The Letters of Vincent van Gogh Read online

  1889 Contrary to all expectations, he recovers quickly and returns to the Yellow House on 7 January; following a petition by his neighbours, he is readmitted to hospital in February; on 23 March he is visited by Paul Signac, to whom he shows his work at his studio; on 17 April Theo marries Johanna Gesina Bonger in Amsterdam; at the end of April Vincent decides to become a voluntary patient at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a psychiatric institution in nearby Saint-Rèmy-de-Provence, where he arrives on 8 May; he has a sudden attack in mid-July while out painting in the fields and is unable to return to work until early September; in September two of his paintings are shown at the fifth exhibition of the Societe des Artistes Independants in Paris; in the autumn, he ‘translates’ work by Millet, Delacroix and Rembrandt into colour, including Millet’s Les travaux des champs; at the end of December he has another attack, lasting one week

  1890 On 18 January the seventh annual exhibition of the Vingtistes in Brussels, which includes six of his paintings, opens; at the end of January he has another attack lasting a week; on 25 January he receives Albert Aurier’s laudatory article entitled ‘Les Isoles: Vincent van Gogh’; Theo’s son, named Vincent Willem after him, is born on 31 January; he visits Aries on 22 February and has another attack, which lasts until the end of April; having been declared fit to do so, he leaves for Auvers-sur-Oise on 16 May; while passing through Paris, he visits Theo and meets Theo’s wife, Johanna; he arrives in Auvers on 20 May and is placed in the care of Dr Paul Gachet, a physician and amateur artist; he rents a room in Ravoux’s inn and starts painting prolifically; on 8 June Theo, Johanna and their child visit Auvers; he travels to Paris for the last time on 6 July in order to discuss Theo’s problems at Boussod & Valadon; he shoots himself in the chest on 27 July and dies of his wounds on 29 July in Theo’s presence; his funeral in Auvers on 30 July is attended by many friends

  1891 On 2 5 January Theo dies at the age of thirty-three

  Early Letters

  Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, a village in Brabant on the Belgian border, the oldest son of Theodoras van Gogh and his amiable wife, Anna Cornelia Carbentus (their first child, also named Vincent, had been stillborn exactly one year earlier). He was named Vincent Willem after his two grandfathers. A daughter, Anna, followed in 1855, and in 1857 a second son, Theo, with reddish hair and blue eyes just like Vincent, but of slighter build. The family was further enlarged by two daughters, Lies and Willemien, and a late arrival, a son called Cor.

  Vincent’s father was a Protestant clergyman in the predominantly Catholic southern Netherlands. Little is known of the young Vincent other than that he was a rather trying, sometimes troublesome boy -probably because his mother tended to spoil her children - and that he loved animals and flowers. Vincent and Theo kept each other company a good deal and their childhood against the background of ‘the wheat fields, the heath and the pine forests, in that peculiarly intense atmosphere of a village parsonage’ was later described by Johanna van Gogh-Bonger as a poetic age, a Brabant idyll. Association with the somewhat unruly peasant lads of the neighbourhood did little to detract from this. For a short time Vincent attended the village school in Zundert, but when he was eleven he was sent to a boarding school in Zevenbergen for two years, followed by a year and a half at the Hogere Burgerschool in Tilburg. In late July 1869, he became the youngest employee of the Hague branch of Goupil & Cie, a well-known firm of art dealers, also established in London, Paris, New York and Brussels. In addition to paintings and drawings, the firm specialized in the sale of reproductions. That the son of a Brabant clergyman should have chosen a career in the international art trade is not as strange as it might at first seem; no fewer than three of his father’s brothers - ‘C. M.’, Cent and Hein – held prominent positions in that field. It seems the recommendation of his Uncle Vincent, his father’s favourite brother, who lived in nearby Prinsenhage, was decisive in Vincent’s choice of profession.

