Van Gogh: Painted With Words Page #4

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We're undertaking this new trial with real good faith.

It's a pity that he isn't a little more accommodating,

but there's simply no changing the fact that he's eccentric.

And I, admitting that I am a sort of dog

accept them

for what they are.

Despite the difficulties at home,

it was around this time

that Vincent came into his own as an artist.

Starting with the drawings of local weavers.

Every day, I paint studies of the weavers here.

I think the looms, with that quite complicated machinery,

in the middle of which sits the little figure,

will also lend themselves to pen drawings.

I must make sure that I get them so that the colour and tone

match with other Dutch paintings, though.

These Dutch painters he was so impressed by

were Anton Mauve and Jozef Israels,

artists from The Hague School,

celebrated for their rural scenes and peasant subjects.

Their palette was grey and brown,

matching the weather conditions of The Netherlands.

Very different from the revolutionary paintings being produced in Paris at that time

by The Impressionists with their bright and colourful paintings,

which Theo had written to Vincent about.

When I hear you talk about a lot of new names,

it's not always possible for me to understand when I've seen absolutely nothing by them.

And from what you say about Impressionism, it's not entirely

clear to me what one should understand by it.

For my part, I find so tremendously much in Israels, for instance, that

I'm not particularly curious about or eager for something

different or newer.

Despite this, Vincent was becoming increasingly interested in colour,

fascinated by what he saw emerging on the looms.

When the weavers weave those fabrics, they try, as you know,

to get the very brightest colours in balance against one another

in the multicoloured tartans,

so that, rather than the fabric clashing, the overall effect is

harmonious from a distance.

You have to go straight to Eugene Delacroix

to find such an orchestration of colours.

I'm talking about the blue, green sketch with

red and purple and touches of lemon yellow.

It speaks a symbolic language through colour itself.

So now Vincent starts to introduce shards of colour into his work,

in landscapes,

and then in a series of portraits of local peasants.

I have a few of the heads I promised you.

They are studies, in the true meaning of the word.

I've already painted at least 30 or so.

At the same time, I'm working on those peasants around a dish of potatoes again.

I hope that the painting of those potato eaters will progress a bit.

You see, I really wanted to make it so that

people get the idea that these folk,

eating their potatoes by the light of their little lamp on the table,

They have tilled the earth themselves with these hands

they are putting in the dish, so the whole speaks of manual labour

and thus they have honestly earned their food.

I wanted to give the idea of

a way of life wholly different from ours.

I certainly don't just want everyone to admire it

or approve of it without knowing why.

Admiration certainly didn't come from Theo,

or from Vincent's friend and fellow artist,

one Anthon van Rappard.

My dear friend!

You can do better than this

fortunately.

That coquettish little hand of that woman at the back,

how untrue!

And what connection is there between the coffeepot,

the table

and the hand lying on top of the handle?

What's that pot doing, for that matter?

It isn't standing,

it isn't being held,

but what then?

And why may that man on the left not have a knee,

or a belly or lungs?

Or are they in his back?

And why must his arm be a metre too short?

And why must he lack half of his nose?

With such a manner of working, you dare to invoke the name of Millet?

Come on!

Art is too important, it seems to me, to be treated so

cavalierly.

But perhaps van Rappard had missed the point.

I want people to say of my work,

that man feels deeply, that man feels subtly,

despite my so-called coarseness or perhaps precisely because of it.

Do you understand?

It seems pretentious to talk like this now, but that's why I want to push on!

The Potato Eaters demonstrates the level of

accomplishment van Gogh had reached in his art -

and remember, he'd only been painting for four years.

It was also the first and the last time he ever did a group portrait.

But the contemptuous critique of van Gogh's masterpiece

wasn't the only matter featured in van Rappard's letter.

The news of the death of your father came so unexpectedly

that I very much wanted some further message,

which didn't come, however.

Did you think that I had so little interest in your father

that a polite formula to announce something so affecting

was enough for that interest?

Vincent hardly mentions the death of his father in the letters of the time,

but despite the difficulties of their relationship,

he was nevertheless affected by the news.

My dear Theo,

I'm still very much under the impression of what has just happened.

I just kept painting these two Sundays.

And he painted

his father's Bible.

I'm sending you a still life of an open, hence an off-white, Bible,

bound in leather, against a black background.

I painted this one in a single day.

This is to show you that when I say that perhaps I haven't

grafted entirely for nothing,

I mean it.

And, tellingly,

Vincent placed next to his father's Bible

a book by the French novelist Emile Zola,

the supreme chronicler of the oppressed and tormented working class.

Vincent saw in Zola a kindred spirit,

embracing the social purpose of art

as well as the artistic interpretation of reality.

'Zola, in La Joie De Vivre and L'Assommoir, and so many other masterpieces,

'paint life as we feel it ourselves and

'thus satisfies that need which we have, that people tell us the truth.'

Read lots of Zola, it's healthy stuff

and clears the mind.

The next part of his journey would take him to the epicentre of the art world,

leaving the Netherlands far behind him.

Vincent arrived in Paris in February 1886,

when the art scene was in transition.

Impressionism had already been dominant for over a decade,

but now the hunt was on for something new.

Somehow, he finally understood that to be taken seriously as an artist,

he had to come to Paris.

However, he didn't bother to inform Theo until he'd already arrived,

sending him a note to meet him in The Louvre in the Salle Carree,

where the great European masters were hung -

the Rembrandts and Delacroixs.

Vinsent intended to immerse himself in the artistic life of the city,

and moved to Montmartre with Theo,

into this house at 54 Rue Lepic.

Fortunately, we're doing well in our new home.

You'd no longer recognise Vincent, he's changed so much,

and that strikes others even more than me.

He has had a major operation on his mouth, for he had lost almost all

his teeth because of the poor state of his stomach.

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