The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh E-Book

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 185

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

'I cannot help that my pictures do not sell. Nevertheless, the time will come when people will see that they are worth more than the price of the paint …' Vincent van Gogh Discover the moving story of Vincent van Gogh, with his artistic genius and emotional torment told through personal letters, sketches and paintings in this beautiful reissue of a previous bestseller. Vincent van Gogh's letters are a written testimony to the artist's struggle to survive and work. This fascinating book's combination of deeply personal letters alongside rough sketches and finished paintings gives an intimate insight into the painter's domestic life in Arles and Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, his spiritual torment and the creative process. The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh engages with the mind of the artist, reflecting his close bond with his brother and closest companion Theo, his relationship with fellow artists and friends, his ongoing struggle with mental illness, and his passion for art. Martin Bailey's introduction provides essential background information about Vincent's early life, setting the period in Provence in perspective. Biographical notes about the recipients of Vincent's letters are provided as well as a guide for visitors to those places painted by Van Gogh.

Leseprobe

THE ILLUSTRATED PROVENCE LETTERS OFVAN GOGH

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Recipients

ARLES

Arrival

The Yellow House

To the Sea

Harvest

Sunflowers

At Home

Gauguin

The Crisis

Relapse

SAINT-RÉMY

To the Asylum

Despair

Postscript: AUVERS

In the Footsteps of Vincent van Gogh

Further Reading

Illustration Acknowledgements

1 PEAR TREE IN BLOOMApril 1888.

Preface

VINCENT VAN GOGH’s greatest paintings were done during his 27 months in Provence. It was here, under the strong light of the Midi, that he captured his sunflowers, orchards, olive groves and harvest scenes. But in addition to his paintings, Vincent left us his letters, a collection of correspondence that enhances our understanding of his pictures. In them Vincent describes the landscape of Provence: the town of Arles, the farmland of the Crau and the mountains of the Alpilles. He writes about his friends and family, most of them far away in Paris or Holland. He discusses his favourite artists and authors, and what they mean to him. He recounts the day-to-day struggle of living without a job – he was dependent on money sent by his brother Theo – and of being ignored by the art world. Most important of all, Vincent writes about his own paintings, often including a little sketch in his letters to explain what he is working on. These sketches, done very quickly and with great spontaneity, capture what he considers are the essential elements of a picture. Vincent’s handwriting is also revealing: he has a great variety of styles, even within one letter, which reflect the mood of what he is trying to say.

The majority of Vincent’s letters were written to his younger brother Theo, who was an art dealer in Paris. Theo kept Vincent’s letters in a cabinet at home in Montmartre and, after his marriage, his wife Jo recalled that ‘week after week I saw the soon familiar yellow envelopes with the characteristic handwriting increase in number’. Theo died just six months after Vincent’s suicide, aged only thirty-three. His wife treasured Vincent’s letters, recording that on her return to Paris after Theo’s funeral the correspondence comforted her: ‘The first lonely evening which I spent in our home after my return I took the package of letters … Evening after evening that was my consolation after the miserable days … I not only read the letters with my heart, but with my whole soul. And so it has remained all the time. I have read them, and re-read them, until I saw the figure of Vincent clearly before me.’

Vincent’s letters to Theo are not the only ones that survive. The correspondence with his mother and his youngest sister Wil exists as do letters to his artist friends Paul Gauguin, Emile Bernard, Paul Signac, John Russell, Eugène Boch and Arnold Koning, as well as those to the Ginoux family, who were his closest friends in Arles. Considering that it was not until years after his death that Vincent’s fame began to spread, it is surprising that so many of his letters have survived. From the three years that Vincent spent in Provence 260 of his letters survive, extracts from nearly half of which are included in this book. In making the selection we have concentrated on material that gives an insight into his everyday life and his paintings. One particular letter should be mentioned, since it was published here for the first time in English in the original version of this book. This is an important letter to Gauguin that Vincent wrote on 22 January 1889, just a month after the crisis that led him to mutilate his ear.

2 LETTER TO WILPart of a poem by Thomas Moore, Who is the Maid?, copied out in English in Vincent’s letter to his sister, c.23 December 1889 [W18/832].

In addition to focusing on Vincent’s stay in the south of France, this book includes a ‘postscript’ on the seventy days that he spent at Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris. It was here that Vincent committed suicide: he climbed up to the wheatfields where he had been painting and shot himself, dying two days later on 29 July 1890. On his body was found a final letter to Theo.

Although Vincent often found it difficult to communicate with people face-to-face, when he took up his pen the ideas flowed. His letters are peppered with references to the writers and artists who inspired him, and show that he was remarkably well-read. Vincent was also a good linguist: most of his letters from Provence were written in French. He also wrote in English, a legacy of his time as a young art dealer in London.

