk with Houlin and write a reassur- and started writing to her again.)
ing letter t<> Tlieo. who had only been able to pav him To test Theo's loyalty now that his marriage was
a brief visit. He added an afl'eetionate message for at hand. Vineent demanded his full monthly allow-
Gauguin, asking him "to refrain until further consi- ance in advance, and a considerable sum besides to
deration from Bpeaking ill of our poor little yellow buy oil colors with. At the same time the growing
house." On January 7. I«S<). he was released and weight of his debt tilled him with remorse: "You will

ii !

•-
have been poor all the time to feed me, but I will give Foreign Legion, and his periodic idea of suicide came

you back the money or give up my soul." A relapse again to the fore with a poignant gravity and a

in early February soon passed, but on the 26th of retributive implication: "If I had to go without

the month, some of the neighbors having petitioned your friendship, suicide could be faced and however
for his removal, he was interned against his will. cowardly I may be I would eventually go through
As a result, depression and despair took hold of his with it. There, as you will see I hope, is the one way
mind. "I will not conceal from you that I would we have of protesting against society and defending
rather have died than cause and endure so much ourselves." He finally opted for voluntary internment
trouble. Well, well, to suffer uncomplainingly is the in the asylum of Saint-Remy-de-Provence, near
only lesson we have to learn in this life." On March 23 Aries. "There I think of accepting outright my
he received a visit from Signac and obtained per- calling as a madman, just as Degas took the guise of

mission to go out with him and show him his house, a notary." He arrived there on May 3, accompanied
now closed by the police, where his canvases shone by Pastor Salles, who arranged for his admission.

in all their dazzling freshness on the whitewashed He felt no apprehension: "Madness is salutary in

walls. As a memento he gave Signac a still life with this, that one becomes perhaps less exclusive." He
herrings. By the end of March he was himself again felt no rancor. Only, "at times, as against the dull
and set to work painting the orchards in bloom. cliffs the waves hopelessly crash, a storm of desire
But he could not get the yellow house back and to embrace something."
Dr Rev had to secure new lodgings for him. He was Nearly two hundred paintings and over a hundred
cheered in early April by a visit from Roulin: drawings represent the achievement of this grandiose
"Though not quite old enough to be a father to me, period in Aries when the artist's Promethean genius
yet he has with me moods of silent gravity and carried him to the heights. But here in a foreign land,

tenderness, like an old soldier for a young one." where his ardor gathered a force that both intoxi-
To Theo, leaving for Holland to be married, he cated and shattered him, he remained irremediably
wrote: "Your goodness will remain to you. Only an exile, self-tormented, turning others against him.
carry over that affection to your wife as much as Arriving at Aries, he stopped near the station, not
possible." Theo answered with supreme tactfulness: daring to enter the gates of the city. Aries appears
"You really speak too well of a thing which is only but seldom, a distant silhouette beyond a foreground
quite natural, let alone the fact that you have return- of trees and grasslands. None of the Roman or

ed it to me several times over by your work and by a medieval monuments interested him, for he was the
brotherliness which is worth more than all the money reverse of an aesthete and went straight to nature
I shall ever possess." But Theo's marriage opened and real life. The dreams of the yellow house and the
a rift that could never be closed: "Now that you are artists' community broke down tragically. He fre-

married we can no longer live for great ideas but, quented and painted the haunts of the lonely, the

you may be sure, only for little ones." He thought restaurant with vacant tables, the lurid night cafe,
of getting himself out of the way by enlisting in the the dismal garrison brothel, the hospital grounds.

113
 Scienter 1888. Canvas.
Pm&CoUecton,V.8.A.
Th Lrb8 . Arte,

Ill
 -J. <\ i*. .5

The Sight Ca}t (PUwe Lamartine). Aries, September

1SSS. Canvas. Yale University Art GaUery,
New Haven. Conn.
Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark.

115
 Starr n Night. Aries. Sejitemher 1SSS. Camas. Private Collection, Paris.

Outdoor Cafe at Night. Aries. September 1SS8. Canvas. Kroller-Muller Museum. Otterlo.

117

i
do/ C4A. XjC C4* / ta,t t € ? t *n He represented in their various forms the obsessive
symbols of the wandering life, gipsies' caravans,
V utvc ^
stage coaches, wagons, a battered pair of shoes.
"I seem to be always a traveler, bound somewhere,
for some destination." Before "taking death to go to
"
"^T,|.',|.f'' a star," he took "the celestial means of locomotion"
offered by the ebb and flow of illness. "In my cerebral
fever or madness, I don't know what to call it, my

mind has sailed many seas."

On his arrival at Aries, pending a closer acquaint-

ance with the place, he sketched some studies at
random, an old Arlesienne, the snow-covered country-
side, a stretch of sidewalk with a pork-butcher's
shop, the plane trees and the viaduct near the
station, a basket of oranges, the beautiful little

flowering almond branch stuck in a glass and streaked

with red ("my blood seems more or less willing to

Pan Oogh's Bedroom. Aries. 1888 start circulating again"), bringing with the flow of

its sap a promise of renewal. The still lifes again play

an essential role by virtue of their quality, their

Van Gogh's Bedroom. Aries, 1888

significance and the precise moment of their appear-

ance, but there are not nearly so many of them as at

Nuenen and Paris, their place being taken by the

two major themes which from now on dominate

In his letters to Gauguin and Theo, Van Gogh described and

sketched, with slighi variations, the picture of his bedroom
based on the contrast of complementary colors and on the
black and white effect of the mirror. "In /hit tints, hut

roughly brushed in. in a thick impasto, the waUs pule lUac,

the /lone ii broken and faded red, the chairs and bed chrome
yellow, the pilhiics and sheets a very pale lemon yellow,

the blanket blood red, the wash-table orange, the basin blue.

the window green. With nil these rent different tones I meant
in express an absolute restfulness. .
." Note the systematic

duplication af objects, imludiiuj the twin jnllous mi u

bachelor's single bed.

 v.;

I
i
/

\ W1V V^>-v4.
Fan Gog^s Bedroom. Aries, October 1888. Canvas. Courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago.

119
his work: landscape and portraiture. The first motif
to enchant him at Aries, on account of its Oriental

rhythm and its Dutch aspect, "a funny thing such as

I won't be doing every day," was the rustic chaw-
bridge over the canal, on the way out of town.
He drew it four times (pen, reed pen, pencil, water-

color) and painted it at least four times between

March and May. Each version, differing in point of

view and color scheme, includes a cart or pedestrians

going over it, black points suspended in the trans-
parency of the air. The bridge with its lilac-colored

stone abutments and its vellow timber framework

"7 have long been struck by the fact that Japanese artists

often made a practice of exchanging portraits. This proves

that the}/ liked each other and held together, and that there

reigned among them a certain harmony; that they lived a

kind of fraternal life, naturally, and not in a ireb of intri-

gues. The more ice come to resemble them in this respect,

the better ire irill be for it." In this self-portrait, trying to

m s< mble them even in physical respects, Van Gogh "slightly

slanted the eyes in the Japanese manner." His friendi

him tin ir portraits from Pont-Aven in Brittany. After

receiving them he wrote to Emile Bernard: "The ho
going to S( em more lived in note that I have the portraits in it."

Above. Paul Gauguin: Self-Portrait. 1SSS. Cm

Vincent ran Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam.

Center. Emile lie, mud: Self-Portrait, 1888. Canvas.

ii van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam.

Below. Charles Laval: Self-Portrait. 1888. Canvas.

Vincent ran Qogh Foundation, Amsterdam.

Opposite page: Self-Portrait dedicated to Gauguin.

Aries, September 1888. Canvat of the

Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Candn

Mass. M auric* Wertheim Collection.
 -

-
 linked not only the two riverbanks, the red-roofed pollen whirl in the wind like a magic swarm between
town and the orange-tinted countryside, but also the the ethereal sky and the solid, fenced-in fields below.

boundless blue of the sky above and the deeper blue A dozen such pictures with an infinite variety of

of the water below. Here was a Provence as fresh and nuances were painted in the space of two or three
limpid as Japanese prints, as bright and firm as weeks: "A white, a pink verging on red, a bluish
Corot's Italian landscapes. white, a grayish pink, a green and pink," and in a

Van Gogh's Aries landscapes, about a hundred sketch Van Gogh showed Theo how 7
to hang a
in all, fall into three main sets corresponding to the vertical study of a pear tree between two horizontal
cycle of the seasons: Orchards. Harvests, Gardens. versions of apricot and plum trees. In the same way,
Winter ceased to exist for him and summer became a little later, he suggested grouping together in sets of
the triumphal season. Each set went to form a poly- six, ten or twelve, in an orange or lemon cover, the

phonic whole which Van Gogh oddly called a deco- magnificent pen and reed-pen drawings he started
ration, with canvases expressly designed as pendants, on in April.

triptychs, and even more numerous combinations. In May the grasslands, their ditches marked by
By the end of March the orchards had burst into purple iris, were covered with buttercups and Aries
flower and he was enthralled by the sight. "I'm in a surrounded by a "'yellow
7
sea" with violet fringes

frenzy of work, now that the trees are in bloom, and appeared like "a Japanese dream" under the blue
I wanted to make a Provencal orchard of a monstrous sky. "I'm trying now to exaggerate the essential, and
gaiety." Theme and vision derived from both leave the banal deliberately vague." The essential

Japanese prints and Impressionism, but Van Gogh meaning the very essence of things, their constituent

pressed his own style beyond the combination of brightness, the light inherent in their local color and
these two sources by maintaining the linear accuracy not the atmospheric veil enveloping or dissolving
of the form and by concentrating in bright zones of them. To fix his palette and gauge his progress, he
eolor the full intensity of what he saw and felt, the painted in quick succession three brilliant still lifes

rapture stirred within him by light. An order for of the firmest plastic density, a basket of lemons,
colors shows that his palette then consisted of silver a blue majolica vase of wild flowers, and. arrayed

white, Prussian blue. Veronese green, emerald, on a tablecloth of myosotis blue against a lemon-
madder red. and the three chromes (yellow, orange, green wall, the first domestic objects acquired for the
lemon), lb 1

explained his new technique to Emile yellow house, the enameled coffee pot. the majolica
Bernard: "While always working directly on the vase and the tiled pot, the plain cup and the deco-
spot. I try to record in the linework what is essential; rated cup with their saucers, "a variation of blues
then the spaces, limited by contours, expressed omot, enlivened by a scries of yellows going as far as

but fill in any case. I fill with tones equally simpli- orange." It was with a view to developing further
fied." All the radiant effervescence of spring swells this blue and yellow color scheme familiar to Vermeer
through the delicately patterned branches contrast- and frequent in Delacroix —and. as he realized, the
ing with bare trunks, and innumerable grains of key colors of the South: sunshine in a blue sky—

'

I
I W_
2
that he decided in June to go down to the Mediter- drawings based on it, all four minutely analyzed by

ranean, not to Marseilles as he first intended, but Roskill and revealing the mastery of line then achiev-
to the nearer beach of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer ed by Van Gogh. With him painting and drawing

"where there were girls who made you think of developed on parallel lines to the point of complete
Cimabue and Giotto, slim, straight, a little sad and fusion and complete possession of an astonishing
mystical." He brought back two seascapes and a personal system of handwriting valid for both
view of the old fortified town, the drawings from techniques. The skillfully regulated use of unitary
which he made two studies of cowherds' thatch- elements as simple as dots, straight lines and curves
covered houses and the beautiful picture of blue, applied in sprinklings, hatchings or volutes enabled

green and red boats lying on the yellow sand like him to render with hallucinating precision the form,

fallen flowers. "What I wanted to find out," he wrote texture and luminous coloring of objects. The best
to Emile Bernard, "is the effect of a more intense stylistic approach to Van Gogh's drawing is to be

blue in the sky." And he added, himself underscoring found in a short general study of his evolution by
the words in his letter: "no blue without yellow and A. M. Hammacher and in two penetrating articles by
without orange." Fritz Novotny dealing precisely with the Aries
No blue without orange. And so the Seascapes drawings. Novotny rightly emphasizes the central
were followed by the Harvests. Just before leaving role of perspective as the organizing principle of
for the sea, Van Gogh finished "under the greenish space and of its polarization. Van Gogh often uses a
azure of a white-hot sky" two companion pictures high, plunging line of sight which reduces the field

of the most arresting and solemn splendor, the of vision while accentuating the tension between the
Harvest and the Haystacks. Curiously matching near and the far, these being given different axes
elements, clearly obsessive and running through and rhythms. In sending to Theo the drawings of

much of his work, appear in both pictures, like the La Crau made from a rocky hillock, he drew his
two ladders leaning against the haystack. The pano- attention to "the contrast between the wild and
ramic view of La Crau stretches out limitlessly in the romantic foreground and the distant perspectives,
clear, torrid atmosphere, like the paradise of Japanese wide-ranging and tranquil, built up with horizontal
art resuscitated in Provence and like a transfigured lines." In the particularly fine drawing of Washer-
memory of the old masters' Holland. Van Gogh in women on the canal bank, one admires the molecular
fact had in mind Ruisdael and Rembrandt's then variety of signs adapted to their function, the white
much neglected disciple Philips Koninck, "who
painted immense stretches of flat country." One of

the secrets of Van Gogh's Nordic genius was his

Page 124: Lis Atyscamps. Aries, October 1SSS. Canvas.
ability to make each detail quite distinct within the
Collection Mr Edwin C. Vogel, New York.
vast expanse pervaded by light. There are two large
preparatory drawings heightened with watercolor Page 125: Paul Gauguin: Les Alyscamps. Aries,
for this painted masterpiece, and two later pen Canvas. Louvre, Pans.

123
125

L- m
!

Paul Gauguin: Old Women

of Aries. Aries, 1888.
Courtesy of The A rt
Institute of Chicago.

idt ut Aries
(Recollection of the Garden
at Etten). Aries.

Now mh i 1888. < 'anvas.

Hermitage, Leningrad.
of the paper being left blank here and there to suggest luxuriant. There are four painted versions made from
the highlights, and also the bold, strikingly modern the terraced public garden on the Promenade des
juxtaposition, noted by Pierre Francastel, of two Lices or from the little park opposite the yellow
distinct perspective systems which give an impres- house: they are entitled The Poet's Garden in honor

sive breadth and timelessness to the arching of Gauguin, whose room they were meant to decorate,
curvature of space. and in memory of Petrarch who dreamed of Laura
Returning to Aries from Saintes-Maries, Van Gogh here in Provence (hence the idyllic couple in several
continued the sequence of Harvests, responding with of these canvases). As a contrast and complement
his whole being to the opulent beauty of mid-summer. to these Gardens, he painted two studies of Vineyards,
"I go on working even at high noon in the wheat- one in October, "green, purple, yellow, with violet
fields, in the full blaze of the sun, without any shade, clusters, with black and orange vine-shoots," the
and I take to it like a cicada." The shadows which other in November, "all purple and yellow with
vanish from the earth at noon, at the summer little blue and violet figures and a yellow sun."

solstice, vanish also from his painting. "Shadows Van Gogh regretted the "rarity" of flowers in

being the frompe-Voeil of the sun," wrote Gauguin Provence, and flower pieces are much fewer now
after he had joined Van Gogh, "I'm inclined to do than in Paris. But the series of Sunflowers painted
away with them." The peasant of painting, Van Gogh in August (plus two replicas in January) "with the
hastened to gather in his harvest before the coming zest of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse" hold a place

storm. "I have seven studies of wheat. . . and old- apart. These, if not his masterpieces, are his most
gold yellow landscapes made at headlong speed, popular pictures and the very symbol of his art,

hurrying like the harvester who falls silent under his love for his fellow man, his cult of the sun, his

the burning sun, pulling himself together to get uncanny ability to capture the radiant energy of the

through his work." This rapidity of execution, universe and make it felt by all. Gauguin marveled
acquired after the manner of the Japanese, the better at the effect and he himself compared it to the
to release the pent-up forces within him, put him "stained-glass windows of a Gothic church." those
into a trance-like state of formidable tension. "To supernatural repositories of light. The triumphant
work fast does not mean working less seriously, it saturation of yellow, with neither shadows nor
depends on one's self-possession and experience." modeling, against a yellow or a green ground, is

During the spring he had aspired to Renoir's "pure, carried to its furthest pitch. Van Gogh consciously
clear-cut line"; now he was haunted by Cezanne and identified the movement of his being with that of
the "rugged side of Provence." these saffron disks which turn at dawn toward the sun
After the pink and white Orchards, the blue and smolder under its noon-day blaze. Among the
Seascapes and the orange-yellow Harvests, came the still lifes of another category, the most moving and
autumn Gardens drawn "with color itself," with no complex is undoubtedly the one he painted on his first

preliminary design in charcoal, and brushed in "with release from hospital in January 1889. "to regain the
a single flow of pigment." Here is green at its most habit of painting." Each of his personal belongings,

12i
 set out on his drawing board on a table, has an with the cosmic breadth and lyricism of Whitman
underlying significance connected with his illness, in the Starry Night over the Rhone with Aries on the
his determination to get well, his relations with Theo horizon. In both pictures the color scheme is based
(whose letter is oddly reversed in the picture). A on the contrast between the "rough gold" of the gas
fascinating study of Van Gogh's symbolic language lighting and the velvety blue of the night sky

has been made by H. R. Graetz, who has pointed out glittering with huge stars. Along with the Starry
in this canvas, so revealing for the state of his inner Night he painted its solar counterpart, the Yellow

life immediately after this crisis, the characteristic House with its coruscating harmonies of sulphur and
value attaching to paired and duplicated objects cobalt. This theme, charged with emotion for him,
symbolizing the male and female principles; they and with an added significance conveyed by the
represent an unsatisfied need for love, friendship, presence and position of the figures and the passing
companionship, and at the same time a desire to train on the viaduct, derives moreover from a
overcome his inner conflicts. characteristic tradition of Dutch painting, the archi-

The poet of the Sun at the summer solstice also tectural picture, whose purest exponents were
became the painter of Night at the autumn equinox. Saenredam and Vermeer. In the same category, the
"The question of painting night scenes or effects, and exterior view of the house was followed by the interior
painting them at night on the spot, interests me no view of Van Gogh's Bedroom, in w hich the
T
intricate

end." he wrote in mid September, when the nights pattern of sharp angles and forthright tones subsides
in Provence are probably at their most beautiful. into "a simplicity in the manner of Seurat." Described
"Often it seems to me that night is more alive and (and drawn) in detail in his letters to both Gauguin
richly colored than day." Before leaving his room at and Theo, this canvas is the one he was best satisfied
the "nighl cafe," to have his revenge for the rent with after his release from hospital, not only because
paid to the landlord, he painted a view of the interior

in one of his most tensely dramatic pictures, which he

associated with the Potato Eaters and with an article
L'ArUsienne (Madame Qinoux). Aries, November 1888.
on Dostoevsky lie was reading. The lurid lighting,
Canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York.
the strained perspective around the great void in the
Madame (linmu mill her husband kepi the Cafe" de In Han
center, the demoniacal clash of reds and greens,
mar the i/ellme house. In .Xmemher 1SSS she sal lo Gauguin
everything goes to "express hi' terrible human
I
inul Van Qogh for (he type picture of the woman of Aries.
passions" and something of the power of darkness Gauguin made a magnificent drawing of her which was later
in a low pot-house." The poetic subject of the starrv copied l"i Van Qogh, ieh<> in less than an how painted one
sky which had haunted him since April appears of his finest pictures, o portrait in uhieh he achieved on
original synthesis <»/ his men style and Gauguin's style,
fragmentanlv for the lirst tune in Outdoor Cafe" at
"... 1/ last I have an ArUsienne, a figure dashed mi in an
Night a picture inspired by a similar motif treated
hoar, the ground /tale lemon, the faee gray, the clothes hlaek.
by .\ni|uetin in Paris in L887 ami by the opening black, black, with run- Prussian him. sin fa inning on a
scene in Maupassant's Bel Ami and then unfolds table mid seated in an orange-colored wooden ehair."

