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To Emile Bernard. Arles, on Or About Tuesday, 19 June 1888

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To Emile Bernard. Arles, on Or About Tuesday, 19 June 1888 To Emile Bernard. Arles, on or about Tuesday, 19 June 1888. on or about Tuesday, 19 June 1888 Metadata Source status: Original manuscript Location: New York, Thaw Collection, The Morgan Library & Museum Date: Vincent told Theo on 21 June that he had received a letter from Bernard (see letter 629). Because he says in the present letter that he is replying to Bernards letter immediately (l. 2), it must precede letter 629. He has also progressed further with The sower than he could report in letter 627, which was written around 17 June, and he mentions a new wheatfield. This suggests that a couple of days must have passed since he wrote that letter, so we have dated the present one on or about Tuesday, 19 June 1888. Additional: Original [1r:1] mon cher Bernard Pardonne moi si jcris bien la hte, je crains que ma lettre ne sera point lisible mais je veux te rpondre tout de suite. Sais tu que nous avons t trs btes, Gauguin, toi et moi, de ne pas aller dans un mme endroit. Mais lorsque Gauguin est parti moi jetais pas encore sr de pouvoir partir. Et lorsque toi tu es parti il y avait cet affreux argent du voyage et les mauvaises nouvelles que javais donner des frais ici qui lont empech. Si nous tions parti tous ensemble vers ici ce naurait pas t si bte car trois nous eussions fait le mnage chez nous. Et maintenant que je suis un peu mieux orient je commence entrevoir des avantages ici. Pour moi, je me porte mieux ici que dans le nord je travaille mme en plein midi en plein soleil sans ombre aucune dans les champs de bl et voil, jen jouis comme une cigale. Mon dieu si 25 ans jeusse connu ce pays au lieu dy venir 35 cette epoque jetais enthousiasm pour le gris ou lincolore plutt. Je revais toujours de Millet et puis javais des connaissances en Hollande dans la catgorie de peintres Mauve, Israels. 1 1 Van Gogh regarded Israls2s work as the counterpart of Millet3s. Nothing is known about any contacts between Van Gogh and Israls, although they very probably met when Vincent was working in the Goupil gallery in The Hague (in July 1883 he quoted something Israls said; see letter 361). Israls sold much of his work through Goupil. 1 2 To Emile Bernard. Arles, on or about Tuesday, 19 June 1888. Voici croquis dun semeur.4 Grand terrain de mottes de terre labours, franchement violet en grande partie. Champ de bl mr dun ton docre jaune avec un peu de carmin. Le ciel jaune de chrome I presque aussi clair que le soleil lui-meme qui est jaune de chrome I avec un peu de blanc tandis que le reste du ciel est jaune de chrome 1 et 2 melangs, trs jaune donc. la blouse du semeur est bleue et son pantalon blanc. toile de 25 carre. il y a bien des rappels de jaune dans le terrain, des tons neutres, rsultantes du mlange du violet avec le jaune, mais je me suis un peu foutu de la vrit de la couleur. faire des images naives dalmanach plutt de vieil almanach de campagne o la grle, la neige, la pluie, le beau temps sont reprsents dune faon tout fait primitive. ainsi quAnquetin avait si bien trouv sa moisson. 5 Je ne te cache pas que je ne dteste pas la campagne y ayant t elev, des bouffes de souvenirs dautrefois, des aspirations vers cet infini dont le Semeur, la gerbe sont les symboles, menchantent encore comme [1v:2] autrefois. 9 Mais quand donc ferai je le ciel toil, ce tableau qui toujours me proccupe10 helas, helas, cest bien comme dit lexcellent copain Cyprien dans en mnage de J. K. Huysmans: les plus beaux tableaux sont ceux que lon rve en fumant des pipes dans son lit mais quon ne fait pas.12 Sagit pourtant de les attaquer quelquincomptent quon se sente vis vis des ineffables perfections de splendeurs glorieuses de la nature. Mais comme je voudrais voir ltude que tu as fait au bordel. 14 4 The letter sketch Sower with setting sun (F - / JH 1472) was done after the painting of the same name (F 422 / JH 1470). Van Gogh described and sketched it at an earlier stage; he worked on it again soon afterwards (see letter 634). 