Van Gogh and Literature Author(s): Carl Nordenfalk Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol.

10 (1947), pp. 132-147 Published by: The Warburg Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750400 . Accessed: 25/03/2013 07:39
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VAN GOGH AND LITERATURE By Carl Nordenfalk

I loved art with passion, and with an equal passion he also Pictures and books, beyond all else, were the spiritual powers which gave a meaning to his existence. The problem for him was how to combine them. During the first ten years of his development, the picture and the book represented two magnetic poles to which he, by turns, felt attracted.' His home, the vicarage, for natural reasons, was a distinctly bookish environment, and his bent in this direction must have been accentuated by his schooling. But even in those early days his incipient interest in pictures is discernible: some drawings made by van Gogh during his school-days after reproductions of well-known paintings have recently been brought to light.2 When his school-days came to an end, pictures-represented in the family his uncles Cornelius Marinus and Vincent, who were art dealers-maniby fested themselves as the stronger attraction. At the age of nineteen, van Gogh obtained employment in the firm of Goupil & Cie. But when his bent, after a religious crisis, again turned to books, his love of pictures was not strong enough to keep him in the world of art. At the age of twenty-three he leaves the picture-shop and prepares to follow in his father's footsteps. Books thus once more gain the upper hand. For a few months we find him literally placed among books, being employed at a bookseller's in Dordrecht.3 But on this occasion also books did not succeed in ousting pictures from his sphere of interests. It is significant that the only sermon of van Gogh that has been preserved-written for the Methodist congregation at Isleworth-is mainly a description of a painting (by G. H. Boughton).4 Just as van Gogh during his employment at the art dealer's in Paris clandestinely devoted himself to book studies, so during his days of study at Amsterdam he secretly devoted himself to art. He made drawings simply because he couldn't help doing so. And when his book studies eventually led him into a cul-de-sac, it was once again the picture that appeared as his guiding star. During the "moulting-time" at Le Borinage in 1878-79 van Gogh takes a definitive decision to adopt art as his calling. This, however, did not signify that books disappeared from his horizon. "I have," declared the newly-fledged artist, "a more or less irresistible passion for books, and I want continually to instruct myself, to study, if you like, just as much as I want to eat my bread." (No. 133.)5 The letters in fact eloquently testify to his never-ceasing love of reading, to literature as a vital part of his Gogh Van loved literature.
1 The best account of van Gogh's life during his youth will be found in the introduction by Theo's widow, Mrs. Jo Bongervan Gogh, to her edition of letters to the

brother: Letters of Vincent van Gogh to his Brother, English trans., London, 1927-9. All

Kunst und Kiinstler, Buchhandlungsgehilfe," XII, 1914, pp. 590 ff. to his Brother, ed. cit., addition 4 Letters ...

SH. J. Brusse, "Vincent van Gogh als

subsequent quotations from the letters to Theo are from this translation. 2 am indebted to the artist's nephew, Mr. V. M. van Gogh, for this information.
132

to No. 79, I, pp. 96-99. 5 Here and in the sequel, the letters to Theo are referred to with the numbers assigned to them in Mrs. Bonger-van Gogh's edition.

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existence. An American author, on the basis of statements in the letters, has drawn up a list of van Gogh's books, including those he had borrowed.1 It is an impressive list, and as regards most of the books we know that van Gogh had not merely skimmed them, but had devoured them whole. With regard he states in one of the letters to Zola's peasant novels La Terreand Germinal, that they had finally come to be almost a part of himself. (No. 520.) One might have expected that his love of literature would have induced van Gogh to select subjects for his art from the world of books. The fact is, however, that-apart from paintings which are really copies of the works of other masters with literary motifs--literary subjects are almost completely banned in the artist's work. Van Gogh in fact, when he adopted art as his true calling, had dedicated himself not only to pictures, but to a definite type of picture: the direct depiction of what can be observed by the eyes. This attitude was, of course, inherent in the times. European painting had arrived at a stage where art had thoroughly emancipated itself from literature. Whereas during the Middle Ages art had served almost exclusively the sphere of religious thought, and whereas during the following centuries literary subjects-religious, mythological or poetic-had been considered to be of paramount importance, in the course of the nineteenth century the simple depiction of reality had, in increasing degree, been assigned a value of its own, had asserted itself as of equal rank with lofty subjects, and was finally proclaimed by Courbet as the only choice of motif that was really compatible with the times. In the course of the eighteen-sixties and seventies we see how the modern painters are tending consistently to abjure literary motifs; Degas' conversion from historical painter to delineator of contemporary manners is perhaps the most striking example. The Hague school, which was van Gogh's immediate artistic environment during the first period of his creative development, had shown for more than a decade a distinctly realistic tendency. His great ideal, the peasant painter Millet, had revealed that art need not lose anything of its loftiness, of its power to elevate and arouse devout feeling, when it renounced biblical subjects. When Theo in 1882, after a visit to his parents in the vicarage at Etten, had intimated that they were surprised at Vincent's simple subjects, the artist gives a characteristic explanation of his attitude: They will never be able to grasp what painting is. They cannot understand that the figure of a labourer-some furrows in a ploughed field, a bit of sand, sea and sky-are serious subjects, so difficult, but at the same time so beautiful, that it is indeed worth while to devote one's life to the task of expressing the poetry hidden in them. (No. 226.) But, when van Gogh renounced literary subjects, it was not only because of the tendency of the times. His artistic bent made it very difficult for him to go beyond the bounds of direct observation. The handling of literary subjects, of course, implies in the artist a certain degree of creative imagination, a capacity for giving form to the airy conceptions of one's own fancy. In van Gogh this capacity seems to have been weakly developed or at any
1 Vincentvan Gogh, with an introduction and notes, edited by Alfred H. Barr.Jr. (The Museum of Modern Art), New York, 1935, pp. 44-46.