IL'S
.
 Vim Oogh's Chair and ripe Arlrs. [ha* mini- isss. Gauguin's Armchair. Aries, December 1888. Canvas.
Canvas. Tate GaUery, London. Vincent van Oogh Foundation, Amsterdam.

On the iln'i before ih<- tragic quarrel with Oauguin, and as with liis father; they also reveal the irreconcilable anta-
ij throwing a pn monitory light on it, Van Oogh painted his gonism between Van Gogh and Gauguin, both tempt r

own rustic wooden chair and, as a pendant, Oauguin' tally and artistically. As early as July 1882 Van Gogh had
umptuous armchair two vacant seats. "A chair of seen a reproduction of a drawing by Luke FHd\ s representing
wood and straw all yellow on red lib s against " wall (hi/ day). Dickens's "empty chair'' in the room where he died, moi in
Then Gauguin's red and green armchair, u night effect, March 1885, at the time of his father's death, he painted n
mill and floor red and green too, u ith two novels and a candle flower still Hie with his father's pipe and tobacco pouch.
mi ihr seat." The candlt is lighted, while Van Gogh's pipe In January 1889, when Van Gogh retouched the two pic-
hat gone out. .1/ least two thorough psychological analyses of chairs after his release from hospital, he brought
of this poignant diptych have been made, revealing uncon- together in a single still lij<
:

Gauguin's candlestick and the

iations with death and references to his relations pipe and tobacco pouch he had inherited from his father.

30
it is an artistic success ("to achieve simplicity with sky above the ripe wheat and plowed fields, witli a

garish colors is not so easy as all that"), but because splendor unseen since Altdorfer, gives the strenuous

it evokes "the reassuring and familiar spirit of figure of the man its universal fecundity. This

things" and aims at producing, at least cathartically, "magnificent motif" he took up again in early

an impression of "absolute repose." December, under Gauguin's influence, in a version

The Sun and the Night also intervene directly or remarkable for its concentrated dynamism. The
symbolically in the portraits and figure paintings enormous yellow-green disk poised on the horizon
which exhibit most strikingly Van Gogh's profound throws an aureole over the sower as, against the light,

originality. "People," he liked to say, "are the root his arm sweeps across the space closed off by the
of everything." And he accordingly declared: "Figure phallic treetrunk, which divides into two equal parts
painting is the work which enables me to cultivate the blue and violet fields and the green sky streaked
what is best and most me
serious in . . . and which with long pink clouds.
more than anything else makes me feel the infinite." In a few months' time Van Gogh painted a gran-

The impressionist revolution bore above all on land- diose sequence of forty portraits, half of them of the

scape, to the exclusion of the figure, which had to be Roulin family, father, mother and three children,
restored to its rightful place by the new means of each posing several times and all admirably differen-
color. "What Claude Monet did for landscape," he tiated in character, age and sex. "And if I succeed in
asked at the beginning of May, "who is going to do doing that ichole family still better, I will have done
it for figure painting? Yet you must feel as I do that at least one thing of my own, to my liking." An
it is in the air. Rodin? He doesn't go in for color. almost filial affection bound him to the postman

So he's not the man. But the painter of the future is Roulin, whose firm and generous personality he
a colorist such as there has never yet been." admired. "I have seldom seen," he said, "a man of

Van Gogh bided his time until after his return from Roulin's stamp." It was through the portrait that

Saintes-Maries, when toward the end of June he felt he best compensated for his physical frustration and
sure enough of his style and his health to venture to rediscovered, without faith in the supernatural, the

paint in high-pitched colors, in "a simultaneous transcendence of the religious art of the past, through
contrast of yellow and violet," the key figure of the the power of color and the profound sense of simple,
Sower which he had so often drawn in black and true humanity. "I should like to paint men or women
white in the Borinage and in Holland. At the same with an indescribable something of eternity, which
time he tackled his first Arlesian portrait, a half- the nimbus used to symbolize, and which we seek
length Zouave against a brick wall and a green door, now in the very radiance and vibrancy of our colors."
a dark, feline head, a raw blue uniform, a madder-red The fundamental modernism of his portraits, worthy
cap
—"a brutal combination of disparate tones not of the great image-making primitives in their power-
easy to bring off." The Sower was his first attempt ful realism and telling characterization, springs from
at a composition "in which color plays a very their plebeian, democratic vitality, the tough strength

prominent part." The yellow sun shining in the yellow of the linework, the lyrical richness of the color.

131
Still Life with Drawing Board and Onions. Aries, January 1889. Canvas. Kroller-M idler Museum. Otterlo.

M Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear. Aries, January-February 1889. Canvas.

Collection of Mr and Mrs Leigh B. Block, Chicago.

133
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Between December 1888 and March 1889 Van Gogh painted five successive

versions of La Berceuse, with Madame Roulin as the model: "I have just
told Gauguin about this picture, as he and I were talking about the Iceland

fishermen and their melancholy loneliness, exposed to every danger, alone

on the sad sea — / have just been telling Gauguin that after these intimate

talks the idea came to me of painting such a picture that the sailors, at once
children and martyrs, seeing it in the cabin of an Iceland fishermen's boat,

would experience a sense of rocking reminding them of their nurse 's lullabies.
A woman in green with orange hair against a green ground with pink flowers.

Note these discordant sharps of raw pink, raw orange, raw green, are softened
by flats of red and green. I can picture these canvases hanging between those
of the Sunflowers, which would thus form torches or candelabra on each
side..." And in a subsequent letter he showed Theo how to make up the

triptych :
" You must realize that if you place them in this way, that is with
La Berceuse in the middle and the two canvases of Sunflowers to right and
left, it makes a kind of triptych. And then the yellow and orange tones of the

head gain in brilliance by the proximity of the yellow icings.

Page 134: Sunflowers. Aries, August 1888. Canvas. Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam.

Page 135: La Berceuse (Madame Roulin). Aries, January-March 1889. Canvas.

Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of John T. Spaulding.

Page 136 : Sunflowers. Aries, August 1888. Canvas. By Courtesy of the Trustees, National Gallery, London.

137
 Traditional representation by contrasts of chiaros- a universal symbol. As Meyer Schapiro has aptly

curo is transformed into a poetic vision founded on observed, this is perhaps the last realistic peasant
the expressive value of pure colors. Thus the ascetic portrait and perhaps, indeed, the only great peasant
face of the painter Boch, in flat strokes of green and portrait in the Western tradition of painting.

yellow, stands out against a starry night sky "and The self-portrait with close-cropped hair which he
by this simple combination the fair-haired head light- dedicated in September to Gauguin, "all ashen with

ed up against this rich blue ground produces the pale Veronese green," the only canvas of the Aries

mysterious effect of a star in the deep blue sky." period from which yellow is absent, movingly testifies

All Van Gogh's portrait paintings showing the to the sheer physical wear and tear to which the man
figure in close-up thus rise up before us like icons subjected himself in the ardent rapture of his work.
against a symbolic ground in which a high-pitched What gives this portrait its unforgettable power is

blue and yellow play the same transfiguring role as the artist's express intention of "magnifying his
gold and blue in Byzantine mosaics or in the pictures personality" so that it should represent the impres-
of the Sienese primitives. Van Gogh's solar yellow sionist painter in general. Van Gogh here portrays
is the ideal equivalent of light and love, his blue himself moreover as "a bonze, a simple worshipper

suggests the infinite space of the sky or its nocturnal of the eternal Buddha," and to add a distinctive

depths. The gnarled hands and the fine tanned face Oriental touch he "just slightly slanted the eyes in

of the old Camargue herdsman painted in the sultry the Japanese manner." The self-portrait with a wan,
heat of August look as if they had been molded in clean-shaven face and a bandaged ear reveals, in the
clay and baked in the sun. The vast blue blouse is aftermath of the drama, a calm determination. Set
absorbed in a glow of copper and sulphur, like the sky exactly on the horizon line which cleaves the red
of Provence glowing in the heat. "The color," noted and orange background, the asymmetrical eyes,

Van Gogh, "is suggestive of the sweltering air of closer together than usual, dart their green flame at

harvest time at high noon. . . hence the orange tones us. The pipe smoke sends up the first of those spirals
gleaming like red-hot iron, hence the tones of old which were to become the hallmark of his final style.

gold glittering in the darkness." What an arresting During Gauguin's visit and under his influence,

parallel between this portrait and the One Rembrandt Van Gogh tried his hand several times at what he
painted of his mother in 1639 (Vienna): the same called "abstractions," pictures composed from
pose, the same searching insight into the human soul, memory or imagination without a model. But his

even the same central color effect. The flashing of moral conscience and his abiding concern for sound
the jewel un her breast transfigures the old woman's craftsmanship prevented him from pursuing this

face without falsifying it, and in her venerable charmed" path which, he well realized, was not for
features Rembrandt evokes the grandmother of all him. Like Cezanne, he Deeded to surrender himself
So in Van Gogh's picture the bright note of the to the outside world, even while unconsciously trans-
neckcloth illuminates the rustic tunic and lifts this posing it; he needed to remain "the witness of
intensely individualized peasant face to the level of truth." to use Kierkegaard's words. "Truth is so dear

L38
Garden of the Hospital at Aries. Aries, Spring 1SS9. Sep,,,. Vincent ran Gogh Foundation. Amsterdar

139
to me, and seeking to paint things truly too, that I do Van Gogh successfully assimilated the nostalgic
believe I still prefer to be a shoemaker rather than primitivism of Pont-Aven.
a musician with colors." In covering vast uniform surfaces with chrome and
Shortly after Gauguin's arrival, in the initial cobalt, Van Gogh, at the height of his Aries period,

excitement of working together, they both painted restored the absolute primacy of color, a primacy

several views of the old Roman cemetery of Aries it had lost since the medieval illuminators or Simone
known as Les Alyscamps (a comparison of which Martini. With Simone and the illuminators, pure

shows at once their affiliations and their divergences), color was a pretty nearly stable element which, used
and then Madame Ginoux, proprietor of the Cafe de on a small scale, constituted a sort of abstract and
la Gare, sat to them both for a type portrait of the universal invariable. Van Gogh's specifically modern
Arlesienne, the woman of Aries. In the resulting color, for all its intensity, allows for the subtlest'

masterpiece which he painted in less than an hour, variations. The concrete expression of sky, earth and
Van Gogh successfully achieved the difficult synthesis sun, it becomes at the same time a dimension of the

between his own personal expressiveness and Gau- sensibility, the subjective force whose degree of

guin's decorative presentation. The rhythmic preci- saturation answers to the inner rhythm of the
sion of the outline marks out the bold pattern of painter, the sensitive spokesman of his moods of

contrasting colors, yellows and blues, reds and elation or depression. Charged with a metaphorical
greens, punctuated with faint pinks. The pensive power whose equivalent is only to be found in
silhouette stands out as flat and bright as a Japanese Delacroix or Griinewald, closely bound up with light
print, but its internal structure has the density of a as in the stained-glass windows of the Gothic cathe-
pyramid. After Gauguin's departure, Van Gogh drals, it embodies both the real presence of objects

followed his example and adopted flower-patterned or figures and their spiritual destiny. Thus, as Kurt
backgrounds for his portraits. The deliberately naive Badt has pointed out, it is fundamentally distinct
folk image of La Berceuse was intended to form the from the atmospheric vibration of the Impressionists

center panel of a triptych, between two pictures of and from the physical, sensual explosion of the

Sunflowers set around it like "candelabra"; in it, Fauves, Van Gogh's direct heirs.
 Saint-Remy and the Starry Night

It is hard to leave a place before having proved in some way

that one has felt and loved it.
'"•"''
'»
.

iWuSb 1
'i

Here is the description of a canvas I have

in front of me moment. A view
at this

of the park of the nursing home where

I am : on the right a gray terrace and part
of a house. A few rose bushes which have
shed their flowers, on the left the park
grounds—red ochre—grounds parched
by the sun, covered with fallen pine
sprigs. This edge of the park is planted

with tall pines with red ochre trunks and

branches, with green leafage saddened by
a mixture of black. A high wall—red
ochre again— cuts off the view and is
overtopped only by a violet and yellow
ochre hill. Now, the first tree is an
enormous trunk but blasted by lightning
and sawn off. One side branch however
shoots up and falls back in
very high
a cascade of dark green sprigs. This dark
giant—like a proud man undone-
contrasts, considered in the character
of
a living person, with the pale smile of a
last rose on the fading bush opposite to it.

The Park of the Hospital at Saint-Rimy. SabntrRtony, October 1889.

Camas.
Folkwang Museum, Essen.
 trance Hull of ike Hospital <ii

Saint-Rimy. Saint-Rimy, 1889.

Gouache on rose-tinted paper.
 SAINT-REMY AND THE STARRY NIGHT

over a mile outside Saint-Remy. on the upstairs, near the corner of the building. Through
A little

Maussane road near the ruins of Glanum, just the iron bars of his window, which formed a per-
manent perspective frame, he never wearied
across from the Plateau des Antiques, an avenue of of

tall pines bordered with iris and laurel leads to the watching "the sun rise in its glory" every morning

asylum housed in the old priory of Saint-Paul-de- over the wheatfield. the enclosure wall and the back-

Mausole in the middle of a neglected park overrun drop of mountains: for months this was to be his

with weeds and wild flowers. Many admirers of main theme. He explored the park, with its stone
Van Gogh are familiar with this charming retreat benches and circular pool, and obtained permission
which retains his imprint, in the heart of that to go out, under the surveillance of a guardian, into

"rugged Provence" of the Alpilles and the Baux. the immediate neighborhood, where he was fascin-
The change of style under way since January 1889, ated by the olives and cypresses, trees as charac-
and soon to gather momentum, was due in part no teristic of this region as willows of Brabant. In

doubt to his malady, but also, it is important to connection with the 1889 World's Fair in Paris.
remember, to the grandiose and geologically con- Gauguin, Bernard, Anquetin and several others
vulsed character of the Saint-Remy countryside, organized a group exhibition in which he was
quite different from the plain of Aries. invited to join, but Theo, exasperated by the
Placed here in a real madhouse but enjoying a good endless preliminary discussions, turned down the
deal of liberty all the same. Van Gogh accepted his invitation without consulting him. "What a storm
lot with quiet resignation. "I assure you," he wrote in a teacup," exclaimed Van Gogh when he heard
to Theo, Tm all right here. . . The fear of madness about it. He trusted Theo's judgment, but still he
has largely fallen from me now that I see around me was mortified at being left out, and in memory of

those afflicted with it." He set at once to painting Gauguin and Bernard he painted a second, quite
the attractive flowers in the garden, a bed of iris extraordinary version of the Starry Xight. whose
and a lilac bush. As many cells were empty, he deeper implications, which he kept to himself, were
disposed of a room on the ground floor, which he not understood even by Theo. He ordered a complete
used as a studio, as well as having a room of his own edition of Shakespeare, whom he now reread.

145

,
 comparing him again with Rembrandt for the yellows, he was stricken by a sudden fit of delirium

compelling reality of his art and the "superhuman which lasted till the end of the month, followed in
infinite" he opened up. By June 25 he already had August by a long spell of torpor and demoralization.
a dozen canvases on the stocks, not counting the "For many days together I have been absolutely
drawings, of which Theo remarked that "they look distraught as at Aries, quite as badly if not worse,
as if they had been done in a fury." His brushwork and presumably these fits will recur again later, it is

too became more vehement, but his palette more awful." Van Gogh rarely gave any details regarding

muted, with ochres now replacing the chromes. "I the nature of his fits, but a few days afterwards,
feel tempted to start over again with simpler colors, when hope returned, he wrote to Theo in his long

ochres for example." letter of September 10: "You can understand that
His spells of delirium at Aries had occurred bet- I tried to compare the second attack with the first

ween Theo's engagement and his marriage. Those of and I will only tell you this, it seems to me to be some
Saint-Remy coincided with what Van Gogh referred outside influence rather than any cause stemming
to as "the great event" — that is, the news that a from within me."
baby was on the way, the imminence of its birth, As soon as he was on his feet again, though
and the birth itself. Theo had married the sister of confined to his room, he took up his brushes with
his friend Andre Bonger. Johanna, Jo for short, who ardor, encouraged by a flattering invitation to

at once shared Theo's admiration for Vincent and exhibit at Brussels with the group known as Les XX
his work. Shortly after her arrival in Paris, she began ("the twenty"), who, by the way, showed an almost
writing the most affectionate letters to the brother- infallible judgment in choosing their guest exhi-
in-law she had never met but who was a living bitors. "I'm struggling with all my energy to master
presence in her home. On July 5 she wrote to tell my work, telling myself that if I succeed, that will

him that she was pregnant, that she hoped to have be the best lightning conductor for my malady." He
as fine a child as the Roulin baby whose portrait painted two self-portraits to test his powers and take
hung in the flat, and asked him to be the god- stock of himself, finished a view of the wheatfield
father if it was a boy. But she could not conceal her from his window, and began the series of copies made
anxiety about her own health and, above all, Theo's. from prints of his favorite masters, beginning
Van Gogh was crushed by the news. The next day significantly with Delacroix's PicU). a difficult

he made a journey to Aries to fetch the canvases composition which he was surprised to be able to
he had left there Pastor Sallea and l)r Key were copy without taking any measurements, "my mind
out of town, but he saw the Ginoux's. the yellow clear and my lingers so sure of themselves.'' Staffed

bouse, a few neighbors, and also Rachel, one of the by nuns, the asylum was directed by the "kindly."

unavowed purposes of his journey. On the way back easygoing Dr I'eyron. a former ship's doctor with no
to Saint-Remy, while he was painting in the open experience of nervous diseases and their treatment.
air at the entrance of the Glanum quarry, in a In treating Van Gogh, he broke off the hygienic,

muffled scale of broken greens and ferruginous commonseuse therapy (cutting out all alcohol) begun

I Hi
bv Rey, and lest he should swallow his colors some- tender violets and lilacs," of Millet's Vigil: a couple

times forbade him to paint, thus depriving him of by lamplight beside a cradle, the man being a

his only outlet. "I feel a fool having to ask a doctor's basketmaker. In his solitary labors he often iden-
permission to paint some pictures." He began to fear tified himself with the weaver, the basketmaker, the

the promiscuity of his unfortunate fellow inmates, shoemaker. Out in the everlasting fields he also

who were left in hopeless idleness, quite uncared for dreamed of an "essentially modern" motif, a city
apart from periodic showers. "The treatment of the bookshop in the evening, a luminous array of pink
patients in this hospital is certainly easy to follow and yellow novels, with dark passers-by, a theme
for absolutely nothing is done." He implored Theo to which he thought of, among pictures of olive trees

arrange for his return to "the northern country- and wheatfields, as "the sowings of books." In

side," for which he was yearning again, and to see November he spent two days uneventfully in Aries

if perhaps Pissarro or Vignon would consent to take and, back at Saint-Remy, painted an on-the-spot
him in. Pissarro declined because of his large family, study of Roadmenders, with torn-up sidewalks and
but suggested his friend Dr Gachet, a man keenly piles of stones and sand under the plane trees of

interested in art, whose house at Auvers-sur-Oise, the promenade. The periodic crisis which he feared
near Paris, was a familiar haunt of artists. Van Gogh might come at Christmas did come —two attacks
now sent some specimens of his work to Holland: lasting about a week. He was stricken with the first

a self-portrait to his mother, to show her that he had during the Christmas holidays, "without any
"after all remained rather like a Zundert peasant," reason," while he was working "with perfect calm";

and a copy of the picture of his bedroom at Aries to the relapse occurred in late January following
his sister, with whom he liked to talk about books another visit to Aries. After the first, he copied for
and writers, and who forwarded a canvas on his Jo and Theo, as a pendant for the Vigil, Millet's

behalf to Margot Begeman. First Steps ("there is no retracing one's steps," he

By October —autumn was the season most wrote to his sister-in-law, "and the steps one has
congenial to him — health had improved and he
his taken count for much in shaping one's future");
eagerly went painting out of doors in order to after the second, he copied for himself, in the same
"make out the internal character" of the soil and spirit as the Pieta, Delacroix's Good Samaritan
bring together a representative group of pictures of ("without you," he confessed to Theo, "I would be
the region. "It is hard to leave a place before having a poor wretch"). He then made a free version of

proved in some way that one has felt and loved it." The Prisoners' Walk by Gustave Dore: one of the