  In The Hague, Vincent took lodgings with the Roos family on the Beestenmarkt and paid regular visits to various Hague relatives and friends of his mother. Regards from these families - the Haanebeeks, the Van Stockums and the Carbentuses (Aunt Fie) - can be found conscientiously included at the end of his letters.

  The earliest of Van Gogh’s letters to have come down to us is dated August 1872, three years after he joined Goupil, and is addressed to his brother Theo, then at school in Oisterwijk, a small town in Brabant. Theo had paid a short visit to him in The Hague, and Vincent recalls the walks they took together. Diffident though this first letter may be, in a sense it foreshadows their later relationship, in which such walks were above all the occasion for confidential talks at critical periods.

  1[D]

  [18] August 72

  [My dear] Theo,

  Many thanks for your letter, I was glad you arrived back safely. I missed you the first few days & it felt strange not to find you there when I came home in the afternoons.

  We have had some enjoyable days together, and managed to take a few walks & see one or two sights between the spots of rain.

  What terrible weather. You must have sweltered on your walks to Oisterwijk. There was harness racing yesterday for the exhibition, but the illuminations & the fireworks were put off because of the bad weather, so it’s just as well you didn’t stay on to see them. Regards from the Haanebeek & Roos families.

  Always your loving

  Vincent

  The second letter from Van Gogh to have survived is dated 13 December of the same year. He congratulates Theo on the fact that he too will be working in the art trade as from January 1873, at the Brussels branch of Goupil & Cie. The idea that they would both then be ‘in the same profession’ lent a fresh dimension to their relationship and led Vincent to open his regular correspondence with his younger brother: ‘We must be sure to write to each other often.’

  2[D]

  The Hague, 13 December 1872

  Dear Theo,

  What good news I’ve just read in Father’s letter. I wish you luck with all my heart. I’m sure you will like it there, it’s such a fine firm. It will be quite a change for you.

  I am so glad that both of us are now to be in the same profession & in the same firm. We must be sure to write to each other often.

  I hope I’ll see you before you leave, we still have a lot to talk about. I believe Brussels is a very pleasant city, but it’s bound to feel strange at first. Write to me soon in any case. Well, goodbye for now, this is just a brief note dashed off in haste, but I had to tell you how delighted I am at the news. Best wishes, & believe me, always,

  Your loving brother

  Vincent

  I don’t envy your having to go to Oisterwijk every day in this awful weather. Regards from the Roos family.

  Van Gogh was very happy to be working in the Hague branch of Goupil & Cie under H. G. Tersteeg. ‘My new year has begun well,’ he wrote at the beginning of January 1873. He had just had a rise in salary and this gave him reason to hope that he would be able to stand on his own feet from then on. The brothers wrote to each other at length about art, expressing their admiration for the old Dutch masters, as well as for Corot and such fashionable contemporary artists as Alfred Stevens, Rotta and Cluysenaer. They also exchanged information about reproductions, and while Vincent gave reports of his visits to Amsterdam museums and galleries, he pressed Theo continually for news of exhibitions in Brussels. Meanwhile, he advised his younger brother to smoke a pipe if he felt downcast, an idea he had taken from Dickens, who recommended tobacco as a remedy for suicide.

  In March he informed Theo that he was about to be promoted and transferred from The Hague to London. He journeyed by way of Paris and made use of the opportunity to visit the main museums and galleries. Proudly he reported how distinguished Goupil’s Paris offices were, ‘splendid and much bigger than I had imagined, especially [the one in] the Place de l’Opera’.

  Vincent arrived in London on 13 June 1873, and remained there for just un
der two years, until 15 May 1875. Goupil’s premises were at 17 Southampton Street, just off Covent Garden. Their main trade was in reproductions, for which there was a keen demand. His new manager was Charles Obach.

  At his first London address, which is not known to us but which was, he wrote, in a ‘quiet, pleasant and airy’ neighbourhood, there were also three German boarders ‘who are very fond of music 8c play the piano & sing, which makes the evenings very enjoyable’. On his salary of £90 a year, however, he had to be careful, and this made it difficult for him to go out and about with them.

