Notes

Context:
JLB 666, 8/21/1888 or 8/22/1888: "I have 3 canvases on the go, 1) 3 large flowers in a green vase, light background (no. 15 canvas)."

Context:
JLB 471, 11/24/1884: "Last week I painted still lifes day in and day out with the people who are painting in Eindhoven. The new acquaintance -- the tanner -- whom I told you about, is really doing his best. But for my part, I also have to do something to keep on good terms with them. But I can't see that I lose by it, since I work more enjoyably because I have some conversation.

Context:
JLB 594, 4/9/1888: "I think what [Gustave] Kahn says is quite true, that I haven't paid enough attention to values, but it'll be quite another thing they'll say later -- and no less true."

Context:
BVG 501, 6/21/1888: "So it's a savage combination of incongruous tones, not easy to manage. The study I made of it seems to me very harsh, but all the same I'd like always to be working on vulgar, even loud portraits like this."
JLB 629, 6/21/1888: "So it's a coarse combination of disparate tones that isn't easy to handle -- the study I did of it seems very hard to me, and yet I'd always like to work on portraits that are vulgar, even garish like that one."

Context:
BVG W7, 9/9/1888-9/16/1888: "And arranging the colours in a picture in order to make them vibrate and to enhance their value by their contrasts is something like arranging jewels properly or -- designing costumes."
JLB 678, 9/9/1888 and 9/14/1888: "And arranging colours in a painting to make them shimmer and stand out through their contrasts, that's something like arranging jewels or -- designing costumes."

Context:
JLB 635, 7/1/1888: "Certainly neither Ricards [Louis Gustave Ricard, 1823-1873; French artist] nor Leonardo da Vincis are less beautiful because there are few of them -- on the other hand, Monticellis, Daumiers, Corots, Daubignys and Millets aren't ugly because in many cases they were done at great speed and there are relatively many of them. As for landscapes, I'm beginning to find that some, done more quickly than ever, are among the best things I do."

Context:
BVG 514, 7/25/1888: "Not only my pictures but I myself have become haggard of late."
JLB 650, 7/29/1888: "Not just my paintings, but I myself most of all, I had recently become wild-eyed."

Context:
JLB 635, 7/1/1888: "As for landscapes, I'm beginning to find that some, done more quickly than ever, are among the best things I do."

Context:
BVG W4, 6/22/1888: "At times, driven by a certain mental voracity, I even read the newspapers with fury, but do not deduce from this fact that I feel a craving for reading."
JLB 626, 6/16/1888-6/20/1888: "Sometimes, out of ravenous hunger, I even read the newspaper here with fury, but don't take this to mean that I have a need to read."

The best example of another image that "haunted" Vincent long before he tried to put it on canvas is the starry night sky. Not counting the elaborate word-painting of "twilight" that he created in December 1877, while a student in Amsterdam (JLB 136, 12/3/1877-12/4/1877; see Chapter 11), he first proposed painting a "starry night" in April 1888 to both Bernard (JLB 596, 4/12/1888) and Theo (JLB 594, 4/9/1888). The first known foray at the subject did not come until almost six months later in September when he painted a corner of the night sky in Café Terrace at Night [F 467 JH 1580] and added stars to the background of his portrait of Eugène Boch (Portrait of Eugène Boch [F 462 JH 1574]) around the same time. (Vincent refers to the Boch portrait as "that painting I've been dreaming about for a long time" [JLB 673, 9/3/1888].) His first full-scale attempt, however, did not come until the end of that month (The Starry Night [F 474 JH 1592]). And clearly none of these efforts satisfactorily expressed the image in his head until his final, seminal work The Starry Night (F 612 JH 1731), which was not painted until June 1889 in the asylum at Saint-Rémy.

The sower is another image that stayed with him for years, despite numerous attempts to get it down on paper or canvas, even until the end of his life. Another, more recent example, is the Yellow House itself. In June 1888, Vincent wrote his sister Wil: "I live in a little yellow house with green door and shutters, whitewashed inside ... the house in the full sun -- and a bright blue sky above it ... Anyway -- but can't you understand that one can paint something like that with a few strokes" (JLB 626, 6/16/1888-6/20/1888). In early September, he wrote Theo in a similar vein: "One of these days you'll see a painting of the little house itself, in full sunshine or else with the window lit and the starry sky" (JLB 677, 9/9/1888). In fact, as far as is known, Vincent did not actually try to paint the image of the house he described in such detail in June until the end of September (Vincent's House in Arles (The Yellow House) [F 464 JH 1589]).

Context:
JLB 666, 8/21/1888 or 8/22/1888: "In the hope of living in a studio of our own with Gauguin, I'd like to do a decoration for the studio. Nothing but large Sunflowers. Next door to your shop, in the restaurant, as you know, there's such a beautiful decoration of flowers there; I still remember the big sunflower in the window." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
JLB 611, 5/20/1888: "The other still life is the majolica jug with wild flowers."

Context:
BVG B6, 6/6/1888-6/11/1888: "On the perfectly flat, sandy beach little green, red, blue boats, so pretty in shape and colour that they made one think of flowers. A single man is their whole crew, for these boats hardly venture on the high seas."
JLB 622, 6/7/1888: "On the completely flat, sandy beach, little green, red, blue boats, so pretty in shape and colour that one thought of flowers; one man boards them, these boats hardly go on the high sea -- they dash off when there's no wind and come back to land if there's a bit too much."

Context:
BVG 519, 8/8/1888: "Under the blue sky the orange, yellow, red splashes of the flowers take on an amazing brilliance, and in the limpid air there is a something or other happier, more lovely than in the North. It vibrates like the bouquet by Monticelli which you have. I reproach myself for not painting flowers here."
JLB 657, 8/8/1888: "Under the blue sky, the orange, yellow, red patches of flowers take on an amazing brilliance, and in the limpid air there's something happier and more suggestive of love than in the north. It vibrates -- like the bouquet by Monticelli that you have. I'm annoyed with myself for not painting flowers here."

Context:
BVG 519, 8/8/1888: "Under the blue sky the orange, yellow, red splashes of the flowers take on an amazing brilliance, and in the limpid air there is a something or other happier, more lovely than in the North."
JLB 657, 8/8/1888: "Under the blue sky, the orange, yellow, red patches of flowers take on an amazing brilliance, and in the limpid air there's something happier and more suggestive of love than in the north."

Context:
JLB 665, 8/21/1888: "I'm thinking of decorating my studio with half a dozen paintings of Sunflowers."

Context:
BVG B15, 8/18/1888: " Effects like those of stained-glass windows in a Gothic church."
JLB 665, 8/21/1888: "Sorts of effects of stained-glass windows of a Gothic church" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 526, 8/21/1888: "If I carry out this idea there will be a dozen panels. So the whole thing will be a symphony in blue and yellow."
JLB 666, 8/21/1888 or 8/22/1888: "Well, if I carry out this plan there'll be a dozen or so panels. The whole thing will therefore be a symphony in blue and yellow."

Context:
JLB 666, 8/21/1888 or 8/22/1888: "Well, if I carry out this plan there'll be a dozen or so panels."

Context:
JLB 683, 9/18/1888: "What's Seurat doing? I wouldn't dare show him the studies I've already sent, but the ones of the sunflowers and the bars and the gardens, those I'd like him to see -- I often think about his system, and yet I won't follow it at all, but he's an original colourist."

Context:
BVG 526, 8/21/1888: Now that I hope to live with Gauguin in a studio of our own," he wrote longingly, "I want to make decorations for the studio. Nothing but big flowers."
JLB 666, 8/21/1888 or 8/22/1888: "In the hope of living in a studio of our own with Gauguin, I'd like to do a decoration for the studio. Nothing but large Sunflowers." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
JLB 274, 10/22/1882: "For the great doesn't happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together."

Context:
JLB 665, 8/21/1888: "A decoration in which harsh or broken yellows will burst against various blue backgrounds, from the palest Veronese to royal blue …"

Context:
BVG 503, 6/28/1888: "But try it, and you tumble into a regular metaphysical philosophy of colour 33. "total lack of construction"BVG 514, 7/25/1888. This is Vincent's summary of Gustave Geffroy's criticism of the Antibes series on view at the entresol.

Context:
BVG 514, 7/25/1888: "I am sending Geffroy's article. He criticizes the Monets very ably, begins by liking them very much, the attack on the problem, the enfolding tinted air, the color. After that he shows what there is to find fault with -- the total lack of construction, for instance one of his trees will have far too much foliage for the thickness of the trunk, and so always and everywhere from the standpoint of the reality of things, from the standpoint of lots of natural laws, he is exasperating enough. He ends by saying that this quality of attacking the difficulties is what everyone ought to have."
JLB 650, 7/29/1888: "I'm sending Geffroy's article. He makes a very good critique of the Monets, first of all liking them very much: the difficulty attacked, the envelope of coloured air, the colour. Now after that he says, what must be repeated is that it all lacks construction everywhere, for example, with him a tree will have far too much foliage for the size of the trunk, and so always and everywhere, from the point of view of the reality of things, from the point of view of a whole number of laws of nature, he's pretty well hopeless. He ends by saying that this quality of attacking difficulties is what everyone should have." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
BVG B11, 7/17/1888: "… not that a drawing of mine and one by Cézanne have much in common. No, indeed, any more than Monticelli and I! But I too love the countryside they have loved so much, and for the same reasons, the colour and the logical composition."
JLB 643, 7/17/1888-7/20/1888: "Not that there are similarities between a drawing by me and by Cézanne; oh, no, no more than between Monticelli and me -- but I too love the region that they have loved so much, and for the same reasons of colour, of logical design."

Context:
BVG B14, 8/4/1888: "In Rembrandt's studio that incomparable sphinx, Vermeer of Delft, found this extremely solid technique which has never been surpassed, which at present ... we are burning ... to find. Oh, I know we are working and reasoning with colors, just as they were with chiaroscuro, tonal values."
JLB 655, 8/5/1888: "In Rembrandt's studio, the incomparable sphinx, Vermeer of Delft, found this extremely sound technique that hasn't been surpassed. Which today ... we're burning ... to find. Oh, I know that we're working and arguing Colour as they did chiaroscuro, value." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
BVG B12, 7/23/1888: "Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous."
JLB 649, 7/29/1888: "Those Dutchmen had scarcely any imagination or fantasy, but great taste and the art of arrangement."

Context:
JLB 683, 9/18/1888: "However, I do so many calculations, and actually today I found that for the ten metres of canvas I had calculated the colours correctly, except for one, the fundamental one of yellow."

Context:
JLB 644, 7/17/1888-7/20/1888: "You'll see from this croquis the subject of the new studies; there's one vertical and one horizontal one of the same subject -- no. 30 canvases."

Context:
JLB 683, 9/18/1888: "I do so many calculations, and actually today I found that for the ten metres of canvas I had calculated the colours correctly, except for one, the fundamental one of yellow."

Context:
JLB 611, 5/20/1888: "A blue enamelled tin coffee-pot, a royal blue and gold cup (on the left), a pale blue and white chequered milk jug, a cup -- on the right -- white, with blue and orange designs, on a yellow grey earthenware plate, a blue barbotine or majolica jug with red, green, brown designs, and lastly 2 oranges and 3 lemons; the table is covered with a blue cloth, the background is yellow green, making 6 different blues and 4 or 5 yellows and oranges."

Context:
BVG 507, 6/29/1888: "Sheer work and calculation, with one's mind strained to the utmost, like an actor on the stage in a difficult part, with a hundred things to think of at once in a single half hour."
JLB 635, 7/1/1888: "Work and dry calculation, in which one's mind is extremely stretched, like an actor on the stage in a difficult role -- where you have to think of a thousand things at the same time in a single half hour."

Context:
BVG 507, 6/29/1888: "Don't think that I would maintain a feverish condition artificially, but understand that I am in the midst of a complicated calculation which results in a quick succession of canvases quickly executed but calculated long beforehand."
JLB 635, 7/1/1888: "Don't believe, then, that I would artificially maintain a feverish state -- but you should know that I'm in the middle of a complicated calculation that results in canvases done quickly one after another but calculated long beforehand" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG B7, 6/18/1888: " Alas, alas, it is just as the excellent fellow Cyprien says in J.K. [Joris-Karl] Huysman's 'En ménage': the most beautiful paintings are those which you dream about when you lie in bed smoking a pipe, but which you never paint."
JLB 628, 6/19/1888: " Alas, alas, it's just as our excellent pal Cyprien says, in 'En ménage' by J.K. Huysmans: the most beautiful paintings are those one dreams of while smoking a pipe in one's bed, but which one doesn't make" (emphasis in original).

Context:
JLB 683, 9/18/1888: "But now I've reached the point where I've made up my mind not to draw a painting in charcoal any more. There's no point; you have to tackle the drawing with the colour itself in order to draw well."

BVG 526, 8/21/1888: Indeed, he did not stop at that. Only a week later, he reported: "I'm now on the fourth painting of sunflowers. This fourth one is a bouquet of 14 flowers and is on a yellow background." (JLB 668, 8/23/1888 or 8/24/1888.) The fourth canvas probably overlapped with one or more of the initial three, as Vincent reports only a short time later: "I'm doing comparatively less, and coming back to it longer" (JLB 677, 9/9/1888). There is much scholarly disagreement as to the identity, sequence, and flower-count of these four images. (For a good parsing of the arguments, see Hendricks and Van Tilborgh, pp. 21-22.) Suffice it to say that the two paintings with three blossoms described in JLB 666, 8/21/1888 or 8/22/1888, are Three Sunflowers in a Vase (F 453 JH 1559) and Still Life: Vase with Five Sunflowers (F 459 JH 1560) (Vincent apparently added several blossoms onto the table of the latter, which was lost and presumed destroyed in the Second World War). The third painting he describes in JLB 666, 8/21/1888 or 8/22/1888, "twelve flowers and buds in a yellow vase," is Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers (F 456 JH 1561) (in Munich); and the fourth painting, introduced in JLB 668, with "14 flowers and is on a yellow background," is Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers (F 454 JH 1562) (in London).

Context:
JLB 666, 8/21/1888 or 8/22/1888: "I have 3 canvases on the go, 1) 3 large flowers in a green vase, light background (no. 15 canvas), 2) 3 flowers, one flower that's gone to seed and lost its petals and a bud on a royal blue background (no. 25 canvas), 3) twelve flowers and buds in a yellow vase (no. 30 canvas). So the last one is light on light, and will be the best, I hope. I'll probably not stop there."

Context:
JLB 666, 8/21/1888 or 8/22/1888: "I work on it all these mornings, from sunrise. Because the flowers wilt quickly and it's a matter of doing the whole thing in one go."

Context:
BVG B9, 6/24/1888: "But under the given conditions of working spontaneously, on the spot, and given the character of it, is a calm, well-regulated touch always possible? Goodness gracious -- as little, it seems to me, as during an assault in a fencing match."
JLB 633, 6/27/1888: "Isn't it rather intensity of thought than calmness of touch that we're looking for -- and in the given circumstances of impulsive work on the spot and from life, is a calm and controlled touch always possible? Well -- it seems to me -- no more than fencing moves during an attack."

Context:
BVG B9, 6/24/1888: "Aren't we seeking intensity of thought rather than tranquillity of touch? But under the given conditions of working spontaneously, on the spot, and given the character of it, is a calm, well-regulated touch always possible?"
JLB 633, 6/27/1888: "Isn't it rather intensity of thought than calmness of touch that we're looking for -- and in the given circumstances of impulsive work on the spot and from life, is a calm and controlled touch always possible?"

Context:
BVG B9, 6/24/1888: "Aren't we seeking intensity of thought rather than tranquillity of touch?"
JLB 633, 6/27/1888: "Isn't it rather intensity of thought than calmness of touch that we're looking for ..."

Context:
JLB 630, 6/23/1888: "It's very good that Claude Monet found a way of making these ten pictures between February and May."

Context:
JLB 630, 6/23/1888: "Thus died -- almost smiling -- Eugène Delacroix, a painter of high breeding -- who had a sun in his head and a thunderstorm in his heart -- who went from warriors to saints -- from saints to lovers -- from lovers to tigers -- and from the tiger to flowers."

Context:
BVG 507, 6/29/1888: "Monticelli, the logical colorist, able to pursue the most complicated calculations, subdivided according to the scales of tones that he was balancing."
JLB 635, 7/1/1888: "Monticelli the logical colourist, able to carry out the most ramified and subdivided calculations on the ranges of tones that he balanced."

Context:
JLB 633, 6/27/1888: "What do I know about it -- from time to time I couldn't help thinking of Cézanne, particularly when I realized that his touch is so clumsy in certain studies -- disregard the word clumsy -- seeing that he probably executed those studies when the mistral was blowing. Having to deal with the same difficulty half the time, I can explain why Cézanne's touch is sometimes so sure and sometimes seems awkward. It's his easel that's wobbling."

Context:
BVG B9, 6/24/1888: "As half the time I am faced with the same difficulty, I get an idea of why Cézanne's touch is sometimes so sure, whereas at other times it appears awkward. It's his easel that's reeling."
JLB 633, 6/27/1888: "Having to deal with the same difficulty half the time, I can explain why Cézanne's touch is sometimes so sure and sometimes seems awkward. It's his easel that's wobbling."

Simplicity, a Cloisonnist first principle, is the recurring theme of Vincent's descriptions of the sunflower paintings when they begin to appear in late August. "As much in harmony and as much a flower as anything you like, and yet painted in solid, thick impasto ... That's what I'd call simplicity of technique. And I must tell you that these days I'm making a great effort to find a way of using the brush without stippling or anything else, nothing but a varied brushstroke." (JLB 668, 8/23/1888 or 8/24/1888.) "The sunflowers are progressing ... as a still life of quinces and lemons [Still Life with Grapes, Pears, and Lemons (F 383 JH 1339)] that you already have, but in the sunflowers the painting is much simpler" (JLB 669, 8/26/1888). He locates this simplicity both in favorite impressionists, like Édouard Manet (JLB 668, 8/23/1888 or 8/24/1888) and, of course, in Japanese art: "I envy the Japanese the extreme clarity that everything in their work has. ... Their work is as simple as breathing." (JLB 686, 9/23/1888 or 9/24/1888.)

Only weeks before starting the sunflower series, the issue of simplicity had been on Vincent's mind. He criticized some of his recent works, including The Sower and The Harvest, saying they "lack[ed] clarity of touch" (JLB 657, 8/8/1888). A week later, he complained that other artists -- by which he undoubtedly meant Bernard and Gauguin -- "surpass me in more precise brushwork," blaming the difference on the mistral, and, strangely, the disadvantages of age and income ("these inevitable circumstances of vanished youth and relative poverty") (JLB 662, 8/15/1888).

Context:
BVG 507, 6/29/1888: "Don't think that I would maintain a feverish condition artificially, but understand that I am in the midst of a complicated calculation long beforehand" (emphasis in original).
JLB 635, 7/1/1888: "Don't believe, then, that I would artificially maintain a feverish state -- but you should know that I'm in the middle of a complicated calculation that results in canvases done quickly one after another but calculated long beforehand" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 504, 7/7/1888: "But alone, I only count on the exaltation that comes to me at certain moments, and then I let myself run on extravagances."
JLB 631, 6/25/1888: "But in isolation I can count only on my excitement at certain moments, and then I let myself run to extravagances."

Context:
BVG 543, 9/28/1888: "I have a terrible lucidity at moments, these days when nature is so beautiful, I am not conscious of myself any more, and the picture comes to me as in a dream."
JLB 687, 9/25/1888: "I have a terrible clarity of mind at times, when nature is so lovely these days, and then I'm no longer aware of myself and the painting comes to me as if in a dream."

