Incent Van Gogh Struggled with Feelings of Rejection and Loneliness. He Felt Rejected by Some of His Family Members, Women
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incent van Gogh struggled with feelings of rejection and loneliness. He felt rejected by some of his family members, women, and society. Vincent had V a desperate longing for a companion to subside his fear of loneliness. The failure of his professional partnership with fellow artist Paul Gauguin, and the fact that his younger brother, Theo van Gogh, had a wife and new baby pushed him over the edge. Miserable and alone, Vincent tried to kill himself at the age of thirty-seven. He did not succeed with one shot from the gun, so he crawled back to the café in Auvers where he laid in bed until he died from the wound. Although Vincent never settled down, there is evidence in his painting The Bedroom, which shows he desired companionship and went as far as creating the perfect world with a make-believe woman in his work. Vincent van Gogh spent his developmental years looking for a purpose to his life by trying many careers from being an art dealer, like his brother Theo, to being involved in the church, like his father, as an evangelist in Brussels. Vincent was not successful at either career, so he moved to Belgium to do missionary work in a coal mining town. Since these were the identities of others, they did not give Vincent the fulfillment he was hoping to find. Vincent moved away from work as a missionary and began to draw. He found his passion in life at the age of twenty-three when he began having ambitions to be an artist. Throughout his career as an artist he struggled to make a living. For that reason, he heavily relied on Theo to provide for him. Vincent was part of the Post-Impressionist movement; thus, he was working during a time when there was a shift in the art world that was not accepted by everyone. In fact, Vincent completed hundreds of paintings, but only profited from a few in his lifetime. Fortunately, Theo believed in Vincent, and as a Desire for Companionship result, Theo provided his brother with the necessary means to create what would later become masterpieces. In February 1888, Vincent left Theo in Paris and moved to Provence, which is located in the south of France. He was searching for a “different light” and a “stronger sun.”1 The solution was Arles, located in Provence. He needed a place that would satisfy his urge for Japan. Vincent often compared Provence to Japan. Once he stated, “This part of the world seems to me as beautiful as Japan for the clearness of the atmosphere and the gay color effects.”2 Although Vincent never traveled to Japan, he studied Japanese prints, which influenced some of his own work. Vincent found southern France to have brilliant tones and colors. He was very optimistic and content with the change in landscape that he discovered in Provence, and he stated, “Essentially the color is exquisite here. When the green leaves are fresh, it is a rich green, the like of which we seldom see in the North. When it gets scorched and dusty, it does not lose its beauty…”3 Vincent was inspired by the landscape, which he felt never lost its beauty. Furthermore, he would often paint outside, which would have provided him with the opportunity to clear his mind in the fresh air. Fresh air was not something he was able to have in Paris. It was often believed that being in the country was good for one’s health, and Vincent had contracted an illness in Paris; thus, he was hoping to regain his strength and recover in the countryside he found in Provence. Vincent was pleased with the surroundings he found in Arles. The sun of southern France was the “stronger sun” he described to his brother. Vincent believed, 1 Martin Gayford, The Yellow House (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2006), 27 2 Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters, ed. Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker (Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 2010), Letter 587 3 Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters, Letter 626 2 Desire for Companionship “Sometimes it is as enormously gay as Holland is gloomy.”4 Vincent was comparing the skies of southern France against the skies of Holland. The sunshine and the landscape revitalized Vincent, and was an inspiration for his work. Although his letters support his pleasure with southern France, it is more substantiated by the fact he painted over two hundred paintings in the fifteen months he lived in Arles. Vincent told Theo of the excitement he was experiencing, and believed it was because “being surrounded by color like this is quite new.”5 Vincent wanted to have plenty of supplies to be prepared for the many inspirations he was experiencing. He did not want to be in a situation where he would be prevented from painting because of the lack of materials. Vincent found what he desired in Arles; therefore, he was utterly inspired and in high spirits. Everything from the landscape to the town inspired Vincent. Although he was sometimes peeved with the town’s inhabitants, Vincent enjoyed the women. Many of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous paintings were created while he was in Arles. Some of his well-known landscapes were painted in Arles, such as: Starry Night over the Rhone and his many wheat fields. Vincent also captured the nightlife of the town in two very famous paintings: The Night Café and the Café Terrace at Night. He painted some people as well, in works like the Portrait of Dr. Félix Rey and the Portrait of Joseph Roulin. Although Vincent did not paint many women, he found them to be beautiful, and felt they were made beautiful by color. Their clothing delighted him because of the choice of color used in the patterns of their dresses.6 Their unique beauty 4 Qtd. in Gayford, 20 5 Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters, Letter 689 6 Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters, Letter 587 3 Desire for Companionship attracted Vincent, but after describing them as women of Fragonard and Renoir, he claimed, “The best thing one could do, from all points of view, would be to paint portraits of women and children. But it seems to me that it won’t be I who does that…”7 Examining his work, there are some portraits of men, women, and children, but landscapes were prevalent in the paintings and drawings he completed in Provence. The Yellow House was included as one of the cityscapes completed by Vincent while he was in Arles. Vincent had grown tired of living in cafés. He felt the transient lifestyle was no longer for him, and “it wasn’t compatible with thoughtful work.”8 Vincent found the perfect painter’s studio in a house at 2 Place Lamartine. He was able to live and work there because Theo provided an income for Vincent, which allowed enough for rent, food, paint supplies, and other essentials. Vincent was using up his paints more often because he was inspired more often, and his painting techniques evolved to applying the paint thickly onto the canvas. On September 26, 1888 Vincent wrote to Theo regarding the supplies needed: lemon chrome yellow, Veronese green, Prussian blue, and zinc white tubes of paint and five meters of canvas.9 Vincent best described the exterior of the Yellow House: My house here is painted outside in the yellow of fresh butter, with garish green shutters, and it’s in the full sun on the square, where there’s a green garden of plane trees, oleanders, acacias. And inside, it’s all whitewashed, and the floor’s of 7 Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters, Letter 604 8 Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters, Letter 682 9 Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters, Letter 689 4 Desire for Companionship red bricks. And the intense blue sky above. Inside I can live and breathe, and 10 think and paint. Figure 1 Figure 2 He found a place to call home, but more importantly, he had a place to work. Vincent was attracted to this house because of the front room located downstairs; it had the light he needed for his work.11 In 1888, Vincent included a sketch of the Yellow House in a letter to Theo. Then, around May 1888, Vincent painted a watercolor that he called The Yellow House (fig. 1), which gave an idea of how the oil painting would turn out four months later in September 1888 (fig. 2). Compositionally, the watercolor and oil paintings are quite similar. They both include people walking in the street, and Arlésiens on the sidewalks. Also, there is a train in both versions. With the use of oil paints, Vincent was able to give the later version more detail and deep, lively colors. The sky is of the intense blue he had described to Theo. The Place Lamartine gardens were left out, so the focus could be on the buildings.12 Theo provided three hundred francs to help furnish the house. 10 Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters, Letter 678 11 Gayford, 12 12 Ronald Pickvance, Van Gogh in Arles (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984), 176 5 Desire for Companionship On October 3, 1888, Vincent wrote to Theo with a list of items the house needed: dressing table with chest of drawers, four sheets, three drawing boards, kitchen stove, frames and stretching frames, colors, and canvases.13 Although Vincent knew this was a lot to ask for, he wanted the house to be fully furnished to impress any houseguests. Vincent took the task of furnishing the house quite seriously.