He concentrated his efforts on the olive orchards, the prisoners up front, looking out at us with a doleful
cypresses, and studies of rocks. But he kept thinking face, is himself, and the others have the grim
of Theo: "You are yourself in the midst of nature, features of the Nuenen peasants. Van Gogh had
since you write that Jo already feels her child alive been struck a few months earlier by a review he had
that is even more interesting than landscape." For read of Dostoevsky's Memories of the House of the

Jo and Theo he now made a copy, "in a scale of Dead, relating his experiences in a Siberian convict

147
 The Fountain in the Hospital Garden. Saint-Rnnij, camp. The kinship between these two suffering
1889-1890. Indian ink. who
geniuses, in their art expressed their burning,

fraternal vision of truth, has been rightly stressed

by Julius Meier-Graefe in his famous biography

of Van Gogh.
Theo's child was born on January 31, 1890, a boy
christened Vincent. "I would have much preferred,"

he wrote to his mother, "for Theo to give his son

Pa's name, of whom I have thought so much of late,

rather than mine. But anyhow, now that it's done,

I have set to work at once on a picture for him, a

canvas for them to hang in their bedroom: a few

The Stone Bench in the Hospital Garden. Saint-Rhny, 1889.
large flowering branches of white almond against
Ink and reed pen.
a blue sky." Jo, who expected the worst, took care

to write to him the day before, and Theo on the day

# ...
of the baby's birth, when everything had gone
smoothly. In his letter Theo enclosed the enthusiastic
</-&

ft . &MI j
and quite remarkable appreciation
published in the first issue of the

written by Albert Aurier, a young symbolist poet

of Vincent's

Meratre de France,
work

and a friend of Bernard's. Van Gogh, though still

ailing, at once replied to both Theo and Jo. To the

mother he spoke of the child, who would be for Theo
"as if a little sun were rising within him"; with his
brother he discussed Aurier's article, which came as

a great surprise to him and aroused ambivalent

reactions. Writing in the scintillating language of

the day. Aurier had some acute things to say about

Van Gogh's art but inevitably he read into it a

symbolist meaning quite foreign to it. and he laid

stress on the artist's isolation, on the tragic, the

pathologieal character of his genhv. Van Gogh saw

himself as a workman at grips with reality; he was

endeavoring to overcome his malady, to convex

through his pictures, if not joy. at least consolation;

and he saw his personal efforts as an integral part of

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 Tk Starry Night. Saint-Remy, June 1889. Indian ink.

himself. has of course been noted that Van Gogh's

sustained from It
the vast collective effort successfully
humility, his panic fear of failure or
excessive
Delacroix and Barbizon to Seurat and Pont-Aven.
merely pride in reverse, a sign of nar-
article which he success, is
He complimented Aurier on his
cissism and repressed exhibitionism. No man is

admired as "in itself a work of art," and gave him as

master of his unconscious, but it must be said in
thanks one of his finest versions of
a token of
fairness to Van GrOgh that his behavior was also
Cypresses ("it has," said Theo, "the richness of a
praise immoderate prompted bv his high and exacting conception of
peacocks tail"), but found his
art and its place in modern soeietv in which criticism
Gauguin or Mfonticelli than to
and better Buited to

lf>()
 The Starry Night. Saint-Remy, June 1889. Camas.
Collection, The Museum of Modern Art. New York. Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest.

151
 is often misinformed and success fallacious. "In the
painter's life," he confessed to his mother, "success

is the worst that can happen to him." And to his

sister he revealed his innermost thoughts when he

said: "Comes over me the desire to renew myself
and try to apologize for the fact that my pictures,

even while symbolizing gratitude in the rustic

sunflower, are still almost a cry of anguish."

Meanwhile the news he received of his painting

and the reception it met with from the best artists

was more and more encouraging. He learned too
that in Brussels Anna Boch, sister of the Belgian
painter with whom he had become friendly, had
bought a picture of his, the Red Vines, for 400 francs.

Then, on February 24, 1890, Dr Peyron notified

Theo that Vincent had been brought back from
Aries in a state of helpless delirium, unable to
remember what he had been doing there and having

lost the canvas he took with him from Saint-Remy.

J /ft/ M ^ / '
'
On the strength of direct or veiled references to
sexual impotence in Van Gogh's letters from June
1889 on, P. Marois has surmised that his impotence
grew more marked each time he went to Aries and
on this last trip became complete, as if "Theo's
Cypresses. Sainl-Remy, June 1889. Ink and reed pen.
marriage and paternity had stifled in him all desire."

He said nothing to Theo of this trip but told him

that he fell ill at the time he was painting with more
patience and sureness than ever what he thought
was perhaps his best picture, the white almond blos-
soms on a blue ground, which he described to his

mother and intended for his godson. This ethereal

and vivid masterpiece, which so rapturously cele-

brates the coming of spring, is a gesture of love and

Cypresses.Samt-Remy, Jinn 1889. ('minis, i

hope toward the child who bore his name hut whose
The Metropolitan Must-am o\ Ail, New York. \ cry existence he unconsciously regretted and
Rogers Fund, 1949. abominated. Van Gogh stood precariously poised

152
x I

A x

W >*
5 ii

Ugg

\.

I
between the dead Vincent whose place he had taken
in the family home at Zundert and the newborn
Vincent who was taking his place in the home of

Theo, his indispensable brother and second father.

His attack lasted until the end of April —two night-
marish months of inaction just as the orchards
were bursting into flower. He was able to paint

nothing except three "little canvases of heads"

entitled Memories of the North. Such memories
always crowded into his mind in times of trouble.

"What am I to say of these last two months? I am

not at all well. I am sad and troubled more than
I could put into words and I'm just all at sea."

When he roused himself from his long torpor and

took up his brushes again, he made a copy of

Rembrandt's etching, the Raising of Lazarus, giving

Lazarus his own wan features. Now he was deter-
mined to leave the asylum. His departure was
arranged for the month of May. His energies were
•7'
revived by this cheerful prospect, tinged however i
-

with regrets. "The whole horrible attack has passed

like a storm and I'm working with a calm and
'—f?^
continuous ardor on my last bit of painting here."

To the last minute, even while packing his trunk,

~*—
? • * * *-

he kept painting, finishing two pictures of Roses on

a green ground and two contrasting bouquets of

Irises, one on a muted ground, the other on a

"brilliant lemon-yellow ground," a final glorious

burst of the color of love and a last salute to the sun

Above: Walled Field. Saint-Remy, June 1889.

Canvas. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.

Below: Walled Field in the Rain.

Sniiit-Remy, November 1889. Canvas.
*34»$
Henry P. Mcllhenny Collection, Philadelphia.

155
 of Provence. He took the train for Paris on May 16, reactions of a schizoid type, which would therefore
categorically refusing to be accompanied. "I feel so reconcile the previous conflict of opinions; he sees

sorrowful at leaving like this that sorrow will be the possible source of the lesion in an obstetrical
stronger than madness." accident, which would have deepened Van Gogh's
This strange "madness" — it cannot be called traumatic sense of being a substitute for the dead
insanity, for its recurrent attacks never clouded his Vincent who preceded him. But no diagnosis, how-
mind or impaired his creative powers —remains an ever convincing, can elucidate the mystery of his
enigma, unsolved by the concerted investigations of disorder and its deeper connection with the uncon-
the analysts. Among all the varieties of psychosis scious. "Every disorder of nature," wrote Novalis,
envisaged, the two principal and contradictory "is the reminder of a higher homeland." Other
options leave little to choose between them because Nordic heroes of the adventuring spirit, worshippers
Van Gogh's case shows none of the irrecusable of light wounded by the solar blade of clairvoyance,

signs which usually distinguish the one from the were Holderlin and Nietzsche; the latter became
other. In the absence of actual fits with convulsions, insane in the very year that Van Gogh entered the
the German and Anglo-Saxon camp headed by Saint-Remy asylum. A genius of the same stamp,
Jaspers (1922) rule out epilepsy and propose an Antonin Artaud, lashed out with understandable
evolution of a schizophrenic nature, though without fury, in his pamphlet Le Suicide de la Societe, against

its main element, autism, self-absorption, and with- those who have "but a ridiculous terminology to
drawal from society. In France the opposite point palliate the most appalling states of anguish and
of view prevails and his malady is diagnosed as human suffocation." He prophesied: "One day Van
epileptoid; this is the diagnosis originally made by Gogh's painting armed with both fever and good
Dr Rey and it has been brilliantly supported by health will return to throw into the air the dust of a

the studies of Franchise Minkowska. But the mad world which his heart could bear no longer."
complex psychopathology of genius can hardly be During his attacks Van Gogh did no painting. He
reduced to strict nosographical terms. After an acted like one possessed, trying to swallow raw
investigation as thorough and penetrating on the paint from the tubes and rolling in the coal bin.
aesthetic as on the psychological plane, the Dutch When he came to himself, in the intervals between

professor G. Kraus, whose wise assessment has his attacks, his mind, as he said himself, "was
recently been confirmed by H. Nagera (1967), absolutely normal and clear, and even more so than

concluded in 1941 that Van Gogh was as much of an before." Then he resumed his work with ardent haste
individualist in his malady as in his art. However and with new accents induced by his state of mind,
the specialist II. (lastaut now maintains that the though retaining perfect control of his brush until
clinical picture of the painter with his bandaged ear a fresh attack occurred. Like a seismograph of his
shows all the syndromes of epilepsy of the temporal oscillating mind and moods, his work is necessarily

lobe, a newly identified local form of epilepsy which uneven, the more so since for his family and friends
is characterized by non-convulsive attacks and he made many copies, often slackly handled, of his

lo(i
WheatfieU and Cypresses. Saint-Remy, June 1889. Canvas. By Courtesy of the Trustees. National Gallery, London.

15<

^>
 original pictures; but there is no reason whatever to that his sister-in-law was pregnant, he declared: "As
divide his work into periods of lunacy and periods a matter of fact I'm going to paint more in gray."

of sanity. Over a hundred and fifty paintings and a A blend of the three primary colors, the gray of
hundred drawings in one year betoken, not illness, Saint-Remy differs from the gray of Nuenen by
but a heroic victory over illness and make Saint- containing a stronger dose of white. That gray
Remy, for all the interruptions he suffered, one of the marks not only an aesthetic but a moral turning
high points of his career. "Never perhaps," said point, resulting from the forced temperance of his

Emile Bernard, "did he paint so well and so boldly." life at the asylum; it marks, too, the reprisal of the
The least pretext was enough to kindle his creative North on the South. His color gained in depth what
ardor, but working conditions in the asylum limited it lost in sonorousness. Van Gogh took inspiration

his scope to a few set ensembles. He could work only from Delacroix, from the canvases in the Bruyas

in his room during times of reclusion (copies of his Collection which he had so much admired in the

own pictures, copies after other masters, and views Montpcllicr museum, canvases all in half-tones,

from his window) or in the garden (studies of "but in those half-tones, what choosing and what
flowers and vegetation, clumps of trees with partial quality." The glow that went out of his color was
views of buildings), or occasionally, when he was fit converted into graphic energy. Line became at
and had permission, in the surrounding countryside Saint-Remy the active, preponderating force, catch-

where, the vineyards being too far away, three main ing up and propelling nature in its frenzied swirlings.

themes occupied him: Cypresses, Olive Trees, and The curves, volutes and spirals hitherto reserved for

Mountains, lie was haunted now by tortured and the drawings or for ornamental touches in the last

convulsive forms, by burgeoning plant life, swirling of his Aries paintings, proliferate now in endless

stars and clouds, hallucinatory vistas either codings and, in combination with the earlier net-
obstructed or frenzied, landscapes of ravines and works of crisscrossing diagonals, form the generating
rocks, a world of storm and tumult into which he elements of a paroxysmal baroque in which the
projected his anguish, as if the driving power of his impetuous expressionism of Nuenen surges up anew.
being, inhibited by illness and internment, had A comparison of the Aries Sunflowers with the
found an outlet in these sudden, vehement discharges. h 8 of May 1889 and the White Host s of May 1890
Alter Aries there was no falling off in the intensity which delimit his stay at Saint-Remy shows the
of his art. but it changed poles, it passed from color marked change of style. Luxuriant but controlled.
to form or rather to the movement of form, from the the color no longer is a magical entity with a life of its

exaltation of color to linear dy nam ism. lie abandoned own. It is held in cheek by the linear vibration, by
uniform tracts of chrome and cobalt, abandoned the the anxious, nervous bracing of contours. The
pure colors of the spectrum: now. in keeping with
his depressive mood, he adopted a broken, blurred
Canvas.
Self-PortraiL Saint-Rimy, 1889
harmony, toned down by grays and ochres but richly From the Collection of Mr <""/ Mrs John Hay Wl
and subtlv shaded. As earlv as July L889, [earning \ York.

L68
 J

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Olive Trees. Saint-Remy, September-October 1889. Canvas. Kroller- Mutter Museum, Otterlo.

Jfc

M
7%e flaw«e 0/ "Les Peyroulets." Saint-Remy, December 1889. Canvas.
Kroller-M tiller Museum, Otterlo.

161
 studies of flowers and grasses, sometimes delightfully Being often confined to his room, he painted the
diversified with beetles, rabbits and butterflies, form view from his window at different seasons: the
an unexpected sequence in the midst of this period. Wheatfield seen against a background of hills.

Most of them were painted soon after his arrival, "I find it queer," he said with bitter irony, "that

before his attacks, in the melancholy setting of the I have such a view through the iron bars of a cell."

old park. "Since I have been here," he wrote on He returned to the theme again and again in summer,
May 25, "the desolate garden, planted with tall pines autumn and spring, at sunrise and sunset, by moon-
under which grows high, untended grass inter- light, after a violent June storm and during the long
mingled with various weeds, has been enough for November rains. Finished in early September after

me to work on, and I haven't yet gone out." He later his attack, but begun in late June just a year after

pictured its various aspects, the flower-bordered the Soicer whose antithesis he meant it to be, the

walks, the stone benches, the circular pond, the version with the harvester, the Reaper as Van Gogh
fantastic branches, the trunks lopped off half way called it, assumed for him, with its Oriental calm,

up or shooting up skywards around the asylum. The a moving significance confirmed by his own death
most arresting version is the one in the Essen the following summer: "I then saw in this reaper

museum, with the enormous trunk blasted by a vague figure struggling like a devil in the full glow
lightning and "that combination of red ochre, green of the heat to get to the end of his task — I saw in

saddened with gray, and black lines" which reflects, him then the image of death, in the sense that

in autumn, "the sensation of anguish from which mankind is the wheat that is mown. So it is, if you
some of my companions in distress often suffer." To like, the contrary of that sower I tried to do before.
Bernard he gave an admirable poetic description But in this death there is nothing sad, it occurs full

worthy of the painting itself, and he explained to his in the light under a sun that floods everything with
sister how he lowered the originally bright tonality a fine golden light. . . It is an image of death such as
of the sky — red, orange, yellow — in order to follow the great book of nature tells us of, but what I have
the course of his emotion : "Then I took a color which sought for is the almost smiling." In the final versions

looks on the palette like a dull, dingy white, obtained without figures, of this same motif, there is a
by mixing white, green and a little carmine. This heightened conflict between curving and diagonal
green tone I slashed over the whole sky. and so at movements, between the central vanishing points
a distance this softens the tones by breaking them and the oblique axes, between the near space of the

i
up and yet one woidd seem to be spoiling and dirtying field itself— a projection of the artist's inner world

one's canvas. I >o not misfortune and sickness do just and his emotional tumult and the far space,

that with us and our health, and are we not more beyond the enclosing wall, subjected to different

deserving as we are when in mischance the great rhythms. The resolving of so complex a system of
doom carries us off, than when serene and healthy tensions and perspectives, of warm and cold tonal-

according to our own ideas and vague desires of ities, gave rise again and again to a new masterpiece
possible happiness?" bv effecting a veritable catharsis.

L62
The Prisoners' Walk, after a print
by Gustave Dore. Saint-Remy,
February 1890. Canvas.
Pushkin Museum, Moscow.

Gustave Dore (1833-1883) was the lust and most prolific a bookseller's clerk at Dordrecht in 1877, Van Gogh came
of the great French illustrators of the Romantic p
across some of these plates and greatly admired (hem.
Probably Ins most remarkable work is the set of 174 plates At Saint-Remy in February 1890 he copied ont of th

for London (1872) by a now forgotten author, W.B. Jerrold. moving of them, including himself among the pris

Dore" excelled in rendering the atmosphere of the modern Several months before, he had been shaken by reading an
city with /Is crowd movements and social contrasts. While article on Dostoevski's Memories of the House of the Head.