5 Louis Anquetin6, The harvest (The mower at noon), 1887 (private collection). Ill. 508. Bernard7 described it as one of Anquetins Japanese abstractions (abstractions Japonaises), and regarded it as one of the first experiments with Cloisonnism. The painting hung in the exhibition staged by Van Gogh in Restaurant du Chalet, and in the offices of the Revue Indpendante in January 1888. See Bernard 1994, vol. 1, pp. 64, 241, and letter 575, n. 9. Van Goghs Arles seen from the wheatfields (F 545 / JH 1477) followed the lead set by Anquetins painting. Van Gogh likens Anquetins painting to naive almanac pictures old country almanacs. Edouard Dujardin8 had made a similar link between Anquetins work and the images dEpinal (cheap, coloured, popular prints) in his article in La Revue Indpendante to which Van Gogh referred in letter 620. 9 Van Gogh is referring here to his Nuenen period from late 1883 to late 1885, when he tried to express the symbolism of the countryside and peasant life. 10 Van Gogh had written to Bernard11 about this subject before (see letter 596). 12 In Joris-Karl Huysmans13s novel En mnage (1881), the character Cyprien remarks: And what about the paintings? The painter scratched his beard with his long fingers. The paintings, pah, he said, its sometimes good to muse about those you will never do, in bed, of an evening, when youre not asleep! ( Alors les tableaux? Le peintre se frotta la barbe de ses longs doigts. Les tableaux, peuh, dit-il, cest quelquefois bon de songer ceux quon ne fera jamais, au lit, le soir, quand on ne dort pas!) (see 3rd ed. Paris 1881, chapter 16, p. 346). The novel is set in an artistic milieu, and revolves around a broken marriage, the day-to-day worries of an old bachelor, the loneliness of the search for love, the need for a woman in short the desolateness of life. Cf. Sund 1992, p. 253 (n. 27). 14 To Emile Bernard. Arles, on or about Tuesday, 19 June 1888. 3 je me fais des reproches nen pas finir de ne pas encore avoir fait de figures ici. Voici encore un paysage. 16 Soleil couchant? lever de lune? Soir det en tout cas. Ville violette, astre jaune, ciel bleu vert, les bls ont tous les tons: vieil or, cuivre, or vert, or rouge, or jaune, bronze jaune, vert, rouge. toile de 30 carre. je lai peint en plein mistral. mon chevalet etait fix en terre avec des piquets de fer, procd que je te recommande. On enfouit les pieds du chevalet et puis on enfonce cot un piquet de fer long de 50 centimtres. on attache le tout avec des cordes, vous pouvez ainsi travailler dans le vent. Voici ce que jai voulu dire pour le blanc et le noir. 17 prenons le Semeur. le tableau est coup en deux, une moitie est jaune, le haut, le bas est violet. eh bien le pantalon blanc repose loeil et le distrait19 au moment o le contraste simultan21 excessif de jaune et de violet lagacerait. Voil ce que jai voulu dire. [2r:3] Je connais ici un sous-lieutenant des zouaves nomm Milliet. je lui donne des leons de dessin avec mon cadre perspectif22 et il commence faire des dessins ma foi jai vu bien pire que a et il a du zle pour apprendre, a t au Tonkin &c. Celui-l va partir mois doctobre pour lAfrique. 23 Si tu tais dans les zouaves il te prendrait avec lui et te garantirait une large marge de libert relative pour faire de la peinture si toutefois tu laiderais un peu dans ses manigences artistiques lui. Cela peut il ttre de quelquutilit. En cas quoui fais le moi savoir aussitt possible . 25 Une raison de travailler cest que les toiles valent de largent. tu me diras que dabord cette raison est bien prosaque, Bernard15 sent him a drawing of a brothel soon afterwards, which Vincent sent on to Theo, saying: its probable that he has a more finished painted study of it (letter 630). Bernards drawing Brothel scene (see letter 630, n. 4) was thus probably based on that study of a brothel. However, no such painted version is known today. 16 The letter sketch Wheatfield with setting sun (F - / JH 1474) is after the painting of the same name F 465 / JH 1473. 17 This is a subject that Van Gogh had raised in his previous letter to Bernard18 (622), who had presumably asked him to explain it in more detail. 19 This form of words is similar to that used by Charles Blanc20 in his Grammaire des arts du dessin when he wrote that, when using bold colours, white can serve to rest the eye, to refresh it, by moderating the dazzling brilliance of the whole spectacle ( reposer loeil, le rafrachir, en modrant lblouissant clat du spectacle entier). See Blanc 1870, p. 609. Van Gogh later made the trousers blue. 21 See letter 536, n. 28 for the concept of simultaneous contrast. 22 For Van Goghs knowledge and use of a perspective frame, see letter 235, n. 10. 23 Paul Eugne Milliet24 was due to leave for Guelma in Algeria on 1 November 1888.
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