  In August 1873 Vincent moved and took lodgings with the Loyer family in Hackford Road in Brixton, south London. A sketch of the houses in this street, the setting for the first of a whole series of disappointments in love, is the earliest English drawing of Van Gogh’s to come down to us.

  For the time being, it seemed, London continued to please him. Vincent made excursions with his German friends, went rowing on the Thames and discovered the joys of gardening. He urged Theo to read the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and William Burger’s book on French and Dutch museums and galleries. He himself visited gallery after gallery in London, from the Royal Academy to the Dulwich Picture Gallery. He discovered that some of the French painters he admired, including James Tissot, Otto Weber and Ferdinand Heilbuth, lived in London, but English painting itself did not appeal to him at first - he deemed the work ‘with few exceptions very nasty, poor stuff’. Those exceptions were the Victorian masters John Everett Millais and George Henry Boughton, and ‘among the older painters’ Turner, Crome and Constable. Again, at the beginning of 1874, when Vincent compiled a list of all the artists he especially liked, there were few English names on it. Instead, the list included several artists who were to play a dominant role in his later letters, chief amongst them the painters of peasant life Jean-François Millet and Jules Breton, and the landscape painters of the Barbizon School and their Dutch counterparts in the Hague School. During this London period, he did not scorn the work of such popular Salon painters as Meissonier or such sentimentalists as Ary Scheffer and Albert Anker. He even praised the voluptuous pieces of Adolphe Bouguereau. It was certainly no accident that his taste was not at odds with that of the Goupil ‘stable’.

  At this time he was reading, amongst other things, the poems of Jan van Beers, which reminded him of Brabant, as well as savouring the works of Keats - ‘the favourite of the painters here & so I found the time to read him’ - whose ‘The Eve of Saint Mark’ he copied out in one of his letters. His favourite author was Jules Michelet, whose L’Amour - and in particular the chapter called ‘Les aspirations de l’automne’ - he frequently quoted and called ‘both a revelation and a gospel’.

  In November 1873 Theo was transferred to Goupil in The Hague, and in March 1874 Vincent heard the ‘wonderful’ news that his young sister, Anna, would be coming to London to find a job.

  13 [D]

  London, January 1874

  My dear Theo,

  Many thanks for your letter. My warm good wishes for a very happy New Year. I know you are doing well in the firm, because Mr Tersteeg told me so. I can see from your letter that you are taking a keen interest in art, & that’s a good thing, old fellow. I’m glad you like Millet, Jacque, Schreyer, Lambinet, Frans Hals, &c., because, as Mauve says, ‘That’s it.’ That painting by Millet, L’angélus du soir, ‘that’s it’, indeed - that’s magnificent, that’s poetry. How I wish I could have another talk with you about art, but we’ll just have to keep writing to each other about it. Admire as much as you can, most people don’t admire enough.

  Here are the names of a few painters I particularly like. Scheffer, Delaroche, Hèbert, Hamon, Leys, Tissot, Lagye, Boughton, Millais, Thys Maris, De Groux, De Braekeleer Jr, Millet, Jules Breton, Feyen-Perrin, Eugene Feyen, Brion, Jundt, George Saal, Israëls, Anker, Knaus, Vautier, Jourdan, Jalabert, Antigna, Compte-Calix, Rochussen, Meissonier, Zamacois, Madrazo, Ziem, Boudin, Gérôme, Fromentin, de Tournemine, Pasini, Decamps, Bonington, Diaz, Th. Rousseau, Troyon, Dupré, Paul Huet, Corot, Schreyer, Jacque, Otto Weber, Daubigny, Wahlberg, Bernier, Émile Breton, Chenu, Cézar de Cocq, Mile Collart, Bodmer, Koekkoek, Schelfhout, Weissenbruch, & last [but] not least Maris & Mauve.1

  But I could carry on like that for I don’t know how long, & then there are still all the old ones & I am sure I have overlooked some of the best of the modern.