163
_

In contrast with the jerky, horizontal deployment gnarled trunks cling to the hard soil, their twisted

of the Wheatfields stands the wavy, vertical upsurge and tangled arms clutch at the sky. They kept up
of the Cypresses. Van Gogh "tackled" them in June, the same stubborn struggle for life as Van Gogh, who
a month after his arrival, either alone or in com- painted them with fraternal eagerness first in June,
bination with the harvesting, and "returned to the "when the green beetles and the cicadas can be seen
charge" once more on the eve of his departure, in flying in the heat," then in October, instead of the

May 1890. "The cypresses still preoccupy me... Vines, and finally in November at the time of the

They are beautiful in their lines and proportions, olive picking and as a realistic retort to the imaginary
like an Egyptian obelisk. And the green is of so olive trees painted at Pont-Aven by Bernard and
distinguished a quality. It is the black spot in a sunny Gauguin. "Their lines are warped," he said, "like

landscape, but it is one of the most interesting black those of old wood." The clouds, trees and terrain
notes, the most difficult to hit off right, that I can undulate together in a surging movement given
imagine. Well, they must be seen here against the rhythm by the velvety harmony of the color and the
blue, in the blue to put it better." Built up in a rich fluid circulation of light, now golden, now silvery,

impasto, indeed molded into the still wet pigment of while the "murmur" of the leafage "has about it

the sky, in a series of intensified orbs, they are something very intimate and immensely old." In the
galvanized by an energy of growth which Van Gogh November sequence, with the women engaged in the

makes physically tangible. For him they were "the age-old task of olive-picking under a pink sky, the

contrary and yet the equivalent of the sunflowers." texture of the paints is thinner, with no impasto,

The sunflowers stand for the sun itself, their heart and the brushstrokes are applied in regular hatchings.

radiating the golden arrows of sagittaria. The "At heart I am not so violent as all that, indeed

cypresses shoot up like funerary torches, like a I feel more like myself when calm." The olive tree,

simulacrum of the metaphorical blaze sweeping all native to the whole Mediterranean basin, naturally
nature at mid-summer and even scorching the rocks. evokes ancient Greece and the compositions of

To the version he retouched in February for Aurier. Puvis de Chavannes, whose influence also had a
in which the paints are "as thickly clotted as a decisive effect on Gauguin and Seurat. From his
Monticelti" and the sky as colorful "as a Scotch Saint-Remy period on. Van Gogh spoke of this

plaid." he added two feminine figures in violet. contemporary artist with increasing admiration:
complementary to the masculine force of the trees. "I can't think now of Puvis de Chavannes without
In other versions, it is the crescent moon that stands a feeling that one day perhaps he or another will

for the female principle. All the versions of the explain the olive tree to us."
Cypresses have this in common: the top is cut off in In October he wrote: "1 can give you notice now
mid-sky by the upper edge of the canvas and so too that with the next pictures dispatched you will
carried into infinity. make a closer acquaintance with the Alpines of the

The more numerous st udies of OtilH Tn es, fourteen good-natured Tartarin." With its limestone masses
in all. correspond to the Orchards of Aries. Their slashed and hacked by torrents, the little range of

L64
the Alpilles overlooks the plain of the Rhone between of other artists, after prints or drawings which he

Aries and Saint-Remy. Swept by the mistral and set up in front of him like real objects. At Saint-

disfigured by erosions, they answer to the expres- Remy he made thirty-six such copies, twenty-four

sionistic anguish of Van Gogh just as the perfect of them after Millet, which Theo rated very high and
cone of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire answers to the which Wilhelm Uhde judged to be "the most mature
classic grandeur of Cezanne. Himself a prey to the and beautiful part of his work." These copies have
cataclysm that tormented the rocks, Van Gogh been systematically studied by Werner Weisbach in
found release by choosing the most rugged sites, the his authoritative monograph and by Fritz Novotny
cragginess of the Quarry or the convulsions of the in a recent article.

Ravine which Roger Fry considered his masterpiece Van Gogh himself, aptly likening these free

because all the vehemence within him was bodied copies to musical interpretations, thus explained their

forth in the vitality of the stones with strange technique and purpose: "I place before me as the

metallic gleams. motif the black and white of Delacroix or Millet or

The portrait, his essential concern, lost ground, after them. And then I improvise on it with color,

for want of models. The self-portrait of September, but of course not being quite myself, but seeking
palette in hand —the inverted equivalent of the last recollections of their pictures —but a recollection and
Paris self-portrait —emerges from a deep cavernous a vague consonance of color which, if not the right
blue. Interlocking brushstrokes form an aureole over ones, are those I feel —such is my interpretation.

"the whitish head with yellow hair," out of which Lots of people do not copy, lots of others do copy
glow a pair of sorrowful, searching eyes. "They say as for me, I have come to do so by chance and I find

it is difficult to know oneself, but it is not easy that it is instructive and sometimes above all a
either to paint oneself." Van Gogh achieved here a consolation. So then my brush goes between my
poignant inwardness. The colors arrayed on the fingers like a bow on a violin and absolutely for my
palette have the curvilinear shape so characteristic own pleasure."

of this whole period. At the same time he painted the Millet's themes of home and country life, for which
masterly portrait of the head guardian of the asylum, Van Gogh invented tender and appealing harmonies
who would have looked like a "real bird of prey" if and some of which, as we have seen, were associated
he had not also had the air of an "old Spanish with Theo's family, took him back to his childhood
nobleman," and that of his wife, to whom, though and his native land, and also enabled him to re-
she was insignificant as a "dusty blade of grass," experience the early progress of his art. In Millet's
he was grateful for finding him normal and in good pictures, of which he thought reproductions should
health. He attempted a portrait of one of the in- figure in the schoolroom and which he endeavored
mates, but such models must have made him uneasy. to "make more accessible to the ordinary public at

In default then of living models, the compensating large," he found the principle of the sequences —the
need for figures was the first of many reasons which labors of the fields, the hours of the day —which
prompted him to copy in color the figure compositions guided his own researches. The religious paintings of

165
r

Delacroix and Rembrandt expressed his craving for Raising of Lazarus, but in place of Christ is the
compassion and salvation. In the Pieta, the face of rising sun —the pagan divinity to which Van Gogh
the bearded Christ with long red hair is a self- offered himself up as a sacrifice. Of Rembrandt's
portrait. The Virgin, whose blue garments float famous etching he retained only the central group
against the violet, gold-fringed clouds of a sky after of Lazarus and his two sisters, excluding the miracle-
a storm, stretches forth her desperate arms with working Christ and the other participants. He
"the good sturdy hands of a working girl." Through- identified himself with Lazarus, and to Martha and
out his evolution, from Nuenen to Auvers, Van Mary, one with orange hair, the other with black
Gogh's expressive rendering of hands is always hair, he gave the features of Madame Roulin (La
revealing. The Good Samaritan has as its setting a Berceuse) and Madame Ginoux (UArlesienne), the
wild spot enclosed by rocks, the same setting as in two women who took, or seemed to him to take, a

the Ravine. The rocks open luminously for the motherly interest in him. If he could have them to

I'n >,), after Delacroix. Saint-Rimy, 1889. Canvas.

Vincent run Qogh Foundation, Amsterdam.
 The Vigil, after Millet.

Saint-Remy, November 1889.

Canvas. Vincent van Gogh
Foundation, Amsterdam.

C&ZWL

il:i s-^iii
The First Steps, after Millet.
Saint-Remy, January- February
1890. Canvas. Collection of
George N. Richard, New York.

sT^S8^»

to

£L^«?
 On arriving at Aries in February 1888, Van Gogh painted
as a symbol of hope and renewal a flowering almond sprig
in a glass of water.
Now he returned to the theme, showing all the branches,
even a dead bough, in blossom floating freely against the open
sky. Theo's son was born on January 31, 1890. On February
15 Van Gogh wrote to his mother: "I would have preferred
for Theo to give his son Pa's name, of whom I have been
thinking so much lately, rather than mine. But anyhow now
that it's done, 1 have started at once on a picture for him,
a canvas for them to hang in their bedroom: several large
flowering branches of white almond against a background
of blue sky." He also told his sister about it: "But anyhow
the result is that the child is there and, as I wrote to its
Flowering Stalks. Saint-Remy, 1890. Pen drawing.
grandmother, I have started painting for it a large sky blue
canvas ivith flowering branches standing out against it."

A few days later, during an outing to Aries, he was stricken

with an acute attack. When he recovered in April he wrote

to Theo: "Work was going well, the last canvas of branches
in bloom — you will see that it was perhaps what I had done
most patiently and best, painted calmly and with a greater
sureness of touch. And the next day, down and out like a

beast." In the following letter he writes: "I fell ill at the

time I was doing the almond blossoms." He refers to this

picture once more in a letter to his sister from Auvers-siir-

Oise: "I have brought with me for Jo and Theo's baby

a fairly large picture — which they hare hung over the
piano — of white almond blossoms — large branches on a sky
blue background."
Flowering Almond Branch. Saint-Remy, February 1890. Canvas. Vincent van Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam.

169
 sit for him again, he said, he would repeat the
composition on a larger scale. In his letters Van
Gogh mused on the greatness of Egyptian art. At the
time he was painting the fifth version of La Berceuse,

he was struck by the following epitaph on an ancient

tomb at Carpentras: "Blessed be Thebe, daughter of

Telhui, priestess of Osiris, who never complained of

anyone." Dreaming then of "a perfect eternity," he

made several drawings of a mysterious head of an
Egyptian woman ; on the back of one of these sheets
he later drew the silhouette of the reaper, the symbol
of death. From these convergent clues H. Graetz has

inferred that the Christian theme of the Raising of

Lazarus interpreted by Van Gogh links up with the

Egyptian myth of the Resurrection of Osiris, the sun
god restored to life by his former helpmate Isis,

goddess of earth, assisted by her sister Nephthys.

Isis simultaneously embodies mother, wife and sister,

the three aspects of woman which a man must know

in order to fulfill himself. Van Gogh renounced an
earthly wife in favor of a cosmic marriage with

death, at the very time he was confiding his inner-

most thoughts to his mother and sister far away

in Holland.
If, for Van Gogh, Christ remained the supreme
Rembrandt: The Raising of Lazarus. About 1632. Etching.
artist, because he worked "in living flesh," and the
highest incarnation of man, yet he did not feel he
had any right to represent him, except through the

example of earlier artists. "The figure of Christ as

I feel it has been painted only by Delacroix and

Rembrandt." Each man suffers his own Gethsemane,
but he described as abstractions, judging them
anachronistic in the modern view of things where

the humblest reality sufficed for his own fervor, the

evocations of Christ in the Garden of Olives imagined

in Brittany by his friends Bernard and Gauguin

170
 The Raising of Lazarus, after Rembrandt's etching. Saint-Remy,
May 1890. Canvas.
Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam.

'Tffe

2? 3S^eg

171
when he himself was at grips with the real olive under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve

trees of Provence. However, to comply with this stars," and threatened by "the great red dragon"
"terrible need for religion" which sometimes pressed (Revelation, xn, 1-4). But the stars, each with its

him so hard, he composed at Saint-Remy the only central sprout like winged seeds, are only ten in

great visionary canvas in his ceuvre, the formidable number in the preliminary sketch, more vehement
Starry Night which transcends the first, more in its emotional sweep, and eleven in the final

soberly lyrical version of Aries. The foreground dis- painting. For this reason S. Lovgren suggests rather
appears, giving place to the concourse of stars in all a connection with Joseph's second dream in Genesis
their fantastic amplitude. Swept up in the heavens (xxxvii, 9), when "the sun and the moon and the

and rolling in a continuous vortex are the giant eleven stars made obeisance" for his future triumph.
stars, the enormous double spiral of the interlocked This interpretation is the more plausible since Van
nebulae, the composite crescent of sun and moon. Gogh had already alluded to the dream of glory and
The earth shares in this mystical exaltation through rehabilitation of the persecuted servant of God when
the natural link of the cypress, a gigantic torch in his Nuenen Still Life with a Bible, on the large
reaching to the stars (the trunk is now invisible, open page, he clearly inscribed the reference he had
while in his usual studies of cypresses it is often in mind: chapter 53 of the Book of Isaiah. The
duplicated) and by the man-made link of the slender Starry Night, also a religious picture sprung from his
church tower, thrusting its fine point up to the level experience of suffering and his knowledge of the
of the far line of mountains. The whirl of planets is Bible, whose secret message neither Theo nor
held aloft by these two trembling verticals. Serried Gauguin nor Bernard ever suspected, transports us
yellow lights shine in the village houses whose solidly into the ardent, all-consoling realm of the heavens.

cubic forms contrast with the curvilinear outburst toward that second "hemisphere" which transcends
in the infinite spaces above. earthly life and which the acceptance of death in the

It seems probable thai this impressionist composi- contemporary picture of the Reaper enabled him to
tion with no apparent allegory may have a concealed glimpse. "And why may not colors." wrote the poet
Biblical meaning. Meyer Schapiro has suggested the Hugo von Hofmannsthal with reference to Van Gogh,
Apocalyptic reminiscence of the woman "travailing "be the sisters of sorrows, since both draw us into
in birth," "clothed with the sun, and the moon the eternal?"
Auvers and the Final Cycle

I try to express the desperately rapid

passing of things in modern life.
 Auvers is quite nice, lots of old
thatched cottages among other
things, which is becoming rare.
This is characteristic and 'pictur-
esque open country... But the
modern villas and private country
houses I find almost as pretty as
the old thatched cottages, which are
falling into ruin. . . And I realize
already that it did me good going to
the South, the better to see the North.

Stairway at Auvers. Auvers, June 1890.

Canvas. City Art Museum of Sainl Louis.
 m Va 4
Tin Town ll«ii „t Auvers on (he I lih of July, Avium, July 1890,
I'anms. CoUedion <>/ Mr and U,< l.. t ,,h /.'.
Block, Onrago.
 AUVERS AND THE FINAL CYCLE

Van gogh arrived in Paris on Saturday, May 17, tomed, and eager to get back to work, Van Gogh
1890. Theo, whom he found looking "paler" than went out to Auvers-sur-Oise on Wednesday, May 21.

when he saw him last, met him at the station and From Paris he wrote to the Dutch critic Isaacson,

took him at once to his new flat in Montmartre, at 8, who was taking a keen interest in his work, asking
Cite Pigalle, on the fourth floor. Jo made a very him to say no more than "only just a few words"
favorable impression on him: he described her as about him, since his recent efforts at Saint- Remy had
"charming, affectionate, simple." She for her part, been "limited to naming these two things, cypresses
expecting to meet a sick man, was surprised to find and olive trees." He expressed his admiration for
"a sturdy, broad-shouldered man with a healthy Giotto, "that great sufferer who remains as familiar

color" ; the first thing she noticed about him was that to us as a contemporary," and whom he would have
he seemed much fitter than Theo. The two brothers liked to copy if he could have traveled to Italy.
went into the bedroom and "silently, with tears in He spoke admiringly too of Puvis de Chavannes,
their eyes," looked at the child asleep in its cradle. whom he now placed on a level with Delacroix:
The almond blossoms painted for the child hung in a composition of Puvis's which he saw at the Champ-
the place of honor over the piano. The next morning de-Mars seemed to him "a strange and providential
Van Gogh was up early, examining in his shirt sleeves meeting between very remote antiquity and crude
the torrent of his oeuvre which filled the apartment, modernity."
unframed canvases even being piled up under the Less than an hour from Paris, Auvers-sur-Oise was
furniture and stacked in Tanguy's storeroom next a peaceful, smiling village straggling up a hillside
door. "It was odd," he wrote to his sister, "seeing bordering the river Oise and crowned by a vast
all my canvases again from the beginning." Then plateau of wheatfields. In 1860 Charles Daubigny
"there came a great many visits" : Jo's brother Andre (1817-1878), on the advice of Corot, had had a studio
Bonger, Pere Tanguy, the painters Guillaumin and built at Auvers in the midst of a garden, where he
Gausson, probably Lautrec, Pissarro and his son received fellow landscapists and also his friend

Lucien, and others. Happy but tiring of the city Daumier, who lived in the neighboring region of
noise and bustle to which he was no longer accus- Valmondois. While a theology student in Amsterdam.
 Garden behind Houses. Auvers, June 1890. Charcoal, watercolors and oils on paper.

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Farms among Trees. Auvers, June 1890. Blue distemper and charcoal.

179
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 Van Gogh deliberately painted the portrait of Dr Gachet in the same spirit
as his last self-portrait, which he brought with him from Saint-Remy. In a
letter to his sister he associated with these two interrelated portraits a third
masterpiece, a view of the old church of Auvers, swept up by the same emotional
intensity. The three pictures also have in common the arresting depths of a
darker and a lighter blue.
"I have found in Dr Gachet a true friend and something like a new brother,
so much do we resemble each other physically, and morally too. . . I did his
portrait the other day. . . With that I have a larger picture of the village
church — an effect in which the building appears purplish against a plain
deep blue sky, of pure cobalt ; the stained-glass windows appear like blotches

of ultramarine blue, the roof is purple and in part orange. In the foreground
some green plants in bloom and some pink sunny sand. . . The portrait of

Dr Gachet shows us a sun-tanned face the color of an overheated brick, with

red hair and a white cap, in a landscape setting with a blue ground of hills ;

his clothes are ultra-marine blue — that brings out the face and makes it paler
in spite of being brick-colored. The hands, an obstetrician's hands, are paler
than the face. In front of him on a red garden table, some yellow novels and
a foxglove flower of dark purple. My own portrait is almost the same, the blue
is a fine blue of the South and the clothes are a bright lilac ..."

Page 180: Portrait of Dr Gachet. Auvers, Jurw 1890. Canvas. Mrs Siegfried Kramarsky Collection, Xew York.

Page 181: The Church at Auvers. Auvers, June 1890. Canvas. Dr Gachet Bequest, Louvre, Paris.

Page 182: Self -Portrait. Saint-Remy, 1890. Canvas. Louvre. Paris.

183

"
ir-
-'
*f

,V Van Gogh had heard with pained emotion of the Dr Gachet invited him to lunch, gave him leave to

death of this painter who formed the link between paint in the house and garden, became an enthu-

Barbizon and Impressionism. Daubigny's widow siastic admirer of his painting, and reassured him as
was still living at Auvers in 1890. Immediately upon to the state of his health. Indeed Van Gogh was now
his arrival there in May Van Gogh began planning feeling much better
— "it is odd how the nightmare
a picture of Daubigny's Garden. After an initial has ceased here to such an extent" —and Dr Gachet
study in June, he painted the final version in July, attributed his disorders not to nervous troubles but

possibly his last picture, certainly the last one men- to over-exposure to the southern sun. dangerous for

tioned in his letters, and one deeply imbued with the Nordic temperament, and to the intoxicating

personal feelings. In the autumn of 1872 the famous fumes of oil of turpentine in his paints. "He said

Dr Gachet (1828-1909), an eager collector and art I must work boldly on, and not think about what has
lover, chose Auvers as a week-end residence conve- been the matter with me." No one in the village

nient to Paris. He lived in a large rambling house could have suspected that he had just come out of
on the hilltop with a terraced garden, where he kept an asylum.
his collections of modern painting and antiques of He first saw Auvers in the spring. It did not

all sorts. He at once invited Cezanne, Pissarro and provoke the intense shock he had experienced at
Guillaumin, who all worked at Auvers. A native of Aries, but he was deeply impressed by its grave and
Lille. Dr Gachet studied medicine at Montpellier serene beauty. He found again with a thrill of

where he met the collector Bruyas and wrote his emotion the old thatched roofs of his native land,
thesis on melancholia. Practising in Paris, he moved the "nests of men" which for him were all that was

in the most advanced literary and artistic circles and "most admirable in the way of architecture." But,
became a close friend of the engravers Bresdin and no aesthete, he liked just as much the middle-class
Meryon. Drawing and painting himself as a hobby, houses and modern villas whose red and white
but especially fond of engraving, he set up a hand masses were hidden amidst the trees and shmbs.
press at Auvers, which Cezanne availed himself of Monet and Renoir had often painted along the banks

and on which Van Gogh pulled his only etching. On of the Oise. Van Gogh, like Cezanne and Pissarro,
his first visit Van Gogh thought him "rather eccen- preferred the rural slopes of the village and. even

tric" and judged him to be suffering from the same more, the immense expanse of wheatfields on the
"nervous trouble" as himself; but, he continued. upper plateau, "the true, characteristic countryside."

"the impression he made on me is not unfavorable. . . Gachet recommended the excellent Auberge Saint-

and I think I shall remain friends with him and do Aubin, where board and lodging could be had for six
his portrait." A widower for several years past, francs a day, but intent as usual on reserving the

he had two children, a boy of sixteen, Paul, and a maximum of his resources for painting materials,

J sjirl

for

Van
of nineteen, Marguerite,

Van Gogh. The sympathy and comprehension

Gogh met with
who.

grew
like

during
her father, sat

the sittings.
he chose a more modest pension, the Cafe Havoux.

OOBting only three francs lift v.

the town hall, where he had an attic room. Several

on the square opposite

is |
 Landscape at Auvers. Auvers, June 1890. Canvas. Pushkin Museum, Moscow.

185

t.\
other painters had rooms there : the Cuban Martinez He received news of Gauguin, spoke oddly of joining

and the Dutchman Hirschig, a friend of Boeh, who him for a month in Brittany, and quoted the remark
arrived on June 16, looking "much too nice to be a made by Gachet at the sight of the "synthesis of an
painter in present-day conditions." The back room Arlesienne" which he painted from a drawing by
of the restaurant was given up to them as a studio. Gauguin: "How difficult it is to be simple."