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CARL NORDENFALK

rate fenced about by inhibitions. It went against the grain for him to paint or draw what he could not actually see, but had to imagine. This is brought out very strikingly at Arles during his intercourse with Gauguin towards the end of 1888. Realism in modern painting had at that time reached a critical stage. The pendulum had again begun to swing in the opposite direction, art was once more aiming at a more direct connection with literature. On arriving at Arles, Gauguin was imbued with this new tendency. "Let me give you a hint, don't paint too much after Nature. Art is an abstraction, draw what you can from Nature while dreaming before her, and think more of the resulting creation."1 This programme Gauguin also tried to impress upon van Gogh during their discussions. "Gauguin, in spite of himself and in spite of myself, has rather brought me to see that it is time I was varying my work. I am beginning to compose from memory." (No. 563.) But he felt all along how it went against the grain to work in that way. When the intercourse with Gauguin eventually led to van Gogh's mental collapse, his aversion to the new method of work forced upon him by Gauguin was doubtless one of the contributory causes. Afterwards, in fact, when he recalled this period, he realized that it was a great folly on his part ever to have allowed himself to be induced to paint free compositions-"abstractions," as he calls them in a letter to Bernard. When Gauguin was in Arles, as you know, I once or twice allowed myself to turn to abstraction . .. and at that time abstraction seemed to me to offer a tempting path. But it's an enchanted ground, old man, and one soon finds oneself up against a wall.2 For van Gogh this problem was aggravated when he tried to treat subjects from the Bible. While he was studying at Amsterdam in order to pass the University matriculation examination, it sometimes happened that, while reading the Bible, he had set about making a drawing illustrating some scene or event in the Old Testament, such as Sarah's burial, according to Genesis xxiii (No. 97), or Elijah in the desert (No. ioi). "It is nothing special, but I see it all so vividly before me," he writes with reference to the last-mentioned subject. But, as soon as he proceeds to grapple in earnest with the production of the picture, the above-mentioned inhibitions against creation from his imagination come into play. In the sequel we hear, strictly speaking, of only one independent attempt to render a biblical episode in pictorial form. It is when, at Arles, he tries to paint 'Christ at Gethsemane.' The subject had been treated by artists whom van Gogh highly admired, namely by Rembrandt,3 Corot,4 and Ary Scheffer,5 and their works had
1 Gauguin to Schuffenecker, I4th Aug., I888 (Lettres de Gauguin a sa femme et a ses amis, ed. M. Malingue, Paris, 1946, p. I34). 2 Vincent van Gogh, Letters to J9mileBernard, edited, translated and with a foreword by Douglas Lord, London, 1938, No. XXI. 3 Rembrandt's etching B.75 is mentioned in letter No. I26 where a painting of the same subject by Carlo Dolci is also referred to. 4 When van Gogh in May 1875 was transferred from Goupil's sale office in London to Paris, he arrived there just in time to see the large memorial exnibition of Corot's pictures at the E~coledes Beaux-Arts. In his first letter from Paris (No. 27), he describes Corot's Gethsemane picture (Robaut 6Io) from the museum at Langres (Memorial exhibition catalogue, No. 96). "I am glad he has painted that," is his concluding reflection. 6 In his first letter from Dordrecht (No.

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VAN GOGH AND LITERATURE

i35

same year (No. 540).1 But on each occasion he ended by scrapping what he

impressed themselves on his memory. According to the letters, he made two different attempts-one in July 1888 (No. 505) and one in September of the

had produced. "Because the form had not been studied from the model first, an absolute necessity in such cases," he writes to Bernard.2 It was therefore with extreme distrust that van Gogh in the following year found Gauguin and Bernard employed in painting biblical subjects during their stay together in Brittany. In the early autumn van Gogh received some specimens of what the two painters had produced. Bernard sent photographs of an 'Annunciation' and 'Adoration of the Magi,' a 'Christ at Gethsemane' and a 'Carrying of the Cross.' The Gethsemane motif had also been treated by Gauguin. He sent Vincent in a letter a water-colour sketch of the painting. When these representations reached van Gogh, they evoked in him the most intense displeasure. He gives expression to this in letters to his brother and to Bernard. What he particularly quarrels with is the improbability of the presentation, their unreality. With regard to Bernard's 'Adoration of the Magi,' he writes: It is going too far beyond the bounds of possibility to imagine a delivery in such circumstances in the middle of the road and the mother in the act of prayer, instead of giving suck; then there are those fat ecclesiastical toads who have fallen to their knees as though in a fit of epilepsy. God knows how or why they should be there !" As regards the 'Annunciation' by the same artist, he remarks: I see figures of angels-elegant ones, certainly-a terrace with two cypresses, which I like a lot; there's plenty of air, plenty of light in it ... but then, once the first impression is past, I ask myself if it is a mystification, the characters mean nothing to me any more. Finally, with reference to Bernard's Gethsemane picture-"that nightmare of a Christ in the Garden of Olives"--he observes that the artist had evidently never seen an olive-tree in reality. For his own part, he stoutly refuses to have any concern with biblical interpretations of this kind. Better, he says, than to paint Christ in the Garden of Olives would be to paint olive gardens in reality.4
84), van Gogh relates a visit to the local museum and particularly mentions Ary Scheffer's picture, 'Christ at Gethsemane.' "It is unforgettable," he writes. 1 The second painting is also mentioned in a letter to Bernard (Lord's edition No. XIX), written about the beginning of October I888. 2 Letters to Bernard, p. 89. 3Ibid., No. XXI. 4 It is interesting to note that in Cezanne, otherwise in so many respects the antithesis of van Gogh, we find a similar repudiation of biblical subjects on the ground of the realist doctrine that the artist should paint only what he sees before his eyes: "Jacob of Voragine tells us that on the night when Christ was born the vines blossomed throughout Palestine. ... We painters should rather-paint these vines in bloom than the angelic host that proclaimed the birth of the Messias." (J. Gasquet, Cizanne, Paris, 1926, p. 172.)