  Do go on doing a lot of walking & keep up your love of nature, for that is the right way to understand art better & better. Painters understand nature & love her & teach us to see.

  And then there are painters who never do anything that is no good, who cannot do anything bad, just as there are ordinary people who can do nothing but good.

  I’m getting on well here, I’ve got a lovely home & I’m finding it very pleasurable taking a look at London & the English way of life & the English people themselves, & then I’ve got nature & art & poetry, & if that isn’t enough, what is? But I haven’t forgotten Holland & especially not The Hague & Brabant.

  We are busy at work doing the stocktaking, but it will all be over in 5 days, we got off more lightly than you did in The Hague.

  I hope that, like me, you had a happy Christmas.

  And so, my boy, best wishes & write soon, I’ve put down whatever came into my head in this letter. I hope you’ll be able to make some sense out of it.

  Goodbye, regards to everybody at work & to anyone else who asks after me, especially everybody at Aunt Fie’s & at the Haanebeeks’.

  Vincent

  I am enclosing a few lines for Mr Roos.

  20 [D]

  London, 31 July 1874

  My dear Theo,

  I’m glad you’ve been reading Michelet & that you understand him so well. If that kind of book teaches us anything it is that there is much more to love than people generally suppose. To me, this book has been both a revelation and a gospel.

  ‘Il n’y a pas de vieille femme!’1 (That does not mean there are no old women, only that a woman does not grow old as long as she loves & is loved.) And then a chapter like Les aspirations de l’automne, how rich that is… That a woman is a ‘quite different being’ from a man, & a being we do not yet know, or at best only superficially, as you put it, yes, that I am sure of. And that a woman & a man can become one, that is, one whole & not two halves, I believe that too.

  Anna is bearing up well, we go on marvellous walks together. It is so beautiful here, if one just has a good & single eye without too many beams in it. And if one does have that eye, then it is beautiful everywhere.

  Father is far from well, although he & Mother say that he’s better. Yesterday we received a letter with all sorts of plans (wouldn’t we just try this & that) which will prove to be unworkable & certainly useless & at the end Father said once again that he leaves it all to us, &c, &c. Rather petty and disagreeable, Theo, & it reminded me so much of Grandfather’s letters, but qu’y faire.2 Our beloved Aunts are staying there now & are no doubt doing much good! Things are as they are & what can a person do about it, as Jong Jochem said.

  Anna & I look at the newspaper faithfully every day & reply to whatever advertisements there are. On top of that we have already registered with a Governess agency.3 So we are doing what we can. More haste less speed.

  I’m glad that you go round to the Haanebeeks so often, give them all my kindest regards & tell them some of my news.

  The painting by Thys Maris that Mr Tersteeg has bought must be beautiful. I had already heard about it & have myself bought & sold one in the same genre.

  My interest in drawing has died down here in England, but maybe I’ll be in the mood again some day. Right now I am doing a great deal of reading.

  On 1st January 1875 we shall probably be moving to another, larger shop. Mr Obach is in Paris at the moment deciding whether or not we should take that other firm over. Don’t mention it to anybody for the time being.

  Best wishes & write to us again soon. Anna is learning to appreciate pai
ntings & has quite a good eye, admiring Boughton, Maris & Jacquet already, for instance, so that is a good start. Between you and me, I think we are going to have a difficult time finding something for her, they say everywhere that she is too young, & they require German, too, but be that as it may, she certainly has a better chance here than in Holland. Goodbye,

  Vincent

  You can imagine how delighted I am to be here together with Anna. Tell H. T.4 that the pictures have duly arrived & that I shall be writing to him soon.

  After a year in England, Van Gogh returned to the Netherlands to spend two weeks with his parents, who had meanwhile moved to Helvoirt, still in Brabant. Here he devoted part of his time to landscape sketches and to filling a little sketchbook for Betsy Tersteeg, the small daughter of his Hague employer. This sketchbook is now in the Van Gogh Museum. On 15 July he returned to London with Anna, who also moved in with the Loyers.