Context:
JLB 686, 9/23/1888 or 9/24/1888: "I envy the Japanese the extreme clarity that everything in their work has. It's never dull, and never appears to be done too hastily. Their work is as simple as breathing, and they do a figure with a few confident strokes with the same ease as if it was as simple as buttoning your waistcoat."

Context:
BVG W4, 6/22/1888: "But I imagine that in the next generation, or in one of the later generations, this working resolutely and without hesitation, this measuring correctly at a glance, this adroitness in the mixing of colours, this drawing with lightning speed -- there will come a generation that will not only do this just as we are doing it now, unappreciated, but then with a public that will like it, in the portrayal of persons no less than in the portrayal of landscapes or of interiors."
JLB 626, 6/16/1888-6/20/1888: "Only I imagine that a generation later or in one of the later generations -- this working decisively without hesitation, measuring correctly in an instant, skilful mixing of the colour, drawing at lightning speed -- a generation will come that will do this not as we do now, alone, unloved, but with a public that will like it both for portraits of people and for portraits of landscapes or interiors."

Context:
BVG 542, 9/24/1888: "Their work is as simple as breathing, and they do a figure in a few sure strokes as if it were as easy as doing up your waistcoat."
JLB 686, 9/23/1888 or 9/24/1888: "Their work is as simple as breathing, and they do a figure with a few confident strokes with the same ease as if it was as simple as buttoning your waistcoat."

Context:
BVG W8, 8/27/1888: "The great majority of the painters, because they aren't colourists in the true sense of the word, do not use these colours there, and they call a painter mad if he sees with eyes other than theirs."
JLB 670, 8/26/1888: "Most painters, because they're not colourists, properly speaking, don't see these colours there, and declare that a painter who sees with other eyes than theirs is mad" (emphasis in original).

Context:
JLB 635, 7/1/1888: "I'd really like to see a drinker in front of a canvas or on the boards. Of course, it's all too crude a lie, this whole malicious, Jesuitical tale of the Roquette woman about Monticelli."

Context:
BVG B13, 7/25/1888: " Thus died -- almost smiling -- Delacroix, a painter of a noble race, who had a sun in his head and a thunderstorm in his heart, who turned from the warriors to the saints, from the saints to the lovers, from the lovers to the tigers, and from the tigers to the flowers."
JLB 651, 7/30/1888: " Thus died -- almost smiling -- Eugène Delacroix, a painter of high breeding -- who had a sun in his head and a thunderstorm in his heart -- who went from warriors to saints -- from saints to lovers -- from lovers to tigers -- and from the tiger to flowers."

Context:
BVG 504, 7/7/1888: "I must warn you that everyone will think that I work too fast. Is it not emotion, the sincerity of one's feeling for nature, that draws us, and if the emotions are sometimes so strong that one works without knowing one works, when sometimes the strokes come with a continuity and a coherence like words in a speech or a letter, then one must remember that it has not always been so, and that in time to come there will again be hard days, empty of inspiration."
JLB 631, 6/25/1888: "I must warn you that everyone will find that I work too quickly. Don't you believe a word of it. Isn't it the emotion, the sincerity of our feeling for nature, that leads us and -- if these emotions are sometimes so strong that we work -- without feeling that we're working -- when sometimes the brushstrokes come in a sequence and in relation one to another like the words in a speech or a letter -- then we have to remember that it hasn't always been like that, and that in the future there will also be quite a few heavy days without inspiration."

Context:
BVG 507, 6/29/1888: "Jules and Edmond de Goncourt said the very same thing, word for word -- 'We used to smoke very strong tobacco to stupefy ourselves' in the furnace of creation."
JLB 635, 7/1/1888: "And Jules and Edmond de Goncourt say this, word for word -- 'we took very strong tobacco to stupefy ourselves' in the furnace of creation."

Like the text's arguments about Vincent "disentangling" object from atmosphere, all of these arguments ultimately go to Vincent's extreme simplification of imagery -- to his rejection both of complexity and embedment. This effort to simplify life, to deconstruct, amplify, rearrange, and organize experience no doubt sprang from Vincent's need to control his environment -- a need he must have felt more sharply as his mental faculties deteriorated under the double threat of mental illness and tertiary syphilis.

It also, we believe, helps explain the universal appeal of Vincent's imagery. There is something deeply calming and accessible in the simplification, the "disentanglement," which Vincent achieves, and it is undeniably related to the appeal of cartoons. If one looks at a painting by J. M.W. Turner, for example, which is all about nuance and complexity -- entanglement -- it is unsettling because it is unclear (to an untrained eye) how the observer is supposed to relate to the image. By simplifying and organizing the experience in a straight-forward and therefore accessible way, by making the decisions about emphasis and hierarchy for the viewer, Vincent's work invites the viewer into the world of the picture.

Another way to see the point is to compare it to Eugène Fromentin's famous argument for the "craft" of art and the importance of "harmonizing" object and space as it relates to the artists of the Dutch Golden Age, no less. "Every object, thanks to the interest it offers, must be examined in its form, and drawn before it is painted. Nothing is secondary in this connection. A bit of ground with its vanishing points, a cloud with its movement, architecture with its laws of perspective, a face with its expression, distinctive features, passing changes, a hand with its gesture, a garment with its habitual look, an animal, with its bearing, its frame, the intimate character of its race and instincts -- all these, with equal rights, form a part of this leveling art, and play, so to speak, the same part in the design." (ibid., p. 136.)

Vincent's art, of course, lies at exactly the opposite pole from Fromentin's "leveling art," in which everything within the artist's vision plays the same part. Vincent's art is laser-like in its clarity -- absolutely focused on the essence of the object it depicts. To buttress our reading that Vincent's simplifying (controlling) imagery sprang from his personal dilemma, we would cite Schapiro's brilliant introduction to the Fromentin volume: "The facture is a product of feeling, a result of the whole psychic disposition of the artist. What he does beyond his instinct, through acquired skill and calculation, depends on instinct too; even the artist's reason is marked with his character and appears in this book as a personal trait. Everything in the work of art -- the attitude to the subject, the execution, palette, and forms -- belongs then to the individual and is an expressive end as well as a means." (Schapiro, pp. x-xi.)

Context:
BVG W8, 8/27/1888: "And there will be noise du bruit, on that occasion. Monticelli is a painter who did the South all in yellow, all in orange, all in sulphur."
JLB 670, 8/26/1888: "We'll make quite a noise on that occasion. Monticelli is a painter who did the south all in yellow, all in orange, all in sulphur."

Context:
BVG 504, 7/7/1888: "But alone, I only count on the exaltation that comes to me at certain moments, and then I let myself run on extravagances."
JLB 631, 6/25/1888: "But in isolation I can count only on my excitement at certain moments, and then I let myself run to extravagances."

Context:
BVG W8, 8/27/1888: "So I myself too have already finished a picture all in yellow -- of sunflowers (fourteen flowers in a yellow vase and against a yellow background, which is certainly different from the previous one with twelve flowers on a blue-green background)."
JLB 670, 8/26/1888: "So I've already prepared especially a painting all in yellow of sunflowers (14 flowers) in a yellow vase and against a yellow background (it's yet another one, in addition to the previous one with 12 flowers against a blue-green background)."

Context:
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "The room where you'll stay then, or which will be Gauguin's if Gauguin comes, will have a decoration of large yellow sunflowers on its white walls."

Context:
JLB 668, 8/23/1888 or 8/24/1888: "I got up very early every day."

Context:
JLB 694, 10/3/1888: "I have the self-esteem to wish to make a certain impression on Gauguin with my work. I can't help wishing to work on my own as much as possible before he comes."

Context:
JLB 668, 8/23/1888 or 8/24/1888: "I got up very early every day, I dined and supped well, I was able to work assiduously without feeling myself weaken."

Context:
JLB 672, 9/1/1888: "All the same, rather than losing physical strength, I'm regaining it, and my stomach, especially, is stronger."

Context:
JLB 690, 9/27/1888-10/1/1888: "I'm beginning to believe more and more that food has something to do with our power to think and to make paintings."

Context:
BVG 537, 9/16/1888: "I went for a splendid walk by myself today among the vineyards."
JLB 681, 9/16/1888: "I took a magnificent walk by myself in the vineyards today."

Context:
JLB 669, 8/26/1888: "As far as my clothes are concerned, they were certainly starting to suffer -- but only last week I bought a black velvet jacket of quite good quality for 20 francs, and a new hat, so that's not at all urgent."

Context:
JLB 602, 5/1/1888: "Now what I'd like to do would be to furnish a room, the one on the first floor, to be able to sleep there. The studio, the store, will remain here for the whole of the campaign here in the south."

Context:
BVG 480, 5/1/1888: "This [house] will remain the studio and the storehouse for the whole campaign, as long as it lasts in the South, and now I am free of all the innkeepers' tricks: they're ruinous and they make me wretched."
JLB 602, 5/1/1888: "The studio, the store, will remain here for the whole of the campaign here in the south, and that way I have my independence from petty squabbles over guest-houses, which are ruinous and depress me."

Context:
BVG 534, 9/9/1888: "I want to make it really an artists' house -- not precious, on the contrary nothing precious, but everything from the chairs to the pictures having character."
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "I really want to make of it -- an artists' house but not precious, on the contrary, nothing precious, but everything from the chair to the painting having character" (emphasis in original).

Context:
JLB 697, 10/4/1888 or 10/5/1888: "However clumsy this effort, you'll still see, perhaps, that while preparing your studio I've thought of you with very deep feeling."

Also, by this time, Cloisonnism (and soon the Nabis) had given new artistic validation to traditional notions of ornamentation, further muddying the distinction between artistic and commercial value. In these muddy waters, Vincent thrived. He, like Theo, always loved "decorating" in the common sense -- that is, organizing a spatial experience through the choice and placement of fabric, furniture, light, colors, flowers, objects, and art. In every studio he occupied, he made elaborate efforts to create the "effect" of an artist's studio -- primarily in order to convince prospective models that he was, in fact, a real artist. This is exactly the kind of "decorating" project -- in both senses -- that he began in September 1888: not just a series of paintings, but a comprehensive "decoration" to transform the Yellow House into a maison d'artiste that would convince, in this case, Gauguin of Vincent's legitimate claim to being an artist.

Context:
BVG 534, 9/9/1888: "I cannot tell you how much pleasure it gives me to find a big serious job like this. For it's going to be, I hope, a real scheme of decoration that I'm starting on now."
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "I wouldn't be able to explain to you how pleased I am to find a big, serious job this way. Because I hope it'll be a true decoration that I'm going to undertake there."

Context:
BVG 534, 9/9/1888: "For I am very anxious to arrange it so that you will be pleased with it, and so that it will be a studio in an absolutely individual style."
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "Because I myself am enthusiastic about the idea of arranging it in such a way that you'll like it, and that it'll be a studio in a style absolutely meant to be that way."

Context:
BVG 537, 9/16/1888: "I read in the literary supplement of Saturday's Figaro (15 September) the description of an impressionist house. This house was built with bricks -- as it were like the bottoms of bottles -- of convex glass, violet glass. With the sunshine reflected in it, and the yellow refractions, the effect was incredible."
JLB 681, 9/16/1888: "I read in the literary supplement of Saturday's Figaro (15 Sept.) the description of an Impressionist house. This house was built, as would be the bottoms of bottles, of bricks of rounded glass -- purple glass. With the sun glancing off it, the yellow glints flashing from it, it produced an extraordinary effect." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
BVG 509, 7/13/1888: "Have you read Mme. Chrysanthème? It gave me the impression that the real Japanese have nothing on their walls, …"
JLB 639, 7/13/1888: "Have you read Madame Chrysanthème? It really gave me a lot to think about, that the real Japanese have nothing on their walls."

Context:
BVG 511, 7/15/1888: "Loti's book Mme. Crysanthème taught me this much: the rooms there are bare, without decoration or ornaments."
JLB 642, 7/15/1888: "Loti's book, Mme Chrysanthème, taught me this: the apartments are bare, without decorations or ornaments."

Context:
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "And the studio -- the red floor-tiles, the white walls and ceiling, the rustic chairs, the deal table, with, I hope, decoration of portraits."

Context:
JLB 639, 7/13/1888: "Ah, so that's how you have to look at a japonaiserie -- in a nice bright room, completely bare, open to the landscape."

Context:
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "And the studio -- the red floor-tiles, the white walls and ceiling, the rustic chairs, the deal table, with, I hope, decoration of portraits."

Context:
BVG 534, 9/9/1888: "I want to make it really an artist's house -- not precious, on the contrary nothing precious, but everything from the chairs to the pictures having character."
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "I really want to make of it -- an artist's house but not precious, on the contrary, nothing precious, but everything from the chair to the painting having character" (emphasis in original). 96. "commonplace" BVG 534, 9/9/1888.

Context:
BVG 534, 9/9/1888: "It will not be commonplace. ... It will have a feeling of Daumier about it, and I think I dare predict it will not be commonplace."
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "It won't be commonplace. ... That will have character 97. none of the curio-shop clutter BVG W15, 10/20/1889-10/22/1889.

Context:
JLB 812, 10/21/1889: "If a painter is rich in our society, then he lives in a house that resembles a curiosity shop, and that isn't very artistic either, to my taste. And I myself have suffered greatly from living so much in conditions where order was impossible, that I lost the notion of order and simplicity."

Context:
BVG 540, 9/22/1888: "You cannot think what peace of mind it gives me, I am so set on making an artist's home, but one for practical use, and not the ordinary studio full of knick-knacks."
JLB 685, 9/21/1888: "You wouldn't believe how much that calms me; I have such a passion to make -- an artist's house -- but a practical one and not the usual studio full of curios" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 540, 9/22/1888: "But the room where I shall put up anybody who comes this way will be like a boudoir, and when it is finished, you will see that it will not be a haphazard production, but a deliberate creation."
JLB 685, 9/21/1888: "But still, the room in which I'll put up those who pass through here will be like a boudoir, and when it's finished you'll see that it's not a haphazard creation, but a job done that way deliberately."

Context:
BVG 509, 7/13/1888: "Have you read Mme. Chrysanthème? It gave me the impression that the real Japanese have nothing on their walls, that description of the cloister or pagoda where there was nothing (the drawings and curiosities all being hidden in the drawers). That is how you must look at Japanese art, in a very bright room, quite bare, and open to the country."
JLB 639, 7/13/1888: "Have you read Madame Chrysanthème? It really gave me a lot to think about, that the real Japanese have nothing on their walls. The description of the cloister or pagoda where there's nothing (the drawings, the curiosities, are hidden in drawers). Ah, so that's how you have to look at a japonaiserie -- in a nice bright room, completely bare, open to the landscape."

Context:
JLB 685, 9/21/1888: "I've been to get five no. 30 stretching frames, so I have even more intentions. I'm having the paintings that stay here framed in oak and in walnut."

This tortured correlation between Japanese cuisine and interior decoration probably disguises one or two much more obvious, more prosaic rationales. First, Vincent is determined to immerse Gauguin in Vincent's work, and the best way to do that is to put it where Gauguin cannot escape it -- in his room. This strategy of promotion by ubiquity is closely related to Vincent's attempt to "rain" his paintings on H.G. Tersteeg's circle in The Hague earlier in 1888 in a way designed to make them virtually inescapable. The other possible explanation is that Vincent does not want to scare the locals -- especially the potential models -- who come to the studio downstairs. He admits that most of his models did not like his portraits of them, and most of the townspeople, as everywhere, had no idea what to make of his wild art. Thus, it made good sense (in the effort to attract models) to hang the biggest and boldest images out of public view, and the smaller objects -- the prints by Delacroix, Daumier, etc. -- as inoffensive decor on the first floor to give visitors the impression of a respectable artist's studio (a design principle that had shaped his previous studios in Etten, The Hague, Nuenen and Antwerp, at least initially).

Context:
JLB 678, 9/9/1888 and 9/14/1888: "I want to stuff at least 6 very large canvases into this tiny little room, the way the Japanese do, especially the huge bouquets of sunflowers. You know that the Japanese instinctively look for contrasts, and eat sweetened peppers, salty sweets, and fried ices and frozen fried dishes. So, too, following the same system you should probably only put very small paintings in a large room, but in a very small room you'll put a lot of big ones."

Context:
JLB 812, 10/21/1889: "I try to paint in such a way that it looks good in a kitchen, then sometimes I notice that it looks well in a drawing room too."

Context:
BVG W7, 9/9/1888-9/16/1888: "In the latter I want nothing but straw-bottomed chairs and a table and a bed of unpainted wood. The walls whitewashed, red tiles on the floor. But I want a great wealth of portraits and painted studies of figures in it, which I think I shall do in the course of time."
JLB 678, 9/9/1888 and 9/14/1888: "I want nothing there but straw-bottomed chairs and a table and a deal bed. The walls whitewashed, the tiles red. But in it I want a great wealth of portraits and painted studies of figures, which I plan to do as I go along."

Context:
BVG W15, 10/20/1889-10/22/1889: "As for me, I often suffered under the fact that I had to live in conditions in which order was impossible, with the result that I lost the notion of order and simplicity."
JLB 812, 10/21/1889: "And I myself have suffered greatly from living so much in conditions where order was impossible, that I lost the notion of order and simplicity."

Context:
JLB 196, 1/3/1882: "It happens to everyone at some point in life that he has to set himself up in his own house, and although at first I couldn't face being in debt, I do feel that it's better this way."

Context:
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "Now yesterday I worked at furnishing the house. Just as the postman and his wife told me, the two beds, if you want something sturdy, will come to 150 francs each."

Context: JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "Then I bought linen for one of the beds, and I bought two palliasses" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 534, 9/9/1888: "That gives an appearance of solidity, durability and quiet, and if it takes a little more bedding, so much the worse, but it must have character."
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "It gives a look of solidity, durability, calm, and if it takes a bit more bed-linen, that's too bad, but it must have character."

Context:
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "With what was left, I bought 12 chairs, a mirror, and some small indispensable things."

Context:
JLB 685, 9/21/1888: "In the other one -- Gauguin's or another lodger's -- we'll still need a dressing-table and a chest of drawers, and downstairs I'll need a large stove and a cupboard."

Context:
JLB 685, 9/21/1888: "In the other one -- Gauguin's or another lodger's -- we'll still need a dressing-table and a chest of drawers, and downstairs I'll need a large stove and a cupboard."

Context:
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "With what was left, I bought 12 chairs, a mirror, and some small indispensable things."

Context:
BVG 534, 9/9/1888: "With the rest I have bought 12 chairs, a mirror and some small necessities."
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "With what was left, I bought 12 chairs, a mirror, and some small indispensable things."

Context:
JLB 685, 9/21/1888: "In the other one -- Gauguin's or another lodger's -- we'll still need a dressing-table and a chest of drawers, and downstairs I'll need a large stove and a cupboard."

Context:
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "Downstairs, the studio and another room, also a studio, but a kitchen at the same time."

According to Druick and Zegers, Vincent's original plan for separate studios downstairs did not work out "perhaps because of the disorderly housekeeping that shocked his more fastidious guest [Gauguin]" (Druick and Zegers, p. 160). Indeed, it is doubtful if the plan was sincerely proffered. Surely it was never realistic. Druick and Zegers indentify only one work that was probably made in the kitchen (Farmhouse in Provence [F 565 JH 1443]) because it shows part of a stove (ibid., p. 384; n. 12). We would add that the painting of the same Zouave (The Zouave (Half-Length) [F 423 JH 1486]) probably shows the same location with the stove's brick chimney to the right. But both of these works were done before Gauguin's arrival in Arles.