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CARL NORDENFALK

like that. .

Of course, with me there is no question of doing anything from the Bible-and I have written to Bernard, and Gauguin too, that I was astonished, looking at their work, that they should have let themselves go
.

feeling of collapse instead of progress. Well, to shake off that, morning and evening these bright cold days, but with a very fine and clear sun, I have been knocking about in the orchards and the result is 5 canvases of 30, which, with the 3 studies of olives you have, make at least an attack on the problem. (No. 615.) In his negative attitude towards religious subjects, van Gogh felt that he was supported by the tradition of the old Dutch masters. In his letters to Bernard from the summer of 1888, he gives the younger painter a rapid review of the history of Dutch art, setting up Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Vermeer and the smaller masters as examples worthy of imitation. The Dutch painted things just as they are, apparently without intellectual intervention, just as Courbet painted lovely nude women. They painted portraits, landscapes, still-lifes. One can be a lot stupider than that and make worse mistakes. When we don't know what to do, my dear Bernard, then we should follow them: even if only to avoid wasting our rare mental force in sterile metaphysical meditation.1 It was unnecessary, van Gogh considered, to search for high-flown or strange subjects. It was sufficient to look about, reality was full of good motifs. "A profound study of the first thing that came to hand, or the first person who came along, sufficed to produce a real creation."2 He himself, when he had nothing better at hand, had unlaced his boots and painted them (P1. 35c).3 The essential thing was that one had something actual, something real and tangible to depict. Proceeding from this dogmatic faith in the virtue of realism, van Gogh considered it advisable to avoid not only biblical motifs, but also literary subjects in general. But the latter were not so easily excluded. Van Gogh's love of literature was too deeply rooted to leave his artistic creation un2 Ibid., loc. cit.
1 Letters to Bernard, No. XIV. these pictures had been suggested to van Gogh by Millet's drawing of his wooden shoes, which is reproduced in Sensier's monograph--had it not been for the existence of a painting by the Swedish artist Nils Kreuger, signed Paris 1882, which represents a pair of boots standing on the floor of a study (P1. 35d) and so closely resembling F. 255, which was painted three years later, that it seems almost impossible that van Gogh should not have been acquainted either with Kreuger's picture or with a French model on which both pictures were based. See C. Nordenfalk, "Van Gogh och Josephson," Ord och bild, LIII, Stockholm, 1944, p. 293-

. It is not that it leaves me cold, but it gives me a painful

3 Boots or shoes are a subject that recurs several times in van Gogh's work. The oldest examples are undoubtedly F. 255 and a closely related canvas which was shown for the first time at the van Gogh exhibition in Brussels in November to December I946 (reproduction in the catalogue p. 44, No. 34 bis). The last-mentioned picture is dated there "6poque de Nuenen 1885" and the same date (or possibly Antwerp 1885) should doubtless be assigned to F. 255, which had previously been referred to the Paris period. It might have been supposed that the idea of

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touched. When it could not find a direct vent in illustration, it gushed forth in other indirect ways. II One of these ways, in its unpretentiousness, was characteristic of the artist. Whilst art, as van Gogh conceived it, being fettered to observation, was unable directly to give form to the imaginative world of literature, it could at any rate give a reminiscence thereof by reproducing the actual objects which communicated the knowledge of this world: the books themselves. In this respect, literature could be compared with music. The tones, of course, could not be directly transferred to pictures. All that art could do was to render the musical instruments themselves and their handling. The "musical instruments" of literature were books, and the reader was the one who played them. In nineteenth-century painting, "the reader" is such a frequently recurring genre motif that it may seem impossible to draw any conclusions from the occurrence of this subject in van Gogh's production, especially as only two examples of a "reader" can be adduced. The one is a drawing from Etten (F. 879), representing an old man sitting by the fire, reading a book, which he supports on his knees. The other is the painting 'La liseuse de romans' (F. 497), which is mentioned in a letter of November 1888 (No. 562). Greater importance must be attached to the appreciation which van Gogh, particularly on account of the motif, accorded to the pictures of other artists representing "readers." Meissonier had painted a portrait of Hetzel with a book in his hand. Van Gogh comments on it thus: Have many things been done which give the note of the nineteenth century better than the portrait of Hetzel? When Besnard1 did those two fine panels,2 primitive man and modern man, that we saw at Petit's, when he made the modern man a reader, he had the same idea. (No. 602). And with regard to a "reader" by Puvis de Chavannes, he observes in the same vein: The 'Portrait of a Man,' by Puvis de Chavannes, has always remained the ideal in figure to me, an old man reading a yellow novel, and beside him a rose and some water-colour brushes in a glass of water. . . . These are consoling things, to see modern life as bright, in spite of its inevitable sadness. (No. 617.) One can scarcely fail to see that it is van Gogh's own love of literature that lies behind his appreciation of these paintings. When a picture represents a person reading, the subject as such is sufficient reason for the occurrence in it of one or more books. The case is different when books to which the portrayed person himself does not stand in any
1 Van Gogh is here speaking of the fashionable artist Albert Besnard. 2Studies for the wall paintings in the