Van Gogh, who was generally in bed by 9 p.m. and Theo was suffering from bronchitis and nephritis;
up at dawn, also went out painting occasionally with his health was breaking down as his worries and
the Australian artist Walpole Brooke, who had been expenses increased. His position at the gallery had
living in Auvers for several months and who had become precarious; his employers Boussod and
been brought up in Japan, though no sign of it ap- Valadon were dissatisfied with his over-zealous

peared in his "rather dull" but well observed studies. patronage of impressionist art and for want of capital
On Sunday, June 8, Gachet invited Theo, his wife he hesitated to go into business for himself. His son
and chdd to lunch and Van Gogh brought a bird's fell so ill as to raise the most serious apprehensions.
nest for his godson. The day went by so quickly and On June 30, sitting with Jo, who from sheer exhaus-

in so congenial an atmosphere
— "For me it has been tion had fallen into a troubled sleep, beside the baby
a very reassuring feeling to be living nearer to who had grown calmer for a moment, Theo wrote
them" —that he quite forgot his project of an open-air a long letter to Vincent full of brotherly affection in

family portrait. Delighted with Auvers, the two which, opening his heart unrestrainedly, he made no
brothers talked of renting a small house there as a allowance, in the stress of his feelings, for its possible

permanent studio for Vincent and a week-end repercussions on a hypersensitive brother entirely
lodging for Theo. Van Gogh felt so buoyed up that dependent on him for his daily bread. The baby
he thought of exhibiting again in a cafe, perhaps with recovered thanks to a cure of ass's milk but the
Cheret this time. But by now he had passed beyond parents dared not leave it yet. so it was Van Gogh
the sphere of ordinary life, and it was as "through who made the trip into Paris on Sunday, July 6.

a glass, darkly" that he remembered the Ginoux's It is difficult now to reconstruct the events of that

—to whom he had written to ask for his furniture day, but it ended with a rather sharp exchange of

and his absent friends. The same Biblical image words between Vincent on the one hand and either Jo
occurs in a letter to his mother who had just returned or Theo on the other, and with Vincent's hurried
from a pilgrimage to Nuenen. "As through a glass, return to Auvers without waiting for an expected
darkly — so it has remained. Life and the why of visit from Guillaumin. He had lunch that day with
saying good-bye and going away and the continuance Lautrec and saw Aurier again. The latter took
of unrest, one understands no more of it than that." Van Gogh home with him and introduced him to
several of his friends. "It was at Aurier's." wrote
Julien Leclercq, "that I had a glimpse of Vincent.

Peasant Woman with a Hat. Auvers, June 1890. Canvas. I remember him as a small, fair-haired man. nervous,
Private Collection, Bern. bright-eyed, large-browed, sensitive-looking, who

1ST
 vaguely reminded one of Spinoza, concealing beneath instance, however, the doctor did refuse to see him.

his evident shyness a vehement activity of mind." Van Gogh had just had a violent scene with him
From the letter written on his return to Auvers, in connection with a picture by Guillaumin which
he seems to have left Paris that day "in bewilder- the doctor had not yet had framed; perhaps, as

ment," uncertain whether or not Theo intended to before with Gauguin, Van Gogh had even threatened
maintain his monthly allowance. He complained that him. The real cause of their conflict, leading to
his pictures were not being properly cared for, and Gachet's inadmissible neglect of a patient entrusted

s that those of his friends were going to ruin, piled to his care, must of course be sought elsewhere, and
up in a "bug-ridden hole" at Tanguy's. Above all, though a number of conjectures have been made it

he was utterly dismayed by Theo's decision to take has never been elucidated. Van Gogh felt all his

his wife and son back to Holland; he had hoped, for supports giving way. "I feel myself a failure . .

their own good, to see them spend their holidays And the prospect is getting darker, I see no happy
in the country, in the more wholesome climate of future at all." He hoped for a visit from Theo and
Auvers. In this attitude of Van Gogh's, one cannot his family on the 14th of July, but they did not
but suspect an obscure and unconscious desire of come, and his picture of the town hall on the French
appropriation, remembering the instinctive attraction national holiday, with its paltry bunting and the
he had always felt for a mother and child, as well deserted square, is inexpressibly sad.
as that curious episode in Paris in the summer of A wonderful letter from Jo at once cheered and
1886 when he asked Theo, who was away in Holland, grieved him, for she announced that she was leaving
to lend him his mistress. "Would it be possible to see for Holland the next day with Theo and the baby.
each other again more calmly? I hope so, but I fear "Jo's letter was really like a gospel to me, a deliver-
that the journey to Holland will prove to be the last ance from anguish. . . but my life too is threatened
straw for all of us." What he feared was that Jo's at its very root, my steps too are unsteady. I have
family might force her and Theo to break with him. feared —not altogether, but a little anyhow — that
And now his friendship with Dr Gachet ended, being dependent on you, you felt me a thing to be
as all his friendships ended, in the inevitable quarrel. dreaded There— returning here have gone back
. . . I

"I went to seo him the day before yesterday and he to —with the brush almost dropping from un-
work
wasn't in . . . I do not think one can rely in any way hands though — but knowing exactly what wanted. I

on Dr Gachet. In the first place he is sicker than I have painted three more large canvases since.

I am, as it seems to me, or just as much, anyhow. These are immense stretches of wheat under troubled
Now when one blind man leads another blind man, skies and I have made no bones about trying to
will they not both fall into the ditch?" Gachet had express sadness and extreme loneliness." The famous
his praetiee in Paris and there he usually spent most Wheatfield with Crows which is accounted his hist

of the week- which for Van Gogh, thus deprived canvas, the only one in which the mental specialist

for several days of the presence he needed, was I >r Kraus has detected visible signs of disintegration,

tantamount to desertion. No doubt in this last may have been painted in a state of incipient delirium

I-

|ss
 Thatched Cottages at Chaponval. Auvers, July 1890. Canvas. Kunsthaus, Zurich.

189

D
I'M)
 •>w \sr^\N^
—^-^ -7
y -v_7 jc«__*^«

Daubigny's Garden. Auvers, July 1890. Pen drawing.

Here is Van Gogh's description of the corresponding planting, from his lust

letter to Theo: "Daubi-gny's garden, a foreground of green and pink grass.

On the left a green and lilac-colored bush and the root-stock of a plant with
whitish lea res. In the middle a bed of roses, on the right a wicket, a nail.
and above the wall a hazel tree with purple leafage. Then a hedge of lilac,

a row of yellow rounded lime trees, the house itself in the background, pink,

with a roof of bluish tiles. A bench and three cliairs, a black figure with a
yellow hat and in the foreground a black cat. Sky pale green."

Above. Daubigny: Wheatfield. Canvas. Krbller-M utter Museum, Otterlo.

Below: Field under a Stormy Sky. Auvers, July 1890. Canvas. Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam.

191

J
 " What's the use of describing a picture by Van Gogh for this canvas has a strange color, almost pompous
No description attempted by another can equal the moreover, of birth, of marriage, of departure,
simple aligntnent of natural objects and tones set I hear the crow's wings beating like loudly clashing
forth by Van Gogh himself, a great icriter as well cymbals over an earth whose torrent Van Gogh seems
as a great painter, and who gives of the work described to have been no longer able to contain.

an impression of the most astounding authenticity." Then death."

However, in the postscript to his extraordinary essay

on Van Gogh, Antonin Artaud, as if taking up the

challenge himself, reverts to this picture of "truffle-
black" crows released into "the rebreuing of the
storm" and continues:
"Who has already seen as in this canvas the earth
equivalent to the sea?
Van Gogh is of all painters the one who most thor-
oughly lays us bare, up to the very woof, but as one
might rid oneself of an obsession.
Thai of making objects other than they are. that of

daring at last to risk (he sin of otherness, and the

earth cannot have the color of a liquid sea, and yet

it is as a liquid sea that Van Gogh throws up his

earth as if under the successive thrusts of a weeding
hoe.

And he infused his canvas with the color of wine dregs,

and it is the earth which reeks of wine, which goes on
lap ping amid the waves of wheat, which lifts up
ii dark COCk's crest against the bur clouds piling
up m (he sky from all sides.

Bui us I hare already sun/, (he gloomy side of the

story is (he lavishness with which (he crows are treated.
Tins color of musk, of rich spikenard, of a truffle

pulled out us from a great supper.

In (he purplish waves of (he sky. two or (hree smoky
^— •*

heads <>f old men risk mi apocalyptic grimace, but

(he trims of Vim Gogh are (hen urging (hem to more
decency, I mum to less spirituality,

and what did I nn Gogh himself menu by this canvas

inlli lis iimli rsliniij sky, pninlnl nearly ill (he i

moment at which h delivered himself from exist* nee,

Whiiilfielil irilh ('ions. .1 in , rs . .1 nli/ 1890. Cfl

Vincent van Oogh Foundation, Amsterdam.

192
resulting from all these events, though the actual the rough copy in his pocket. In it he drew and
crisis would then have been averted by the violence described Daubigny's garden, "one of my most
of the act of painting and the emotional outpouring purposeful canvases," asked for more colors, though
that went into it. As he accordingly wrote to his reducing his order "to the barest minimum," and
mother and sister: "I am in a mood of almost too added: "I would perhaps like to write to you about
great a calm, in the mood needed to paint that.'* many things, but in the first place the desire to do so

On July 23 he wrote his last letter to Theo, who has completely left me, and then I feel how useless

had just returned to Paris from Leyden, and kept it is." On Sunday afternoon, July 27, he went out
 into the fields with a revolver, "the sun flooding Robert extends and amplifies, though she makes no
everything with a fine golden light," and shot him- reference to it, the memorable article by Georges

self in the chest. In the evening he managed to make Bataille on Sacrificial Mutilation. Adopting the
his way back to his room, concealing his wound and view s of Bela Grunberger, for
r
whom The Suicide of
saying nothing to anyone. Wondering at his absence the Melancholiac "is always invested with a certain
from the supper table, the Ravoux's went up to his inner splendor" because it marks not so much a defeat

room and, noticing his blood-stained jacket, sent for as an absolute redemption of the humiliated ego,

Dr Gachet, who considered it impossible to extract she concludes admirably: "Vincent van Gogh chang-
the bullet. Gachet asked him for Theo's address, ed his death into a sombre triumph whose witnesses
but Van Gogh refused to tell him. Notified the next were so much struck that for two days they did
morning at the gallery, Theo came at once and found nothing to provide proper care for him, as if they
Vincent sitting up in bed, calmly smoking his pipe. knew that he could only be saved by letting him
The two brothers talked together in Dutch during enjoy the only salvation that lay open to him, above
the day. Remaining with him into the night, Theo all the only one that could bring him back to himself

rested his head a while on the pillow next to Vincent's. at the end of the long calamity of life. And it is true

"I want to be going," said Vincent. He expired that by dying he at last won his life: vanquishing
shortly afterwards, at half past one in the morning the 'dead man's body' which had been his lifelong
of July 29th. Theo. already a sick man and now torment, committing suicide in his hatred of limits,
shattered by this blow, died six months later. The he could afford to linger a while and take leave
two brothers, inseparable in life, lie side by side in quietly smoking his pipe almost smiling."
the little cemetery at Auvers, against the wall His two months at Auvers were for Van Gogh a

bordering the wheat fields. period of remission and intense regular work:
The crux of the matter can never be known, but "...and my health is good, I go to bed at nine
it is possible to single out the multiple and convergent o'clock, but get up at five most of the time. . . I feel

causes motivating Van Gogh's final decision, which much surer of my brush than before going to Aries."
he took quite deliberately and not in an access of He painted an average of one canvas a day and left

delirium. There was on the one hand the external besides about thirty drawings. "1 am working much
pressure of circumstances, on the other the deeper and last; in that way I try to express the desperately

urges of his nature and cast of mind. With his fine rapid passing of things in modern life." In this short
lucidity he himself saw clearly enough where the period, more prolific and more uneven than any
trouble lay: "I am more melancholy than perse- other, there are both staggering achievements and
cuted." Melancholia is often the result of an extreme undeniable weaknesses: but instead of seeing in it

narcissism or an infinite love inevitably thwarted by the artist's final decline, as man] critics have done,
the vicissitudes of life and consequently turning into it seems more reasonable to envisage it with its

destructive sell'-morlilicatinn. In a recent study of peculiar characteristics and as the necessary and
<rreat insighl on The Genius ">i<l his Model, Marthe grandiose outcome of his career as a whole.

I'.M
 At Auvers Van Gogh found again not only the The first pictures he painted at Auvers —thatched
rustic themes from which he had never departed, roofs, pink and white chestnut trees, studies of

but also the rural community of his childhood, from flowers in Dr Gachet's garden, houses dotted amidst
which he had been separated since Nuenen. He trees, fields of alfalfa and wheat seen from above
painted the fields, gardens, haystacks, sheaves, ears leave an impression, if not of joy, impossible after
of grain, and different aspects of the village, with the ordeal of the asylum, at least of vivifying

its mingling of thatched cottages and modern villas, freshness and grave serenity.

and its significant monuments, the church, the town "And yet," he wrote to his mother, confiding to

hall, and the chateau nestling in the trees. Of the her his growing sense of loneliness and detachment,
local Gothic church, whose solidity resists the "flam- "there is a reason for the fact that sometimes my
boyant" eruptions which sweep it up in his picture, work today is more harmonious." The reason is,

he wrote to his sister that "it is almost the same he went on. that "painting is a world in itself."
thing as the studies I made at Nuenen of the old and though inferior but yet equivalent to the natural
tower and the churchyard, only now the color is life from which he was barred, it was for him now
probably more expressive, more sumptuous." Along "the sole link connecting the past to the present,"
one of the two roads of "sunny pink sand" enclosing both in his private life and in the life of art; hence
the church behind a triangular patch of flower-dotted the importance he suddenly accorded to Puvis de
grass, walks a peasant woman wearing a Dutch cap. Chavannes and the final balancing out of the
The little town hall standing on the square opposite contradictory tendencies inherent in his work.
the inn where he boarded looks astonishingly like The tormented arabesques of Saint-Remy persisted
the town hall of Zundert. His mother wrote to him at Auvers, in the flickering swirl of trees and vegeta-
now from Nuenen during her visit there, but his tion, and strike a contrast with the calm, solidly
mind was turning back beyond Nuenen, back to his realistic forms of buildings. The character of his line

childhood memories of Zundert, as it had at the time changed: the calligraphic variety of the strokes
of his first attack in Aries. The two boys standing corresponding to each detail and the system of

on the doorstep of the Thatched Cottages at Chaponval, internal nuclei taken over from Delacroix were both
while a workman repairs the roof or the chimney pot, abandoned in favor of short, nervously curling lines
surely they are Vincent and Theo seen again as they and longer, intertwining curves heralding Modern
had been once, in days long gone by. Thus the cycle Style and suggesting the dynamic vitalism of nature.

finally closed, and as he reached his journey's end The whole is now diluted in rich and soothing colors.
— "It did me good going to the South, the better Van Gogh did not venture to revert to the grays and
to see the North" — it was truly a return to his native browns of Nuenen, but the dominant colors were
land and, in the final works, a voluntary absorption now milky whites, humid greens, restful violets

in it: "Do you know, Theo, that expression of a

— "it is as I supposed, I see violets more wherever
Dutch poet: I am bound to the earth by more than they are" —and dark blues, like nourishing juices
earthly bonds." wrung from his own destruction and carriers of a rich

195
new sap. "I do not live for myself but for the genera- sits so naturally, "as if against a very vivid, yet a

tion to come," that of the Fauves and Expressionists quiet background."

who owed so much to his example. After his visit to Paris in July he was "entirely
Figure paintings were few at Saint-Remy for want absorbed" by the expanse of wheatfields, "vast as
of models and sufficient concentration. At Auvers the sea," and by Daubigny's garden, painting the
they again become essential works, about fifteen of latter as a tribute to the landscapist who had lived

them in all. To his sister he expressed his ideal: at Auvers and had been a friend of Corot and a
"I should like —mind you, I am far from saying defender of Monet. The plain, all in the mildest tints

I can do it all, but this is what I am aiming at of yellow and gold, pale green and lilac, stretches

I should like to paint portraits which to people living into an infinite distance like the Dutch countryside
a century from now would appear like apparitions." under the low sky of his childhood, but empty now
He said this with reference to the incomparable of any human presence —nor was there anybody on
likeness of Dr Gachet, leaning to one side in a mood the square in front of the town hall, for all the flags
of wistful meditation, his pale, nervous face propped and bunting of the French national holiday
against one hand, while the other lies flat on the red and immersed in the nocturnal depths of a singular
table on which are two yellow-backed novels and blue, characteristic of Auvers, which is the antithesis
a sprig of foxglove in a glass. He several times of the yellow of Aries. The strange horizontal format
emphasized the exceptional character of this portrait of this canvas concentrates the picture space into a
'with the sorry expression of our time" which subjective whole, abolishes the central perspective
combines the sitter's personality with his own, and formerly prevalent and now dissociated, and rein-

which he made deliberately similar to his last self- forces the sense of annihilation.
portrait, probably executed just before he left On the rough copy of his last letter to Theo, found
Saint-Remy. in his pocket. Van Gogh wrote: "Well, the truth is,

At Auvers he also painted a portrait of Mademoi- we can only make our pictures speak." His speak
selle Oachet at the Piano, a tall pink figure against a to each of us the silent language of light and frater-

green, orange-spotted ground; a portrait of Adeline nity. But even if their flame should go out and if

Ravoux, a lighl blue figure seated in profile against the future should no longer acknowledge him as a
the surrounding dark blue; and a Peasant Woman bringer of light, other lights will arise in the infinite
in a blue, red-dotted working jacket, in which we constellated space which his art created, and even
find again the sturdiness and truthfulness of the more precious than his work will be the unique and
Nnenen figures, though now the straw hat. the apron abiding legend of the painter who strove to be a
and the tanned face are painted in the luminous sower among men and departed calmly in the glory
colors of the wheat and poppies among which she of the harvests.
 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Van Gogh's letters are the indispensable source for a know- ensembles remain in Holland: the collection of the Kroller-
ledge of the man and his work. The most recent and most Muller Museum at whose scholarly catalogue is
Otterlo,
complete edition, superseding all the many previous editions, periodically brought up to date (latest edition, 1966), and
is the Centenary Edition, published under the editorship of Theo's own collection, established by his son as the Vincent
civil engineer Vincent W. van Gogh, Theo's son and the van Gogh Foundation, temporarily housed in the Municipal
painter's godson and nephew: Verzamelde Brieve)! ran Vincent Museum of Amsterdam but soon to be installed in a special
Amsterdam 1952-1954, 4 vols.;
Don Gogh, reissued in 2 vols., museum in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam 1955. This edition, in which all the letters are
published in the original language (Dutch, French, and a few
in English), also includes recollections and accounts of Van General Works
Gogh by those who knew him. From it were made the standard
editions in English (1958), French (1960), and German (1965- Roger Fry, Transformations, London 1926; new edition,
1966). Some rectifications in the chronological order of the New York 1956. —
M. 0. Mais, Trente annees de lutte pour Fart,
letters, often undated, have been suggested by J. Hulsker and 1884-1914, Brussels 1926. —
A. S. Hartrick, .4 Painter's
M. de Sabloniere. Pilgrimage through Fifty Years, Cambridge 1938. Maurice —
Rayxal, De Baudelaire a Bonnard, Geneva 1949; English
A revised edition now being prepared of the monumental
catalogue of
is