Context:
JLB 685, 9/21/1888: "I'm also thinking of planting two oleanders outside the door, in tubs."

Context:
JLB 664, 8/19/1888: "Under the present circumstances, even while spending, I don't have what's barely essential, and I no longer feel in myself the strength to go on very long like that." 121. "If Gauguin and I" BVG 528, 8/27/1888.

Context:
BVG 528, 8/27/1888: " If Gauguin and I do not take the opportunity to fix ourselves up like this, we may drag on year after year in small lodgings where we cannot fail to go to seed. I have pretty well done that already, for it has been going on for a very long time."
JLB 669, 8/26/1888: " If we were to refrain from setting ourselves up like that, Gauguin and I could drag on from year to year in small lodgings where one can't fail to become dull-witted. I'm more or less that way already, because it goes back a long, long way."

Context:
BVG 523+522a, 8/18/1888: "As soon as you can, would you, not give, but lend me 300 francs in one lump sum for a year? Then, if I take it that at present you send me 250 francs a month, you will only send me 200 after this, until the 300, paid out at once, would be paid off."
JLB 664, 8/19/1888: "The day when you could, would you -- not give me, but lend me 300 francs for a year, all at one go? Then if I reckon that at present you're sending me 250 francs a month, you wouldn't send me more than 200 after that, until the 300 paid out all at once had been paid off."

Context:
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: "What a difference, then, living together -- myself I have to pay 45 a month for my lodging alone. And so I always come back to the same calculation, that with Gauguin I'll spend no more than on my own, and that without suffering thereby."

Context:
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "I now plan to buy some article for the house every month. And with patience, the house will be worth something for the furniture and the decorations."

Context:
JLB 664, 8/19/1888: "I mean to be inflexible on this point of setting up a permanent studio and to sleep there and not at the guest-house. Under the present circumstances, even while spending, I don't have what's barely essential, and I no longer feel in myself the strength to go on very long like that. If Gauguin can find the same opportunity at Pont-Aven, that's fine, but I tell you the costs here, for which, once this expenditure has been made, plenty of hard work will have been done. The sun down here means a good deal, all the same. As things are, I'm ruining myself and I'm wearing myself out."

Context:
BVG 537, 9/16/1888: "I am convinced that in the end we shall do well by furnishing the studio. And I already feel freer in my work."
JLB 681, 9/16/1888: "I'm convinced that in the end we're doing well by furnishing the studio. And as for work, I already feel freer and less harrowed by unnecessary worries than before."

Context:
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "And from today you can say to yourself that you have a sort of country house, unfortunately a bit far away."

Context:
BVG 525, 8/15/1888: "I am very glad to have these pictures sent off, and in this way our sister will see my studies, and that makes a difference to me, for by this she will share in something that is essentially part of our life in France, crude and casual as it may be."
JLB 662, 8/15/1888: "I'm very glad to see the package sent off, and in this way our sister will see my studies, which isn't a matter of indifference to me, because in this way she'll also experience a thing that is after all an essential part of our French life, raw and just as it is."

Context:
JLB 672, 9/1/1888: "You know, it seems to me that L'immortel isn't as fine as Tartarin for colour, because, with its quantity of subtle and accurate observations, it makes me think of Jean Béraud's disheartening paintings, so dry, so cold. Tartarin, now, is so genuinely great -- with the greatness of a masterpiece, just like Candide."

Context:
JLB 672, 9/1/1888: "You know, it seems to me that L'immortel isn't as fine as Tartarin for colour, because, with its quantity of subtle and accurate observations, it makes me think of Jean Béraud's disheartening paintings, so dry, so cold. Tartarin, now, is so genuinely great -- with the greatness of a masterpiece, just like Candide."

BVG 543, 9/28/1888. (See Ch. 32, n. 133.) Sund, as usual, puts this point extremely well: "Both of the passages to which Van Gogh referred [in L'Assommoir and Bouvard et Péchuchet] are particularized Parisian street scenes, and his own painting of the Place Lamartine [Vincent's House in Arles (The Yellow House) (F 464 JH 1589)] replicates neither. But the specifics of those literary antecedents clearly were less important to him than the spirit of the verbal renderings cited, each of which suggests authorial delight in the everyday life of mundane locales. Van Gogh considered his own graceless motif vindicated by these writers' attention to the same generic subject -- a thoroughfare in a modest, out-of-the-way neighborhood -- and he aimed to emulate their realistic reportage in paint." (Sund, pp. 190-91.)

Context:
JLB 691, 9/29/1888: "Milliet finds it horrible, but I don't need to tell you that when he says he can't understand that someone can enjoy doing such an ordinary grocer's shop, and such stiff, square houses with no charm at all, I reflect that Zola did a certain boulevard at the beginning of L'assommoir and Flaubert a corner of quai de la Villette in the summer heat, at the beginning of Bouvard et Pécuchet, that aren't half bad."

He concludes inconclusively: "It's ways of seeing things -- now, with the first one, we're less in danger of behaving like Don Quixote; it's possible, and with the last idea we go the whole hog" (ibid.). (Presumably, "the first" here refers to Zola's and Maupassant's heroes; while "the last" refers to Flaubert's pair of determined laughing-stocks.) About a month later, Vincent uses Flaubert's book in a more specific way in defense of his painting of the Yellow House (Vincent's House in Arles (The Yellow House) [F 464 JH 1589]): "Milliet finds it horrible, but I don't need to tell you that when he says he can't understand that someone can enjoy doing such an ordinary grocer's shop, and such stiff, square houses with no charm at all, I reflect that Zola did a certain boulevard at the beginning of L'assommoir and Flaubert a corner of quai de la Villette in the summer heat, at the beginning of Bouvard et Pécuchet, that aren't half bad" (JLB 691, 9/29/1888).

But the connection between Flaubert's anti-heroes and Voltaire's Candide, and the message Vincent is trying to send about the Midi, lies far deeper -- as he makes clear in April the following year (1889) when he cautions Theo to "think of [Voltaire's] Pangloss, think of Bouvard and Pécuchet, I know, then even that can be explained, but those people [i.e., the people of Arles who are driving him out of town] perhaps don't know Pangloss, or else one forgets everything one knows about him under the inevitable bite of real despairs and great pains" (JLB 765, 4/30/1889).

On the eve of entering the asylum at Saint-Rémy, Vincent is struggling to recover the cosmic laugh that he had shared the previous summer with Flaubert and Voltaire. He wrote sister Wil the same day (April 30), confirming as much: "you don't know the reasonings of good père Pangloss in Voltaire's Candide, nor Flaubert's Bouvard et Pécuchet. ... But the memory of that often sustains me in the uncomfortable and unenviable hours and days or nights." (JLB 764, 4/28/1889-5/2/1889.)

Context:
JLB 669, 8/26/1888: "However, let's not forget Bouvard et Pécuchet, let's not forget À vau l'eau, because all of that is very, very profoundly true. Au bonheur des dames and Bel-ami, that's no less true, however. It's ways of seeing things -- now, with the first one, we're less in danger of behaving like Don Quixote; it's possible, and with the last idea we go the whole hog."

Context:
BVG 524, 8/14/1888: "For instance, there is a rough sketch I made of myself laden with boxes, props, and canvas on the sunny road to Tarascon."
JLB 660, 8/13/1888: "For example, there's a quick sketch I made of myself laden with boxes, sticks, a canvas, on the sunny Tarascon road …"

Context:
BVG 522, 8/13/1888: "Then a little study of a rest area occupied by the performers in a travealing fair with red and green carts; and also a little study of the cars of the Paris-Lyons-Marseilles train."
JLB 664, 8/19/1888: "And a little study of a halting-place of fairground people, red and green caravans, and also a little study of carriages of the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranée …"

The thrust of the argument is that people who are not persuaded by the images themselves might be persuaded by the sheer virtuosity of the act of creating them. Vincent sees this virtuosity (which consists primarily of unhesitating speed) as a common trait of many of the avatars of the new art. He goes on to tell his sister: "there are at least a score of fellows who in an hour or so can paint a portrait with character in it -- people hardly ever ask for one -- 20 or so fellows who can do whatever landscape you please, at whatever hour of the day, with whatever colour effect you please, on the spot, without hesitation -- nobody looks on, they always work alone." (ibid.) This theme of self-dramatization, of painting as performance, threads through the letters of summer. He writes Bernard: "I've sometimes worked excessively fast; is that a fault? ... I deliberately went outside to make it, out in the mistral. ... in the given circumstances of impulsive work on the spot and from life, is a calm and controlled touch always possible? Well -- it seems to me -- no more than fencing moves during an attack." (JLB 633, 6/27/1888; emphasis added.) To Theo, he compares the "act" of painting to the performance of an actor on the boards: "Work and dry calculation, in which one's mind is extremely stretched, like an actor on the stage in a difficult role -- where you have to think of a thousand things at the same time in a single half hour" (JLB 635, 7/1/1888). In August, this notion of art as a spectator sport reaches its zenith in the passage quoted in the text: "Well, there you are, there's my strong point, to do a chap roughly in one sitting. If, my dear brother, I let myself get more carried away, I'd always do that, I'd drink with the first person to come along and I'd paint him ..." (JLB 662, 8/15/1888.) At the end of August, this image appears again in another letter to Wil, again as a grievance on behalf of painters, like himself, whose true art -- i.e., their performance -- can never be fully captured on canvas: "Is it true, as I think in moments when I'm in a good mood, that what is alive in art, and eternally alive, is first the painter and then the painting? Well, what difference does that make -- but if one sees people working it's still something one doesn't find under glass in museums." (JLB 670, 8/26/1888; emphasis in original.)

This fascination with the exhibitionistic aspect of painting can be traced to early in Vincent's artistic career. In a letter to Van Rappard from The Hague in 1882, Vincent mentions a print that he found "particularly fine," which depicted "a painter working on a shop sign while people watch." (JLB 232, 5/28/1882.) The reference in the letter to Wil in June 1888 to "someone who can really play the violin" entertaining at a dinner party may allude specifically to John Peter Russell, who could play the violin and did, indeed, entertain guests with performances (JLB 626, 6/16/1888-6/20/1888). One intriguing possible implication of this line of thinking is that the wild painting style reported by witnesses like Milliet was, to some extent, theatrics: that Vincent was purposely entertaining observers with an exaggerated, stylized version of his actual creative process.

Context:
JLB 662, 8/15/1888: "… there's my strong point, to do a chap roughly in one sitting. If, my dear brother, I let myself get more carried away, I'd always do that, I'd drink with the first person to come along and I'd paint him -- and not in watercolours but in oils, on the spot, like Daumier. If I did a hundred like that there'd be some good ones among them. And I'd be more French and more myself -- and more of a drinker. It tempts me so much -- not the drink, but painting ruffians." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
JLB 655, 8/5/1888: "I've just made a portrait of a postman -- or rather, two portraits even -- Socratic type, no less Socratic for being something of an alcoholic, and with a high colour as a result."

Context:
JLB 656, 8/6/1888: "I'll send you two lithographs by De Lemud [Aimé de Lemud, 1816-1887; French artist], 'Wine' and 'Coffee'; in 'Wine' there's a Mephisto character who makes you think a little of C.M. when younger, and in Coffee -- … it's absolutely Raoul -- you know that perpetual old bohemian student type whom I knew last year."

Context:
JLB 653, 7/31/1888: "The man is a fervent republican and socialist, reasons very well and knows many things."

Context:
BVG 560, 12/4/1888: "I have made portraits of a whole family, that of the postman whose head I had done previously -- the man, his wife, the baby, the little boy, and the son of sixteen, all characters and very French, though the first has the look of a Russian."
JLB 723, 12/1/1888: "I've done the portraits of an entire family, the family of the postman whose head I did before -- the man, his wife, the baby, the young boy and the 16-year-old son, all characters and very French, although they have a Russian look" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 550, 10/10/1888: "But he is so much the reverse of a sot, his exaltation is so natural, so intelligent, and he argues with such sweep, in the style of Garibaldi, that I gladly reduce the legend of Monticelli the drunkard on absinthe to exactly the same proportions as my postman's."
JLB 702, 10/10/1888 or 10/11/1888: "But he's so much the opposite of stupefied, and his elation is so natural, so intelligent, and then he argues with such a broad sweep, 149. "a drinker all his life"BVG 550, 10/10/1888. (See Ch. 32, n. 143.)

Context:
BVG 550, 10/10/1888: "My friend the postman, for instance, lives a great deal in cafés, and is certainly more or less of a drinker and has been so all his life."
JLB 702, 10/10/1888 or 10/11/1888: "My friend the postman, for example, lives a great deal in cafés and is certainly more or less a drinker and has been so all his life."

Context:
JLB 702, 10/10/1888 or 10/11/1888: "But he's so much the opposite of stupefied, and his elation is so natural, so intelligent, and then he argues with such a broad sweep, 151. "[Roulin's] wife was delivered" BVG W5, 7/31/1888.

Context:
JLB 653, 7/31/1888: "His wife gave birth today and so he's in really fine feather and glowing with satisfaction."

Context:
JLB 691, 9/29/1888: "My friend the postman lives at the bottom of the street on the left, between the two railway bridges."

Context:
JLB 653, 7/31/1888: "I hope I'll also get to paint the baby born today."

Context:
BVG 518, 8/6/1888: "And in the same way a child in the cradle, if you watch it at leisure, has the infinite in its eyes."
JLB 656, 8/6/1888: "And a baby in its cradle, also, if you look at it at your ease, has the infinite in its eyes."

As he did with The Zouave and The Mousmé -- other images that advertised the artistic advantages of the Midi -- Vincent sent elaborate drawings of his paintings of Roulin to his brother (Joseph Roulin, Three-Quarter-Length [F 1459 JH 1547]), to Bernard (Joseph Roulin, Sitting in a Cane Chair, Three-Quarter-Length [F 1723 JH 1523]) (and thereby to Gauguin), and even to Russell. Vincent also sent the second, bust portrait of the postman (Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin [F 433 JH 1524]) to Theo. (Russell's drawing was based on the bust portrait.) Vincent kept the larger, three-quarter-length portrait (Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin [F 432 JH 1522]) in Arles where he used it as the basis for several more paintings over the remainder of his stay in Arles (Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin [F 434 JH 1647], Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin [F 439 JH 1673], Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin [F 435 JH 1674], Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin [F 436 JH 1675]), the first of which was done while Gauguin was present in the studio. (It is possible, but doubtful, that Roulin did additional posing for this one.) Altogether, there are nine surviving images of the burly postman.

Context:
JLB 656, 8/6/1888: "The chap, not accepting money, was more expensive, eating, drinking with me" (emphasis in original).

Context:
JLB 655, 8/5/1888: "He was getting too stiff while posing, and that's why I painted him twice, the second time at a single sitting."

Vincent did not finish this painting (Portrait of Postman Joseph Roulin [F 432 JH 1522]) in a single session, but his reports about what a restless model Roulin was (see Ch. 32, n. 160), and his triumphant claims about the other, smaller portrait of the postman (Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin [F 433 JH 1524]) being done in a single sitting (JLB 655, 8/5/1888; JLB 662, 8/15/1888), indicate that Vincent was working as fast as he could on the first, larger version.

Context:
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: I don't know if I'll be able to paint the postman as I feel him; as a revolutionary this man is like père Tanguy, he's probably considered a good republican because he heartily detests the republic we currently enjoy, and because, in short, he's a little dubious and a little disillusioned with the republican idea itself. But one day I saw him singing the Marseillaise -- and I thought I was seeing ' 89, not next year, but the one 99 years ago. It was something out of Delacroix, out of Daumier, out of the old Dutch painting entirely. (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
JLB 655, 8/5/1888: "Goddamn, what a subject to paint 165. and perhaps Bernard, too BVG 493, 5/28/1888: As of late May, Vincent still anticipated that Bernard would come to Arles, either specifically to join the combination Vincent envisioned, or on his way to or from military duty in Africa.

Context:
JLB 616, 5/28/1888 or 5/29/1888: "This would be the beginnings of an association, then. Bernard, who's coming to the south too, will join us."

Context:
BVG 520, 8/11/1888: " And I should not be surprised if the impressionists soon find fault with my way of working, for it has been fertilized by Delacroix's ideas rather than by theirs."
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: " And I wouldn't be very surprised if the Impressionists were soon to find fault with my way of doing things, which was fertilized more by the ideas of Delacroix than by theirs."

Context:
BVG 556, 10/21/1888: "And to say at the same time how right I think it is to see a tendency toward great things in the Impressionist movement, and not only a school which would confine itself to optical experiment."
JLB 709, 10/21/1888: "And at the same time to say how strongly I believe that we're right to see in the Impressionist movement a tendency towards great things, and not only a school that would limit itself to making optical experiments" (emphasis in original).

Context:
JLB 679, 9/10/1888: "For him, as for me, we'll feel very clearly that we must succeed, because the honour of all three of us is involved there, and because we're not working just for ourselves. That seems to me to be the case. And I say to myself that even if we must tumble into the inevitability of things, we should still do it that way. But increasingly I'm dismissing the idea of that tumble when I think of the serenity that we see on faces in Frans Halses and Rembrandts, as in the portrait of old Six, as in his own, as in those Frans Halses that we know so well in Haarlem, of old men and old women."

Context:
JLB 702, 10/10/1888 or 10/11/1888: "The other day, you remember, I wrote to our sister and to you that sometimes I believed I had the feeling that I was continuing Monticelli here. Good -- but you see now -- the studio in question, we're setting it up. What Gauguin will do, what I'll also do myself, will be in keeping with that fine oeuvre by Monticelli, and we'll try to prove to the good folk that Monticelli didn't quite die, slumped over the tables of the cafés along La Canebière, but that the little old chap is still alive. And the thing won't end with us either; we're starting it off on quite a solid footing."

Context:
JLB 668, 8/23/1888 or 8/24/1888: "But there you are, we live in times when there's no market for what we do; not only do we not sell, as you see with Gauguin, we'd like to borrow against paintings done and we find nothing, even when the amounts are insignificant and the works substantial. And that's how we fall prey to all the whims of fortune. And I fear that it will scarcely change during our lifetime. As long as we were preparing the way for richer lives for the painters who will walk in our footsteps, that would already be something."

Context:
BVG 539, 9/17/1888: "It is true that in impressionism I see the resurrection of Eugène Delacroix, but the interpretations of it are so divergent and in a way so irreconcilable that it will not be impressionism which will give us the final doctrine."
JLB 683, 9/18/1888: "Now it's true, I see in Impressionism the resurrection of Eugène Delacroix, but the interpretations being both divergent and somewhat irreconcilable, it won't be Impressionism that will formulate the doctrine" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG B13, 7/25/1888: "Coming to France as a foreigner, I, perhaps better than Frenchmen born and bred, have felt Delacroix and Zola, and my sincere and wholehearted admiration for them is boundless. In their quality as painters of a society, of a nature in its entirety, Zola and Balzac produce rare artistic emotions in those who love them, just because they embrace the whole of the epoch they depict."
JLB 651, 7/30/1888: "Having come to France I have, perhaps better than many Frenchmen themselves, felt Delacroix and Zola, for whom my sincere and frank admiration is boundless. Zola and Balzac, as painters of a society, of reality as a whole, arouse rare artistic emotions in those who love them, for the very reason that they embrace the whole epoch that they paint."