Ecole de Pharmacie (G. Mourey, Albert Besnard,Paris, n.d., pl. between pp. 54-5)-

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CARL NORDENFALK

definite relation are added as accessories to a portrait. This is the case with two of Van Gogh's best known paintings. In one version of the portrait of Gachet (F. 753, P1. 35b), two French novels, both by the de Goncourt lie on the table in front of brothers, ManetteSalamonand Germinie Lacerteux, him. It is not known that Dr. Gachet had been particularly interested in this reading. On the other hand, we do know that the de Goncourt brothers were among van Gogh's favourite authors: Germinie Lacerteux is mentioned on no less than three different occasions in the letters to Theo (Nos. 289, 540 and 582). Thus, it seems rather to be the painter than the model who has displayed his favourite books in this picture. Still more strikingly is this tendency shown in the often repeated painting 'L'Arldsienne,' executed by van Gogh on the basis of a drawing by lady have been provided with distinctly legible titles: Charles Dickens, de Noel, and Beecher-Stowe, La casede l'OncleTom.' These books, which Contes are missing in Gauguin's drawing,2 are van Gogh's own addition to the composition. His intention had evidently been to show that they might have been suitable reading for the lady portrayed. Their real owner, however, was not Mme. Ginoux, but himself. Both books are mentioned in letters to Theo written at the end of March and the beginning of April 1889 respectively: I have sent for a few more books so as to have a few solid ideas in my head. I have read again UncleTom'sCabin,you know Beecher Stowe's book
on slavery, Dickens' ChristmasBooks . . . (No. 582.) Gauguin (F. 540-543, P1. 35a). Here also the books on the table in front of the

I have been re-reading Dickens' Christmas Booksthese days. There are in so one must that read them over and over, them things profound there's a tremendously close connection with Carlyle. (No. 583.) The renewed perusal of these books was doubtless the immediate occasion for introducing them into the picture based on Gauguin's 'L'Arldsienne.' In such circumstances the earliest version (F. 543) should probably be assigned not to St. Rdmy, in January or February 189o, as is commonly supposed, but to the spring of 1889, that is, before the removal to St. Rdmy.3 Whenever we find books as a motif in van Gogh's paintings, we should regard them as a token of his own love of literature. It came naturally to him to indicate his favourite reading in this way, just as it was his habit to tell his
1 In the specimen illustrated on P1. 35a, the books have the following titles on the back: "Christmas Tales" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin." 2 Gauguin placed the figure at a caf6 table in the foreground of the painting 'The Night Caf6' (see the reproductions in Konsthistorisk tidskrift, XV, 1946, p. 144). 3 There is also documentary evidence for the attribution of the first version of 'L'Arl6sienne' a la Gauguin to the Arles period. When Vincent on the I7th June, I890, writes to Theo that he was pleased to hear that Gauguin had appreciated his painting after the drawing of his fellow-artist (No. 642), this is in reply to Theo's letter of the in which he is told: "He I5th June, I890, (Gauguin) likes very much the portrait of a woman whichyou painted at Arles." (Theo van Gogh, Lettres a son frere Vincent, published by x V. W. van Gogh, Amsterdam, 1932, p. i6. The reading "Lauzet" in this edition is an error for "Gauguin."

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35

a-Van Gogh, L'Arldsienne. (After a drawing by Gauguin.) Kr6ller-Miiller Museum, Hoenderlo

b-Van Gogh, Portrait of Dr. Gachet, Staidelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfort (p. 138)

(p. 138)

c-Van

Gogh, Boots, V. W. van Gogh Coll. (p. 136)

d-N. Kreuger, Boots (1882), Art Gallery of H.R.H. Prince Eugen, Sweden (p. 136)

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36

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a-Van

Gogh, Still Life, Kr6ller-Miuller Museum, Hoenderlo (p. 139 f.)

c-Detail

of P1. 36b (p. 141)

b-Van Gogh, Bible and Novel, V. W. van Gogh Coll. (pp. 141, 146)

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brother in the letters which book he was reading at the moment, the pictures being in a way an autobiography in paint. There are even pictures which reveal more about his literary studies than do the letters. An interesting example of this fact is a still-life with sundry objects placed on or close to a table with a wooden slab (F. 604, P1. 36a). It was probably produced at Arles shortly after the artist's return from the hospital to the yellow house in
January 1889.1

The articles depicted in this still-life are shown in the following list: a wine bottle, a jar of water, four onions, two of them on a white kitchen plate, a pipe and tobacco-pouch (the same as in 'Van Gogh's Chair,' F. 498), a candle-stick (the same as in 'Gauguin's Chair,' F. 499), a stick of sealing-wax, a box of matches, a book, the envelope of a letter from Theo,2 a burnt match.

