Notes: Religion

Notes for the Text

Ary Scheffer’s Christus: “Ary Scheffer, De ChristusConsolator (1837) en de Christus Remunerator (1848)”: The original painting of Christus Consolator was sold by Goupil through Uncle Cent’s gallery in The Hague 1862. “I have come to heal”: “Ary Scheffer, De Christus Consolator (1837) en de Christus Remunerator (1848)”: The biblical passage that inspired the Christus Consolator was Luke 4: 18-19: “I have come to heal those who are of a broken heart, to preach deliverance to those in jail, and to give freedom to the suppressed.” Favorite religious images: “Ary Scheffer, De Christus Consolator (1837) en de Christus Remunerator (1848)”: “In religious circles in the 19th century, the Christus Consolator was an extraordinarily popular work. One could find everywhere engravings and lithographs [of it], printed in all kinds of formats.”

Oppression: “Ary Scheffer, De Christus Consolator (1837) en de Christus Remunerator (1848).” Van Gogh does not mention, and may not have been aware of, the elaborate political symbolism of the painting. According to the artist’s own notes, the figure in the right foreground of Consolator is a “Pole” who is lying on the bloody national flag—”symbols of the failed insurrection of 1831 against the Russians.” Next to the fallen Pole is an African slave “beseechingly extending his fettered arms to Christ,” and behind him, figures representing Africa’s previous slave-trading eras, from antiquity to the Middle Ages. Also in the picture, according to Scheffer’s notes, is a Greek “who only achieved his freedom in the beginning of the nineteenth century, in the long fight for freedom against the Turks.” Despair: “Ary Scheffer, De Christus Consolator (1837) en de Christus Remunerator (1848).” According to the artist’s notes, the figure at the top left of the painting, clutching a dagger, represents a suicide (or intended suicide). In the same group are a castaway holding the broken rudder of his ship and an exile holding his walking stick. In front of this group is a laurel-crowned poet (Torquato Tasso), representing unrecognized talent. The three figures in the lighted left foreground represent the three stages of womanhood—each, presumably, with unique cause for despondency. “Sadness does no harm”: BVG 36a, 9/7/1875: Van Gogh relayed this message from his father to his brother. Context: JLB 46, 9/9/1875: “Melancholy does not hurt, but makes us see things with a holier eye.”

“The whole room”: Görlitz, in Van Gogh-Bonger with Deel and Druk, p. 330. “Sorrowful yet”: Görlitz, in Van Gogh-Bonger with Deel and Druk, p. 330. The translators of Görlitz’s letter to Frederik van Eeden render this passage variously as “always sad, but always happy” and “Ever sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (Görlitz, in Welsh-Ovcharov, ed., p. 17). But there is no doubt that Van Gogh intended to reference his favorite phrase from 2 Corinthians 6:10: “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” At Easter: Görlitz, in Welsh-Ovcharov, ed., p. 17. Easter fell on April 1 in 1877. Van Gogh probably adorned the images on his wall for Palm Sunday, March 25. “I was not a”: Görlitz, in Welsh-Ovcharov, ed., p. 17; emphasis in original.

“The Bible is”: Görlitz, in Van Gogh-Bonger with Deel and Druk, p. 330. Record time: BVG 113, 11/19/1877. Context: JLB 134, 11/19/1877: “Because when I started they said that 2 years would be necessary for the first 4 subjects mentioned, whereas if I should pass in October, I’ll have done more in an even shorter time.” Greek and Latin: BVG 97, 5/28/1877. “May God grant”: BVG 113, 11/19/1877. Context: BVG 113, 11/19/1877: “May God grant me the necessary wisdom and grant my wishes, that He will allow me to end my studies as early as possible in order that I become ordained, so that I can perform the duties of a clergyman.” JLB 134, 11/19/1877: “May God give me the wisdom I need and grant me my heart’s desire, namely to complete my studies as soon as possible and to be inducted into a living and the practical duties of a minister.” Make long lists: BVG 106, 8/18/1877. Context: JLB 127, 8/18/1877: “Wrote a text in which all the parables are listed in order and the miracles and so on, and am also doing the same in English and French, expecting Latin and Greek to be added later on, may it come to pass!”