Context:
BVG B6, 6/6/1888-6/11/1888: "More and more it seems to me that the pictures which must be made so that painting should be wholly itself, and should raise itself to a height equivalent to the serene summits which the Greek sculptors, the German musicians, the writers of French novels reached, are beyond the power of an isolated individual; so they will probably be created by groups of men combining to execute an idea held in common."
JLB 622, 6/7/1888: "More and more it seems to me that the paintings that ought to be made, the paintings that are necessary, indispensable for painting today to be fully itself and to rise to a level equivalent to the serene peaks achieved by the Greek sculptors, the German musicians, the French writers of novels, exceed the power of an isolated individual, and will therefore probably be created by groups of men combining to carry out a shared idea" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 534, 9/9/1888: "I see absolutely nothing to object to in your suggestion of exhibiting once at the Revue Indépendente, provided, however, that I am no obstacle to the others who usually exhibit there."
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "I find absolutely nothing to object to what you speak of, to exhibit sometime at the Revue Indépendante, as long as I'm not a cause of obstruction for the others who usually exhibit there."

Context:
BVG 536, 9/11/1888: "Both he and I will feel strongly that we must succeed because the honor of all three of us is at stake, and that each is not working for himself alone."
JLB 679, 9/10/1888: "For him, as for me, we'll feel very clearly that we must succeed, because the honour of all three of us is involved there, and because we're not working just for ourselves."

Context:
JLB 620, 6/5/1888: "Apparently an article on Anquetin has appeared in the Revue Indépendante in which he seems to have been called the leader of a new movement in which Japonism was even more marked, &c."

Context:
JLB 678, 9/9/1888 and 9/14/1888: "A huge yellow lantern lights the terrace, the façade, the pavement, and even projects light over the cobblestones of the street, which takes on a violet-pink tinge. The gables of the houses on a street that leads away under the blue sky studded with stars are dark blue or violet, with a green tree. Now there's a painting of night without black. With nothing but beautiful blue, violet and green, and in these surroundings the lighted square is coloured pale sulphur, lemon green."

Context:
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "It often seems to me that the night is much more alive and richly coloured than the day."

Context:
JLB 622, 6/7/1888: "Because the Japanese disregards reflection, placing his solid tints one beside the other -- characteristic lines naively marking off movements or shapes."

Context:
BVG 544, 10/3/1888: "Bernard's letter is once more full of his conviction that Gauguin is a very great master, and a man absolutely superior in character and intellect."
JLB 697, 10/4/1888 or 10/5/1888: "Bernard's letter is once again full of the conviction that Gauguin is a truly great master, and an absolutely superior man in terms of character and intelligence."

Context:
JLB 626, 6/16/1888 - 6/20/1888: "Theo once bought from him a large painting of negresses dressed in pink, blue, orange, yellow cotton under the tamarind, coconut and banana trees, with the sea in the distance. Like Le mariage de Loti, that description of Otaheite. He's been in Martinique, you see, and he's worked in that tropical scenery."

Context:
JLB 684, 9/19/1888-9/25/1888: "The south will delight you and make you a great artist; Gauguin himself owes his superiority to the South. I've been looking at the stronger sun down here for months and months now."

Context:
BVG B19, 10/7/1888: "Here too perhaps -- I have hardly had any experience of it yet, and so I must wait and see; but it is a damned useful thing to see the South -- where so much more of life is spent in the open air -- in order to understand the Japanese better."
JLB 698, 10/5/1888: "Here too, perhaps; I've hardly had the experience yet and it remains to be seen. But it's damned useful to see the South, where life is lived more in the open air, in order to understand the Japanese better."

Context:
BVG 536, 9/11/1888: "I am rather curious to know what he will say to you himself. I reply to him exactly as I feel, but I do not want to say depressing or dismal or malicious things to so great an artist."
JLB 679, 9/10/1888: "I'm quite curious to know what he'll write to you himself; I'll reply to him exactly as I feel, but I don't want to say melancholy or sad or mean things to so great an artist."

Context:
BVG 544, 10/3/1888: "Enclosed a very, very remarkable letter from Gauguin. Do put it on one side as a thing of extraordinary importance."
JLB 697, 10/4/1888 or 10/5/1888: "Included herewith a quite, quite remarkable letter from Gauguin, which I'll ask you to put aside as being of extraordinary importance."

BVG B9, 6/24/1888. Although Vincent argued with Bernard, in particular, over the use of overtly religious symbols (see later in this chapter), he condoned the larger concept of using symbols in art, as is obvious in this passage from a letter to Bernard in late June: "Now I say it again -- this Christ is more of an artist than the artists -- he works in living spirit and flesh, he makes men instead of statues, so … as a painter I feel good being an ox … and I admire the bull, the eagle, the man, with a veneration -- which -- will prevent my being a man of ambition." (JLB 633, 6/27/1888.) Similarly, Vincent's letters around this time are filled with passages that boast the symbolic dimensions of his own work, like this description of his portrait of the peasant Patience Escalier (Portrait of Patience Escalier [F 444 JH 1563]): "But imagining the terrific man I had to do, in the very furnace of harvest time, deep in the south. Hence the oranges, blazing like red-hot iron, hence the old gold tones, glowing in the darkness." (JLB 663, 8/18/1888.) (For more on Vincent's embrace of Symbolism via Gauguin and Bernard, see Roskill, pp. 234-36, and Goldwater, pp. 137-39.)

Context:
JLB 633, 6/27/1888: "Now I say it again -- this Christ is more of an artist than the artists -- he works in living spirit and flesh, he makes men instead of statues, so … as a painter I feel good being an ox … and I admire the bull, the eagle, the man, with a veneration -- which -- will prevent my being a man of ambition."

Context:
BVG 528, 8/27/1888: "Painting as it is now promises to become more subtle -- more like music and less like sculpture -- and above all it promises color. If only it keeps this promise."
JLB 669, 8/26/1888: "Painting as it is now promises to become more subtle -- more music and less sculpture -- in fact, it promises colour. As long as it keeps this promise." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
BVG 501a, 6/17/1888: "I enclose the slip of scribbling that you may judge of my abstractions, and forgive my not writing before as such. I must hurry off this letter for I feel some more abstractions coming on and if I did not quickly fill up my paper I would again set to drawing and you would not have your letter."
JLB 627, 6/17/1888: "I enclose the slip of scribbling, that you may judge of my abstractions and forgive my not writing before as such. I must hurry off this letter for I feel some more abstractions coming on and if I did not quickly fill up my paper I would again set to drawing and you would not have your letter."

Context:
JLB 666, 8/21/1888 or 8/22/1888: "The whole thing will therefore be a symphony in blue and yellow. I work on it all these mornings, from sunrise. Because the flowers wilt quickly and it's a matter of doing the whole thing in one go."

Context:
JLB 590, 5/30/1888: "But by intensifying all the colours one again achieves calm and harmony. And something happens like with the Wagner music which, performed by a large orchestra, is no less intimate for that." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
JLB 670, 8/26/1888: "Have you read Whitman's American poems yet? Theo should have them, and I really urge you to read them, first because they're really beautiful, and also, English people are talking about them a lot at the moment. He sees in the future, and even in the present, a world of health, of generous, frank carnal love -- of friendship -- of work, with the great starry firmament, something, in short, that one could only call God and eternity, put back in place above this world."

Context:
BVG B19, 10/7/1888: "And I cannot work without a model. I won't say that I don't turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colours, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true."
JLB 698, 10/5/1888: "And I can't work without a model. I'm not saying that I don't flatly turn my back on reality to turn a study into a painting -- by arranging the colour, by enlarging, by simplifying -- but I have such a fear of separating myself from what's possible and what's right as far as form is concerned."

Context:
JLB 686, 9/23/1888 or 9/24/1888: "I envy the Japanese the extreme clarity that everything in their work has. It's never dull, and never appears to be done too hastily. Their work is as simple as breathing, and they do a figure with a few confident strokes with the same ease as if it was as simple as buttoning your waistcoat."

Context:
BVG 526, 8/21/1888: "I would like to paint in such a way that everybody, at least if they have eyes, would see it."
JLB 666, 8/21/1888 or 8/22/1888: "I'd like to paint in such a way that if it comes to it, everyone who has eyes could understand it."

Context:
BVG 527, 8/27/1888: "That's what I'd call simplicity of technique. And I must tell you that nowadays I am trying to find a special brushwork without stippling or anything else, nothing but the varied stroke."
JLB 668, 8/23/1888 or 8/24/1888: "That's what I'd call simplicity of technique. And I must tell you that these days I'm making a great effort to find a way of using the brush without stippling or anything else, nothing but a varied brushstroke."

Context:
BVG W7, 9/9/1888-9/16/1888: "Theo wrote me that he had given you Japanese pictures. This is surely the practical way to arrive at an understanding of the direction which painting in bright clear colors has taken at present."
JLB 678, 9/9/1888 and 9/14/1888: "Theo wrote telling me that he has given you some Japanese prints. It's certainly the most practical way of getting to understand the direction that painting has taken at present. Colourful and bright."

Context;
BVG 527, 8/27/1888: "But anyway, this much is positive, it is not we of the present time who are decadent. Gauguin and Bernard talk now of 'painting like children' -- I would rather have that than 'painting like decadents.'"
JLB 678, 9/9/1888 and 9/14/1888: "In any case, here's what's positive, we aren't the ones who represent decadence today. Gauguin and Bernard are now talking about doing 'children's painting.' I prefer that to the painting of the decadents."

Context:
JLB 697, 10/4/1888 or 10/5/1888: "I've slightly slanted the eyes in the Japanese manner" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 545, 10/7/1888: "I have written to Gauguin in reply to his letter that if I might be allowed to stress my own personality in a portrait, I had done so in trying to convey in my portrait not only myself but an impressionist in general, had conceived it as the portrait of a bonze, a simple worshiper of the eternal Buddha."
JLB 697, 10/4/1888 or 10/5/1888: "I wrote to Gauguin in reply to his letter that if I too was allowed to enhance my personality in a portrait, trying to show in my portrait not only myself but an Impressionist in general, I had conceived this portrait as being that of a bonze, a simple worshipper of the eternal Buddha."

Context:
JLB 686, 9/23/1888 or 9/24/1888: "And we wouldn't be able to study Japanese art, it seems to me, without becoming much happier and more cheerful, and it makes us return to nature, despite our education and our work in a world of convention."

Context:
BVG 542, 9/24/1888: "So come, isn't what we are taught by these simple Japanese, who live in nature as if they themselves were flowers, almost a true religion?"
JLB 686, 9/23/1888 or 9/24/1888: "Just think of that; isn't it almost a new religion that these Japanese teach us, who are so simple and live in nature as if they themselves were flowers?"

Context:
BVG 542, 9/24/1888: "And one cannot study Japanese art, it seems to me, without becoming merrier and happier, and we should turn back to nature in spite of our education and our work in a conventional world."
JLB 686, 9/23/1888 or 9/24/1888: "And we wouldn't be able to study Japanese art, it seems to me, without becoming much happier and more cheerful, and it makes us return to nature, despite our education and our work in a world of convention."

Context:
JLB 680, 9/11/1888: "My letter to Gauguin has gone off; I asked them for an exchange if they wish; I would so much like to have here Gauguin's portrait of Bernard and Bernard's of Gauguin."

Context:
JLB 695, 10/3/1888: "Now I'd like to see you taking a very large share in this belief that we'll be relatively successful in founding something lasting."

Context:
BVG 497, 6/12/1888-6/13/1888: " I do not find it easy to think of changing my direction now that I have begun on the South. It is better never to budge -- but to get deeper and deeper into the scenery."
JLB 624, 6/12/1888 or 6/13/1888: " It's quite hard for me to imagine myself changing direction; having made a start on the south it's better not to move than -- penetrating ever deeper into the region."

Context:
BVG 539, 9/17/1888: "It is true that in Impressionism I see the resurrection of Eugène Delacroix, but the interpretations of it are so divergent and in a way so irreconcilable that it will not be Impressionism which will give us the final doctrine."
JLB 683, 9/18/1888: "Now it's true, I see in Impressionism the resurrection of Eugène Delacroix but the interpretations being both divergent and somewhat irreconcilable, it won't be Impressionism that will formulate the doctrine" (emphasis in original).

Vincent promised that, when Gauguin finally came to Arles, he (Vincent) would "show him beyond any doubt my own originality" (JLB 709, 10/21/1888), and predicted confidently: "If he and I stay here for a long time we'll make paintings that are more and more personal" (JLB 624, 6/12/1888 or 6/13/1888; emphasis in original). Vincent staunchly defended the right of other artists, like Gauguin, to maintain their own individuality: "I should in any case not like to diminish an individual through an association" (JLB 629, 6/21/1888). To sister Wil, he even waxed indignant in defense of the artist's prerogative to go his own way: "They're ambitious here too, but still there's a difference, and many here are beginning to understand how ridiculous it is to make oneself dependent on the opinion of others about what one does" (JLB 626, 6/16/1888-6/20/1888). Tellingly, Vincent bragged to Theo about his Japanese-inspired decorative scheme for the Yellow House in these terms: "you'll like it ... it'll be a studio in a style absolutely meant to be that way" (JLB 677, 9/9/1888); and he expressed his disappointment in Bing's review of Japanese art because it did not make a case for "great, typical art" (JLB 685, 9/21/1888).

Context:
BVG 544, 10/3/1888: "His coming will alter my manner of painting and I shall gain by it, I believe, but all the same I am rather keen on my decorations, which are almost like French painted porcelain. And these days are magnificent."
JLB 697, 10/4/1888 or 10/5/1888: "His arrival will change me in my way of painting, and I'll gain by it, I dare believe -- but all the same, I'm rather attached to my decoration, which is almost barbotine. And these recent days are superb."

Context:
BVG 544, 10/3/1888: "His coming will alter my manner of painting and I shall gain by it, I believe, but all the same I am rather keen on my decorations, which are almost like French painted porcelain. And these days are magnificent."
JLB 697, 10/4/1888 or 10/5/1888: "His arrival will change me in my way of painting, and I'll gain by it, I dare believe -- but all the same, I'm rather attached to my decoration, which is almost barbotine. And these recent days are superb."

Context:
JLB 590, 5/30/1888: "By next year -- when the World Exhibition will be held -- I have to make a mass of things, because my friends will certainly also not fail to have a great many interesting things on hand."

Context:
BVG 536, 9/11/1888: "I am rather curious to know what he will say to you himself. I reply to him exactly as I feel, but I do not want to say depressing or dismal or malicious things to so great an artist."
JLB 679, 9/10/1888: "I'm quite curious to know what he'll write to you himself; I'll reply to him exactly as I feel, but I don't want to say melancholy or sad or mean things to so great an artist."

Context:
BVG B3, 4/9/1888: "Thanks for your kind letter and for the enclosed sketches of your decoration, which I think very funny. Sometimes I regret that I cannot make up my mind to work more at home and extempore."
JLB 596, 4/12/1888: "Thanks for your kind letter and the croquis of your decoration included with it, which I find really amusing. I sometimes regret that I can't decide to work more at home and from the imagination."

Context:
JLB 698, 10/5/1888: "I'm not saying that I don't flatly turn my back on reality to turn a study into a painting -- by arranging the colour, by enlarging, by simplifying -- but I have such a fear of separating myself from what's possible and what's right as far as form is concerned. ... I have so much curiosity for what's possible and what really exists that I have so little desire or courage to search for the ideal, in so far as it could result from my abstract studies. But in the meantime I'm still living off the real world. I exaggerate, I sometimes make changes to the subject, but still I don't invent the whole of the painting." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
BVG B19, 10/7/1888: "And I cannot work without a model. I won't say that I don't turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colours, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true."
JLB 698, 10/5/1888: "And I can't work without a model. I'm not saying that I don't flatly turn my back on reality to turn a study into a painting -- by arranging the colour, by enlarging, by simplifying -- but I have such a fear of separating myself from what's possible and what's right as far as form is concerned."

Context:
BVG B19, 10/7/1888: "But in the meantime I am getting well acquainted with nature. I exaggerate, sometimes I make changes in a motif; but for all that, I do not invent the whole picture; on the contrary, I find it all ready in nature, only it must be disentangled."
JLB 698, 10/5/1888: "But in the meantime I'm still living off the real world. I exaggerate, I sometimes make changes to the subject, but still I don't invent the whole of the painting; on the contrary, I find it ready-made -- but to be untangled -- in the real world."

Context:
BVG B19, 10/7/1888: "But in the meantime I am getting well acquainted with nature. I exaggerate, sometimes I make changes in a motif; but for all that, I do not invent the whole picture; on the contrary, I find it all ready in nature, only it must be disentangled."
JLB 698, 10/5/1888: "But in the meantime I'm still living off the real world. I exaggerate, I sometimes make changes to the subject, but still I don't invent the whole of the painting; on the contrary, I find it ready-made -- but to be untangled -- in the real world."

This leads Vincent to a bizarre but strangely moving image: "see that meat from the market, notice how, all the same, despite everything, it can still be electrified for a moment by the stimulus of a love more refined and unexpected" (ibid.). Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was published in 1818, but there is no indication anywhere else in the letters or literature that Vincent read this classic of science fiction.

Context:
BVG B8, 6/23/1888: "The sonnets are doing well -- that is to say, their color is fine; the drawing is less strong, or rather less sure, the drawing is still hesitant -- I don't know how to express it -- their moral purpose is not clear."
JLB 632, 6/26/1888: "The sonnets are going well -- i.e. -- the colour in them is good -- the design isn't as strong, less sure of itself, rather; the conception's still hesitant, I don't know how to put it -- its moral purpose isn't clear."

Context:
BVG 514, 7/25/1888: "Bernard has sent me 10 sketches like his brothel; three of them were

Context:
BVG 514, 7/25/1888: "But there is a woman washing herself, very Rembrandtesque, an effect like Goya, and a landscape with figures, very strange."
JLB 650, 7/29/1888: "But there's a woman washing herself, very Rembrandtesque, or in the style of Goya, and a very strange landscape with figures."

The juxtaposition of Dutch naturalism (portraits, landscapes, still lifes) to Symbolist "meditations" is unmistakable. Vincent takes the trouble to bury his dismissal of those meditations as "stupidity" and "folly" in indirection, undoubtedly out of deference to Bernard's enthusiasm, but by this time (August 1888) Vincent already has a clear record of criticizing such imagery in similarly extreme terms. As early as 1873, while working for Goupil in London, Vincent leveled a rare attack on an English painting he saw "with a sort of fish or dragon no less than 6 ells long. It was ghastly. And a little man who was going to kill the above-mentioned creature. And all this represented, I believe, 'the archangel Michael slaying Satan.'" (JLB 13, 9/13/1873.) Ten years later, in July 1883, after visiting the Hague studio of his one-time friend George Hendrik Breitner, Vincent flew into a tirade over the artist's strange "abstract" work, calling it "weird," "absolutely unpalatable," and "very ugly" because "the fantasy is heavy-handed and without meaning, and there are almost no correspondences to what exists. ... If he deviated from the normal for a reasonable motive, well and good, but here it's a question of not taking any trouble with his work either. I find it truly wretched and I hope he recovers, but he has lost his way badly." (JLB 361, 7/11/1883.) Interestingly, Vincent described one of the Breitner images derisively as "a not unmystical scene, probably taken from Revelation" (ibid.). He concluded his scalding critique by comparing Breitner's work to a nightmare: "I utterly fail to understand how anyone could possibly come up with something like that. It's the sort of thing one sees when one has a fever -- or impossible and meaningless as in a dream that makes no sense at all." (ibid.)