The articles, as we see, are unconventionally selected and largely of personal character. They had not been procured expressly in order to be painted, being already in the room. The pipe and the tobacco-pouch, the envelope and the burnt match had evidently been in the artist's hands shortly before they were laid on the model table. The same presumably applies to the book. The title on the cover runs:
ANNUAIREDE LA SANTJ ... . F. V. RASPAIL

Thus, on this occasion it was not a novel, but a medical book, the wellknown Manuel annuaire de la santi ou Midecineet pharmacie by the domestiques medical author F. V. Raspail, published in new editions almost every year since 1847. What did this pamphlet signify for the artist just then? The answer is indicated by a study of its contents. F. V. Raspail in the nineteenth century was one of the leading men in France in the field of social hygiene. Imbued with strong democratic views, he endeavoured, with his popularly written publications, to make a breach in the "freemasonry" with which the medical science of those days had fenced itself about. He desired to teach people to understand themselves the nature of the diseases with which they were threatened or afflicted and to prevent or treat them without the aid of doctors. For that purpose, he relied largely on old well-tried household remedies. For example, he recommended garlic as a cleanser for the body. It
is therefore, perhaps, no coincidence that the artist has included the four onions in the picture and has placed one of them on the medical book.
1 It is presumably referred to in the following passage from a letter to Theo of the 17th January, 1889 (No. 571): "I have begun work again, and have already three studies done in the studio."
2 In the envelope, the underlined name of the town to which it is addressed is almost It seems, however, to be Arles, illegible. followed by Provence in brackets.
IO0

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14o

CARL NORDENFALK

Van Gogh, as we can see from a number of passages in his letters, was deeply interested in questions of health. As far back as July I88o he had written from Le Borinage to Theo: A very necessary study is that of medicine, there is scarcely anybody who does not try to know a little of it, who does not try to understand what it is about, and you see I do not know as yet one word about it.

(No. I33.)

His desire was to get to know enough about the functions of the body to enable him to control his state of health himself. When, in the following summer at Etten, after a mild disease, he had an opportunity to consult a doctor, he expresses his satisfaction in a letter to his brother. * . . I like to talk with a doctor now and then, in order to know that everything is right. If one hears, occasionally, a sound and true word about health, one gets by and by much clearer ideas about it; and if one knows what things to avoid, and what things to do, one is not shaken like a reed by every wind, and does not believe all the nonsense one hears so often about health and ill-health. (No. 148.) Van Gogh's interest in questions of health was of a personal nature. Since his youth he had evidently suffered from the nervous constitution which eventually led to the collapse at Arles and to the following periods in hospital. With the propensity for self-observation which is noticeable throughout in his letters, he regarded himself as his own patient and was anxious to take the steps by which he thought he could keep his body in good health. On his return from the hospital to the yellow house in January 1889, we find him in fact fighting single-handed the severest sequel of his mental disorder, insomnia. I fight this insomnia by a very, very strong dose of camphor in my pillow and mattress, and if ever you do not sleep I recommend you this.
(No. 570.)

The letter does not mention where the directions for the camphor remedy were taken from. But the still-life executed about that time shows that the source was the above-mentioned book by Raspail, who particularly recommends camphor as a remedy: "As my studies and researches had led me to the conviction that most of our diseases are caused by external and internal parasites and their destructive action on the organs of the body and, as on the other hand, it was my intention to simplify drugsjust as I had done with regard to medical theory, I could not possibly have found any better remedy than
camphor, with its double effect of destroying the immediate cause of the disease and neutralizing its consequences."' As regards the method of layto prevent sexual excitements.2 1 Raspail, Manuelannuaire, p. 56, ? I17.
2 Ibid., pp. 60 and
212.

ing camphor in the bed-clothes, it is recommended by Raspail as a remedy

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The articles which van Gogh had depicted in this still-life were thus not taken at random, but, in the strictest sense, "personal belongings." The catastrophe with Gauguin had, so to speak, cast him out of the secure haven of his own home; it is as though, on returning to it, he had sat down and counted the things which had been left by the storm and with the aid of which he would have to try and build up a new existence. The book had not been placed there merely as a colouristic note in the composition. It is a confession of the artist's faith in the possibility of mastering the destructive forces and fighting his way back to a normal existence. In the pictures thus far considered, the books were merely accessories, component parts of the subject. But in van Gogh's work there are also paintings where the books dominate the picture and where, consequently, his interest in them appears still more explicitly. The oldest of them is the canvas 'The Bible and the French novel,' produced in October 1885 (F. I17, P1. 36b). It is mentioned in a letter to Theo (No. 429) in the following words: In answer to your description of the study by Manet, I send you a still-life of an open-so a broken-white-Bible, bound in leather, against a black background, with a yellow-brown foreground, with a touch of citron yellow. I painted that in one rush, on one day. This is to show you that, when I say that I have perhaps not plodded quite in vain, I venture to say this because at present it comes quite easily to me to paint a given subject unhesitatingly, whatever its form or colour may be. When one reads this description, one may have the impression that the still-life for van Gogh had been solely a technical study, a kind of test of his ability to paint any subject laid before him. But a closer examination shows that in this case too the choice of a subject had been largely determined by intense literary interests. The Bible is opened not merely in order to give the artist an opportunity to paint its leaves in delicate shades of broken white. It is opened at a definite place. In the upper margin on the right side, ISAIE appears in distinct letters, and the new chapter at the side is marked CAP LIII.xx (P1. 36c). It is the famous passage in Isaiah (in the English Bible, Ch. LII, v. 13-15) on the suffering and glorification of the servant of the Lord. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men: So shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him. The oppressed man's dream of final rehabilitation, were not these words for van Gogh-just at a time when his masterpiece, 'The Potato-eaters,' had