Van Gogh's entire work: J.B. de La Faille,

edition, From Baudelaire to Bonnard, Geneva 1949. —
Lionello
Venturi, Impressionists and Symbolists, New York 1950;
L'QSuvre de Vincent van Gogh, catalogue raisonne, 4 vols., Paris
and Brussels 1928. Volumes I and II, devoted to the paintings,
French edition, De Manet a Lautrec, Paris 1953. Werner —
Haftmaxx, Malerei im 20. Jahrhundert, Munich 1954; English
were revised and reissued in a single volume: J. B. de La Faille,
Vincent van Gogh, Paris, London and New York 1939. — edition, Painting in the 20th Century. New York and London
—
1960. John Rewald, Post-Impressionism, From Van Gogh
To this must be added two other standard works, one with
a corresponding catalogue: de Grcyter,
W. Scherjon and
to Gauguin, New York 1956. —
S. Lovgrex, The Genesis of

Vincent van Gogh's Great Period, Aries, St. Remy and Aucers-
J.
Modernism, Stockholm 1959. —
G. H. Hamilton', Painting

sur-Oise (Complete Catalogue), Amsterdam 1937, and W.

and Sculpture in Europe, 1880-1940, London 1967. Sir Her- —
bert Read, _4r/ and Alienation, London 1967.
Vaxbeselaere, De HoUandsche Periode (1880-1885) in het
Werk van Vincent can Gogh, Antwerp 1937, French edition
1938. —
The scholar M. E. Tralb act, director of the Inter-
national Van Gogh Archives and author of over a hundred Monographs and Various Studies
articles devoted to his hero, has published exhaustive studies
J. Havelaar, Vincent ran Gogh, Amsterdam 1915 (3rd ed.,
two specific periods: M. E. Tralb act, Vincent ran Gogh
of
Antwerpsche Periode, Amsterdam 1948, and M.E.
1943). — J. Meier-Graefe. Vincent, 2 vols.. Munich 1921
(2nd ed., 1925); English edition, London 1922 and New York
Tralbai't, Vincent ran Gogh Amsterdam 1959.
in Drenfhe,
1933. — G. F. Hartlacb, Vincent can Gogh, Leipzig 1922
Of Van Gogh wrote: "His work is sublime, especially
Millet, (new ed., Berlin 1930). —
K. Jaspers, Strindberg und ran Gogh,
considered as a whole, and it will become more and more Arh itcn :ur angeuandten Psychiatric. Berlin 1922
French ed.. i

difficult to get an idea of it when the pictures are dispersed." Paris 1953). —
H. von Hofmaxxsthal, Gesammelti Wirkc.
His own work too is now widely dispersed, but two major Berlin 1924, Vol. II, pp. 210-214 (in French in Van Gogh

199
raconte par lui-meme et par ses amis, Geneva 1947, Vol. II, Magazine Articles and Special Issues
pp. 142-148). — V. Doiteau and E. Leroy, La folie de Van
Gogh, Paris 1928. — K. Pfister, Vincent van Gogh, Berlin 1929 A. Aurier, Les Isoles, Vincent van Gogh, Mercure de
(1st ed., 1922). — F. Knapp, Vincent van Gogh,
Potsdam France, January 1890 (reprinted in A. Aurier, (Euvres
Bielefeld-Leipzig 1930. — W. Uhde, Vincent van Gogh, Vienna posth umes, Paris 1893). —
O. Mirbeau, Vincent van Gogh,
1936. — M. Florisoone, Van Gogh, Paris 1937. — R. Huyghe, Echo de Paris, March 31, 1891 (reprinted in 0. Mirbeau,
Van Gogh, Paris n.d. (1937). — de Beucken, l'u portrait
J. Des Artistes, Paris 1922). —
G. Bataille. La mutilation
de Vincent van Gogh, Liege 1938 (Brussels Paris 1953). — n.d., saerificielle et I'oreille coupee de Vincent van Gogh, Documents,

A. Artaud, Van Gogh, suicide de le Paris 1947. — la societe, No. 8, 1930. —F. Minkowska, Van Gogh, Les relations entre

\V. Muensterberger, Vincent van Gogh, Drawings, Pastels, sa vie, sa maladie et son ceuvre, L'Evolution psychiatrique, 1932,
Studies, Bussum and New York 1947 (French ed., Paris 1948). Vol. III. —
Xovotny, Van Gogh's Teekeningen van het
F.
— G. Schmidt, Van Gogh, Bern 1947. M. Buchmann, — "Straatje te Saintes-Maries", Maandblad voor Beeldende
Die Farbe bei Vincent van Gogh, Zurich 1948. — A. M. Kunsten, December 1936. —
G. Kraus, Vincent van Gogh
Hammacher, Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam n.d. (1948). — en de Psychiatrie, Psychiatrische en Neurologische Bladen,
C. Xordenfalk, Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam n.d. (1948): September-October 1941. —
C. Xordenfalk. Van Gogh and

English ed., New York 1943. W. Weisbach, Vincent — Literature, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute,

i(in Gogh, Kunst und Schicksal, 2 vols., Basel 1949-1951. — London 1948. — C. Mauron, Xotes sur la structure de Vincons-
M. Schaptro, Vincent van Gogh, New York 1950. J. — cient chez Vincent van Gogh. Psyche, Nos. 75-78, January-April
Leymarie, Van Gogh, Paris and New York 1951. C. — 1953. — H. Gastaut. La maladie de Vincent van Gogh envisaged
Esttenme, Van Gogh, Geneva 1953 (French, English and a lumiere des conceptions nouvelles sur Yepilepsie psycho-
la

German editions). —
A. M. Hammacher, Van Gogh, Milan motnee, Annales medicopsychiatriques, 1956, 196. — M. 2, p.

1953. —
M. de Sabloxiere, Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam Roskill, Van Gogh's "Blue Cart" and his Creative Process,
n.d. (1954). —
D. Cooper, Zeichnungen und Aguarelle von Oud Holland, 1966. — M. Robert, Van Gogh,
1, genie son le et

Vincent van Gogh, Basel 1954 (English ed.. New York 1955). — double, Preuves, February 1968.
R. Shikiba, Vincent run Gogh, Tokyo 1954. H. Perruchot, — Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, December 1946, Swedish van Gogh
/." in Van Gogh, Paris 1955.
de —
P. Marois, Le secret de
Studies (articles by C. Xordenfalk, A. Meyerson, Derkert,
Van Gogh, Paris 1957. —
F. Elgar, Van Gogh, Paris and
H. Eklund, 0. Reuterswaerd). —
Art News Annual, 1950
C.

New York 1958. —

J. Stellingwerkf, Werkelijkheid en
(articles by W. Gaunt, J. Rewald, S. Spender, J. Beer,
Grondmotief big Vincent run Gogh, Amsterdam 1959. M. E. — —
Tralbait. Van Gogh, A Pictorial Biography, London 1959. — M. Pease). Mededelingen, Nos. 1-2, The Hague, 1964,
Van Gogh Symposium (articles by \Y. J, de Gruytek, M. E.
G. Kmttel, Van Gogh, Itrecht 1960. K. Badt, Die — Tralbait, J. Leymarie). —
De Tafel Ronde, Nos. 8-9,
Farbenlehre van (loghs, Cologne 1961. P. Cabanne, Van — May-June 1955 (articles by V.W. van Gogh, G. Aigrisse,
Cogh, Paris 1961. — F. NOVOTNY, Die Bildcr van Goghs nach
M. Florisoone, J. G. van Gelder, II. Jaffe. M. de Sablo-
fremden VorbOdern, Festschrift Kurt Badt zum 70. Geburts-
mere, H. Sandberc, M. E. Tralbait. etc.).
tage, Berlin 1961. —
F. Erpel, Die Selbstbildnisst Vincent run
Goghs, Berlin 1963. - II. R. Gkaktz, The Symbolic Language of book reviews and notices relating to Van Gogh
Studies,
Vincent run Gogh, New York, Toronto, London 1963. P. — are published regularly in the Dutch magazine Must umjournal.
LEPROHON, Til fut run Gogh, Paris 1964. — H. Xagera, The first bulletin of the International Van Gogh Archives was
Vincent run Gogh, .1 Psychological Study, London 1967. published in Antwerp in the autumn of 1967.
 INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES

Aix-en-Provence 89. Badt Kurt 140. Brooke Walpole, Australian painter at

Alpilles, the 145, 165. Balzac Honor6 de (1799-1850) 33, 55. Auvers 187.
Altdorfer Albrecht (c. 1480-1538) 131. Barbizon painters 33, 61, 150, 184. Briegel Pieter (c. 1525-1569) 50.
Amsterdam 16, 17, 24, 110, 177; Bargue Charles (tl883), Exerciccs nu Brussels 17, 18, 152;
Rijksmuseum 41, 110; fusain, Cours complet de dessin 17. Goupil Gallery 13;
Stedelijk Museum 30, 59, 80; Bataille Georges (1897-1962) 194. Salon of Les XX 146.
Vincent van Gogh Foundation 8, 21, Baux-de- Provence 145. Brcyas Alfred (1821-1877) 158, 184.
37/39, 43, 46, 51, 61, 64/66, 69, 79, 82, Begeman Margot 37, 147. Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional de Bellas
89, 97, 101, 103, 111, 120, 130, 137, Berlin, Staatliche Museen 74. Artes 67.
139, 154, 166, 167, 169, 171, 191, 192; Bernard Emile (1868-1941) 52, 62, 63, Byzantine mosaics 138.
- Van Gogh's stay at (May 9, 1877- 67, 69, 74, 77, 80, 81, 89, 106/108, 110,
July 1878) 24, "llO, 177. 120, 122, 123, 145, 148, 158, 162, 164, Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum
Angrand Charles (1854-1926) 67, 74, 170, 172; 120.
77. Van Gogh's letters to 77, 89, 90, 102, Carbentus Anna Cornelia (1819-1906)
Anquetin Louis (1861-1932) 62, 69, 74, 120, 122, 123, 162. 11, 37, 63, 77, 112, 147, 148, 152. 168,
81, 128, 145. Besnard Albert (1849-1934) 61. 170, 187, 193, 195.
Antoine Andr6 (1858-1943) 74. Bing Gallery (Paris) 79, 81. Carpentras 170.
Antwerp, stay at (end of November 1885- Blanc Charles (1813-1882) 37. Cezanne Paul (1839-1906) 44, 63, 64,
end of February 1886) 13, 41, 52, 54, Boch Eugene Guillaume 106, 138, 152, 66, 82, 84, 89, 127, 138, 165, 184.
55, 81 187; Chaplet Ernest (1835-1909) 63.
School of Fine Arts 56. Anna (1848-1933) 152. Chardin Jean-Baptiste (1699-1779) 41.
Aries, stay at (February 1888-May 1889) Bock Theophile de 23. Cheret Jules (1836-1932) 187.
4, 13, 29, 62, 64, 70, 77, 87, 89, 91, 92, Boldini Giovanni (1842-1931) 61. Chicago, Art Institute 119, 126;
96, 97, 99/101, 103, 104, 106/120, 122, Bonger Andr<5 62, 146, 177; Leigh B. Block Collection 133. 17ti.

123, 126, 127, 130, 131, 133, 138/140, Johanna, Theo's wife 113, 146/148, Cimabue (active 1272-1302) 123.
145/147, 152, 158, 164, 165, 168, 172, 158, 168, 177, 187, 188. Cloisonnism 106.
184, 194/196; Bonnard Pierre (1867-1947) 81. Codde Pieter (1599-1678) 41.
- L'Alcazar (Night Catt) 106, 113/115, Borinage 7, 13, 16/18, 24, 28, 37, 131. Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum 91.
128; Bosboom Johannes (1817-1891) 23. Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Gryptotek
Yellow house (Place Lamartine) 95, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 13, 137. 155;
106, 107, 110/113, 122, 127, 128, 146. Brabant 11, 13, 23, 35, 37, 41, 52, Royal Museum of Fine Arts 95.
Artatd Antonin (1896-1946) 156, 192. 145. Coppee Francois (1842-1908) 62.
Asnieres 73, 77, 80, 81, 90. Breda (Holland) 37. Coquiot Gustave (1866-1926) 63, 77.
Aurier Albert (1865-1892) 148, 150, Breitner George Hendrik (1857-1923) CoRMON. Fernand Piestre (1845-1924)
164, 187. 26. 62, 77.
Auvers-sur-Oise, stay at (May 21, 1890- Bresdin Rodolphe (1825-1885) 184. Corot Camille (1796-1875) 14. 37. 40.
July 1890) 17, 147, 166, 168, 175/181, Breton Jules (1827-1906) 17. 67, 122, 177, 196.
183/196. Brittany 33, 63, 66, 74, 95, 120, 170, 187. Courru-res (France) 17. 52.

201
 Crau, La 97, 123. Francastel Pierre 127. The Hague: The Sower (summer 1883)
Cuesmes (Borinage), stay at (winter Fromentix Eugene (1820-1876) 37. 33; Still Lifes (December 1881) 24, 44;
1879-1880) 13, 17, 18. Fry Roger (1866-1934) 165. Tree Lashed by the Wind (summer 1883)
Furnee, geometer at the Hague 40. 33;
Daubigny Charles-Francois (1817-1878) Paris: Alexander Reid (summer 1886)
17, 63, 177, 184, 190, 191, 193, 196. Gachet Dr Paul (1828-1909) 147, 180, 62, 82 Festival in Montmartre, Gardens
;

Daudet Alphonse (1840-1897) 89. 183, 184, 187, 188, 194/196. in Montmartre (winter 1886-1887) 80;
Daumtek Honore (1808-1879) 32, 50, Gastatt H. 156. Saint- Remy: Glanum Quarry (summer
B6, 62, 108, 177. Gauguin Paul (1848-1903) 13, 61, 63, 1889) 146; The Good Samaritan, after
Decrucq, miner at Cuesmes 18. 66, 67, 69, 74, 77, 80, 81, 95, 102, 103, Delacroix (May 1890) 147, 166; Irises
Degas Edgar (1834-1917) 61, 63, 66, 81, 106/108, 111, 112, 118, 120, 123, 126/ (May 1889) 155, 158; The Quarry
108, 113. 128, 130, 131, 137, 138, 140, 145, 150, (October 1889) 165; Portrait of the
De Groux Charles (1825-1870) 52. 164, 170, 172, 187, 188; Head Guardian of the Asylum (Septem-
Delacroix Eugene (1798-1863) 37, 41, Van Gogh's letters to 77, 90, 118, 128. ber 1889) 165; Roadmenders, Study
52, 55, 61, 67, 122, 14it, 146, 147, 150, Gausson L6o (born I860) 177. (November 1889) 147; Roses (May
158, 165, 166, 170, 177, 195. Gauzi Francois 62. 1889) 155, 158; The Souer (November
Delarbeyrette 63, 64. Gestel 41. 1889) 13.
Delainay Robert (1885-1941) 80. Ginoux Monsieur and Madame 128, Gogh Theodorus van, the artist's father
Denis, baker at Wasmes 16. 140, 146, 166, 187. (1822-1885) 11, 13, 16, 23, 24, 35, 37,
Diaz de i.\ Pena Xarcisse (1809-1876) Giotto (c. 1266-1337) 123, 177. 41, 49, 54, 61, 130, 148, 168;
64. Gladwell Harry 14. Elizabeth, his sister 13, 14;
Dickens Charles (1812-1870) 14, 33. Glanum, ruins of (Provence) 145, 146. Cornells, uncle from Amsterdam 29;
130. Gogh Vincent van (1853-1890), Jan, uncle 16;
Divisionism 61, 80. correspondence with Theo 13, 14, 16, Theo, his brother (1857-1891) 8, 11,
Dordrecht, stay at (January 21-April 30, 17, 21, 23, 24, 29, 32, 33, 35, 37, 59, 13, 14, 16/18, 23, 24, 29, 32, 35, 37, 41,
1877) 16, 163. 64, 77, 79, 87, 90, 95, 106/108, 110, 54, 55, 61/64, 74, 77, 79, 82, 87, 89,
Dore Gustavo (1833-1883) 147, 163. 112, 113, 118, 122, 123, 128, 131, 90, 95, 106/108, 110, 112, 113, 118,
I ivsky Feodor Michailovitch 137, 138, 143, 145/148, 152, 156, 162, 122, 123, 128, 137, 145/148, 150, 152,
(1821-1881) 7, 16, L28, 147, 163. 164, 170, 184, 188, 191, 193, 195, 196; 155, 165, 168, 172, 177, 187, 188, 191,
Drenthe, stay '
in the (autumn 1883) - self-portraits 10, 11, 56, 77, 82, 84, 193/196; Vincent Willem, Theo's son
32 35, 66. 1(17, 112, 133, 138, 146, 147, 156, 158, (born January 31, 1890) 8, 146/148,
Durand-Ruel Gallery (Paris) 61,63,102. 165, 166, 183, 196; 152, 155. 168, 177, 187, 188;
Direr Albrecht (1471-1528) 32, 49. - copies after old masters 17, 18, 146, Vincent, his brother (|1852) 11, 155,
158, 165; Delacroix 146, 147, 165; 156;
Egyptian art 170. Gustave Dore 147, 163; Holbein 18; Vincent, his uncle 11, 13, 16, 23;
Eindhoven (Holland) 37. in. 44. .Millet 13,17,147,165,167; Rembrandt Willemien, his sister 23, 63, 77, 90,
Eliot George (1819-1880) 11. L56, 166, 171; 117. 162, 162, 168, 170, 177. 183, 193,
England 11, 17. other works mentioned in the text: 196.
Essen, Folkwang Museum 143, 162. Antwerp: Skull with n <
'igarette (winter GONCOURT brothers, Edmond (1822-
Etten (Dutch Brabant) II, 18; L885-1886) 66; 1896) and Jules (1830-1870) 33, 41,
stay at (April 12, L881-Christmas The Belgian Painter
Aries: portraits, 79, 81.
1881) L5, 18, 23/26, 33, 3;,. Bocfc(summer 1888) 106,138; Mittiel Gothie art 29. 140.
Expressionism 196. (summer 1888) 106; The Artist's Graetz 11. R. 128, 170.
Eyi k Jan van (1386/90-1 ill) and Mother (October 1888) 112; Dr FiUx Groningen 11.
Hubert :'.."..
Reg (January 1889) 112: Groot de, family at Xiienon 52.

Harvests (summer 1888) 127; The Bed Grunbbrgsr Mela 194.

Fanttn-Latoub Henri (1836-1904) 77. Inns 127, 162; StiU Life* (Ma\ L888) GrOnewald Matthias (c 1476-1528) 11".
I aiivism, l''aii\cs 1 1(1, l!l(i. 122; SHU Life with Herrings (1889) GUILLAI min Annand i
L841-1927) 63.
i
lorent 77. 113; 71. 77, 177. is I. 1ST. L88.
I'Vlix (1861-1944) 71. Anvcrs: Adelint Unions 196; Made-
i
Luke Kin. moiselle Oachel nl thr Piano (summer ll\ u,r\ van der, pedlar at Paturages 16.

Fontvieille 106. 1890) 184, 196; Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum 19.