This is precisely the same accusation he leveled against Bernard's and Gauguin's symbolic religious imagery six years later, in November 1889: "I've written to Bernard, and also to Gauguin, that I believed that thinking and not dreaming was our duty, that I was therefore astonished when looking at their work by the fact that they give way to that. ... The thing about them is that they're sorts of dreams and nightmares." (JLB 823, 11/26/1889.) The impression Breitner's images left was so sour that Vincent recalled them a full year later in Nuenen with undiminished scorn: "As you know, the last impressions that I had of him were rather unfavourable as a consequence of 3 large canvases that I saw at his place and in which I literally saw nothing that one could locate either in reality or in an imaginary world" (JLB 451, 7/2/1884). A year after that, Vincent criticized a painting recommended to him by Theo (Fritz Uhde's Suffer the Little Children to Come unto Me) precisely on account of its figure of Christ: "I like interiors in bright tones with peasant children -- without a mystical figure of Christ, like [Jozef] Israëls, like [David Adolph] Artz, better than this, where one gets a mystical Christ into the bargain" (JLB 510, 6/28/1885, emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG B14, 8/4/1888: "They painted portraits, landscapes, still lifes. Well, one can be stupider than that, and commit greater follies."
JLB 655, 8/5/1888: "They make portraits, landscapes, still lifes. One could be stupider than that and commit greater follies."

Context:
BVG B14, 8/4/1888: "They painted portraits, landscapes, still lifes. Well, one can be stupider than that, and commit greater follies."
JLB 655, 8/5/1888: "They make portraits, landscapes, still lifes. One could be stupider than that and commit greater follies."

Context:
BVG B14, 8/4/1888: "If we don't know what to do, my dear comrade Bernard, then let's do as they did if only not to let our rare intellectual power evaporate in sterile metaphysical meditations which cannot possibly put the chaos into a goblet, as chaos is chaotic for the very reason that it contains no glass of our caliber."
JLB 655, 8/5/1888: " If we don't know what to do, my dear old Bernard, then let's do the same as them, if only so as not to allow our scarce mental powers to evaporate in sterile metaphysical meditations that aren't up to bottling chaos, which is chaotic for the very reason that it won't fit into any glass of our calibre" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG B14, 8/4/1888: "Now we see that the Dutch paint things just as they are, apparently without reasoning, just as Courbet painted his beautiful nude women."
JLB 655, 8/5/1888: "The Dutchmen, now, we see them painting things just as they are, apparently without thought, the way Courbet painted his beautiful naked women."

Context:
BVG B13, 7/25/1888: " Hammer into your head that master Frans Hals, that painter of all kinds of portraits, of a whole gallant, live, immortal republic. Hammer into your head the no less great and universal master painter of portraits of the Dutch republic: Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, that broad-minded naturalistic man, as healthy as Hals himself."
JLB 651, 7/30/1888: " Get him into your head, this Master Frans Hals, painter of various portraits of a whole self-assured and lively and immortal republic. Get into your head the no less great and universal master portrait painter of the Dutch Republic, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, a broad and naturalistic and healthy man, as much as Hals himself."

The exact scope of Vincent's claim of derivativeness is not clear; nor, clearly, was it meant to be much more than rhetorical. (In a letter to his sister Wil only a month later, he concedes that French artists "are undeniably the masters" in painting, "in modern art history there are names like Delacroix, Millet, Corot, Courbet, Daumier, who dominate everything that was produced in other countries" [JLB 626, 6/16/1888-6/20/1888].) But some accusation was nonetheless intended. Indeed, Bernard's lack of knowledge about Dutch painting, and Vincent's affront at this, is a theme of the latter's letters around this time, and seems to have been a direct response to the former's arguments for Symbolism: "Ah ... Rembrandt ... all admiration for Baudelaire aside -- I venture to assume, especially on the basis of those verses ... that he knew more or less nothing about Rembrandt. ... But see, have you ever looked closely at [Rembrandt's] 'the ox' or the interior of a butcher's shop [1655] in the Louvre? You haven't looked closely at them, and Baudelaire infinitely less so. It would be a treat for me to spend a morning with you in the Dutch gallery. All that is barely describable. But in front of the paintings I could show you marvels and miracles that are the reason that, for me, the primitives really don't have my admiration first and foremost and most directly." (JLB 649, 7/29/1888, emphasis in original.)

Vincent repeats this condescending advice almost word-for-word in his next letter to Bernard: "I want to repeat to you that neither Baudelaire nor you has a sufficiently clear idea when it comes to Rembrandt. And when it comes to you, I couldn't encourage you enough to take a long look at major and minor Dutchmen before arriving at an opinion. Here it's not just a matter of strange precious stones, but it's a matter of sorting out marvels from among marvels." (JLB 651, 7/30/1888.)

Context:
BVG B13, 7/25/1888: "I mention Fabritius here although we know only two canvases of his, and I don't mention a lot of good painters, and especially not the paste among these diamonds, that paste so solidly crammed into the vulgar French noodles."
JLB 651, 7/30/1888: "I mention Fabritius to you there, by whom we know only -- two canvases -- I don't mention a heap of good painters, and especially not the paste among these diamonds, paste firmly embedded in ordinary French skulls" (emphasis in original).

Context:
JLB 599, 4/19/1888: "Twisted on his cross in a spiral is a very, very good rendering of the exaggerated thinness of the mystical Christs; why not add to it that the anguished expression of the martyr is like the eye of a broken-hearted cab horse? That way it would be more utterly Parisian, where you see looks like that, either in the pensioners of the little carriages, or in poets and artists." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
JLB 632, 6/26/1888: "You do very well to read the Bible -- I start there because I've always refrained from recommending it to you. When reading your many quotations from Moses, from St. Luke, &c., I can't help saying to myself -- well, well -- that's all he needed. There it is now, full-blown -- -- -- the artist's neurosis. Because the study of Christ inevitably brings it on, especially in my case, where it's complicated by the seasoning of innumerable pipes."

Context:
JLB 783, 6/25/1889: "Speaking of Gauguin, Bernard and the fact that they might well do more consolatory painting, I must, however, add what I've anyway often said to Gauguin himself, that one must then not forget that others have already done so."

Context:
BVG B8, 6/23/1888: " How small-minded the old story really is! My God! Does the world consist solely of Jews, who declare from the very start that all those who are different from them are impure?"
JLB 632, 6/26/1888: " How petty that story is! My God, are there only these Jews in the world, then? Who start out by declaring that everything that isn't themselves is impure?"

Context:
BVG B8, 6/23/1888: "But the consolation of that deeply saddening Bible, which arouses our despair and indignation, which seriously offends us and thoroughly confuses us with its pettiness and infectious foolishness -- the consolation it contains like a stone inside a hard rind and bitter pulp, is Christ."
JLB 632, 6/26/1888: "But the consolation of this so saddening Bible, which stirs up our despair and our indignation -- thoroughly upsets us, completely outraged by its pettiness and its contagious folly -- the consolation it contains, like a kernel inside a hard husk, a bitter pulp -- is Christ."

Context:
BVG B8, 6/23/1888: "But the consolation of that deeply saddening Bible, which arouses our despair and indignation, which seriously offends us and thoroughly confuses us with its pettiness and infectious foolishness -- the consolation it contains like a stone inside a hard rind and bitter pulp, is Christ."
JLB 632, 6/26/1888: "But the consolation of this so saddening Bible, which stirs up our despair and our indignation -- thoroughly upsets us, completely outraged by its pettiness and its contagious folly -- the consolation it contains, like a kernel inside a hard husk, a bitter pulp -- is Christ."

Context:
BVG B8, 6/23/1888: "As I read the many sayings of Moses, Luke, etc., I couldn't help thinking, you know, that's all he needs -- and now it has come to pass … the artistic neurosis."
JLB 632, 6/26/1888: "When reading your many quotations from Moses, from St Luke, &c., I can't help saying to myself -- well, well -- that's all he needed. There it is now, full-blown -- -- -- -- ... the artist's neurosis."

Context:
BVG B8, 6/23/1888: " Only Delacroix and Rembrandt have painted the face of Christ in such a way that I can feel him ... and then Millet painted ... the teachings of Christ."
JLB 632, 6/26/1888: " The figure of Christ has been painted -- as I feel it -- only by Delacroix and by Rembrandt … And then Millet has painted … Christ's doctrine."

Context:
BVG B8, 6/23/1888: " The rest rather makes me laugh, the rest of religious painting -- from the religious point of view, not from the point of view of painting."
JLB 632, 6/26/1888: " The rest makes me smile a little -- the rest of religious painting -- from the religious point of view -- not from the painting point of view."

Context:
BVG 531, 9/3/1888: " Oh, my dear boy, sometimes I know so well what I want. I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, ill as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life -- the power to create."
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: " Ah, my dear brother, sometimes I know so clearly what I want. In life and in painting too, I can easily do without the dear Lord, but I can't, suffering as I do, do without something greater than myself, which is my life, the power to create."

Context:
BVG B5, 5/20/1888: "The whites, very Christian and all that … in order to put a stop to this barbarity (?), really not very cruel … could find no better means than the extermination of the tribe of cannibal natives as well as the tribe against which the latter fought (in order to provide themselves from time to time with the necessary palatable prisoners of war)."
JLB 612, 5/22/1888: "The whites, very Christian, etc., to put an end to this barbarity? really not very savage … could think of nothing better than to exterminate both the tribe of cannibal natives and the tribe with which the former was at war (in order to obtain the requisite edible prisoners of war on both sides)."

Context:
BVG W4, 6/22/1888: "We must never invoke the excuse of extenuating circumstances, of our inability, and so on. It is less kristian (in the sense in which it is diluted nowadays), but it is better for us, and perhaps even for others. And energy begets energy, and conversely paralysis paralyzes others."
JLB 626, 6/16/1888-6/20/1888: " … we mustn't give way too much to the extenuating circumstance of not being able &c., it's less Christian (in the sense in which people water it down these days), but it's better for us and perhaps even for others. And energy generates energy, and conversely paralysis paralyzes others."

Context:
BVG 470, 3/18/1888: "There is a Gothic portico here, which I am beginning to think admirable, the porch of St. Trophime. But it is so cruel, so monstrous, like a Chinese nightmare, that even this beautiful example of so grand a style seems to me to belong to another world, and I am as glad not to belong to it as to that other world, magnificent as it was, of the Roman Nero."
JLB 588, 3/21/1888 or 3/22/1888: "There's a Gothic porch here that I'm beginning to think is admirable, the porch of St. Trophime, but it's so cruel, so monstrous, like a Chinese nightmare, that even this beautiful monument in so grand a style seems to me to belong to another world, to which I'm as glad not to belong as to the glorious world of Nero the Roman."

Context:
BVG 470, 3/18/1888: "There is a Gothic portico here, which I am beginning to think admirable, the porch of St. Trophime. But it is so cruel, so monstrous, like a Chinese nightmare, that even this beautiful example of so grand a style seems to me to belong to another world, and I am as glad not to belong to it as to that other world, magnificent as it was, of the Roman Nero."
JLB 588, 3/21/1888 or 3/22/1888: "There's a Gothic porch here that I'm beginning to think is admirable, the porch of St Trophime, but it's so cruel, so monstrous, like a Chinese nightmare, that even this beautiful monument in so grand a style seems to me to belong to another world, to which I'm as glad not to belong as to the glorious world of Nero the Roman."

Context:
JLB 636, 7/5/1888: "I'm reading Balzac, César Birotteau, I'll send it to you when I've finished it -- I think I'll re-read all of Balzac."

Context:
BVG 505, 7/8/1888: "I have scraped off a big painted study, an olive garden, with a figure of Christ in blue and orange, and an angel in yellow. Red earth, hills green and blue, olive trees with violet and carmine trunks, and green-gray and blue foliage. A citron-yellow sky."
JLB 637, 7/8/1888 or 7/9/1888: "I've scraped off one of the large painted studies. A Garden of Olives -- with a blue and orange Christ figure, a yellow angel -- a piece of red earth, green and blue hills. Olive trees with purple and crimson trunks, with grey green and blue foliage. Sky lemon yellow." (Emphasis in original.)

A month later, the same image of Christ in the Garden came to him again as he was about to give his first sermon. Quoting again from the gospel Mark's account (14:36), Vincent wrote Theo: "Your brother was indeed moved when he stood at the foot of the pulpit and bowed his head and prayed 'Abba, Father, let Thy name be our beginning'" (JLB 96, 11/3/1876). Before leaving Isleworth, Vincent pasted into the guest book of the Slade-Joneses a print of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. (See Bailey, pp. 87-88.) In January 1877, from Dordrecht, Vincent singles out Ary Scheffer's "Christ in Gethsemane" for special praise -- "unforgettable," he calls it (JLB 101, 1/21/1877). Later that year, after he began studying for university admission in order to follow in his father's footsteps, the scene in the Garden tops Vincent's list of examples of angelic intervention: "we read of the Angel who strengthened Him in Gethsemane, who was sorrowful, even unto death" (JLB 118, 5/31/1877). The connection between this image of paternal reconciliation and Vincent's troubled relationship with his own father is undeniable. Because Vincent's father died unreconciled to his eldest son in 1885 -- putting ultimate forgiveness permanently out of reach -- thoughts of religion, and especially images of Christ in the Garden, grew both increasingly irresistible and increasingly toxic in Vincent's imagination: destabilizing, as here, a psyche already weakened and vulnerable.

Context:
BVG 505, 7/8/1888: "I have scraped off a big painted study, an olive garden, with a figure of Christ in blue and orange, and an angel in yellow. Red earth, hills green and blue, olive trees with violet and carmine trunks, and green-gray and blue foliage. A citron-yellow sky."
JLB 637, 7/8/1888 or 7/9/1888: "I've scraped off one of the large painted studies. A Garden of Olives -- with a blue and orange Christ figure, a yellow angel -- a piece of red earth, green and blue hills. Olive trees with purple and crimson trunks, with grey green and blue foliage. Sky lemon yellow." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
BVG 605, 9/7/1889-9/8/1889: "You understand that I have tried to compare the second attack with the first, and I only tell you this, it seemed to me to stem from some influence or other from outside, rather than from within myself. I may be mistaken, but however it may be, I think you will feel it quite right that I have rather a horror of all religious exaggeration."
JLB 801, 9/10/1889: "You'll understand that I've tried to compare the second crisis with the first, and I say only this to you: it appears to me to be some kind of influence from outside rather than a cause that comes from within myself. I may be mistaken, but whatever the case I think you'll consider it right that I'm a little horrified by all religious exaggeration."

Druick and Zegers appear to assume that in painting his Vision of the Sermon in August-September, Gauguin relied on Vincent's description of the first aborted image in July: "one of the large painted studies. A Garden of Olives -- with a blue and orange Christ figure, a yellow angel -- a piece of red earth, green and blue hills. Olive trees with purple and crimson trunks, with grey green and blue foliage. Sky lemon yellow." (Druick and Zegers, p. 137; JLB 637, 7/8/1888 or 7/9/1888; emphasis in original.) Druick and Zegers cite the presence of an angel in both works and similarities in palette (presumably, red earth and a yellow angel). But the two works do not align well, either in subject or palette (e.g., only the wings of Gauguin's angel are yellow), even despite the generality of Vincent's description (e.g., "red" could refer to any number of hues). Nor can we find any circumstantial evidence for Gauguin's knowledge of the description in JLB 637, 7/8/1888 or 7/9/1888, or, independently, of either one of Vincent's destroyed works, the first of which Bernard never knew about (if he did, surely Vincent would have referenced it when he informed him of the second failure) and the second of which Bernard did not learn about until October. To our knowledge, no descriptions of this second attempt have survived.

Context:
BVG 540, 9/22/1888: "For the second time I have scraped off a study of Christ with the angel in the Garden of Olives. You see, I can see real olives here, but I cannot or rather I will not paint any more without models."
JLB 685, 9/21/1888: "For the second time I've scraped off a study of a Christ with the angel in the Garden of Olives. Because here I see real olive trees. But I can't, or rather, I don't wish, to paint it without models."

Context:
JLB 628, 6/19/1888: "I don't hide from you that I don't detest the countryside -- having been brought up there, snatches of memories from past times, yearnings for that infinite of which the Sower, the sheaf, are the symbols, still enchant me as before."

Context:
BVG 520, 8/11/1888: "Behind the head, instead of painting the ordinary wall of the mean room, I paint infinity … "
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "Behind the head -- instead of painting the dull wall of the mean room, I paint the infinite."

Context:
BVG W7, 9/9/1888-9/16/1888: "My dear sister, it is my belief that it is actually one's duty to paint the rich and magnificent aspects of nature. We are in need of gaiety and happiness, of hope and love."
JLB 678, 9/9/1888 and 9/14/1888: "My dear sister, I believe that at present we must paint nature's rich and magnificent aspects; we need good cheer and happiness, hope and love."

Context:
BVG B13, 7/25/1888: " Am I very incomprehensible, my dear comrade Bernard? I am just trying to make you see the great simple thing: the painting of humanity, or rather of a whole republic, by the simple means of portraiture."
JLB 651, 7/30/1888: " Am I, my dear old Bernard, terribly incomprehensible this time? I'm trying to make you see the great simple thing, the painting of humanity, let's rather say of a whole republic, through the simple medium of the portrait."

Context:
JLB 686, 9/23/1888 or 9/24/1888: "I envy the Japanese the extreme clarity that everything in their work has. It's never dull, and never appears to be done too hastily. Their work is as simple as breathing, and they do a figure with a few confident strokes with the same ease as if it was as simple as buttoning your waistcoat. Ah, I must manage to do a figure with a few strokes. That will keep me busy all winter. Once I have that, I'll be able to do people strolling along the boulevards, the streets, a host of new subjects. While I've been writing you this letter, I've drawn a good dozen of them. I'm on the track of finding it. But it's very complicated, because what I'm after is that in a few strokes the figure of a man, a woman, a kid, a horse, a dog, will have a head, a body, legs, arms that will fit together."

Context:
BVG 525, 8/15/1888: "I would rather wait for the next generation, which will do in portraiture what Claude Monet does in landscape, the rich, daring landscape 267. "a complete thing" BVG B12, 7/23/1888.

Context:
BVG B12, 7/23/1888: "What do you expect? I am not so very eccentric; a Greek statue, a peasant by Millet, a Dutch portrait, a nude woman by Courbet or Degas, those calm modeled perfections, are the reason why a lot of other things -- the primitives like the Japanese -- seem to me so much penmanship. It interests me enormously, but a complete thing, a perfection, renders the infinite tangible to us; and the enjoyment of a beautiful thing is like coitus, a moment of infinity."
JLB 649, 7/29/1888: "But there you are; I'm so far from eccentric. A Greek statue, a peasant by Millet, a Dutch portrait, a nude woman by Courbet or Degas, these calm and modelled perfections are the reason that many other things, the primitives as well as the Japanese, seem to me ... like writing with a pen; they interest me infinitely ... but something complete, a perfection, makes the infinite tangible to us."

Context:
BVG B12, 7/23/1888: "Rembrandt did in fact [paint religious subjects] -- but he is the only one (and Biblical subjects are, relatively speaking, not numerous in his work). He is the only one, the exception, who has done Christs, etc. ... And in his case it is hardly like anything whatever done by the other religious painters; it is metaphysical magic."
JLB 649, 7/29/1888: "Rembrandt though -- indeed [paints religious subjects], but he's the only one (and there are relatively few biblical subjects in his oeuvre), he's the only one who, as an exception, did Christs, &c. And in his case, they hardly resemble anything by other religious painters; it's a metaphysical magic." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
JLB 649, 7/29/1888: "I'm showing you a painter who dreams and who paints from the imagination, and I started off by claiming that the character of the Dutch is that they invent nothing, that they have neither imagination nor fantasy. Am I illogical? No. Rembrandt invented nothing, and that angel and that strange Christ; it's -- that he knew them, felt them there." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
BVG B12, 7/23/1888: "I am showing you a painter who dreams and paints from imagination, and I began by contending that the character of the Dutch painters is such that they do not invent anything, that they have neither imagination nor fantasy."
JLB 649, 7/29/1888: "I'm showing you a painter who dreams and who paints from the imagination, and I started off by claiming that the character of the Dutch is that they invent nothing, that they have neither imagination nor fantasy."