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been condemned by his best artist friend as a failure, and when the gossip among the parishioners of Nuenen was laying impediments in the way of his continued work-as though they had come direct from his own heart? "We hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised and we esteemed him not" (Ch. 53, v. 3)-"And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death" (v. 9)-were these not words that applied to him too as an artist? The Bible was not merely a given object of optional form and colour-it carried a message to the beholder about the artist who had painted it. A somewhat similar remark applies to the smaller book at the side. It is not merely "a note of citron yellow"-its author was the admired novelist Emile Zola, and it bears the high-sounding title La joie de vivre. With its description of the kill-joy tendencies of the older generation, this book had doubtless caused the chords of feeling in van Gogh to vibrate against a sounding-board of similar personal experiences. The still-life has thus evidently a literary under-meaning. Nay, its symbolical significance perhaps extends still deeper in the artist's experience of life. Alongside of the Bible stands a candlestick with a burnt-out candle. It is a combination of motifs which, iconographically, can be traced back to the 'Vanitas' still-life of the seventeenth century.1 That in van Gogh's work also it should be regarded as a symbol of the transitorinessof life is shown by the fact that a similar motif is introduced in an earlier drawing from the Hague period, representing a woman on her death-bed. In the still-life picture, moreover, the motif has a background in a real event: the large family Bible carries one's thoughts back to the death of the father about six months before. But the idea of death and sorrow does not exclusively dominate the picture. mori of the Bible and the burnt-out candle, the little Against the memento yellow novel boldly proclaims the opposite watchword: la joie de vivre! Into this contrast van Gogh had also introduced something of his personal attitude of opposition. It was modern French literature that had opened his eyes to the narrowness of his father's Calvinistic view of life. In the vicarage at Etten a heated controversy had been waged in regard to the son's right to adopt the ideas of the new times. "If father sees me reading a French book by Michelot or Victor Hugo, he thinks of incendiaries and murderers itself out in the picture, as the father's authority had dominated his years of growth. The French novel seems almost to run the risk of being pushed over the edge of the table. But, with its stronger yellow colouring, it bravely makes a stand against the superior power. The situation is suggestive of the Old Testament story of David and Goliath. It is the dramatic moment before the contest begins. When van Gogh in Paris returns to the same type of still-life, the Bible has quitted the field (F. 335, 358-360, P1. 37a-d) ! It is the French novel that triumphs, whilst the brooding, dark general tone gives way to a colouration of shimmering light pigments. In the largest of these still-life pictures from the Paris period (F. 359,
1 For instance a still-life by E. Collyer in Ingvar Bergstr6m, Holldndskt stillebenmdleri the Bredius Collection in Amsterdam. See underi6oo-talet, G6teborg, 1947. also on the whole species of 'Vanitas' still-life

and all kinds of 'immorality'."

(No. I59.)

The large family Bible spreads

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37

a-Van Gogh, Statuette and Books, Kr6ller-Muller (p. Museum, Hoenderlo 142 f.)

b-Van

Gogh, Parisian Novels, 142 f.) (p. Ziirich

G. Boner Coll.,

c-Van Gogh, Parisian Novels, V. W. van Gogh Coll. 142 f.) (p.

d-Van Gogh, Books, V. W. van Gogh Coll. (p. 142 f.)

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a-Van Gogh, Drawing, from Letters to his Brother (P. I44)

b-Van

Gogh, Crab, V. W. van Gogh Coll. (p. I47)

c-Van Paris

d-Van
Gallery,

Gogh, Vincent's
London (p. 147)

Chair, Tate

e-Van

Gogh, Landscape, Halvorsen Coll. (p. 145)

f-Van van G

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VAN GOGH AND LITERATURE

I43

P1. 37b), van Gogh's love of reading, his devotion to modern literature, has found its most intense expression.' A score of Paris novels with covers in yellow, pink and green tones lie spread in heaps on a table. The composition shows something of the profusion which during the Dutch period marked his still-lifes with fruits and potatoes, and which may carry one's thoughts to the great Flemish painters of the seventeenth century. From this picture it is but a step to the motif which had particularly engaged his thoughts, when, after a year's confinement in the mental hospital at St. Rdmy, he prepared once more to return to Paris, to his fellow-creatures and culture. He then dreamed of painting a picture representing "une librairiejaune (effet de gaz)." I don't know, however-not being a pessimist always-I still think that I have it yet in my heart to paint some day a book shop with the frontage yellow and rose, at evening, and the black passers-by-it is such an essentially modern subject. Because it seems to the imagination such a focus of light-I say, there would be a subject that would go well between an olive grove and a cornfield, the seedtime of books and prints. I have a great longing to do it, like a light in the midst of darkness.
(No. 615.)

"A focus of light"-in these words van Gogh himself has clearly indicated what he intended to express by the books he had introduced into his pictures. He wished to depict them as sources of light and warmth, in his own existence and in that of mankind in general. III Whatever meanings van Gogh may have infused into his paintings with books, they must, even for himself, have seemed a poor substitute for the world of imagination to which the beholder, of course, could gain admission only by reading the books. There was a great gulf between the rich mental content that lay concealed in the printed texts and the small fraction thereof that could be hinted at by depicting the book itself. The inability of dogmatic realism to gain touch with the invisible realm of romance could scarcely have been more clearly demonstrated. With this admission, however, the problem had not been dismissed. Were the small square exteriors of the books the only points of contact between the invisible realm of literature and the visible world of painting? Did the immortal creations of romance exist only in the realm of imagination, far beyond the reach of the realist's study of what can be observed with the eyes? Van Gogh's attitude to this question is indicated by an episode from the Paris period which Gauguin has recounted in Avantet apres.2 The scene is a
1 This motif occurs also in another version (F. 358, P1. 37c), where the back-wall and the vase of flowers are missing. It has been published by De la Faille as a preliminary study, but, to judge by the technique, it is, as I have already pointed out elsewhere, rather a repetition from memory of the

pointillist Paris picture, made some time in the autumn of I888. Cf. "Swedish van Gogh Studies," Konsthistorisk tidskrift, XV, I946, p. 133, note I. 2 Paul Gauguin, Avantet apris, Paris, 1923, pp. 42-4.