202
Hague, The, stay at (1869) 13; (Christ- Portrait of Van Gogh, pastel 68. Monticelli Adolphe (1824-1886) 62/64,
mas 1881-September 1883) 23, 24, 26, Laval Charles (1862-1894) 106, 107, 120. 77, 89, 150, 164.
29, 33, 37, 40, 55, 65, 80; Leclercq Julien 187. Montpellier 184; Musee Fabre 110,158.
- Goupil Gallery 13. Leningrad, Hermitage 126. Moreas Jean (1856-1910), Manifeste
Hals Frans (1581/85-1666) 41, 49. Levens, painter at Antwerp 62, 77. symboliste (1886) 61.
Hamma. her A.M. 81, 123. Leyden 29, 193. Moscow, Pushkin Museum 163, 185.
Hartrick A.S. (born 1864) 63, 77, 84; Liebermann Max (1847-1935) 33. Mourier-Petersen Christian Wilhelm
Portrait of Van Gogh, watercolor 84. Lille 184. (born 1858) 90.
Heidegger Martin (1889) 65. Lohengrin (Wagner, 1886) 61. Munch Edvard (1863-1944) 35.
Hermans, goldsmith at Eindhoven 40, London 13, 14, 17; Munich, Neue Staatsgalerie 87.
44, 52. Goupil Gallery 13;
Hiroshige (1797-1858) 79. National Gallery 137, 157; Nagera H. 156.
Hirschig Anton 187. Tate Gallery 130; New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery
Hofmannsthal Hugo von (1874-1929) collections: A. Chester Beatty 104; 115.
172. A. T. Smith 39. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Hokusai (1760-1849) 79. Loti Pierre (1850-1923) 79. 102, 128, 152;
Holbein Hans the Younger (1497-1543) Lovgren S. 172. Museum of Modern Art 151;
18. Loyer Ursula 14. collections: Mrs Siegfried Kramarskv
Holderlin Friedrich (1770-1843) 156. Luce Maximilien (1858-1941) 71, 81. 183; George N. Richard 167;
Hoogeven (Drenthe) 33. Edwin C. Vogel 123; John Hay
Hugo Victor (1802-1885) 33. MacKnight Dodge (born 1860) 90. Whitney 158; Alfred Wyler 52.
Manet Edouard (1832-1883) 41, 44. Nietzsche Friedrich (1844-1900) 156.
Impressionism 41, 61/63, 67, 70, 74, 77, Maris Willem (1844-1910) 23, 26, 30; Nordenfalk Carl 80.
80, 81, 90, 106, 112, 122, 131, 140, Jacobus Hendrikus (1837-1899) 26; Novalis Friedrich (1772-1801) 156.
184, 187. Matthijs (1839-1917) 26. Novotny Fritz 123, 165.
Isaacson, Dutch critic 177. Marois P. 152. Nuenen, stay at (November 1883-
Israels Jozef (1824-1911) 26, 30, 49, 52. Marseilles 63, 64, 89, 112, 123. November 1885) 35, 37/43, 45, 46,
Martinez, Cuban painter at Auvers 187. 48/52, 55, 62, 77, 118, 147, 158, 166,
Japan, influence of 79, 81, 87, 89, 102, Martini Simone (c. 1285-1344) 140. 172, 187, 195, 196.
107, 120, 123, 127, 138, 187; Matisse Henri (1869-1954) 62, 80.
- Japanese prints 26, 55, 79, 81, 82, 87, Maupassant Guy de (1850-1893) 81, Otterlo, Kroller-Muller Museum 4, 46,

122, 140. 128. 72, 74, 96, 100, 117, 133, 160, 161,
Jaspers Karl (1883) 156. Mauron Charles 8, 89. 191.
Jaures Jean (1859-1914) 62. Mauve Anton (1838-1888) 23, 24, 26,
Jerrold W. B. 163. 30, 33, 44, 90. Paris 13, 14, 17, 40, 41, 52, 55, 79, 95,
Jones, Methodist minister in London 14. Meier-Graefe Julius 148. 108, 112, 118, 127, 128, 146, 147, 156,
Jongkind Johann Barthold (1819-1891) Mendes Catulle (1841-1909) 62. 177, 184, 187, 188, 193, 196;
77. Mendes da Costa Dr 16. - Montmartre 59, 62, 69, 80, 177;
Jugendstil (Modern Style) 29, 195. Meryon Charles (1821-1868) 184. Goupil Gallery (later Boussod and
Mesdag Hendrik Willem (1831-1915) Valadon Gallery) 13, 17, 61, 74, 79,
Kandinsky Wassily (1866-1944) 80. 26. 187, 194;
Kerssemakers 41, 49. Meunier Constantin (1831-1905) 16. Georges Petit Gallerv: International
Kierkegaard Soeren (1813-1855) 33, Michelangelo (1475-1564) 55. Exhibition (1886) 61; (1887) 67;
138. Michelet Jules (1798-1874) 14. - World's Fair (1889) 145:
Konihck Philips (1619-1688) 95, 123. Millet Jean-Francois (1814-1875) 13, Bibliotheque Nationale 79; Musee
Koning A. H. (1860-1944) 62, 66, 69, 14, 17, 26, 37, 40, 44, 50, 52, 63, 65, Carnavalet 66; Louvre 14, 40, 56,
112. 67, 147, 165, 167. 123, 183; Musee du Jeu de Paume 77;
Kraus G. 89, 156, 188. Milliet, second lieutenant in the Musee Rodin 79, 82; Luxembourg 14:
Zouaves 106. - Restaurant La Mere Bataille 62;
Laeken, near Brussels 16, 17. Minkowska Francoise 156. - Cabaret Le Tambourin, Bd. Clichv 69,
Lautrec Henri de Toulouse- (1864- Monet Claude (1840-1926) 61/63, 102, 74, 81, 82;
1901) 62, 68, 69, 74, 80, 81, 177, 187; 131, 184, 196. Theatre Libre 74:

203
- stay at (spring 1886-February 1888) Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen 64. Tabarant A. 77.

11, 49, 56, 59, 61, 62, 64/75, 77, 79, 81, Roulix Monsieur and Madame (Aries) Tanguy, Pere 66, 77, 79, 82, 106, 177,
82, 84, 89, 90; 102, 107, 112, 113, 131, 137, 146, 166. 188.
apartment in the Rue Lepic 61, 62, Rousseau Henri the Douanier (1844- Tarascon 95.
69, 80. 1910) 61. Tartarin de Tarascon (Daudet) 164.
Paris Illuslre 79. Rubens Pieter Paul (1577-1640) 41, 52, Tersteeg, manager of the Goupil
Paturages, near Mons 16. 55. Gallery at the Hague 13, 17, 64,
Petit Georges (Gallery at Paris) 61, 67. Ruisdael Jacob van (1628/29-1682) 33, 90.
Petrarch (1304-1374) 127. 123. Tilburg (Holland) 13.
Peyron Dr Theophile 146, 152. Russell John (1858-1931) 62, 63, 84, Tolstoy Leo (1828-1910) 28, 107.
Philadelphia, Henry P. Mcllhenny 90. Tralbaut M. E. 81.
Collection 155. Troyes, Pierre Levy Collection 70.
Pietersen, Pastor at Brussels 17. Saenredam Pieter Jansz. (1597-1665)
Pissarro Camille (1830-1903) 61, 63, 110, 111, 128. Uhde Wilhelm (1874-1947) 35, 165.
66, 74, 80, 147, 177, 184; Saint Louis, City Art Museum 71, 175. Utrecht, stay at (May 1883) 32, 37.
Lucien (1863-1944) 63, 177. Saint-Ouen 80."
Pont-Aven (Brittany) 106, 110, 120, Saint-Remy-de-Provence, stay at (May Valadon Suzanne (1867-1938) 77.
140, 150, 164. 3, 1889-May 16, 1890) 13, 17, 44, 113, Vanbeselaere W. 55.
Portier 63. 137, 144/150, 152, 158, 160/172, 177, Valmondois 177.
Poi-ssin Nicolas (1594-1665) 8, 41. 183, 195, 196; Verhaeren Emile (1855-1916) 16.
Provence 62, 77, 79, 81, 85, 89, 122, 123, - Asylum 113, 143/145, 148, 156, 184, Vermeer Jan (1632-1675) 41, 111, 122,
127, 128, 138, 145, 156, 172. 195. 128.
Puvis de Chavannes Pierre (1824-1898) Saintes-Maries-de-Ia-Mer, Les 95, 102, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum 105,
61, 108, 164, 177, 195. 123, 127, 131. 138.
Salles, Pastor at Aries 112, 113, 146. Vigxon Victor (1847-1909) 147.
Rachel, prostitute at Aries 110, 146. Salon (1886) 61; (1875) 14. Vos Kee 24, 28, 35.
Raffaelli Jean-Francois (1850-1924) Salon des Independants (1886) 61;
77, 81. (1887) 69; (1888) 90. Wacker van de 41.
Rappard Ridder Anton van (1858-1892) ScBAPTRO Meyer 138, 172. Washington, Phillips Collection 109.
18, 23, 25, 29, 32, 33, 37, 54, 77. Scheveningen 32. Wasmes (Belgium), stay at (January
Ravoux Monsieur and Madame (Auvers) Schuffenecker Emile 108. 1879) 16.
184, 194/196. Segatori Agostina 74, 77, 82. Weele Herman Johannes (1852-1930)
Redoh Odilon (1840-1916) 61, 62. Sensier, Millet's biographer (1881) 26, 26.
Hkid Alexander 62, 82. 65. Weisbach Werner 165,
Rembrandt (1606-1669) -11, 52, 84, 95, Seurat Georges-Pierre (1859-1891) 61, Weissehbruch Johannes (1822-1880)
LOB, 123, 138, L46, 155, 166, 170, 171. 63, 66, 67, 69/71, 77, 80, 150, 164. 26, 29.
Renaissance 50. Siiafrath, Catholic sacristan at Xuenen Whitman Walt (1819-1892) 107, 128.
Reran Ernest 1 1823-1892) 11. 37.
Renoib Pierre Augusta (1841-1919) 61, Shakespeare William (1564-1616) 145. Yeisen Kesai 79.
63, 67, 77, 127. L84. Si en (Christine) 28, 29, 32, 33, 35, 37.
lirvue Indrprndantc, I'aris 74. Siena, Sienese primitives 138. Zevenbergen Holland)
i 13.
Ki:v Dr Felix 112, 11H, L46, 117. L56. Signac Paul (1863-1935) 66, 67, 71, 74, Zola Emile (1840-1902) 33,41,49,52,
RlMBAUD Arthur (1864-1891) 61. 77, 80, 81, 113. 61, 89.
Robert Marthe L94 SlStET Alfred (1839-1899) 61. Zundert (Dutch Brabant) 11, 13. 23,
Rodin Auguste (1840-1917) 62, 131. Spinoza Baruch (1632-1677) 188. 28, 112. 147, 155, 195.
Riiskii.i. M. 123. STOKES, minister at Ramsgate 14. Zurich, E.G. Buhrle Collection 73, 82;
Rotterdam, Dr w. Nolsl Trenite Estate Stricker, pastor, Van Gogh's uncle 16, Kunsthaus L89.
in; 24, 26. Zweeloo 33.
 WORKS REPRODUCED AND MENTIONED

BERNARD Emile (1868-1941). Self-Portrait. Signed upper right: Emile Bernard, 1888, a son copaing Vincent.
Canvas. (18x21y2 ") Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam (107) 120

CEZANNE Paul (1839-1906). Self-Portrait with Palette. 1885-1887. Canvas. (36x28)0 E.G. Biihrle Collection.
Zurich (84) 82

CO ROT Camille (1796-1875). The Church at Marissel near Beauvais. 1866. Canvas. (21*4x16*0 Louvre, Paris . 40

DAUBIGNY Charles-Francois (1817-1878). Wheatfield. Undated. Canvas. (18y2 x31y2 ") Kroller-Muller Museum,
Otterlo, Holland (191) 190

DAUMIER Honore (1808-1878). Soup. About 1860-1862. Watercolor, charcoal and pen. (11x15%*) Cabinet des
Dessins, Louvre, Paris 50

GAUGUIN Paul (1848-1903). Portrait of Van Gogh painting Sunflowers. Aries 1888. Canvas. (28 3
4 x35 3
4
") Vincent
van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam (HO) 103
— Self-Portrait. 1888. Signed lower right: Les Miserables a l'ami Vincent, p. Gauguin 88. Canvas. (17%x22")
Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam (107) 120
— Les Alyscamps. Aries 1888. Canvas. (36*4x28*4*) Louvre, Paris (12-1 140) 125
— Old Women of Aries. Aries 1888. Canvas. (283/4 x36") Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago 126

GOGH Vincent van (1853-1890). Pollard Willows at Sunset, detail. Aries, October 1888. Canvas. Kroller-Muller
Museum, Otterlo, Holland (4) 3
— Self-Portrait Studies. Paris, 1886-1888. Pen and pencil. (12*4x9%*) V.W. van Gogh Collection. Laren.
Holland (11) 10
— The Sower, after Millet. Cuesmes, August 1880. Pen and wash heightened with green and white. (18 7 8 \ 14 !
8
")

Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam (13, 17 ) 12

— Miners' Wives carrying Bags. Etten, April 1881. Pen. (17x23 /2 ") Kroller-Muller
I
Museum, Otterlo, Holland (18) 15
— Thatched Cottages at Nightfall. Nuenen, May 1885. Canvas. (25 3/4 x31y4 ") Vincent van Gogh Foundation,
Amsterdam (21. 44) 20
— The Sower. Etten, 1881. Pen. (8y4 x5y4 ") Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam (23,24)22
— Pond in the Heath. Etten, June 1881. Pen and lead pencil. (9*4x12*4") A. Scholte van Houten Collection,
Lochem, Holland (24) 25
— View from his Studio Window. The Hague, 1883. Pen. (8x5*4") Vincent van Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam 26

205
Behind the Schenkweg. The Hague. May 1882. Pencil heightened with white. ill l 4 <18V) Kroller-Muller
Museum. Otterlo. Holland 27

Thaw. The Hague. March 1883. Watercolor. 15%x I

23') Dr H. P. Bremmer Estate. The Hague 27

Boofs. The Hague. July 1882. Watercolor heightened with white. 1 15% * 21V i G. Benand Collection. Paris (32, 90 J
27

Mother and Child. The Hague. April 1883. Charcoal and lead pencil heightened with white and bistre wash.
121 13V Vincent van Gosh Foundation. Amsterdam
l

Sorrow. The Hague. April 1882. Lead pencil. 1 18 < 12* i F. Bremmer Collection. The Hague 29
Sheet of Pen Sketches. Drenthe. 188 9% Vincent van Gosh Foundation. Amsterdam 34
Man with a Harrow. Drenthe. 1883. Pen. <4 •
5V> Vincent van Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam 35
People coming out of Church at Xuenen. Xuenen. January 1884. Canvas. (16*4x13**) Vincent van Gogh
Foundation. Amsterdam (37, 44) 36
The Parsonage at Xuenen. Xuenen 1885. Canvas. 2 Vincent van Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam (44) 38
The Garden of the Parsonage in Winter. Xuenen 1884. Pen and lead pencil V - Vincent van Gogh
Foundation, Amsterdam (44) 38
The Watermill. Xuenen. November 1884. Canvas on wood. (17' 4 <22V> Mr and Mrs A.T. Smith Collection.
London (44) 39
The Old Tower at Xuenen. Xuenen. May 1885. Canvas V . Vincent van Gogh Foundation.
Amsterdam (44. 195) 39

A Lane in Autumn. Xuenen 1885. Canvas. 1

39-26* Dr W. Xolst Trenite Estate. Botterdam
> . . . (44) 40
Weaver. Xuenen. February 1884. Ink and lead pencil. (10*4x15%") Vincent van Gogh Foundation.
Amsterdam (37, 50. 52) 42
Weaver. Xuenen. May 1884. Pen drawing heightened with white. (12- 15 V> Vincent van Gogh Foundation.
Amsterdam (37, SO, 52) 42
Weaver. Xuenen. January-April 1884. Watercolor. (13%xl7%") Vincent van Gogh Foundation.
Amsterdam (37, 5*'). 52) 43
Woman scouring Pots. Xuenen. Summer 1885. Black crayon. (21*4x17"") Kroller-Muller Museum. Otterlo.
Holland . . . (54) 45

Peasant Mowing. Xuenen 1885. Black crayon. 1 1»> 2 incent van Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam (55) 46
Still Life with Apples and Two Pumpkins. Xuenen. September 1S85. Canvas. (23 1 t -33V» Kroller-Muller
:n. Otterlo, Holland (49) 4-;

Still Life with Bowls. Xuenen. September 1885. Canvas on wood. 32 Vincent van Gogh Foundation.
Amsterdam
Thre*> Bir September- -ober 1885. Canvas. (13x16*4") Kroller-Muller Museum. Otterlo.
Holland (49
Still Life with the Bible. Xuenen. October 1885. Canvas. (25*4x31*) Vincent van Gogh Foundation.
Amsterdam (4*. 0, SO, 172t 47
IVasant Woman with a Cap. Xuenen 1885. |
Vincent van Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam . .

"f Hands for the Potato Eaters Xuenen. January L886. Black cray. •• " k TIB Gogh
Foundation. Amsterdam (41. 52) 19
Thf Potato Eaten. Nuene* May 18G Vincent van Gogh Foundation.
rdam (41. 51
Portrait of a Woman. Antwerp, December 1885. Canvas. (23%xl9%") Mr and Mrs Alfred Wyler Collection,
X.w York (52, 55) 53

The Tower of Antwerp Cathedral. Antwerp, December 1885. Black crayon. (11% x 8%") Vincent van Gogh
Foundation, Amsterdam (55) 54
Montmartre. Paris 1887. Canvas. (37%x47%") Municipal Museum, Amsterdam (59, 80) 58

View from Van Gogh's Room in the Rue Lepic. Paris 1887. Canvas. (18%xl5yg") Vincent van (lotdi

Foundation. Amsterdam (61, 62, 80) 60

Red Gladioli and White Gillvflowers in a Vase. Paris 1886. Canvas. (25%xl3%") Boymans-Van Beuningen
Museum, Rotterdam "... (62, 77, 80) 64

Shoes. Paris 1886. Canvas. (15x18") Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam (77) 65
Le Moulin de la Galette. Paris 1886. Canvas. (24x19%") Museo National de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires (62, 80) 67

Woman in the Cabaret "Le Tambourin" (Portrait of Agostina Segatori?). Paris, early 1888. Canvas. (21%xl8J4*)
Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam (82) 69
The Hiith Factories at Clichy. Paris 1887. Canvas. (21%x28%") City Art Museum of Saint Louis, Gift of Mrs
Mark C. Steinberg (81) 71
Restaurant Interior. Paris 1887. Canvas. (17%x22%") Kroller-Muller Museum. Otterlo, Holland . . (81) 72
The Asnieres Bridges. Paris 1887. Canvas. (20y2 x25>/2 ") E. G. Biihrle Collection. Zurich . . . (77, 80, 81) 73

Still Life with a Plaster Statuette. Paris, Summer 1887. Canvas. (21y2 xl8y4 ") Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo,
Holland (81) 74
The Yellow Books (Parisian Novels). Paris 1887. Canvas. (28%x36y2 ") Private Collection, Switzerland . (81) 75
An Italian Woman (Agostina Segatori?). Paris 1887. Canvas. (32x23y2 ") Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris (74, 77, 82) 76

Le Pere Tanguy. Paris 1887. Canvas. (36x28%") Musee Rodin, Paris (66, 77. 79. 82, 106) 78

Free Copy of a Japanese Print by Kesai Yeisen. Paris 1888. Canvas. (39 1/2 x23%") Vincent van Gogh Foundation.
Amsterdam (81) 79
Self-Portrait at the Easel. Paris 1888. Canvas. (25%xl9%") Vincent van Gogh Foundation.
Amsterdam (77, 82, 84, 165) 83

View of Aries. Aries 1889. Canvas. (28%x36%") Neue Staatsgalerie, Munich (87) 86
Almond Branch in Bloom. Aries, February 1888. Canvas. (9y2 x7y2 ") Vincent van Gogh Foundation,
Amsterdam (89, 118, 168) 88

The Drawbridge. Aries, March 1888. Pen. (3'/2 x4%") Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam . . (120) 90

The Bridge of Langlois. Aries 1888. Black chalk. (9%xl2%") Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mr and
Mrs George Gard De Syfva Collection (120) 90

The Drawbridge. Aries, May 1888. Canvas. (19'/2 x 25") Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne . . . (90,120)91
Orchard in Provence. Aries, April 1888. Reed pen heightened with watercolor. (15y2 x21") Vincent van Gogh
Foundation, Amsterdam (29. 122. 164) 92

View of Aries. Aries 1888. Indian ink and reed pen. (17x21%") Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.
Providence (92) 9:!