In English and French: BVG 106, 8/18/1877. Context: JLB 115, 5/21/1877-5/22/1877: “Wrote a text in which all the parables are listed in order and the miracles and so on, and am also doing the same in English and French, expecting Latin and Greek to be added later on, may it come to pass!” “After all”: BVG 96, 5/21/1877-5/22/1877. Context: BVG 96, 5/21/1877-5/22/1877: “I am engrossed in the study of the Bible, but only in the evenings, when my day’s labours are done, or in the early morning—after all, it is the Bible that is essential—though my duty is to devote myself to other study, which I do.” JLB 115, 5/21/1877-5/22/1877: “I’ve already begun studying the Bible, but only in the evenings, when I’ve finished my work for the day, or early in the morning—after all, that’s the most important thing—even though it’s now my duty to dedicate myself to studying other things, which I do, of course.”

With the tenacity”: BVG 113, 11/19/1877. Context: BVG 113, 11/19/1877: “I apply myself to these studies with the tenacity of a dog that gnaws a bone; I should also like to know the grammar, history and geography of the Nordic countries, particularly those countries that border on the North Sea and the Channel.” JLB 134, 11/19/1877: “So I have to study these just as diligently as a dog gnaws a bone, and similarly I should like to know the languages, history and geography of the northern countries, i.e. those around the North Sea and the English Channel.” “It does not come”: BVG 97, 5/28/1877. Context: BVG 97, 5/28/1877: “The work does not come to me so easily and quickly as I could wish, but practice makes perfect, I hope; only if I could, I should like to skip a few years, my boy.” JLB 116, 5/28/1877: “The work and writing don’t yet go as fast and easily as I’d wish, but I hope to learn by practice, but, old boy, if I could I’d like to skip over a few years …”

“Jesus walked”: BVG 101, 6/12/1877: The translations from both BVG and JLB (JLB 120, 6/12/1877) have been combined. JLB translate Van Gogh as saying, “He [Laurillard] made a deep impression on me—he also spoke in that sermon about the parable of the sower and about the man who cast seed into the ground, and he should sleep, and rise day and night, and the seed should spring and increase and grow up, he knoweth not how, he also spoke about the funeral in the cornfield by Van der Maaten.” JLB cite the following biblical passages as the source of Van Gogh’s “Jesus walked” quote: Matthew 12:1: “At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were hungry, and began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat”; Mark 2:23: “And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn”; and Luke 6:1: “And it came to pass on the second sabbath after the first, that he went through the corn fields; and his disciples plucked the ears of corn, and did eat, rubbing them in their hands.” Context: BVG 101, 6/12/1877: “Sunday morning I heard the Reverend Mr. Laurillard at early morning service; he spoke about, ‘Jesus walked in the newly sown field.’” JLB 120, 6/12/1877: “Heard the Rev. Laurillard on Sunday morning in the early sermon on ‘Jesus went through the cornfields’.” Nature sermons: Kôdera, Christianity Versus Nature: A Study of van Gogh’s Thematics, p. 232. Christ not only embodied in nature: Kôdera, “Van Gogh and the Dutch Theological Culture of the Nineteenth Century,” p. 120: Met Jezus in de naturr (With Jesus in Nature) was the name of one of Lauillard’s books. Kôdera quotes this passage from it: “I am very glad to be with Jesus in nature ... I should have liked to walk with Him in the fields; I should have liked to bob up and down with Him on the lake; I should have liked to sit with Him on the mountain-top.” “Divineness”: Carlyle, p. 31: Renan set Christ in the fields of reality. Taine rejected the supernatural and embraced the visible and the verifiable. In Zundert, the Society for Prosperity subscribed to the ennobling, even sanctifying, benefits of simple labor. Dorus praised farmers as paragons of religious virtue: “You are the salt of the earth” (b2370 V/1982, “Gogh, Theodorus en Anna C. van” to “Gogh, Theo van”, 11/3/1875).