I have referred to Van Gogh as Vincent throughout the text because everyone knew him by his Christian name and this was how he signed his paintings.

This book was originally published by Collins & Brown in 1990, the centenary of the artist’s death. It was then entitled Vincent van Gogh: Letters from Provence. I would like to reiterate my thanks to Gabrielle Townsend, the Collins & Brown editor who commissioned the book and guided it through production. It is now being reissued with a slightly updated text by Pavilion Books. The text of the letters is from the 1958 English translation published by Thames & Hudson as The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh. In 2009 the Van Gogh Museum published a revised translation of the letters, which is also available online. In square brackets after each letter extract in our book, we first give the letter number from the 1958 translation, followed by that of the 2009 translation. In producing this 2021 Batsford edition I would like to express my thanks to Pavilion’s publishing director Tina Persaud and editorial assistant Lilly Phelan.

3 LETTER TO THEOIn this letter of 10 November 1888 [561/718] Vincent explains that Gauguin, who had just arrived in Arles, had suggested an ingenious way of making white picture frames. A tiny sketch was added, showing how Vincent had just framed his painting of ‘The Red Vineyard’.

Finally, I hope that the letters will present Vincent’s paintings in a fresh light, adding another layer of meaning to them.

MARTIN BAILEY

August 2020

Introduction

4 SELF-PORTRAIT WITH DARK FELT HATOne of his early self-portraits, painted in Paris in the winter of 1886–87.

WHEN VINCENT VAN GOGH arrived in Arles, on 20 February 1888, he was almost thirty-five. Although this was to prove his greatest year, in terms of the masterpieces that he produced, he had only started to paint six years earlier. In that short time, he had taught himself. To begin with he had worked in dark colours, depicting the peasants of Brabant. Then, during his time in Paris, he lightened his palette, influenced by the colours of the Impressionists. As he set off for Arles, he was just in the process of developing his highly personal style.

Vincent was born on 30 March 1853 at Zundert, a village in the south of the Netherlands. His childhood seems to have been unremarkable, although he was a rather lonely and awkward boy. His father Theodorus was a Reformed Church pastor and his mother Anna Carbentus ran the family home. The family’s eldest son, Vincent had three sisters and two brothers.

Looking back at his career, it is strange to recall that Vincent worked as an art dealer for seven years. This choice of career, made when he left school at sixteen, was probably not an early sign of artistic ability or interest but the result of family connections. Three of his uncles were in the art business and it was Uncle Cent who found a place for his young nephew at Goupil’s gallery in The Hague.

In 1873, just after turning twenty, Vincent was transferred to London, where he worked at Goupil’s branch in Covent Garden. He found lodgings in Brixton, at 87 Hackford Road, and it was there that he may well have fallen in love with his landlady’s daughter, Eugenie Loyer. She rejected his advances, which pushed him into a deep depression; his work suffered badly and his parents, blaming the ‘London fog’, thought that a change of scene might be the answer. Twice he was temporarily transferred to Goupil’s gallery in Paris, but despite his family’s links with Goupil’s, the company became increasingly dissatisfied with their awkward assistant. Early in the New Year of 1876 he was sacked.

By this time Vincent had become increasingly obsessed by evangelical Christianity. This was, it soon became clear, a reaction to the two great rejections he had suffered – the rebuff by Eugenie and the loss of his job at the gallery. Vincent’s worried parents encouraged their son to seek another job in the art world, possibly with a museum in London. But he was more interested in a position with the church and thought about becoming an evangelist in an English coalmining town or even a missionary in Latin America. In the end he decided to become a teacher.

On his last day at Goupil’s, just before Easter 1876, Vincent received a reply to an application for a job as a teaching assistant in Ramsgate. Although unpaid, he accepted the post in return for board and lodging. The following month the school moved to Isleworth, a village west of London. There Vincent took up preaching, giving his first sermon at Richmond Methodist Church on 29 October 1876. ‘When I was standing in the pulpit, I felt like somebody who, emerging from a dark cave underground, comes back to the friendly daylight,’ he wrote to his brother Theo, who had then taken over his job with Goupil’s in The Hague.

At Christmas 1876 Vincent returned to Holland. Uncle Cent found his nephew another job, this time as a bookshop assistant in the town of Dordrecht. But Vincent, convinced that his vocation lay with the church, never settled down, and four months later he left. Vincent was now determined to become a preacher, but to get a good position in the church he needed to have a university degree and, in order to enter university, he had to pass an examination in Latin and Greek. In May 1877 Vincent set off for Amsterdam, where he lived with his Uncle Jan and studied for his entrance exams. He soon felt that learning ‘dead’ languages was irrelevant and in July 1878 he abandoned his studies, returning to the family home in Etten.