Context:
BVG 531, 9/3/1888: "And in a picture I want to say something comforting as music is comforting."
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: "And in a painting I'd like to say something consoling, like a piece of music."

Context:
BVG 531, 9/3/1888: " I want to paint men and women with that something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolize, and which we seek to confer by the actual radiance and vibration of our colourings."
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: " I'd like to paint men or women with that je ne sais quoi of the eternal, of which the halo used to be the symbol, and which we try to achieve through the radiance itself, through the vibrancy of our colorations."

Context:
BVG 525, 8/15/1888: "I would rather wait for the next generation, which will do in portraiture what Claude Monet does in landscape, the rich, daring landscape 274. "the thing of the future" BVG B19, 10/7/1888.

Context:
BVG B19, 10/7/1888: "I strongly urge you to study portrait painting, do as many portraits as you can and don't flag. We must win the public over later on by means of the portrait; in my opinion it is the thing of the future."
JLB 698, 10/5/1888: "I really urge you to study the portrait; make as many as possible and don't give up -- later we'll have to attract the public through portraits -- in my view that's where the future lies."

Context:
BVG 531, 9/3/1888: "Ah! portraiture, portraiture with the thought, the soul of the model in it, that is what I think must come."
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: "Ah, the portrait -- the portrait with the model's thoughts, his soul -- it so much seems to me that it must come."

Context: JLB 641, 7/15/1888: "Thomas bought Anquetin's study in the end -- the peasant."

Context:
BVG 519, 8/8/1888: "I wanted to paint a poor old peasant, whose features bear a very strong resemblance to Father, only he is coarser, bordering on a caricature. Nevertheless, I should have been very keen to do him exactly like the poor peasant that he is."
JLB 657, 8/8/1888: "I wanted to paint a little old peasant who had an enormous resemblance to our father in his features. Only he was more common, and verged on caricature. Nevertheless, I would have been enormously keen to do him just as he was as a little peasant."

Context:
JLB 657, 8/8/1888: "He promised to come, and then he said that he ought to have the painting for himself, and so I had to do two the same, one for him and one for me. I told him no. Perhaps he'll come back some day."

See Self-Portrait with Pipe and Straw Hat, F 365v JH 1354, 1887/88 oil on canvas, 16.1 by 12.4 inches, 41 by 31.5 cm., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, a self-portrait painted in the same month. The hat styles vary between the two portraits, although Vincent apparently had more than one straw hat in his wardrobe. The one that appears in several Paris self-portraits from the previous summer (Self-Portrait with Straw Hat [F 469 JH 1310], Self-Portrait with Straw Hat [F 365v JH 1354]) looks more like the hat that Escalier wears, only perhaps larger, depending on the relative head sizes. (Both the hat and the blouse may be visible, hanging from hooks behind Vincent's bed, in The Bedroom [F 482 JH 1608].) Interestingly, the next time Escalier sits for a portrait at the end of the month (Portrait of Patience Escalier [F 444 JH 1563]), he wears a straw hat with a narrow red band that is completely different from the one in the earlier portrait and nothing like any hat shown in one of Vincent's self-portraits. This hat undergoes a wild variation in Vincent's drawing of Portrait of Patience Escalier (F 444 JH 1563) (The Old Peasant Patience Escalier with Walking Stick, Half-Figure [F 1461 JH 1564]).

Context:
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "But what does that do to us, we've read La terre and Germinal, and if we paint a peasant we'd like to show that this reading has in some way become part of us."

BVG 520, 8/11/1888. "You'll shortly make the acquaintance of Mr. Patience Escalier -- a sort of man with a hoe, an old Camargue oxherd, who's now a gardener at a farmstead in the Crau. Today without fail I'll send you the drawing I made after this painting [Portrait of Patience Escalier (F 1460 JH 1549)], as well as the drawing of the portrait of Roulin the postman. The colour of this portrait of a peasant isn't as dark as the Nuenen potato eaters -- but the very civilized Parisian, [Alphonse] Portier, probably so-called because he kicks paintings out of the door -- will find himself up against the same question again. You've now changed since then, but you'll see that he hasn't changed, and really it's a pity that there aren't more paintings in clogs in Paris." (JLB 663, 8/18/1888; emphasis in original.)

Context:
BVG 520, 8/11/1888: "Shortly you are going to make the acquaintance of Mr. Patience Escalier, a sort of man with a hoe, former drover of the Camargue, now gardener at a farm in the Crau."
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "You'll shortly make the acquaintance of Mr. Patience Escalier -- a sort of man with a hoe, an old Camargue oxherd, who's now a gardener at a farmstead in the Crau."

Context:
BVG 520, 8/11/1888: "The colouring of this portrait of the peasant is less black than the potato eaters of Nuenen, but our highly civilized Parisian Portier -- probably so called because he chucks pictures out -- will be bothered by the same old problem."
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "The colour of this portrait of a peasant isn't as dark as the Nuenen potato eaters -- but the very civilized Parisian, Portier, probably so-called because he kicks paintings out of the door -- will find himself up against the same question again" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG B15, 8/18/1888: "I dare believe that Gauguin and you would understand it; but how ugly people will think it! You know what a peasant is, how strongly he reminds one of a wild beast, when you have found one of the true race."
JLB 665, 8/21/1888: "I would dare to believe that you and Gauguin would understand it, but how ugly they'll find it! You fellows know what a peasant is, how much of the wild animal there is when you come across somebody pure-bred."

BVG 519, 8/8/1888: Vincent writes about the dispute with Escalier even before introducing him. On August 8, he tells Theo that Escalier "promised to come, and then he said that he ought to have the painting for himself, and so I had to do two the same, one for him and one for me. I told him no. Perhaps he'll come back some day." (JLB 698, 10/5/1888.) In the next letter, only three days later, he sends Theo a drawing of the portrait (Portrait of Patience Escalier [F 1460 JH 1549]) along with this grandiose introduction: "You'll shortly make the acquaintance of Mr. Patience Escalier -- a sort of man with a hoe, an old Camargue oxherd, who's now a gardener at a farmstead in the Crau" (JLB 663, 8/18/1888). For more on the reasons for Vincent's unusual introduction of Escalier.

Context:
JLB 698, 10/5/1888: "I wanted to paint a little old peasant who had an enormous resemblance to our father in his features. Only he was more common, and verged on caricature. Nevertheless, I would have been enormously keen to do him just as he was as a little peasant. He promised to come, and then he said that he ought to have the painting for himself, and so I had to do two the same, one for him and one for me. I told him no. Perhaps he'll come back some day."

BVG 520, 8/11/1888: After Vincent paints his first portrait of Escalier (Portrait of Patience Escalier, Shepherd in Provence [F 443 JH 1548]), and apparently after the falling out with his model, a very strange thing happens. Even though he concedes that the first portrait was a failure (JLB 664, 8/19/1888), he writes to both Theo and Bernard describing the portrait in the most glowing terms -- terms that do not conform to the first painting at all. To Theo, he recommends hanging the portrait of Escalier as a pendant to the very cosmopolitan Lautrec portrait of a woman that was in Theo's collection: "I dare even believe that the Lautrec will, by simultaneous contrast, become even more distinguished, and mine will gain from the strange juxtaposition, because the sunlit and burnt, weather-beaten quality of the strong sun and strong air will show up more clearly beside the face powder and stylish outfit" (JLB 663, 8/18/1888). But there is no "strong sun" in Portrait of Patience Escalier, Shepherd in Provence (F 443 JH 1548), nor is there any suggestion of a sun in the cobalt background. Nevertheless, Vincent continues: "But imagining the terrific man I had to do, in the very furnace of harvest time, deep in the south. Hence the oranges, blazing like red-hot iron, hence the old gold tones, glowing in the darkness." (ibid.) Again, this description appears to have no relation to the only portrait of Escalier known to have been completed by this time. A week later, Vincent writes to Bernard in the same vein: "Ah, I do have a new figure all the same, which is absolutely a continuation of certain studies of heads done in Holland; ... Again it's a study in which colour plays a role that the black-and-white of a drawing couldn't convey. I wanted to send you a very large and very carefully finished drawing of it. Well -- it turned into something entirely different, while still being correct. Because once again the colour suggests the scorched air of harvest time at midday in the blistering heat, and without that it's a different painting." (JLB 665, 8/21/1888, emphasis in original.) In both letters, the description Vincent gives conforms much more closely to the second known portrait of Escalier (Portrait of Patience Escalier [F 444 JH 1563]) than to the first, even though the second is generally believed to have been painted at the end of August. (The drawing Vincent enclosed with JLB 665 seems to have disappeared [see Pickvance, p. 167].)

There are at least four possible explanations: (1) these letters refer to a missing third portrait of Escalier that was done soon after the first one around August 10; (2) Vincent painted the second portrait (Portrait of Patience Escalier [F 444 JH 1563]) earlier than the end of August and must be referring to another (lost) painting in the later letters (JLB 669, 8/26/1888; JLB 671, 8/29/1888 or 8/30/1888; JLB 676, 9/8/1888); (3) Vincent is imagining a portrait of Escalier that he did not get a chance to make (because of their falling-out) until the end of August and is describing that imagined (forthcoming) portrait to Theo and Bernard; (4) Vincent's reports in JLB 663, 8/18/1888, and JLB 665, 8/21/1888, are poetic and predictive rather than descriptive and retrospective (for example, he may be referring to the colors in Escalier's face when he tells Theo about "the sunlit and sunburned quality of the huge sun"). The text combines the third and fourth of these explanations, because the reference to the first portrait of Escalier as a "failure" comes after the glowing descriptions (assuming that JLB 664, 8/20/1888, is correctly dated), and because of the suggestion of future action in Vincent's mid-August report to Bernard: "But imagining the terrific man I had to do, in the very furnace of harvest time, deep in the south" (JLB 663, 8/18/1888). Vincent took a similar approach to his portrait of Eugène Boch, which he imagined in considerable detail a full month before he succeeded in coaxing Boch to sit for him and actually put paint on canvas. (See Ch. 32, n. 303.)

Context:
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "You'll shortly make the acquaintance of Mr Patience Escalier -- a sort of man with a hoe, an old Camargue oxherd, who's now a gardener at a farmstead in the Crau."

Context:
BVG 520, 8/11/1888: "But imagine the terrible man that I have to do in the full furnace of the harvest at high noon. Hence the flashing orange colours like a red-hot fire, hence the tones of old gold luminous in the gloom. Ah, my dear boy -- and the good folk will not see in this exaggeration anything but a caricature."
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "But imagining the terrific man I had to do, in the very furnace of harvest time, deep in the south. Hence the oranges, blazing like red-hot iron, hence the old gold tones, glowing in the darkness. Ah, my dear brother -- and the good folk will see only caricature in this exaggeration."

Context:
BVG 520, 8/11/1888: "But imagine the terrible man that I have to do in the full furnace of the harvest at high noon. Hence the flashing orange colours like a red-hot fire, hence the tones of old gold luminous in the gloom. Ah, my dear boy -- and the good folk will not see in this exaggeration anything but a caricature."
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "But imagining the terrific man I had to do, in the very furnace of harvest time, deep in the south. Hence the oranges, blazing like red-hot iron, hence the old gold tones, glowing in the darkness. Ah, my dear brother -- and the good folk will see only caricature in this exaggeration."

Context:
BVG 520, 8/11/1888: "But imagine the terrible man that I have to do in the full furnace of the harvest at high noon. Hence the flashing orange colours like a red-hot fire, hence the tones of old gold luminous in the gloom. Ah, my dear boy -- and the good folk will not see in this exaggeration anything but a caricature."
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "But imagining the terrific man I had to do, in the very furnace of harvest time, deep in the south. Hence the oranges, blazing like red-hot iron, hence the old gold tones, glowing in the darkness. Ah, my dear brother -- and the good folk will see only caricature in this exaggeration."

Context:
JLB 671, 8/29/1888 or 8/30/1888: "I have two models this week, an Arlésienne and the old peasant, whom I'm doing this time against a bright orange background, which, although it doesn't pretend to represent a red sunset in trompe l'oeil, is perhaps a suggestion of it, all the same."

Context:
BVG 505, 7/8/1888: "Bock is staying with [Dodge] MacKnight, and it seems that he is working very hard, but I have seen nothing yet. He is a young man whose appearance I like very much, a face like a razor blade, green eyes, and a touch of distinction. MacKnight looks very common beside him."
JLB 637, 7/8/1888 or 7/9/1888: "That Boch is still staying with MacKnight, and he's working hard, it seems. But I haven't seen anything yet. He's a lad whose outward appearance I like very much. Face like the blade of a razor, green eyes, and distinction with all that. MacKnight seems very coarse beside him."

Context:
BVG 502, 6/23/1888: "MacKnight has a friend with him now, I never see any of his work. Yesterday I showed four or five new studies to him and his friend; they looked at them in frosty silence."
JLB 630, 6/23/1888: "MacKnight has a friend with him now, I never see any of his work, yesterday I showed him and his friend four or five new studies, which they looked at in icy silence."

Context:
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: "Yesterday I spent another day with that Belgian -- who also has a sister among the Vingtistes -- the weather wasn't good but it was a jolly good day for chatting; we went for a walk, and all the same we did see some very fine things at the bullfights and outside the town."

Context:
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: "Yesterday I spent another day with that Belgian-- who also has a sister among the Vingtistes -- the weather wasn't good but it was a jolly good day for chatting; we went for a walk, and all the same we did see some very fine things at the bullfights and outside the town."

Context:
JLB 669, 8/26/1888: "Ah -- MacKnight has cleared off at last -- I don't regret it in the least. His pal the Belgian didn't seem greatly saddened by it either when he came yesterday to tell me about it, and we spent the evening together."

Context:
JLB 669, 8/26/1888: "He's thinking seriously of going to paint the coal-miners in the Borinage, and if he's still here when Gauguin comes, not impossible then that we'll ask him to do for us in the north what we'd do for him in the south -- do our utmost to enable him to live more cheaply than on his own."

Context:
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: "We talked more seriously about the plan that if I keep on lodgings in the south, he should definitely set up a kind of post in the coal-fields."

Context:
JLB 669, 8/26/1888: "That then Gauguin and he and I, in cases where the importance of a painting would be a reason for travelling, could exchange places -- sometimes being in the north, but in a familiar part of the country where we have a friend, sometimes in the south."

Context:
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: "He gave me two sittings in one day."

At the end of July, Vincent finally paid the visit to MacKnight and Boch in Fontvielle that he had been planning all month (JLB 650, 7/29/1888). Although highly critical of their insensitive relations with the locals, Vincent obviously warms to Boch: "this Boch must be getting pretty dull-witted with MacKnight" (JLB 650, 7/29/1888). He speaks promisingly, if prospectively, of Boch's art ("He'll become stronger and will bring out his individuality, I think" [ibid.]). Only a week or two later, MacKnight and Boch visit the Yellow House again and Vincent entertains the possibility of giving Boch drawing lessons -- a clear sign of his fraternal designs on the younger man (JLB 657, 8/8/1888). Only three days after that visit, Vincent imagines making a portrait of "an artist friend who dreams great dreams, who works as the nightingale sings, because that's his nature" (JLB 663, 8/18/1888). This surely was not MacKnight and could only have been Boch. A month later, when Vincent finally paints the portrait, he compliments Boch yet again in the same terms as before: "a young man with the Dante-like face, ... quite distinguished in appearance" (JLB 673, 9/3/1888). And he refers to his portrait of Boch as "that painting I've been dreaming about for a long time" (ibid.).

Context:
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "I'd like to do the portrait of an artist friend who dreams great dreams, who works as the nightingale sings, because that's his nature."

Context:
BVG 531, 9/3/1888: "He'll be a blond man. I want to put my appreciation, the love I have for him into the picture. So I paint him as he is, as faithfully as I can, to begin with. But the picture is not yet finished. To finish it I am now going to be the arbitrary colourist. I exaggerate the fairness of the hair, I even get to orange tones, chromes and pale citron-yellow."
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: "This man will be blond. I'd like to put in the painting my appreciation, my love that I have for him. I'll paint him, then, just as he is, as faithfully as I can -- to begin with. But the painting isn't finished like that. To finish it, I'm now going to be an arbitrary colourist. I exaggerate the blond of the hair, I come to orange tones, chromes, pale lemon."

Context:
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "Behind the head -- instead of painting the dull wall of the mean room, I paint the infinite. I make a simple background of the richest, most intense blue that I can prepare, and with this simple combination, the brightly lit blond head, against this rich blue background achieves a mysterious effect, like a star in the deep azure."

Context:
BVG 503, 6/28/1888: "The 'Christ in the Boat' -- I am speaking of the sketch in blue and green with touches of violet, red and a little citron-yellow for the nimbus, the halo -- speaks a symbolic language through color alone."
JLB 634, 6/28/1888: "Christ's boat -- I'm talking about the blue and green sketch with touches of purple and red and a little lemon yellow for the halo, the aureole -- speaks a symbolic language through colour itself."

The references to comfort, eternity, haloes, and Ary Scheffer all point to one of the defining images of Vincent's imagination: Scheffer's Christus consolator, which Vincent saw both in reproduction and in its original painted version in Dordrecht -- both in the company of his brother and with his father. There is also a connection between Boch and Christ via Delacroix, a shared favorite of both Vincent and Boch (JLB 673, 9/3/1888). Vincent mentions Delacroix's Christ on the Sea of Galilee (the "Bark of Christ") at the same time as he paints the portrait of Boch (JLB 676, 9/8/1888). (In September 1889, Vincent also mentions "a Gethsemane" by Delacroix [JLB 801, 9/10/1889].) Only a month after painting his first Boch portrait, Vincent created a second version (without the model) and at the same time attempted another version of the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane (JLB 698, 10/5/1888). Both paintings failed, he reported, and he "mercilessly destroyed" them both (ibid.). A full year later (November 1889), Vincent pulled these strands more explicitly together when he pointedly reminded Bernard that "in order to give an impression of anxiety, you can try to do it without heading straight for the historical garden of Gethsemane; in order to offer a consoling and gentle subject it isn't necessary to depict the figures from the Sermon on the Mount" (JLB 822, 11/26/1889).

Context:
BVG 505, 7/8/1888: "I have scraped off a big painted study, an olive garden, with a figure of Christ in blue and orange, and an angel in yellow. Red earth, hills green and blue, olive trees with violet and carmine trunks, and green-gray and blue foliage. A citron-yellow sky."
JLB 637, 7/8/1888 or 7/9/1888: "I've scraped off one of the large painted studies. A Garden of Olives -- with a blue and orange Christ figure, a yellow angel -- a piece of red earth, green and blue hills. Olive trees with purple and crimson trunks, with grey green and blue foliage. Sky lemon yellow."

Context:
BVG 531, 9/3/1888: "I am always in hope of making a discovery there, to express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colours, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones."
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: "I still have hopes of finding something there. To express the love of two lovers through a marriage of two complementary colours, their mixture and their contrasts, the mysterious vibrations of adjacent tones."

Context:
BVG 531, 9/3/1888: "I am always in hope of making a discovery there, to express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colours, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones."
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: "I still have hopes of finding something there. To express the love of two lovers through a marriage of two complementary colours, their mixture and their contrasts, the mysterious vibrations of adjacent tones."