Only way: Silverman, p. 156: “How, then, could an unknowable, indescribable, and invisible divinity be rendered accessible to a human spirit hungering for consolation and regeneration? The aesthetic faculties alone could approach and approximate the fullness of God.” Silverman cites one preacher, Sytze Hoekstra, who regarded Nature as “the site and source of religious devotion.” God’s truest intermediaries: Kôdera, “Christianity versus Nature: A Study of the Thematics in Van Gogh’s Oeuvre,” p. 35: “In every generation,” Laurillard wrote, “there have always been many who, whilst wandering outside, have ‘heard the Lord God walking in the garden.’” These special people, he said, “were not only desirous of deciphering God’s written hieroglyphics, but also had the gift of doing so.” In his sermon that Sunday, Laurillard illustrated this sacred mission with an image that Van Gogh knew well from his childhood and was, at that moment, hanging in his attic study: Van der Maaten’s Funeral Procession through the Cornfields (1862). According to Kôdera: “It was not unusual for preachers to refer to paintings in their sermons. Not only in the church, but also in books, lectures, articles and poems, they often addressed subjects such as art, music, literature and so on.” (Kôdera, Vincent van Gogh, p. 15.) Interestingly, Dorus van Gogh used the same Van der Maaten image in a sermon he gave in August of the same year (1877) (b2551 V/1982, “Gogh, Theodorus van” to “Gogh, Theo van”, 8/16/1877). Dorus also recommended to Theo a book by Laurillard Uit de Cel (From the Cell): “We read it recently. It is movingly beautiful and full of short sayings showing insight into human nature, the kind one would want to remember and to apply to oneself and others.” Later the same year, Van Gogh also inquired whether Theo was familiar with any of Laurillard’s books: “Have you ever seen any of his books? ‘Uit de cel’ must be very beautiful …” (JLB 136, 12/3/1877-12/4/1877). Silverman expresses Laurillard’s notion of the shared mission of preachers and artists this way: “Representation and human expressive consciousness emerged as the singular mediators of the immanent and transcendent orders” (Silverman, p. 156).

Always served religion: b0984 V/1962, “Gogh, Theodorus en Anna C. van” to “Gogh, Theo van”, 7/8/1878: Dorus cautioned Theo on this very point before he left for the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1878: “you will also philosophize about the world with all its beauty and beauty of all kinds and its joys, but what matters for you has to be down here, isn’t it, and that thought leads us above the worldly to Him who must inspire everything, also do and not do, and determines duty and calling.” The Van Goghs had the same, limited view of nature—and issued a similar warning to their sons about mistaking the agent for the principal, the creation for the creator. “Sweet child, you ask us if we think a man can live on nature alone, but pagans live on nature and without the Bible, and we know what becomes of them, don’t we? ... If you are talking about nature only, then there is no mention of Jesus, and it’s precisely Jesus who gives us the ability to enjoy nature thoroughly, since He says: the Creator of all that loveliness is Your Father.” (b2729 V/1982, “Gogh-Carbentus, Anna C. van” to “Gogh, Theo van”, 10/28/1874.) “We know from experience that nature alone is not enough for mankind. ... You, my boy, also need faith and religion.” (b2728 V/1982, “Gogh, Theodorus van” to “Gogh, Theo van”, 10/28/1874.) These two passages would appear to put Silverman’s elegant scholarly generalizations about the Van Goghs’ embrace of the unity of nature and art into context (Silverman, p. 150).

Ubiquitous emblem books: Kôdera, Vincent van Gogh: Christianity versus Nature, pp. 16, 17: “[T]he publication and the popularity of emblem books decreased during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and for this reason emblem books have seldom been used for the interpretation of nineteenth-century paintings. However, the emblematic tradition was strongly represented in the clergymen’s writings with which Van Gogh was familiar.” Elsewhere, however, Kôdera identifies a “Victorian emblematic revival,” with which “through his stay in England and through his reading Van Gogh was quite familiar” (ibid., p. 17). Prints that hung: Kools, p. 112. Kôdera cites other examples such as the “reward prints” given as prizes in Sunday School (Kôdera, in Masheck, ed., pp. 229, 231-232) and the picture-poetry books (Bijschriften-poezie) written by preachers like Jan Ten Kate, which used religious images like Scheffer’s Christus Remunerator to enliven and elaborate inspirational texts (Kôdera, Vincent van Gogh: Christianity versus Nature, pp. 15-16). Laurillard also published such books. According to Kôdera, Ten Kate also published collections of religious prints, of which Van Gogh owned at least one: Ecce Homo, a head of Christ. On his copy, Van Gogh wrote in the margins: “Nothing shall separate us from the love of Christ nor things present nor things to come” (Kôdera, in Masheck, ed., p. 229; Romans 8:38-39). Kôdera’s discussion of this subject, in its many manifestations, is definitive. That this tradition had already had an impact on Van Gogh’s imagination can be seen in his report from a year earlier, in the little church on Turnham Green, when he assisted in a “magic lantern” show illustrating the life of Martin Luther and the Reformation using slides of images “in the manner of Holbein” (JLB 95, 10/23/1876-10/25/1876). In his Richmond sermon, Van Gogh himself had enlisted a painting by Boughton to inspire his listeners’ faith (see Chapter 7). “Religion of beauty”: Silverman, p. 157.