Street in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Saintes-Maries, June 1888. Pen and reed pen. (9%xl2 1
2
"( Collection. The
r
Museum of Modern Art, New Y ork, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Bequest (123, 121 / 95
Boats at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Saintes-Maries, June 1888. Reed pen and Indian ink. (9y2 xl2% J. K. )

Thannhauser Collection. New Y'ork. Courtesy of Thannhauser Foundation (123, 127) 95

207
 — Haystacks in Provence. Aries, June 1888. Canvas. (28 3/4 x363/8 ") Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, Holland (123) 96
— La Crau with Market Gardens. Aries, June 1888. Canvas. ("28 3/4 x36 4") Vincent van Gogh Foundation,
1

Amsterdam (123) 97

,
_ Washerwomen. Aries, June 1888. Pen and reed pen. (12 3/8 x 9y2 ") Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, Holland (99, 123) 98

— The Rock. Aries, July 1888. Reed pen. (19y4 x24") Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam 99
— The Sower. Aries, Summer 1888. Canvas. (25y4 x31 5/8 ") Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, Holland (102, 131, 162) 100
— The Sower. Aries, December 1888. Canvas. (13x 16") Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam (102, 131, 162) 101
—

!— —
—
Portrait of an Old Provencal Peasant (Patience Escalier). Aries, August 1888. Canvas. (27x22") A. Chester
Beatty Collection, London
Seated Girl. Aries, July 1888. Pen and reed pen. (12 1/2 xl3 3/8 ") Print Room, Pushkin Museum, Moscow
Portrait of a Zouave. Aries, June 1888.
Courtesy of Thannhauser Foundation
Portrait of the Postman Roulin. Aries,
Reed pen. (12 5/8 x9 /2 ")
1
J- K. Thannhauser Collection,

August 1888. Pen. (12y2 x9y2 ") Hahnloser-Buhler

New

Collection, Winterthur.
(138) 104
.

York.
.

(131) 107
106

Switzerland (102, 131) 107

— A Corner of the Public Garden. Aries, September 1888. Indian ink and reed pen. (12y2 x9 s/8 ") Vincent van Gogh
Foundation, Amsterdam (127) 108
— Garden with Thistles. Aries. October 1888. Indian ink. (9y2 xl2y2 ") Vincent van Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam 108
Entrance to the Public Gardens at Aries (The Poet's Garden). Aries, September 1888. Canvas. (28y2 x35 3 9 ")
The Phillips Collection, Washington, d.c (127) 109
— Van Gogh's House at Aries (The Yellow House). Aries, September 1888. Canvas. (28 3 8 x36v4 ") Vincent van Gogh
Foundation, Amsterdam (107, 128) 111
— The Carrel Restaurant at Aries. Aries, September 1888. Canvas. (21y4 x25y2 ") Private Collection, U.S.A. (113) 114
— The Night Cafe, Place Lamartine, Aries. Aries, September 1888. Canvas. (28'/2 x36!4") Yale University Art
Gallery, New Haven, Conn. Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark (106, 113, 128) 115

— Outdoor Cafe at Night. Aries, September 1888. Canvas. (31y8 x253/4 ") Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo.
Holland (113, 128) 116
Starry Night. Aries, September 1888. Canvas. (28>/2 x 36%") Private Collection, Paris . . . (107, 128, 172) 117
Van Gogh's Bedroom. Aries 1888. Pen. (5' 4 x7'/8 ") Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam . (128, 147) \\t
Van Gogh's Bedroom. Aries 1888. Pen. (4y2 x4 7/8 ") Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam . (128, 147) 118
Van Gogh's Bedroom. Aries. October 1888. Canvas. (28 3 4 x36") Courtesy of The Art Institute of
Chicago *
(118, 128, 147) 119

Self-Portrait, dedicated to Gauguin. Aries, September 1888. Signed lower right: Vincent. Inscribed upper
left: A ninn ami Paul (i. Canvas. (24y2 x20'/2 ") Courtesy of the Fogg Art Museum. Harvard University, Cam-
bridge, Mass., Maurice Wertheim Collection (107, 120, 138) 121

I.e. AlvBcamps. Aries, October 1888. Canvas. (36'/2 x29") Collection Mr Edwin C. Vogel, New Vork (123, 140) 124

Promenade at Aries (Recollection of the Garden at ECtten). Aries. November 1888. Canvas. (28%x36%")
Hermitage, Leningrad 126
— L'Arlefflenne (Madame Ginoux). Aries. November 1888. Canvas. (36 s/8 x29V) The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York (128. 140, 166, 1S7) 129

Van Gogh's Chair and Pipe. Aries. December ISSK. Signed on the chair: Vincent. Canvas. (36Hx29") Tate
Gallery, London (110) ISO

208
Gauguin's Armchair. Aries, December 1888. Canvas. (35%x28 3/4 ") Vincent van Gogh Foundation.
Amsterdam (110) 130
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear. Aries, January-February 1889. Canvas. (20x17%") Collection of Mr and
Mrs Leigh B. Block, Chicago (112. 133, 138, 156) 132
Still Life with Drawing Board and Onions. Aries, January 1889. Canvas. (19%x25!4") Kroller-Miiller Museum,
Otterlo, Holland (128) 133
Sunflowers. Aries, August 1888. Signed on the vase: Vincent. Canvas. (37 3/4 x29 1/8 ") Vincent van Gogh Founda-
tion, Amsterdam (106, 127, 137, 140, 158) 134

La Berceuse (Madame Roulin). Aries, January-March 1889. Canvas. (36!4x28 3/8 ") Courtesy of Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston. Bequest of John T. Spaulding (112, 131, 137, 140, 166, 170) 135

Sunflowers. Aries, August 1888. Signed on the vase: Vincent. Canvas. (36 3/8 x28 3/4 ") By courtesv of the trustees,
National Gallery, London (106, 127, 137, 140, 158) 136

Sunflowers and La Berceuse. Saint-Remy, May 25, 1889. Sketch. (3 3/4 x4 7/8 ") Vincent van Gogh Foundation,
Amsterdam (140) 137
Garden of the Hospital at Aries. Aries, Spring 1889. Sepia. (18*4 x 23 3/8 ") Vincent van Gogh Foundation,
Amsterdam 139
The Park of the Hospital at Saint-Remy. Saint-Remy, October 1889. Canvas. (28% x 3654") Folkwang Museum,
Essen (143, 145, 158, 162) 142

Entrance Hall of the Hospital at Saint-Remy. Saint-Remy, 1889. Gouache on rose-tinted paper. (24xl8 /2 ") 1

Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam 144

The Stone Bench in the Hospital Garden. Saint-Remy 1889. Ink and reed pen. (24 3 8 xl8 /2 ") Vincent van Gogh 1

Foundation, Amsterdam (145, 162) 148

The Fountain in the Hospital Garden. Saint-Remy 1889-1890. Indian ink. (19 /2 xl8 1 1
8 ") Vincent van Gogh
Foundation, Amsterdam (145, 148, 162) 149
The Starry Night. Saint-Remy, June 1889. Indian ink. (18 1/2 x24 1/2 ") Kunsthalle, Bremen . . (158,172) 150
The Starry Night. Saint-Remy, June 1889. Canvas. (29x3614") Collection, The Museum of Modern Art. New
York. Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest (145, 172) 151

Cypresses. Saint-Remy, June 1889. Ink and reed pen. (32%x24 3,4") In the Brooklyn Museum Collection,
New York (158, 164, 177) 152
Cypresses. Saint-Remy, June 1889. Canvas. (36%x29 /8 ") The Metropolitan Museum
1
of Art, New York.
Rogers Fund, 1949 (150, 152, 158, 164, 177) 153
Wheatfield with Mower. Saint-Remy, June 1889. Canvas. (29x36%") Vincent van Gogh Foundation,
Amsterdam (145. 146. 147. 162. 164. 172) 154

Walled Field. Saint-Remy, June 1889. Canvas. (27y2 x353/4 ") Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (145. 162. 164) 155

Walled Field in the Rain. Saint-Remy, November 1889. Canvas. (28 7/8 x36 3/8 ") Henry P. Mcllhennv Collection,
'.
Philadelphia (162,164)155
Wheatfield and Cypresses. Saint-Remy, June 1889. Canvas. (28'/2 x36") By courtesv of the trustees. National
Gallery, London
' "
...... (145, 162. 164. 177) 157
Self-Portrait. Saint-Remy, September 1889. Canvas. (22 /2 xl7 14") From the Collection of Mr and Mrs John
I

Hay Whitney, New York (146, 158, 164, 165) 159

Olive Trees. Saint-Remy, September-October 1889. Canvas. (28 :i

H x36' 4 ") Kroller-Miiller Museum, Otterlo.
Holland (158, 164. 177) 160

209
 — The Ravine of "Les PevToulets." Saint-Remv. December 1889. Canvas. (28%x36y4") Kroller-Miiller Museum,
Otterlo, Holland .
".
(158, 165, 166) 161
— The Walk, after a print by Gustave Dore in W.B. Jerrold's book "London." Saint-Remy. February
Prisoners'
1890. Canvas. (31%x 25%") Pushkin Museum, Moscow (147) 163 .

— Pieta, after Delacroix. Saint-Remy, 1889. Canvas. (28 3/4 x 23 3/4 ") Vincent van Gogh Foundation,
Amsterdam (146, 147) 166
- The Vigil, after Millet. Saint-Remy, November 1889. Canvas. (28y2 x36 //) Vincent van Gogh Foundation,
1

"
Amsterdam (147) 167
— The First Steps, after Millet. Saint-Remy, January-February 1890. Canvas. (28 3/4 x36") Collection of George
N. Richard, New York (147) 167
— Flowering Stalks. Saint-Remy, 1890. Pen. (16Vsxl2%") Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam . . . 168
— Flowering Almond Branch. Saint-Remv, Februarv 1890. Canvas. (28% x 36 1/i") Vincent van Gogh Foundation,
Amsterdam (148, 152, 168, 177) 169
— The Raising of Lazarus, after Rembrandt's etching. Saint-Remy, May 1890. Canvas. (19x24%*) Vincent
van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam (155, 166, 170) 171
- Stairway at Auvers. Auvers, June 1890. Canvas. (20x28") City Art Museum of Saint Louis . . . (175) 174
— The Town Hall at Auvers on the 14th of July. Auvers, Julv 1890. Canvas. (28 3 8 x36%") Collection of Mr and Mrs
Leigh B. Block, Chicago (188, 195, 196) 176
— Garden behind Houses. Auvers, June 1890. Charcoal, watercolors and oils on paper. (17'/4x21%") Vincent
van Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam (195) 178
Farms among Trees. Auvers. June 1890. Blue distemper and charcoal. (17%x21%") Vincent van Gogh Foun-
dation, Amsterdam 179
— Portrait of Dr Cachet. Auvers. June 1890. Canvas. (26x22V) Mrs Siegfried Kramarskv Collection,
New York (183, 184, 196) 180

The Church at Auvers. Auvers, June 1890. Canvas. (37x29 3 8 ") Dr Gachet Bequest, Louvre. Paris (183, 195) 181
- Self-Portrait. Saint-Remy 1890. Canvas. cJf)', 21% ) Dr Gachet Bequest, Louvre, l'aris . . (183,196)182
Landscape at Auvers. Auvers. June 1890. Canvas. (28% 35% Pushkin Museum, Moscow 185
Peasant Woman with a Hat. Auvers, June 1890. Canvas. (36J4> 28y4 ") Private Collection. Bern . (187. 196) 186
r
Thatched Cottages at Chaponval. Auvers, July 1890. Canvas. (2. )%x31%") Kunsthaus. Zurich . . (184, 195) 189
Field under a Stormy Sky. Auvers. July 1890. Canvas. (19 8/8 x39%") Vincent van Gogh Foundation.
Amsterdam ...'." '
(188, 191, 196) 190
Daubigny'a Garden. Auvers. July 1890. Pen. (3x8*) Vincent van Gogh Foundation. Amsterdam (184, 193, 196) 191
Wheat field with Crows. Auvers. Julv 1890. Canvas. (20x40 3 4 ") Vincent van Gogh Foundation,
Amsterdam '

(188, 192, 196) L93

HALS Frans (1581/86-1666). The Civic Guards of Si George, detail. 1639. Fians Hals Museum. Haarlem.
Holland (41) 49

ISRAELS Jozei (1824-1911). Towing the Boat Canvas. (24% :;;,

% I
Municipal Museum. Amsterdam (on loan
from the Pijksmiiseuin) (30) 31
— The Frugal Meal. Drawing (~r2) 49

KONINCK Philips (1619-1688). Landscape with the River Waal at Peek. L664. Canvas. (58 B0 I
Royal Museum of
Pine Vrts, Copenhagen (96) '.'4

L'H)
KONING A. H. (1860-1944). Windmill in Montmartre. Undated. Canvas. (18x22%") Vincent van Gogh Foundation,
Amsterdam 66

LAUTREC Henri de TOULOUSE- (1864-1901). Vincent van Gogh during his Stay in Paris. Paris 1887. Pastel.

(21 1/4xl7 3 4 ") Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam 68

— Young Woman sitting at a Table ("Poudre-de-Riz"). 1889. Canvas. (22x18") Vincent van Gogh Foundation,
Amsterdam 69

LAVAL Charles (1862-1894). Self-Portrait. Signed lower right: a l'ami Vincent, C. Laval 88. Canvas. (19%x23%")
Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam (107 ) 120

MARIS Willem (1844-1910). Winter Landscape. Canvas. (18y8 x 39%") Municipal Museum, Amsterdam . . (30) 31

MAUVE Anton (1838-1888). Horses by a Fence. 1878. Canvas. (163/4 x9 3/4 ") Municipal Museum, Amsterdam (on loan
from the Rijksmuseum) 30

MILLET Jean-FranQois (1814-1875). Man Digging, seen from behind. Barbizon, about 1850-1853. Black crayon
on bistre paper. (12% x 10%") Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris 44

MONET Claude (1840-1926). Sunflowers. 1884. Canvas. (50>/2 xl4i/2 ") Durand-Ruel Collection, Paris 102

MONTICELLI Adolphe (1824-1886). Vase of Flowers. 1875-1880. Canvas. (20x15%") Vincent van Gogh Foundation,
Amsterdam (77) 64

"PARIS ILLUSTRE", cover of the special issue on Japan, May 1886 (magazine published by Boussod and Valadon,
Paris): Japanese Courtesan or "Oiran." Print by Kesai Yeisen. (Page 18xl2y2 ") Reproduced from a copy in
the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (81) 79

REMBRANDT Harmensz. (1606-1669). Tower of the Westerkerk in Amsterdam, seen from the Prinsengracht.
About 1646. Pen and bistre wash. (7 /2 x5%") P'odor Collection, Municipal Museum, Amsterdam
1
.... 54
— Thatched Cottage beside a Canal. 1652-1653. Reed pen and bistre wash. (5%x9 3/4 ") Courtesy of The Art Institute
of Chicago (95) 94
— The Artist's Mother. 1639. Panel. (3D/4 x24y4 ") Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (138) 105
— The Raising of Lazarus. About 1632. Etching. (14%xl0") Print Room, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (155. 166, 171) 170

SAENREDAM Pieter Jansz. (1597-1665). The Old Town Hall of Amsterdam. 1657. Canvas. (25%x32%") Rijks-
museum, Amsterdam (Ill, 128) 110

SEURAT Georges (1859-1891). The Suburbs. 1883. Canvas. (13x16%") Pierre Lew Collection, Troves,
*
France (71, 81) 70

SIGNAC Paul (1863-1935). View of Montmartre. 1884. Canvas. (13% xl0y2 ") Musee Carnavalet, Paris . ... 66
— Still Life with the Book "Soleil." 1883. Canvas. (12%xl8%") Stiftung Preussisicher Kulturbesitz, National-
galerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin 74
 PUBLISHED MAY 1968

TEXT AND ILLUSTRATIONS PRINTED IN OFFSET

BY IMPRIMERIES REUNIES S.A., LAUSANNE,
UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TECHNICAL STAFF
OF EDITIONS D'ART ALBERT SKIRA

PHOTOGRAPHS
All the photographs in this book
were supplied by the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam
on behalf of the Vincent van Gogh Foundation

with the exception of those obligingly lent by the following museums and collections: Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum (page 110), Boston, Museum of Fine Arts (page 135), Buenos Aires, Museo
nacional de Bellas Aries (page 67), Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum (page 121),
Chicago, Art Institute (pages 119, 126), Chicago, Leigh B. Block Collection (pages 132, 176),
Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptolek (page 155), Copenhagen, Royal Museum of Fine Arts
(page 94), Essen, Folkwang Museum (page 142), London, National Gallery (pages 136,
157), London, Tate Gallery (page 130), London, A. Chester Beally Collection (page 104),
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (page 90 top), Moscow, Pushkin Museum (pages 106,
185), New Haven, Conn., Yale University Art Gallery (page 115), New York, Brooklyn
Museum (page 152 lop), New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art (page 153), New York,
Museum of Modern Art (pages 95 lop, 151), New York, Mrs Siegfried Kramarsky Collection
(page 180), New York, John Hay Whitney Collection (page 159), Otlerlo, Kroller-M tiller
Museum (pages 3, 15, 27 lop, 45 lop, 46 top and bottom, 72, 74, 96, 98, 100, 116, 133, 160,
161, 190 top), Paris, C. Durand-Ruel Collection (page 102), Philadelphia, Henry P. Mcllhenny
Collection (page 155), Providence, Rhode Island School of Design (page 93), Rotterdam,
A.S. Nolst Trenite Collection (page 40), Saint Louis, Mo., City Art Museum (pages 71,
174), Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (page 105), Zurich, E.G. Buhrle Foundation
(page 82). Other photographs by Maurice Babey, Basel (pages 40 right, 49 center, 73), Henry
Alexandria ,Va. (pages 53, 109), Joachim Blauel, Munich (page 86), Brenwasser,
B. Beville,
New York (page 124), Bulloz, Paris (page 66 right), Dalzell Hatfield, Los Angeles (page 167),
A. Dingjan, The Hague (pages 27 center, 29), W. Drayer, Zurich (page 189), A. Frequin,
The Hague (page 64 right), Giraudon, Paris (page 163), A. Godin, Troyes (page 70),
Martin Hesse, Bern (pages 107 right, 186), F. Lemer, Neic York (page 129), La Photo-
theque Europienne, Paris (pages 27 bottom, 44, 78, 79 right), Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Cologne
(page 91), Sotheby, London (page 39), Walter Steinkopf, Berlin (page 74), Stickelmann,
Bremen (page 150), and by courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
(pages 95 bottom, 107 left), the Musee .larquemart- Andre, Paris (page 126 bottom) and the
Service de Documentation pholographique des Musees Naliotuiux, Versailles (pages 50, 76,
125, 181, 182).

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