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street in Montmartre. Van Gogh comes out from an art and curio dealer's, where he has sold a still-life for five francs. He clutches the coin in his hand: he has been starving for several days. He is accosted by a street girl, who has just been let out from the house of correction. "Van Gogh had kept up with French literature. He thinks of 'La fille Elisa,' and his five-franc piece is given to the poor girl. Hastily, as though he were ashamed of his charity, he scurries away on an empty stomach." For him, it was not just an ordinary street girl-it was the de Goncourt brothers' Elisa who had approached him, as real as life, and had received his money. Romance, it is true, derived its material from real life. But for those, such as the true lover of literature, who absorbed themselves in its creations, the inverse might happen, and romance take on the substance of reality. This opened up new vistas for pictorial art, enabling it, through the world of the visible, to gain contact with the realm of poetry and romance; and we shall see that this idea actually played a considerable part in van Gogh's artistic creation. One of the earliest examples is a nude figure, which van Gogh sent his brother in April 1882 (P1. 38a). For the first time he had tackled the study of the nude human body. Sien, the poor, starved, pregnant woman with whom he cohabited at the Hague, had sat as his model. But the contemplation of her tired, collapsing body had called up associations with a figure in literature-and suddenly, for his inner eye, the subject assumes quite a different character. He signs the drawing 'The Great Lady' and, in a letter to Theo, explains its meaning as follows: There is a poem by Thomas Hood, I believe, in which he tells us of a rich lady who could not sleep at night because during the day, when she went out to buy a dress, she saw the poor seamstress, pale, consumptive, emaciated, sitting at work in a close room.1 And now she is consciencestricken about her wealth, and starts up anxiously at night. In short, it is a slender, pale woman figure, restless in the dark night. (No. 185.) A direct parallel to this drawing is the painting 'La Berceuse,' which van Gogh had on his easel at Arles when the catastrophe with Gauguin occurred, and of which he afterwards made a large number of replicas (P1. 38c). This painting, as van Gogh himself has informed us, is intended to illustrate an old Breton legend (presumably told by Gauguin). According to this legend it sometimes occurred that the Breton fishermen, when they were out on the Atlantic at night in stormy weather, suddenly saw a vision: an old woman sitting in the prow of the boat and singing lullabies to them. They did not fear her, for they knew that it was "La Berceuse," the old nurse who had lulled them to sleep when they were small and who had now come to them
again to rock them to rest in the tossing craft.
1 Van Gogh is presumably, as has been pointed out to me by Meyer Schapiro, referring here to Thomas Hood's poem "The Song of the Shirt." He asks for this poem in a letter

If one looks at van Gogh's painting, it seems difficult to credit his own
to van Rappard from Etten, of the I5th Ocvan Gogh to Anton Ritter van Rappard
I88I-i885, New York, 1936, pp. 9-IO.) tober, 1881 (Letters to an Artist, From Vincent

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statement that it was intended to be an illustration of the above-mentioned legend. Any other artist would doubtless have indicated, in some form, the scene of the event, the rocking prow of the fishing-boat and the stormy dark sea. Van Gogh, on the other hand, shows us "La Berceuse" sitting indoors in a chair against the background of a flowery wall-paper. In point of fact, the painting originally did not represent at all the imaginative figure of the legend. When van Gogh first mentions it in a letter to Theo (No. 560), he states that he is busy painting portraits of the different members of the Roulin Family, including the lady who had just given birth to a baby. While he was painting this portrait, it had occurred to him that Mme. Roulin, in her motherliness, was like the vision of the fishermen personified. And from that moment the painting is no longer merely a portrait of the postman's wife, but is also intended to represent "La Berceuse" of the legend. As if in order to make up for the lack of scenery in the picture, he afterwards conceived the idea of placing the painting in the cabin of a boat, with a sunflower on either side. His intention was that "sailors-who are both children and martyrs-seeing the picture in the cabin of their Icelandic fishing-boat, should once again experience the old feeling of being rocked in a cradle and remember the songs of their childhood." (No. 574.) Similar observations may be made in regard to other pictures by van Gogh. One of the study heads from Nuenen, a profile picture of a young peasant girl, is at the same time, according to a statement in a letter to Theo (No. 41O) an illustration of a passage in Zola's novel Germinal;and, with a as young girl at Arles as a model, he painted a picture of a Japanese mousmr, Pierre Loti had described her in MadameChrysanthdme The (No. 514). sight of an old stage-coach in the yard of an inn impels him to paint the creaking old mail-cart to which Daudet had devoted a page in his Tartarinde Tarascon (No. 552). Even literary descriptions of landscapes were illustrated by him in this way. While he was staying at St. Rdmy, his youngest sister sent him a book by Edouard Rod, Le sens de la vie, which at that time had created quite a sensation. He read it without much appreciation-he found the title of the book too pretentious-but was at any rate impressed by a description of a mountainous region in the Alps. Some time afterwards he informed Theo that he had painted a landscape on the basis of the description in the book (No. 507). The painting, which has been preserved, is not, however, an imaginative composition (P1. 38e). It is a landscape study of a hilly district near the hospital, which seemed to Vincent to resemble that described in the novel. In this way he saw the romance embodied in reality and, by representing it, he indirectly illustrated the romance.' These paintings thus acquire a curious double meaning. To the uninitiated they look merely like "ordinary"
1 It was not only the creations of romance, but also those of art that van Gogh might find embodied in the world of reality. He explains this in a letter from Nuenen to Theo "If one endeavours to follow (No. 393). devoutly in the steps of the great masters, one will find them at certain moments deep in I mean that what we call their reality. creations will be seen by us also in reality if one has the same eyes, the same outlook as they."