It was then that one of Vincent’s friends from England suggested a post for him. The Reverend Thomas Slade-Jones, a schoolmaster who had employed the young Dutchman in Isleworth, was visiting Holland and told him about a Belgian mission school near Brussels where academic qualifications were not required. Vincent was admitted, but after three months he failed to qualify because his teachers were convinced that he lacked the right qualities. Despite this rejection, his religious fervour was so strong that he was determined to preach the gospel. Setting off on his own, he left for the Borinage, a poverty-stricken region in the south of Belgium, and in January 1879 he obtained a six-month assignment in the coalmining village of Wasmes. There he lived like a pauper, giving away most of his clothes and sharing his food with the miners. Believing that this way of life was inappropriate for a clergyman, his superiors did not renew his contract.

Vincent refused to give up his commitment to preaching the gospel. He moved to the nearby town of Cuesmes, where he served as an evangelist without official backing from the church. For just over a year he lived in abject poverty, largely ignored by the mining community. Vincent suffered from intense depression: ‘There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke coming through the chimney, and go along their way,’ he wrote sadly in June 1880.

Vincent’s religious faith wavered but he discovered a new challenge. ‘In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil . . . and I will go on with my drawing. From that moment everything has seemed transformed for me,’ he wrote to his brother in September. In October 1880 he moved to Brussels, hoping to enrol at the Academy of Fine Art. But despite his initial enthusiasm, the transition from preacher to art student proved difficult and in April 1881 he returned to his parents’ home in Etten. There he continued to practise his drawing by sketching the peasants of Brabant.

It was in Etten that Vincent fell in love again. This time the object of his affection was Kee Vos, his recently widowed cousin who had been invited to the Van Gogh home for the summer holidays. Bound up in thoughts of her lost husband, she had no idea of the deep effect she was having on her younger cousin and was astonished when Vincent suddenly declared his love. Kee immediately rejected him, in remarkably similar circumstances to the way Eugenie had reacted seven years earlier. The emptiness created by Kee’s rejection killed not only Vincent’s love but his remaining religious faith.

Vincent’s parents found their son impossible to understand. They had been saddened when he had been sacked as an art dealer. They had found it difficult to comprehend his behaviour in the Borinage when he had given away all his possessions to the poor. Now he had fallen in love with his widowed cousin and he had rejected the church, which was taken as a personal rebuff by his father. Relations at home became increasingly tense and in December 1881 Vincent set off once again, this time returning to The Hague, where twelve years earlier he had started his career with Goupil’s. Determined to learn how to paint, he convinced Theo to agree to support him financially while he developed his artistic skills. Within a few weeks of his arrival in The Hague, Vincent fell in love with a prostitute. Sien Hoornick was struggling to bring up her four-year-old daughter by earning her living on the streets. She was pregnant, drank heavily and was very moody. Yet despite her desperate situation – or perhaps because of it – Vincent fell in love with her and transformed this ‘fallen’ woman into his muse.

In The Hague Vincent really began to develop his artistic skills. He asked for help from Anton Mauve, a successful painter who had married his cousin Jet Carbentus. Initially Mauve was sympathetic, encouraging him to take up painting rather than simply drawing. But Vincent was awkward to deal with and relations quickly soured. Once more Vincent was on his own, and it was then that he became interested in the English ‘black-and-white’ artists whose work he found in back issues of the Illustrated London News and the Graphic. Using Sien as his model, he improved his drawing and even considered returning to England to seek work as an illustrator.

Although Vincent found increasing satisfaction in his art, his relations with Sien deteriorated. She had another child with a different man, whose care absorbed much of her energy, and living in poverty their dream of a proper family life proved elusive. In September 1883 Vincent finally decided to break with Sien and headed for Drenthe, a desolate area in the north of the Netherlands where he wanted to paint peasant life. There, however, with the approach of winter, conditions proved tough and lonely. After three months he gave up, reluctantly returning to his parents, who were now living in the small town of Nuenen.

Vincent spent two years in Nuenen. He painted the local peasants in earthy colours, finishing his first masterpiece, ‘The Potato Eaters’, in May 1885. After his father had died on 26 March 1885, Vincent found it increasingly difficult to get on with his mother. In November he left home once more, setting off for Antwerp. He was never again to set foot in his native land.

In Antwerp Vincent enrolled at the Academy of Fine Art but, as at Brussels three years earlier, his teachers believed he had little talent. He stayed for the winter, but was impatient to move on again. By now it was clear that he would never settle down; he was destined to spend his life searching for the right place to live. Theo had chosen a different path, leading a respectable middle-class life as an art dealer. By this time he had been transferred to Paris and promoted to manager of Goupil’s gallery (now renamed Boussod & Valadon) in the boulevard Montmartre.