Context:
BVG 503, 6/28/1888: "This is the point. The 'Christ in the Boat' by Eugène Delacroix and Millet's 'The Sower' are absolutely different in execution. The 'Christ in the Boat' -- I am speaking of the sketch in blue and green with touches of violet, red and a little citron-yellow for the nimbus, the halo -- speaks a symbolic language through colour alone."
JLB 634, 6/28/1888: "The question remains this -- Christ's boat by Eugène Delacroix and Millet's sower are of entirely different workmanship. Christ's boat -- I'm talking about the blue and green sketch with touches of purple and red and a little lemon yellow for the halo, the aureole -- speaks a symbolic language through colour itself."

Context:
BVG 531, 9/3/1888: "To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a sombre background. To express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance. Certainly there is nothing in that of trompe d'oeil realism, but isn't it something that actually exists?"
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: "To express the thought of a forehead through the radiance of a light tone on a dark background. To express hope through some star. The ardour of a living being through the rays of a setting sun. That's certainly not trompe-l'oeil realism, but isn't it something that really exists?"

Context:
BVG 531, 9/3/1888: "To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a sombre background. To express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance. Certainly there is nothing in that of trompe d'oeil realism, but isn't it something that actually exists?"
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: "To express the thought of a forehead through the radiance of a light tone on a dark background. To express hope through some star. The ardour of a living being through the rays of a setting sun. That's certainly not trompe-l'oeil realism, but isn't it something that really exists?"

Context:
BVG B21, 11/20/1889: "I am telling you about these canvases, and about the first one in particular, to remind you that one can express anguish without making direct reference to the actual Gethsemane, and that there is no need to portray figures from the Sermon on the Mount in order to express a comforting and gentle motif."
JLB 822, 11/26/1889: "I'm speaking to you of these two canvases, and especially the first, to remind you that in order to give an impression of anxiety, you can try to do it without heading straight for the historical garden of Gethsemane; in order to offer a consoling and gentle subject it isn't necessary to depict the figures from the Sermon on the Mount."

Context:
BVG B22, 10/17/1888: "By means of all these very diverse tones I have wanted to express an absolute restfulness, you see, and there is no white in it at all except the little note produced by the mirror with its black frame (in order to get this fourth pair of complementaries into it)."
JLB 706, 10/17/1888: "I had wished to express utter repose with all these very different tones, you see, among which the only white is the little note given by the mirror with a black frame (to cram in the fourth pair of complementaries as well)" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 533, 9/8/1888: "I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green."
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "I've tried to express the terrible human passions with the red and the green."

Context:
BVG B21, 11/20/1889: "I am telling you about these canvases, and about the first one in particular, to remind you that one can express anguish without making direct reference to the actual Gethsemane, and that there is no need to portray figures from the Sermon on the Mount in order to express a comforting and gentle motif."
JLB 822, 11/26/1889: "I'm speaking to you of these two canvases, and especially the first, to remind you that in order to give an impression of anxiety, you can try to do it without heading straight for the historical garden of Gethsemane; in order to offer a consoling and gentle subject it isn't necessary to depict the figures from the Sermon on the Mount."

Goldwater, p. 129: This is Goldwater's observation, too, in reference to the famous passage describing the Boch portrait (Portrait of Eugene Boch [F 462 JH 1574]) to Theo: "Here Van Gogh, expressing a preoccupation that will have its definitive formulation in The Starry Night [F 612 JH 1731], employs certain key words ('infinite', 'azure', 'mysterious') of the Symbolist vocabulary."

Context:
BVG B7, 6/18/1888: "To be honest with you, I have absolutely no objection to the countryside, since I grew up in it -- I am still enchanted by snatches of the past, have a hankering after the eternal, of which the sower and the sheaf of corn are the symbols."
JLB 628, 6/19/1888: "I don't hide from you that I don't detest the countryside -- having been brought up there, snatches of memories from past times, yearnings for that infinite of which the Sower, the sheaf, are the symbols, still enchant me as before."

Context:
BVG 520, 8/11/1888: "Behind the head, instead of painting the ordinary wall of the mean room, I paint infinity, a plain background of the richest, intensest blue that I can contrive, and by this simple combination of the bright head against the rich blue background, I get a mysterious effect, like a star in the depths of an azure sky."
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "Behind the head -- instead of painting the dull wall of the mean room, I paint the infinite. I make a simple background of the richest, most intense blue that I can prepare, and with this simple combination, the brightly lit blond head, against this rich blue background achieves a mysterious effect, like a star in the deep azure."

Context:
BVG 520, 8/11/1888: "I exaggerate the fairness of the hair, I even get to orange tones, chromes and pale citron-yellow. Behind the head, instead of painting the ordinary wall of the mean room, I paint infinity …"
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "I exaggerate the blond of the hair, I come to orange tones, chromes, pale lemon. Behind the head -- instead of painting the dull wall of the mean room, I paint the infinite."

Context:
BVG 520, 8/11/1888: "I should like to paint the portrait of an artist friend, a man who dreams great dreams."
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "I'd like to do the portrait of an artist friend who dreams great dreams."

Context:
BVG B14, 8/4/1888: "In Rembrandt's studio that incomparable sphinx, Vermeer of Delft, found this extremely solid technique which has never been surpassed, which at present ... we are burning ... to find. Oh, I know we are working and reasoning with colours, just as they were with chiaroscuro, tonal values."
JLB 655, 8/5/1888: "In Rembrandt's studio, the incomparable sphinx, Vermeer of Delft, found this extremely sound technique that hasn't been surpassed. Which today ... we're burning ... to find. Oh, I know that we're working and arguing Colour as they did chiaroscuro, value." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
JLB 635, 7/1/1888: "Monticelli the logical colourist, able to carry out the most ramified and subdivided calculations on the ranges of tones that he balanced, certainly overtaxed his brain doing that work, as did Delacroix and Richard Wagner."

Context:
BVG 520, 8/11/1888: "Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes, I use color more arbitrarily, in order to express myself forcibly. Well, let that be, as far as theory goes."
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "Because instead of trying to render exactly what I have before my eyes, I use colour more arbitrarily in order to express myself forcefully. Well, let's let that lie as far as theory goes."

BVG 533, 9/8/1888. Referring to works like The Night Café in the Place Lamartine in Arles (F 463 JH 1575) and The Sower (F 422 JH 1470) (which he called "the first attempt in that genre"), Vincent writes: "It's a colour, then, that isn't locally true from the realist point of view of trompe l'oeil, but a colour suggesting some emotion, an ardent temperament" (JLB 676, 9/8/1888).

Context:
BVG 533, 9/8/1888: "It is color not locally true from the point of view of the delusive realist, but color suggesting some emotion of an ardent temperament."
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "It's a colour, then, that isn't locally true from the realist point of view of trompe l'oeil, but a colour suggesting some emotion, an ardent temperament."

Examples are: The Green Vineyard (F 475 JH 1595), Ploughed Field (F 574 JH 1586), and The Old Mill (F 545 JH 1577).

Ploughed Field, F 574 JH 1586, September 1888, oil on canvas, 24.5 by 36.2 inches, 72.5 by 92 cm., Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Context:
BVG 617, 12/15/1889: "I think that probably I shall hardly do any more things in impasto; it is the result of the quiet, secluded life that I am leading, and I am all the better for it. Fundamentally I am not so violent as all that, and at last I myself feel calmer."
JLB 829, 12/19/1889: "I think it likely that I'll do hardly any more things in impasto, it's the result of the calm life of seclusion I'm leading, and I feel I'm better for it. Fundamentally I'm not as violent as that, anyway I feel more myself in calmness." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
BVG W4, 6/22/1888: "In point of fact these fellows are ambitious too, but there is a difference nevertheless, and many here are beginning to understand how preposterous it is to make oneself dependent on the opinion of others in what one does."
JLB 626, 6/16/1888-6/20/1888: "They're ambitious here too, but still there's a difference, and many here are beginning to understand how ridiculous it is to make oneself dependent on the opinion of others about what one does."

Context:
JLB 678, 9/9/1888 and 9/14/1888: "My dear sister, I believe that at present we must paint nature's rich and magnificent aspects; we need good cheer and happiness, hope and love."

Context:
BVG 503, 6/28/1888: "Another very crude effort, and yet I am trying to get at something utterly heartbroken and therefore utterly heartbreaking."
JLB 634, 6/28/1888: "One more effort that's far from finished -- but one at least where I'm attempting something more heartbroken and therefore more heartbreaking."

Context:
BVG 520, 8/11/1888: " Because instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes, I use color more arbitrarily, in order to express myself forcibly. Well, let that be, as far as theory goes, but I'm going to give you an example of what I mean."
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "Because instead of trying to render exactly what I have before my eyes, I use colour more arbitrarily in order to express myself forcefully. Well, let's let that lie as far as theory goes, but I'm going to give you an example of what I mean."

Context:
BVG 543, 9/28/1888: "But this blasted mistral makes it very hard to get one's brushwork firm and interwoven with feeling, like a piece of music played with emotion."
JLB 691, 9/29/1888: "But this bloody mistral is a real nuisance for doing brushstrokes that hold together and intertwine well, with feeling, like a piece of music played with emotion."

Context:
BVG 539, 9/17/1888: "I have tried to put something of that into one of the pictures painted in a very thick impasto, citron yellow and lime green. Giotto moved me most -- always in pain, and always full of kindness and enthusiasm, as though he were already living in a different world from ours."
JLB 683, 9/18/1888: "I've tried to put something of that into one of the gardens, painted with thick impasto, lemon yellow and lemon green. Giotto touched me the most -- always suffering and always full of kindness and ardour as if he were already living in a world other than this."

Context:
BVG 553b, 10/2/1888: "The garden with the oleanders and the clipped shrub has an impasto like painted porcelain."
JLB 704, 10/15/1888: "The garden with the oleanders and the round bush is impasted like barbotine."

Context:
JLB 689, 9/26/1888: "Now it's true that I've left out some trees, but what I've kept in the composition is really like that. Only they've overcrowded it with a number of bushes that aren't in character." (Emphasis added.)

Context:
BVG 541, 9/27/1888: "It is true that I have left out some trees, but what I have kept in the composition is really there just as you see it."
JLB 689, 9/26/1888: "Now it's true that I've left out some trees, but what I've kept in the composition is really like that."

Context:
BVG 541, 9/27/1888: "Only it has been overcrowded with some shrubs which are not in character. And to get at that character, the fundamental truth of it: that's three times now that I've painted the same spot."
JLB 689, 9/26/1888: "Only they've overcrowded it with a number of bushes that aren't in character; and so to find this truer and more fundamental character, this is the third time I'm painting the same spot" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 541, 9/27/1888: "Only it has been overcrowded with some shrubs which are not in character. And to get at that character, the fundamental truth of it: that's three times now that I've painted the same spot."
JLB 689, 9/26/1888: "Only they've overcrowded it with a number of bushes that aren't in character; and so to find this truer and more fundamental character, this is the third time I'm painting the same spot" (emphasis in original).

Context:
JLB 698, 10/5/1888: "I exaggerate, I sometimes make changes to the subject, but still I don't invent the whole of the painting; on the contrary, I find it ready-made -- but to be untangled -- in the real world."

Context:
BVG B19, 10/7/1888: "But in the meantime I am getting well acquainted with nature."
JLB 698, 10/5/1888: "But in the meantime I'm still living off the real world."

Context:
BVG B19, 10/7/1888: "I exaggerate, sometimes I make changes in a motif; but for all that, I do not invent the whole picture; on the contrary, I find it all ready in nature, only it must be disentangled."
JLB 698, 10/5/1888: "I exaggerate, I sometimes make changes to the subject, but still I don't invent the whole of the painting; on the contrary, I find it ready-made -- but to be untangled -- in the real world."

Context:
BVG B12, 7/23/1888: "I am showing you a painter who dreams and paints from imagination, and I began by contending that the character of the Dutch painters is such that they do not invent anything, that they have neither imagination nor fantasy. Am I illogical? No. Rembrandt did not invent anything, that angel, that strange Christ, the fact is that he knew them; he felt them there."
JLB 649, 7/29/1888: "I'm showing you a painter who dreams and who paints from the imagination, and I started off by claiming that the character of the Dutch is that they invent nothing, that they have neither imagination nor fantasy. Am I illogical? No. Rembrandt invented nothing, and that angel and that strange Christ; it's -- that he knew them, felt them there." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
JLB 673, 9/3/1888: "To express hope through some star. The ardour of a living being through the rays of a setting sun. That's certainly not trompe-l'oeil realism, but isn't it something that really exists?"

Context:
BVG 541, 9/27/1888: "They are loaded with fresh flowers, and quantities of faded flowers as well, and their green is continually renewing itself in fresh, strong shoots, apparently inexhaustibly."
JLB 689, 9/26/1888: "They're covered in fresh blooms, and then in masses of faded blooms; their foliage also keeps on putting out strong new shoots, apparently inexhaustibly."

Context:
JLB 699, 10/8/1888: "That's to say, I'm doing a portrait of our mother for myself. I can't look at the colourless photograph, and I'm trying to do one with harmonious colour, as I see her in my memory."
JLB 700, 10/9/1888 or 10/10/1888: "I'm working on a portrait of our mother because the black photograph was making me too impatient."

Context:
BVG 535, 9/12/1888: "Exaggerated studies like the 'Sower' and like this 'Night Café' usually seem to me atrociously ugly and bad, but when I am moved by something, as now by this little article on Dostoyevsky, then these are the only ones which appear to have any deep meaning."
JLB 680, 9/11/1888: "Exaggerated studies like the sower, like the night café now, usually seem to me atrociously ugly and bad, but when I'm moved by something, as here by this little article on Dostoyevsky, then they're the only ones that seem to me to have a more important meaning" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 539, 9/17/1888: "I cannot paint it as beautifully as that, but it absorbs me so much that I let myself go, never thinking of a single rule."
JLB 683, 9/18/1888: "I can't paint as beautifully as that, but it absorbs me so much that I let myself go without thinking about any rule."

Context:
JLB 655, 8/5/1888: "What do these differences matter when in the end it's a question of expressing oneself powerfully?"

Context:
BVG 528, 8/27/1888: "That is another reason why Seurat's 'Grande Jatte,' the landscapes with broad stippling by Signac and Anquetin's boat, will become in time even more personal and even more original."
JLB 669, 8/26/1888: "Another reason why Seurat's La Grande Jatte, Signac's landscapes with coarse stippling, Anquetin's boat, will in time become even more personal, even more original."

Context:
BVG 520, 8/11/1888: "It is only that what I learned in Paris is leaving me, and I am returning to the ideas I had in the country before I knew the Impressionists."
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "It's just that I find that what I learned in Paris is fading, and that I'm returning to my ideas that came to me in the country before I knew the Impressionists" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 539, 9/17/1888: "I do not know if anyone before me has talked about suggestive colour, but Delacroix and Monticelli, without talking about it, did it."
JLB 683, 9/18/1888: "I don't know if anyone before me has talked about suggestive colour. But Delacroix and Monticelli, while not talking about it, did it."

Context:
JLB 622, 6/7/1888: "I'm going to put the black and the white boldly on my palette just the way the colourman sells them to us, and use them as they are" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 520, 8/11/1888: "And I should not be surprised if the Impressionists soon find fault with my way of working, for it has been fertilized by Delacroix's ideas rather than by theirs."
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "And I wouldn't be very surprised if the Impressionists were soon to find fault with my way of doing things, which was fertilized more by the ideas of Delacroix than by theirs."

Context:
BVG 503, 6/28/1888: "This is the point. The 'Christ in the Boat' by Eugène Delacroix and Millet's 'The Sower' are absolutely different in execution. The 'Christ in the Boat' -- I am speaking of the sketch in blue and green with touches of violet, red and a little citron-yellow for the nimbus, the halo -- speaks a symbolic language through colour alone."
JLB 634, 6/28/1888: "The question remains this -- Christ's boat by Eugène Delacroix and Millet's sower are of entirely different workmanship. Christ's Boat -- I'm talking about the blue and green sketch with touches of purple and red and a little lemon yellow for the halo, the aureole -- speaks a symbolic language through colour itself."

Context:
BVG 477a, 4/21/1888: "Surely Monticelli gives us not, neither pretends to give us, local colour or even local truth. But gives us something passionate and eternal -- the rich colour and rich sun of the glorious South in a true colourist way parrallel with Delacroix's conception of the South"
JLB 598, 4/19/1888: "Surely Monticelli gives us not, neither pretends to give us, local colour or even local truth. But gives us something passionate and eternal -- the rich coulour and rich sun of the glorious south in a true colourists way parralel with Delacroix's conception of the south."

Context:
JLB 682, 9/18/1888: "Now if I set up a studio-refuge right at the entrance to the south, that's not so silly. And precisely that means that we can work calmly. Ah, if others say, it's too far from Paris &c.? Let them, too bad for them. Why did the greatest colourist of all, Eugène Delacroix, judge it indispensable to go to the south, and as far as Africa? Obviously because not only in Africa but even from Arles onwards you'll naturally find fine contrasts between reds and greens, blues and oranges, sulphur and lilac."

Context:
JLB 682, 9/18/1888: "Now if I set up a studio-refuge right at the entrance to the south, that's not so silly. And precisely that means that we can work calmly. Ah, if others say, it's too far from Paris &c.? Let them, too bad for them. Why did the greatest colourist of all, Eugène Delacroix, judge it indispensable to go to the south, and as far as Africa? Obviously because not only in Africa but even from Arles onwards you'll naturally find fine contrasts between reds and greens, blues and oranges, sulphur and lilac."

Context:
JLB 682, 9/18/1888: "Now if I set up a studio-refuge right at the entrance to the south, that's not so silly."

Years before that, Vincent had read in Alphonse Karr's A Tour Round my Garden about colors with "harmonies as ravishing as those of music" (Karr, p. 80). "They awaken in my mind," Karr wrote, "thoughts perfectly strict and individual, and their influence acts powerfully on my imagination" (ibid.). In 1876, the man who probably first read that passage to Vincent, his father Dorus, had written Theo lamenting Vincent's taste at the time for the "pale shadings" of paintings by the Hague pariah Matthijs Maris: "I would wish that [Vincent's] tastes would more prefer the expression of a more forceful life, even under the guise of more strong and varied colors" -- thus drawing the kind of connection between color and emotional state that was the cornerstone of Vincent's mature art (b2225 V/1982, "Gogh, Theodorus en Anna C. van" to "Gogh, Theo van", 1/4/1876).

Context:
JLB 683, 9/18/1888: "But I'm again the way I was in Nuenen, when I made a vain attempt to learn music -- even then -- so strongly did I feel the connections there are between our colour and Wagner's music."

Context:
BVG 429, 10/15/1885-10/31/1885: "Jules Dupré is in landscape rather like Delacroix, for what enormous variety of mood did he express in symphonies of colour."
JLB 537, 10/28/1885: "Jules Dupré is like Delacroix in landscape, for what enormous diversity of mood he expressed in symphonies of colour."

Context:
BVG 429, 10/15/1885-10/31/1885: "Jules Dupré is in landscape rather like Delacroix, for what enormous variety of mood did he express in symphonies of colour."
JLB 537, 10/28/1885: "Jules Dupré is like Delacroix in landscape, for what enormous diversity of mood he expressed in symphonies of colour."

Context:
BVG 408, 5/11/1885: "And instinct, inspiration, impulse, and conscience are better guides than many people think."
JLB 502, 5/22/1885: "And instinct -- inspiration -- impulse -- conscience -- guide more truly than many people think."