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representations of an actually existing subject. In order to understand that they are at the same time literary illustrations, one must have access to the artist's own explanation: in such cases the letters are thus an indispensable commentary on the paintings. This reminds us of the "typological" method of illustration in the Middle Ages, according to which a scene from the Old Testament may at the same time be regarded as a symbol for an event in the New Testament. In van Gogh's painting, Mme. Roulin is also "La Berceuse" of the legend, just as Moses or Gideon in a mediaeval representation is also the Christ of the New Testament. Panofsky, in his analysis of the significance of pictorial art in the introhad pointed out that, in looking at ductory chapter of his Studiesin Iconology, "the must between world of motifs," which can be we distinguish pictures, understood in the light of one's own experience, and "the world of images, stories and allegories," which presupposesin the beholder a special knowledge of literary sources.1 According to the realist doctrine, it was the duty of the artist to content himself with the world of motifs, which alone could be perceived with the aid of the eye; and it has already been pointed out that, formally speaking, van Gogh was an orthodox adherent of the realist tenets. Apart from the copies after the works of other artists, he contented himself, in principle, with taking his subjects from "the world of motifs." But, in his eyes, this world was not always in the same way, as it was for other realists, a simple matter of perception only-it was in itself a "world of images, stories, allegories"! It was not merely a question of the limited number of motifs that could be regarded as "realized literature," but of a symbolic vision of far wider range. To the Bible and the French novels could be added the richest and most significant of all documents: le grandlivrede la nature(No. 604), the truth of which revealed itself in the light of a deep-felt sympathy with everything in creation. The artist writes from the Hague in I882: I see in Nature, for example in trees, expression and, as it were, a soul. A row of pollard willows sometimes seems to resemble a procession of almsmen. Young corn has something inexpressibly pure and tender about it, awakening a similar emotion as, for instance, the expression of a sleeping baby. The trampled grass at the roadside has something tired and dusty about it, like the denizens of the slums. A few days ago, when it had been snowing, I saw a group of white cabbages standing frozen and benumbed; it reminded me of a group of old women, in their petticoats and threadbare shawls, whom I had seen early in the morning standing by a coffee stall. (No. 242.) But, above all, the meaning of things revealed itself to him in the light of his personal experiences. Just as in the letters he often uses metaphors and similes in order to make clear his problems, so-consciously or unconsciously -he illustrates his own situation in allegorical pictures. A typical example has already been mentioned in the analysis of the still-life with the Bible and the French novel (P1. 36b), and other similar examples might be adduced.
New York, 1939, PP. 9 1 E. Panofsky, Studiesin Iconology,

ff.

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Just as the storm-ravaged solitary tree in a painting from the Hague period (F. Io) represents his own struggle under pressing external conditions, so the pictures of the orchards at Arles in spring symbolize the recovery which he was then experiencing. When at Arles, at the time when he was painting the still-life with Raspail's medical book, he depicted a crab which had been thrown on its back and is sprawling in its effort to get on its legs again (P1. 38b), this was a covert description of his own situation.1 And were not the two pictures of his own chair and that of Gauguin, which he had commenced during the final stage of his intercourse with the latter-in the deepest sense of the words, "empty chairs" (P1. 38d, f)-a premonition of the catastrophe which was destined before long to make them vacant, like the desk chair of the deceased Dickens in Luke Fildes' woodcut in The Graphicfor 1870, mentioned by van Gogh, in July 1882 (No. 220), as part of his own collection of English magazine illustrations?2 Thus, most of van Gogh's realistic motifs really represent private cryptograms, marked by a deep-seated instinct for literary creation. If in some of his still-lifes the book is present in the picture as a kind of fetish of the lover of literature, in most of his works it is present, so to speak, beneath the picture, invisible to the eye, but nevertheless perceptible as a centre and source of power. In this respect, van Gogh the artist is reunited with his former ego, the preacher. In the last resort, the symbolic language in van Gogh's art can be traced to his religious view of life. The sermon which he preached at Isleworth in 1876 concludes with the words: When every one of us goes back to daily things and daily duties, let us not forget that things are not what they seem, that God by the things of daily life, teacheth us higher things. These are words which were to preserve their deep significance also for van Gogh the painter. They designate the line which he was to follow from beginning to end, regardless of all changes of milieu and consequent modifications in style. The art of van Gogh is usually looked upon as divided into two distinct periods with little in common between them-the Dutch period and the French. From the point of view adopted here there was, however, no essential change in the artist's personality. To depict the things of daily life so that they conveyed the message of a higher reality, this was the deeper significance in all his artistic endeavours.3
1 How natural the symbolic language of Empty chairs-there are many of them, there will be still more, and sooner or later things seemed to him at that time is shown in the place of Herkomer, Luke Fildes, by his eagerness to give Signac a still-life with smoked herrings on the latter's visit to Arles Frank Holl, XAilliamSmall, etc., there will be nothing but empty chairs. (No. 252.) in the spring of 1889. In colloquial French, as has been pointed out to me by Dr M. The empty chair, as the symbol of the inMuusses, a pair of smoked herrings is called visible presence of a deceased person or an "gendarmes," and this made van Gogh immortal, is really an old theme in iconoanxious lest the painting should be viewed at graphy, known under the name of Hetoimasia. See the literature quoted by Panofsky, Arles as an unseemly jest at the police! 2 In a later letter he writes with reference op. cit., p. 212. 3 Translated from the Swedish Grenville to this woodcut: by

Grove.

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