Notes: Introduction

Notes for the Text

Aurier article: Aurier, Gustave-Albert. “The Isolated Ones: Vincent van Gogh” (“Les isolés: Vincent van Gogh,” Mercure de France, January 1, 1890, pp. 24–29, in Stein, ed., pp. 181–93. Les Vingt: Lecomte, “The Exhibition of the Neo-Impressionists,” in Stein, ed., p. 207: “M. Vincent van Gogh’s fierce impasto and his exclusive use of gentle harmonies of color result in powerful effects: the violet background of Cypresses and the symphony of greens in an undergrowth make a vivid impression.” “You must in any case go”: Johanna van Gogh–Bonger, The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), letter 12, 11/19/1873 (hereafter, BVG). Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten, and Nienke Bakker, Vincent van Gogh: The Letters; The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition (London: Thames and Hudson, 2009), letter 015, 11/19/1873 (hereafter, JLB). “It is good to love”: BVG 121, 4/3/1878 | JLB 143, 4/3/1878. Dore exhibition: https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/3488/work-by-gustave-dore-the-dore-gallery-collection The Gleaners selling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gleaners

“Father Millet”: BVG 161, 11/23/1881 | JLB 189, 11/23/1881. “There was still progress”: BVG 241, 11/2/1882-11/3/1882 | JLB 280, 11/5/1882. “The sower, with color”: BVG 501, 6/21/1888 | JLB 629, 6/21/1888. “I am still enchanted”: BVG B7, 6/18/1888 | JLB 628, 6/19/1888.

Les Cours de dessin: BVG 136, 9/24/1880. Van Gogh references Cours de dessin by Charles Bargue multiple times in his letters. According to JLB, Cours de dessin was primarily known as “a series of drawing examples published by Goupil & Cie as loose leaves”(JLB 136, 12/3/1877-12/4/1877; n. 22). It was also a drawing course (JLB 157, 9/7/1880; n. 9). Bargue’s publication was broken into two volumes: Modèles d’après la bosse and Modèles d’après les maîtres (JLB 136, 12/3/1877-12/4/1877). More than two years earlier, Van Gogh referred already to having “a sheet from Bargue’s Cours de dessin (the drawing examples), 1st part, No. 39, Anne of Brittany” hanging in his room (JLB 136, 12/3/1877-12/4/1877). 180. Anquetin tribute: The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, F 467 JH 1580, September 1888, oil on canvas, 31.9 by 25.8 inches, 81 by 65.5 cm., Otterlo, Kröller-Müller Museum. Welsh-Ovcharov and others make elaborate arguments for the originality of Van Gogh’s image vis-xxxx Van Gogh’s description of this painting, The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night (F 467 JH 1580)—one of the most detailed descriptions in all the letters—bears quoting in full: “I was interrupted precisely by the work that a new painting of the outside of a café in the evening has been giving me these past few days. On the terrace, there are little figures of people drinking. 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. I enormously enjoy painting on the spot at night. In the past they used to draw, and paint the picture from the drawing in the daytime. But I find that it suits me to paint the thing straightaway. It’s quite true that I may take a blue for a green in the dark, a blue lilac for a pink lilac, since you can’t make out the nature of the tone clearly. But it’s the only way of getting away from the conventional black night with a poor, pallid and whitish light, while in fact a mere candle by itself gives us the richest yellows and oranges.” (JLB 678, 9/9/1888 and 9/14/1888.) 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.”

“Translating them”: BVG 613, 11/2/1889 | JLB 816, 11/3/1889. “Improvised”: BVG 607, 9/19/1889 | JLB 805, 9/20/1889. “The vague consonance”: BVG 607, 9/19/1889 | JLB 805, 9/20/1889. “My own interpretation”: BVG 607, 9/19/1889 | JLB 805, 9/20/1889. “Isn’t it like that in music”: BVG 607, 9/19/1889 | JLB 805, 9/20/1889.