Vincent decided to leave Antwerp to join Theo in Paris, arriving at the beginning of March 1886. Paris opened his eyes to modern art and, under the influence of the Impressionists, his colours started to become brighter. For the first time since he had been an art dealer ten years earlier he mixed with a wide range of artists, enrolling for studies at Fernand Cormon’s studio and meeting some of his brother’s gallery acquaintances. Vincent’s list of friends from this period now reads like a roll-call of the greatest painters of the late nineteenth century: Emile Bernard, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, Camille and Lucien Pissarro, Paul Signac, Georges Seurat and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

5 VIEW FROM VINCENT’S WINDOWPainted in the spring of 1887 from the window of the flat he shared with Theo at 54 rue Lepic, Paris.

Although Vincent and his brother were extremely close, they found it very difficult to live together. Vincent became increasingly restless and his thoughts turned towards a new destination. In the autumn of 1886 he wrote to the English artist Horace Livens: ‘In spring – say February or even sooner – I may be going to the south of France, the land of blue tones and gay colours.’

6 THEO VAN GOGH

Recipients

THEO VAN GOGH1857–1891Vincent’s brother. Like Vincent he began working as an art dealer for Goupil’s. He was transferred to the company’s Paris gallery in 1878 and three years later he was promoted to manager of their branch at 19 boulevard Montmartre. By this time he had already begun supporting his brother financially, sending him regular allowances so that he was able to paint. In February 1886 Vincent came to stay with Theo in Paris and soon afterwards they moved into a larger flat at 54 rue Lepic. There were constant tensions between them while they were living together, and in February 1888 Vincent moved to Provence. Theo continued to send money to him there and they wrote regularly, on average twice a week. Theo visited Vincent in Provence only once, after Vincent had mutilated his ear, on Christmas Eve 1888. Vincent later stayed with Theo between 17–20 May 1890, on his way from Saint-Rémy to Auvers, and Theo and his family visited Auvers on 8 June. Theo died on 25 January 1891, six months after Vincent had taken his own life.

7 JO BONGER

JO BONGER1862–1925Theo’s wife. Jo was the sister of Theo’s friend Andries Bonger; she had spent her student days in London, where she studied English – specializing in the poetry of Shelley – before returning to Holland as a teacher. Theo met her briefly in Holland in the summer of 1885, again in the summer of 1887 and their relationship developed in December 1888. They became engaged at Christmas time and were married on 17 April 1889. Vincent met her in May 1890, on his way from Saint-Rémy to Auvers, just a few weeks before he died. After Theo’s death in 1891, Jo devoted great efforts to getting recognition for Vincent’s art and had his letters published.

8 WIL VAN GOGH

WIL VAN GOGH1862–1941Vincent’s youngest sister. She was the only one of his three sisters whom he kept in touch with when he was in Provence. Wil was then living with their elderly mother Anna, first of all in Breda and then, from the autumn of 1889, in Leiden. She was interested in art and liked to write. Wil also became an early member of the Dutch feminist movement. In her later life she was interned in a psychiatric asylum for nearly 40 years.

9 ANNA VAN GOGH

ANNA VAN GOGH1819–1907Vincent’s mother. His father Theodorus died on 26 March 1885 in Nuenen and after Vincent left home eight months later he never saw his mother again. She lived to the age of eighty-eight, outliving all her three sons.

PAUL GAUGUIN1848–1903Artist. Vincent met Gauguin in Paris in December 1887, on Gauguin’s return from Panama. In January 1888 Gauguin went to the Breton village of Pont-Aven to paint and then moved to Arles on 23 October. He lived with Vincent in the Yellow House, but relations between them soon became strained. After Vincent had mutilated his ear on 23 December 1888, Gauguin summoned Theo to Arles. On Christmas Day he returned to Paris with Theo. Two months later he went back to Pont-Aven. In February 1890 he returned to Paris and the following year he set off for Tahiti. He died in the Marquesas Islands.

EMILE BERNARD1868–1941Artist and writer. Vincent met Bernard at Cormon’s studio in Paris in 1886. Although he was fifteen years younger than Vincent, they got on well. In the autumn of 1888 Bernard moved to Pont-Aven, where Gauguin was painting, and at one point he considered accompanying him to Arles. However, he returned to stay with his parents in Paris and the following summer went to Saint-Briac, on the northern coast of Brittany. Vincent and Bernard corresponded regularly, often discussing their pictures. After Vincent’s death, Bernard championed his friend’s work.

10 GAUGUINSelf-portrait done for Vincent, September 1888.

11 VINCENT VAN GOGHPortrait by John Russell, autumn 1886.

JOHN RUSSELL1858–1930