Van Gogh: Painted With Words Page #7

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where he would remain for a year.

The letters he wrote during that time

are a heart-wrenching confession

of his coming to terms with his condition.

I wanted to tell you that

I've done well to come here.

First, in seeing the reality of the lives of the

mad, cracked people in this menagerie

I'm losing the vague dread, the fear of the thing. And...

little by little, I can come to consider madness as being an illness like any other.

As far as I know, the doctor here is inclined to

consider what I've had as an attack of

an epileptic nature.

It's quite odd perhaps that the result of this terrible attack is

that in my mind there's hardly any really clear desire or hope left.

I'm thinking of squarely accepting my profession as a madman.

There were days, sometimes weeks, when Vincent was unable to work,

tormented by spells of mental illness.

But these alternated with periods of amazing creativity

in which he was extremely productive.

He was given permission to paint in the surrounding countryside

and sent dozens of paintings to Theo in Paris.

"Thanks very much for the consignment of canvases, colours, brushes, tobacco and chocolate,

"which reached me in good order.

"I was very glad of it,

"for I was pining for work a little."

Also, for a few days now I've been going outside to work in the neighbourhood.

What a beautiful land and what beautiful blue and what a sun.

So then my brush goes between my fingers as if it were the bow on a violin and

absolutely for my pleasure.

I'm struggling

with a canvas begun a few days before my indisposition.

A reaper, the study is all in yellow,

terribly thickly impasted, but the subject was beautiful and simple.

A vague figure struggling like a devil in the

full heat of the day to reach the end of his toil.

And then saw the image of death in it

in the sense that humanity would be like the wheat being reaped.

So, if you like, it's the opposite of that sower I tried before. But

in this death, nothing's sad, it takes place in broad daylight with a sun that

floods everything with a light of fine gold.

Your latest paintings have given me a great deal to think about

as regards your state of mind when you made them.

All of them have

a power of colour

which you hadn't attained before,

which in itself is

a rare quality,

but you've gone further.

But how hard your mind must have worked and how you endangered yourself to the extreme point

endangered yourself to the extreme point where

vertigo is inevitable.

Let me quietly continue my work.

If it's that of a madman, well then, too bad.

Then I can't do anything about it.

And around this time,

Vincent got the only review ever to appear in his lifetime,

by the young critic, Albert Aurier.

What characterises his works as a whole

is its excess of strength,

of nervousness,

its violence of expression.

His colour we know already,

unbelievably dazzling

with this metallic, jewel-like quality.

In his categorical affirmation of character of things,

a powerful figure is revealed -

masculine

daring,

very often brutal

yet sometimes

ingeniously delicate.

Vincent stayed at St Remy for over a year,

but he began to fear being labelled the mad artist,

so once again,

he asked Theo for help.

I don't feel competent enough to judge the way they treat patients here,

and nor do I have any desire to enter into the detail,

but please remember

that around six months ago I warned you that if I was seized

by a crisis of a similar nature, that I would wish to change asylums.

And I've delayed too long already, having allowed an attack to go by in the meantime.

I was then in the middle of work, and I wanted to finish canvases in progress,

otherwise I would no longer be here by now.

Right, so

I'm going to tell you

that it seems to me that a fortnight, though a week would please me more,

should be enough to take the necessary steps to move.

During his stay in the home, this patient, During his stay in the home, this patient,

has had several attacks lasting for between two weeks and a month.

During these attacks, he is subject to terrifying terrors,

and has on several occasions attempted to poison himself,

either by swallowing colours that he used for painting, or by ingesting paraffin,

which he had taken from the boy when he was filling his lamps.

In the interval between attacks, the patient is perfectly calm and lucid,

and passionately devotes himself to painting.

He is asking to be discharged today in order to go to live in the north of France,

hoping that climate will suit him better.

In May 1890, he moved to Auvers, close to Paris,

with a letter of introduction from Theo to a Dr Paul Gachet.

And he rented an attic room here at the Auberge Ravoux.

Once settled in Auvers, Vincent set himself a punishing schedule,

leaving his room at five in the morning

to go out and paint in fields

and not returning till nine at night.

It was a period of intense activity in which he produced a canvas a day.

Being back north,

I am very distracted.

I did a portrait of Dr Gachet the other day.

You have a face, the colour

of over-heated and sun-drenched

brick, with reddish hair,

a white cap, blue background.

He's very nervous and

very bizarre.

My portrait of myself is almost like this too -

so similar are we physically, and morally.

"I think he is sicker than I am, or

shall we say, just as much?

"When one blind man leads another, don't they both fall into the ditch?"

Although Vincent doubted Dr Gachet's ability to help him,

they did become good friends.

He dined at his house and painted his daughter.

They had much in common.

Gachet was not only a physician but also an amateur artist,

and deeply involved in the treatment of mental malaise.

But despite the doctor's sympathetic ear,

Vincent is still alone.

Since my illness, the feelings

of loneliness takes hold of me in the fields

in such a fearsome way that I hesitate to go out.

with time, though, that will change.

It's only in front of the easel while painting that

I feel a little of life.

I feel

a failure

that's it as regards me.

I feel that that's the fate I'm accepting

and which won't change any more.

In July 1890, he returned to Paris to visit Theo

and his sister-in-law, Jo,

and to see for the first time his recently-born nephew,

Vincent.

Theo explained to him that he now had responsibilities,

with a young family to support.

Vincent now feared that he was becoming a liability.

Distressed, he returned to Auvers that same evening.

I feared,

not completely but a little nonetheless,

that I was a danger to you

living at your expense.

I'd perhaps like to write to you about many things.

I profess the desire has passed to such a degree that I feel the pointlessness of it.

"I'm applying myself to my canvases with all my attention.

"They're immense stretches of wheat fields

under turbulent skies

"..and I made a point of trying to express sadness,

"extreme loneliness."

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