Magnificent new cathedral: See Van der Ham. Van Gogh reports on about October 10, “I’ve been to Amsterdam this week—I hardly had time to see anything but the museum. I was there 3 days; went Tuesday, back Thursday.” (JLB 534, 10/10/1885.) Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride: Kerssemakers, “Reminiscences of Vincent van Gogh,” in Stein, ed., p. 52: Kerssemakers recalls that Van Gogh “spent the most time in front of The Jewish Bride,” and Van Gogh essentially confirms this report in his subsequent comment on the painting to Theo, comparing it to the much more celebrated Rembrandt group portrait, The Syndics (popularly known as The Dutch Masters): “[While] not ranked so high [as The Syndics], what an intimate, what an infinitely sympathetic picture [the Jewish Bride] is, painted d’une main de feu [with a hand of fire]. You see, in The Syndics Rembrandt is true to nature, though even there, and always, he soars aloft, to the very highest height, the infinite; 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. That’s what he is in The Jewish Bride. ... What a noble sentiment, infinitely deep.” “Above all”: BVG 427 10/1/1885 | JLB 535, 10/13/1885. “What Rembrandt alone”: BVG 597, 7/2/1889 | JLB 784, 7/2/1889. “When Veronese had painted”: BVG 429, 10/15/1885-10/31/1885 | JLB 537, 10/28/1885.

“Of flesh and blood”: Émile Zola, The Belly of Paris (Le ventre de Paris), translated by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly (Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Press, 1996), p. 148. “What I look for”: Ibid., p. 148. “In the picture”: BVG 418, 7/1/1885 | JLB 515, 7/14/1885. “Legends”: BVG 94, 4/30/1877 | JLB 113, 4/30/1877. “Chats”: Van Gogh read Jean Gigoux’s Causeries sur les artistes de mon temps (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1885) in 1885 and mentioned it in many letters (i.e., JLB 490, 4/6/1885, JLB 492, 4/9/1885, JLB 494, 4/18/1885, JLB 496, 4/28/1885, JLB 502, 5/22/1885, JLB 515, 7/14/1885, JLB 542, 11/17/1885, JLB 547, 12/14/1885, and JLB 526, 8/8/1885-8/15/1885). “What kind of man”: BVG 418, 7/1/1885 | JLB 515, 7/14/1885. “I am constantly reminded”: BVG 605, 9/7/1889-9/8/1889 | JLB 801, 9/10/1889.

Red Vineyard selling: JLB 855, 2/19/1890: “Yesterday ... Theo informed me that they’d sold one of my paintings in Brussels for 400 francs.” “If we were all like him”: BVG B1, 9/22/1887-12/21/1887 | JLB 575, December 1887. “When it’s a matter of several painters”: BVG 544, 10/3/1888 | JLB 694, 10/3/1888. “My back is not broad enough”: BVG 625, 2/2/1890 | JLB 850, 2/1/1890. “I prefer to wait”: BVG 525, 8/15/1888 | JLB 662 8/15/1888. “A link in the chain”: BVG 489, 5/20/1888 | JLB 611, 5/20/1888. “For painting today”: BVG B6, 6/6/1888-6/11/1888 | JLB 622, 6/7/1888. “It is good to love”: BVG 121, 4/3/1878 | JLB 143, 4/3/1878.

Notes for the Plates

Let’s still continue to seek: JLB 800, 9/5/1889-9/6/1889 | BVG 604, 9/5/1889-9/6/1889. There’s a painter by Meissonier: BVG 248, 11/26/1882-11/27/1882 | JLB 288, 11/26/1882, 11/27/1882. The other day: BVG R13, 9/18/1882-9/19/1882 | JLB 267, 9/19/1882. Rembrandt has painted angels: BVG B12, end of July 1888 | JLB 649, 7/29/1885. The Holbeins: BVG 138, 11/1/1880 | JLB 160, 11/1/1880. We like Japanese painting: BVG 500, 6/5/1888 | JLB 620, 6/5/1888. An article on Anquetin: BVG 499, 6/4/1888 | JLB 620, 6/5/1883. I believe that: BVG B1, 9/22/1887-12/21/1887 | JLB 575, December 1887.