Context:
BVG 403, 4/15/1885-4/30/1885: "And about that conversation I read that, when all those worthy people were going home in the evening, Delacroix, with his usual vivacity and passion, loudly called after them in the middle of the boulevard, Par coeur! Par coeur! Probably to the great astonishment of the respectable passers-by."
JLB 496, 4/28/1885: "And I read of the conversation in question that when all those good people were going home late in the evening -- Delacroix, with his usual vivacity and passion -- shouted out after them in the middle of the boulevard, By heart! By heart!, probably to the great surprise of respectable passers-by."

Context:
BVG 429, 10/15/1885-10/31/1885: "I painted that in one rush, during a single day."
JLB 537, 10/28/1885: "I painted this in one go, in a single day" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 426, 10/10/1885-10/11/1885: "How Delacroix would have understood that picture. What a noble sentiment, infinitely deep."
JLB 534, 10/10/1885: "Oh how Delacroix would have understood that very painting! What a noble sentiment, fathomlessly deep."

Context:
BVG 426, 10/10/1885-10/11/1885: " … but Rembrandt could do more than that -- if he did not have to be literally true, as in a portrait, when he was free to idealize, to be a poet, that means Creator."
JLB 534, 10/10/1885: "But yet -- Rembrandt could do something else -- when he didn't have to be true in the literal sense, as he did in a portrait -- when he could -- make poetry -- be a poet, that's to say Creator" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 426, 10/10/1885-10/11/1885: " … but Rembrandt could do more than that -- if he did not have to be literally true, as in a portrait, when he was free to idealize, to be a poet, that means Creator."
JLB 534, 10/10/1885: "But yet -- Rembrandt could do something else -- when he didn't have to be true in the literal sense, as he did in a portrait -- when he could -- make poetry -- be a poet, that's to say Creator" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 429, 10/15/1885-10/31/1885: "Then again, more fantastic, what I once saw, a corner of a garden by him, which I have never forgotten: black in the shadow, white in the sun, vivid green, a fiery red and then again a dark blue, a bituminous greenish brown, and a light brown-yellow. Colours that indeed have something to say for themselves."
JLB 537, 10/28/1885: "Then again more capricious, like the corner of a garden by him that I saw and have never forgotten; black in the shadow, white in the sun, bright green, a fiery red, and then again a dark blue, a bituminous greenish brown and a light brownish yellow. Truly colours that can have quite a lot to say to one another."

Context:
BVG 425, 9/4/1885: "As to Poussin, he is a painter and a thinker who always gives inspiration, in whose pictures all reality is at the same time symbolic. In the work of Millet, of Lhermitte, all reality is also at the same time symbolic."
JLB 533, 10/4/1885: "As for Poussin -- he's a painter who thinks and makes one think about everything -- in whose paintings all reality is at the same time symbolic. In the work of Millet, of Lhermitte, all reality is also symbolic at the same time."

Context:
BVG 405, May 1885: "These peasants seem to be painted with the soil in which they have been planting."
JLB 499, 5/2/1885: " 'His peasants seem to have been painted with the soil they sow'" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 418, 7/1/1885: "But a [Jean-François] Raffaelli is somebody, a Lhermitte is somebody, and with many pictures by almost unknown people one has the feeling that they were made with a will, with feeling, with passion, with love."
JLB 515, 7/14/1885: "But a Raffaëlli -- is someone, a Lhermitte is someone, and in many paintings by virtually unknown people one feels that they were made with a will, with emotion, with passion, with love" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 418, 7/1/1885: "Tell him that I long most of all to learn how to produce those very inaccuracies, those very aberrations, reworkings, transformations of reality, as may turn it into, well -- a lie if you like -- but truer than the literal truth."
JLB 515, 7/14/1885: "Tell him that my great desire is to learn to make such inaccuracies, such variations, reworkings, alterations of the reality, that it might become, very well -- lies if you will -- but -- truer than the literal truth."

Context:
BVG B15, 8/18/1888: "Ah! I have another figure all the same which is an absolute continuation of certain studies of heads I did in Holland."
JLB 665, 8/21/1888: "Ah, I do have a new figure all the same, which is absolutely a continuation of certain studies of heads done in Holland … "

Context:
JLB 663, 8/18/1888: "The colour of this portrait of a peasant isn't as dark as the Nuenen potato eaters -- but the very civilized Parisian, Portier, probably so-called because he kicks paintings out of the door -- will find himself up against the same question again" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG 525, 8/15/1888: "What I gained by it as an artist, should I lose that as a man? If I had the faith to do it, I'd be a notable madman; now I am an insignificant one, but you see I am not sufficiently ambitious for that fame to set a match to the powder."
JLB 662, 8/15/1888: "Would I lose as a man what I gained as an artist, doing that? If I had faith in that, I'd be a famous madman -- now I'm not a famous one -- but you see I don't have enough ambition for that particular kind of fame to put the match to the powder."

Context:
JLB 656, 8/6/1888: "It's what they call a 'night café' here (they're quite common here), that stay open all night. This way the 'night prowlers' can find a refuge when they don't have the price of a lodging, or if they're too drunk to be admitted."

Context:
JLB 656, 8/6/1888: "Today I'm probably going to start on the interior of the café where I'm staying, in the evening, by gaslight."

Context:
JLB 635, 7/1/1888: "Restaurants here are expensive because everyone eats at home."

Context:
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "Everywhere it's a battle and an antithesis of the most different greens and reds; in the characters of the sleeping ruffians, small in the empty, high room, some purple and blue."

Context:
BVG 518, 8/6/1888: "It is what they call here a 'café de nuit' (they are fairly frequent here), staying open all night. 'Night prowlers' can take refuge there when they have no money to pay for a lodging, or are too drunk to be taken in."
JLB 656, 8/6/1888: "Today I'm probably going to start on the interior of the café where I'm staying, in the evening, by gaslight. It's what they call a 'night café' here (they're quite common here), that stay open all night. This way the 'night prowlers' can find a refuge when they don't have the price of a lodging, or if they're too drunk to be admitted."

Context:
JLB 684, 9/19/1888-9/25/1888: "I, for example -- it's true that I've just done that study of a night café -- but that, although it's a house of assignation, and from time to time you see a whore sitting there at a table with her fellow -- I myself, I say, I haven't yet been able to do a brothel as such, precisely because it would cost me more money than I'm forced to have, to do it reasonably well and seriously" (emphasis in original).

Context:
JLB 656, 8/6/1888: "It always seems to me that I'm a traveller who's going somewhere and to a destination. If I say to myself, the somewhere, the destination don't exist at all, that seems well argued and truthful to me. When he kicks somebody out, the brothel-keeper has a logic of the same kind, argues well, too, and is always right."

Context:
BVG B19, 10/7/1888: "Let me know when you will be in Paris. The fact is that I have already written you a thousand times that my night cafe isn't a brothel; it is a cafe where night prowlers cease to be night prowlers, because they flop down at a table and spend the whole night thus without prowling at all."
JLB 698, 10/5/1888: "Write to me when you're going to be in Paris -- the thing is that I've already written you a thousand times that my night café isn't a brothel, it's a café where night prowlers cease to be night prowlers, since, slumped over tables, they spend the whole night there without prowling at all" (emphasis in original).

Context:
BVG B16, 9/18/1888: "Take my own case, it is true that I have just done that study of the 'Night Cafe,' but nevertheless, though it is a free-love hotel, where from time to time you may see a whore sitting at a table with her fellow, I myself have not been able to do a brothel in the exact sense of the word, just because if I were to do it a little satisfactorily and seriously, it would cost me more money than I can possibly afford."
JLB 684, 9/19/1888-9/25/1888: "I, for example -- it's true that I've just done that study of a night café -- but that, although it's a house of assignation, and from time to time you see a whore sitting there at a table with her fellow -- I myself, I say, I haven't yet been able to do a brothel as such, precisely because it would cost me more money than I'm forced to have, to do it reasonably well and seriously" (emphasis in original).

Given the shady, outré nature of the café's after-hours business, this argument -- offering the implicit dignification of a painting -- may, indeed, have amused Ginoux. Some authorities (e.g., Korshak, in Masheck, ed., p. 33) have inferred that Ginoux took Vincent's painting in lieu of rent. Vincent no doubt proposed this idea, but Ginoux apparently rejected it. In the same letter, Vincent hastens to disabuse his brother of any such hope: "Now as for recovering the money paid to the landlord through my painting, I'm not making a point of it, because the painting is one of the ugliest I've done" (JLB 676, 9/8/1888).

Context:
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "Because actually, always bowed down under this money problem with lodging-house keepers, I put up with it cheerfully. I'd given a piece of my mind to the said lodging-house keeper, who isn't a bad man after all, and I'd told him that to get my own back on him for having paid him so much money for nothing, I'd paint his whole filthy old place as a way of getting my money back."

Context:
BVG 533, 9/8/1888: "Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most disparate reds and greens in the figures of the little sleeping hooligans, in the empty, dreary room, in violet and blue."
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "Everywhere it's a battle and an antithesis of the most different greens and reds; in the characters of the sleeping ruffians, small in the empty, high room, some purple and blue."

Context:
BVG 533, 9/8/1888: "I swore at the said landlord, who after all isn't a bad fellow, and told him that to revenge myself for paying him so much money for nothing, I would paint the whole of his rotten joint so as to repay myself."
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "I'd given a piece of my mind to the said lodging-house keeper, who isn't a bad man after all, and I'd told him that to get my own back on him for having paid him so much money for nothing, I'd paint his whole filthy old place as a way of getting my money back."

Context:
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "Well, to the great delight of the lodging-house keeper, the postman [Roulin] whom I've already painted, the prowling night-visitors and myself, for 3 nights I stayed up to paint, going to bed during the day."

Context:
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "The white clothes of the owner, watching over things from a corner in this furnace, become lemon yellow, pale luminous green."

Context:
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "The white clothes of the owner, watching over things from a corner in this furnace, become lemon yellow, pale luminous green."

While we certainly share Korshak's appreciation of Vincent's mastery of color, we find several problems with his reading of the sources. First, the description in JLB 658, 8/9/1888, appears to apply to the neighboring Restaurant Venissat, not to the Café de la Gare. This is clear from a passage later in the same letter when Vincent writes, "In front of the restaurant, a covered courtyard, paved with red bricks, and on the walls, vines growing wild, convolvulus and climbing plants" (ibid.). The Restaurant Venissat was set back from the street, as can be seen in Vincent's painting of the Yellow House (Vincent's House in Arles (The Yellow House) [F 464 JH 1589]) from around the same time; while the Café de la Gare faced directly onto the street. While there are some similarities between the description in JLB 658, 8/9/1888, and the interior depicted in The Night Café (a reddish floor in the kitchen, which could be brick, seen through the curtain at the back), there are just as many obvious differences (the undressed table-tops, the boarded floor, and, especially, the dominating billiard table). One could argue that because both properties were owned by Joseph Ginoux, the decor may have been similar in both. However, it should be noted that the exterior of the Restaurant Venissat -- according to both Vincent's painting and his letter -- was quite colorful ("pink, with green shutters" [JLB 691, 9/29/1888]).

Also, when Gauguin painted a portrait of the proprietor's wife, Marie Ginoux, in November 1888, he depicted her in the café's main room with exactly the same colors as in Vincent's earlier painting. (Of course, Gauguin did not execute his portrait in situ, but instead constructed it using a portrait-drawing he had made earlier in November, so he may have just borrowed Vincent's version of the café's interior, but he was undoubtedly a frequent patron at the café throughout his two months in Arles.)

Another possible explanation is that Vincent's "inventiveness" is at work in his description of the restaurant interior in JLB 658, 8/9/1888. The insistent references to gray and invocations of Velázquez are hallmarks of Vincent in persuasive-descriptive mode. Vincent states the theme of the letter quite clearly: "So not everything is brilliantly coloured all the time." And he adds another example that speaks in similarly exaggerated terms: "I saw a cowshed with 4 cows the colour of café au lait, and a calf the same colour, ... Grey too, Velázquez grey. There was a tranquility about it -- this café au lait and tobacco brown of the cows' hides, with the soft white bluish grey of the walls, the green curtain and the yellow and sparkling green of the sunny exterior making a brilliant contrast. You see how there are other things still to do, quite different from what I've done." (ibid.) For some reason -- perhaps because of something Theo has written to moderate Vincent's rhetoric of exaggerated color -- Vincent appears to be keeping the door open to tonal painting. A few works from August (Two Thistles [F 447a JH 1551], A Pair of Shoes [F 461 JH 1569], Interior of a Restaurant in Arles [F 549a JH 1573], The Old Mill [F 550 JH 1577]) could be seen to support this reading of JLB 658, 8/9/1888.

Context:
BVG 533, 9/8/1888: "The room is blood red and dark yellow with a green billiard table in the middle; there are four citron-yellow lamps with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most disparate reds and greens in the figures of the little sleeping hooligans, in the empty, dreary room, in violet and blue."
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "The room is blood-red and dull yellow, a green billiard table in the centre, 4 lemon yellow lamps with an orange and green glow. Everywhere it's a battle and an antithesis of the most different greens and reds; in the characters of the sleeping ruffians, small in the empty, high room, some purple and blue."

Context:
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "Anyway, I tried with contrasts of delicate pink and blood-red and wine-red. Soft Louis XV and Veronese green contrasting with yellow greens and hard blue greens. All of that in an ambience of a hellish furnace, in pale sulphur."

Context:
BVG 533, 9/8/1888: "The blood-red and the yellow-green of the billiard table, for instance, contrast with the soft tender Louise XV green of the counter, on which there is a pink nosegay."
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "The blood-red and the yellow-green of the billiard table, for example, contrast with the little bit of delicate Louis XV green of the counter, where there's a pink bouquet."

Context:
BVG W7, 9/9/1888-9/16/1888: "There are six or seven different reds in this canvas, from blood red to delicate pink, contrasting with as many pale or deep greens."
JLB 678, 9/9/1888 and 9/14/1888: "In this canvas there are 6 or 7 different reds, from blood-red to delicate pink, contrasting with the same number of pale or dark greens."

Vincent uses the word "terrifying" twice in regard to Delacroix's Christ: once with Bernard and once with Theo. In June: "he -- with his pale lemon halo -- sleeping, luminous -- within the dramatic violet, dark blue, blood-red patch of the group of stunned disciples. On the terrifying emerald sea, rising, rising all the way up to the top of the frame. Ah -- the brilliant sketch." (JLB 632, 6/26/1888.) In September: "When Paul Mantz saw Delacroix's violent and exalted sketch, Christ's boat, at the exhibition that we saw in the Champs-Elysées, he turned away from it and cried out in his article, 'I did not know that one could be so terrifying with blue and green'" (JLB 676, 9/8/1888). Those, like Korshak, who want to see a religious Hell in Vincent's references to a "furnace" in The Night Café ("an ambience of a hellish furnace" [JLB 677, 9/9/1888]) and elsewhere, are missing the true pain and threat of Vincent's nightmare vision of his own life: the furnace is not the fires of damnation, it is the trial of meaninglessness and the fear of oblivion (Korshak, in Masheck, ed., pp. 29-40).

Context:
BVG 533, 9/8/1888: "Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most disparate reds and greens in the figures of the little sleeping hooligans, in the empty, dreary room, in violet and blue."
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "Everywhere it's a battle and an antithesis of the most different greens and reds; in the characters of the sleeping ruffians, small in the empty, high room, some purple and blue."

Context:
JLB 678, 9/9/1888 and 9/14/1888: "The room is painted red, and inside, in the gaslight, the green billiard table, which casts an immense shadow over the floor."

Context:
BVG 534, 9/9/1888: "In my picture of the 'Night Café' I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime. So I have tried to express, as it were, the powers of darkness in a low public house, by soft Louis XV green and malachite, contrasting with yellow-green and harsh blue-greens, and all this in an atmosphere like a devil's furnace, of pale sulphur."
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "In my painting of the night café I've tried to express the idea that the café is a place where you can ruin yourself, go mad, commit crimes. Anyway, I tried with contrasts of delicate pink and blood-red and wine-red. Soft Louis XV and Veronese green contrasting with yellow greens and hard blue greens. All of that in an ambience of a hellish furnace, in pale sulphur."

Context:
BVG 533, 9/8/1888: "Now, as for getting back the money I have paid to the landlord by means of my painting, I do not dwell on that, for the picture is one of the ugliest I have done. It is the equivalent, though different, of the 'Potato Eaters.'"
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "Now as for recovering the money paid to the landlord through my painting, I'm not making a point of it, because the painting is one of the ugliest I've done. It's the equivalent, though different, of the potato eaters."

Context:
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: "I'm making a drawing of it in watercolour tones to send you tomorrow, to give you an idea of it."

Context:
BVG 534, 9/9/1888: "And all with an appearance of Japanese gaiety, and the good nature of Tartarin."
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "And yet with the appearance of Japanese gaiety and Tartarin's good nature."

Context:
BVG 534, 9/9/1888: "And all with an appearance of Japanese gaiety, and the good nature of Tartarin."
JLB 677, 9/9/1888: "And yet with the appearance of Japanese gaiety and Tartarin's good nature."

Context:
BVG 535, 9/12/1888: "The idea of the 'Sower' continues to haunt me all the time. Exaggerated studies like the 'Sower' and like this 'Night Café' usually seem to me atrociously ugly and bad, but when I am moved by something, as now by this little article on Dostoyevsky, then these are the only ones which appear to have any deep meaning."
JLB 680, 9/11/1888: "The idea of the sower still continues to haunt me. Exaggerated studies like the sower, like the night café now, usually seem to me atrociously ugly and bad, but when I'm moved by something, as here by this little article on Dostoyevsky, then they're the only ones that seem to me to have a more important meaning." (Emphasis in original.)

Context:
BVG 533, 9/8/1888: " I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green."
JLB 676, 9/8/1888: " I've tried to express the terrible human passions with the red and the green."

Context:
JLB 680, 9/11/1888: "I have a study of an old mill, painted in broken tones like the Oak on the rock; that study which you said you had framed with the sower. The idea of the sower still continues to haunt me. Exaggerated studies like the sower, like the night café now, usually seem to me atrociously ugly and bad, but when I'm moved by something, as here by this little article on Dostoyevsky, then they're the only ones that seem to me to have a more important meaning." (Emphasis in original.)

BVG 529, 8/29/1888. Vincent in fact completed yet another painting of a pair of shoes (A Pair of Shoes [F 461 JH 1569]) only about a week before he undertook The Night Café (F 463 JH 1575).

Context:
JLB 671, 8/29/1888 or 8/30/1888: "I have a bouquet on the go as well, and also a still life of a pair of old shoes."

BVG 522, 8/13/1888. In August 1888, Vincent reported painting "two studies of thistles on a piece of waste ground, thistles white with the fine dust from the road" (JLB 664, 8/19/1888; emphasis in original). These are Thistles (F 447 JH 1550) and Two Thistles (F 447a JH 1551). A week later, he reported: "I have another study on the go, of dusty thistles with an innumerable swarm of white and yellow butterflies" (JLB 666, 8/21/1888 or 8/22/1888). This painting is lost.

Context:
JLB 664, 8/19/1888: "As far as studies go, I have two studies of thistles on a piece of waste ground, thistles white with the fine dust from the road" (emphasis in original).

Context:
JLB 656, 8/6/1888: "It always seems to me that I'm a traveller who's going somewhere and to a destination."

Context:
JLB 656, 8/6/1888: "All these things, family, native country, are perhaps more appealing in the imagination of such as us -- who do fairly well without a native country, as well as a family -- than in any reality."