“He made a deep”: BVG 101, 6/12/1877. Context: JLB 120, 6/12/1877: “He made a deep impression on me …” Returned again: BVG 101a, 7/9/1877: Between Sunday, June 10, and Sunday, July 9 (five Sundays), Van Gogh heard Laurillard preach three times. He does not mention hearing him preach again until the following March (JLB 142, 3/3/1878). Van Gogh did not give any reason for such a long hiatus, if there was one. The only other Laurillard sermon about which Van Gogh gives details was one based on Jeremiah 8:7: “Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming [but my people know not the judgment of the Lord]” (JLB 131, 9/18/1877). According to Van Gogh, Laurillard told a story of seeing “a flock of migratory birds and spoke about the phenomenon of birds migrating, and how man will also migrate once to a warmer land.” Context: JLB 121, 7/9/1877: “I go to church a lot, I’ve heard the Rev. Laurillard three times, you would like him too, because he paints, as it were, and his work is at once lofty and noble art.” “It is as if”: BVG 101a, 7/9/1877. Context: BVG 101a, 7/9/1877: “I often go to church; I have heard the Reverend Mr. Laurillard three times; you would like him too, for it is as if he paints, and his work is at the same time high and noble art.” JLB 121, 7/9/1877: “I go to church a lot, I’ve heard the Rev. Laurillard three times, you would like him too, because he paints, as it were, and his work is at once lofty and noble art.” Andersen: BVG 101a, 7/9/1877. In this letter, Van Gogh quotes a portion of Hans Christian Andersen’s short-story “Vertellingen van de maan” (“What the Moon Saw”) from Prentenboek Zonder Prenten: Vertellingen van de Maan (JLB 121, 7/9/1877; n. 2). Context: JLB 121, 7/9/1877: He has the feeling of an artist in the true sense of the word, as someone like Andersen …” Michelet: BVG 110, 9/18/1877. Context: JLB 131, 9/18/1877: “He treated this subject in the spirit of Michelet or [Friedrich] Rückert, or as many have also painted it, including [Paul Alexandre] Protais, Souvenirs of the homeland.” “He has the feelings”: BVG 101a, 7/9/1877. Context: BVG 101a, 7/9/1877: “He has the feelings of an artist in the true sense of the word, for instance, like [Hans Christian] Andersen, when he said …” JLB 121, 7/9/1877: “He has the feeling of an artist in the true sense of the word, as someone like Andersen had when he says, for example …”

Asking Kee Vos to marry him: BVG 194, 5/4/1882-5/12/1882. The nature of this proposal is often softened in the biographical literature, presumably because of its astonishing abruptness. Van Gogh is typically described as merely “confessing” his love (Bailey, pp. 115-117). In Bonger, he merely “speaks to her of his love” (Van Gogh, Bonger, in Van Gogh, Vincent, p. xxxii). The actual proposal is rarely mentioned (an exception is Lubin, pp. 56-57). This reticence, of course, is difficult to align with Kee’s response, “no, nay, never” (JLB 228, 5/16/1882). Context: BVG 194, 5/4/1882-5/12/1882: “I asked Kee if she would risk marrying me.” JLB 225, 5/10/1882: “I asked Kee Vos if she would chance it with me.” Religion would “ring hollow”: BVG 158, 11/18/1881.Context: BVG 158, 11/18/1881: “In a word, that to me their way of thinking seemed narrow-minded, neither full nor generous enough; and also that to me ‘God’ would ring nothing but hollow if one had to hide one’s love and were not allowed to follow the dictates of one’s heart.” JLB 185, 11/18/1881: “… the word ‘God’ would have only a hollow ring to it if one had to conceal love and wasn’t allowed to follow one’s heart’s promptings.” “I really don’t care for all that twaddle”: BVG 164, 12/21/1881. Context: JLB 193, 12/23/1881: “…all that drivel about good and evil, morality and immorality, I actually care so little about it.”

Portfolio and Bible: BVG B8, 6/23/1888: Van Gogh’s response reveals the nature of Bernard’s outreach from Pont-Aven and shows that Bernard initiated the dialog about the Bible. 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.” Both artists were busily planning: BVG 596, 6/25/1889. Ambitions to religious imagery are probably the subject of Van Gogh’s dismissive comment to Theo in late June of 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” (JLB 783, 6/25/1889). The first “consolatory” images are probably the two major paintings that Bernard and Gauguin completed in the summer of 1888: Breton Women in the Meadow (Bernard), and Vision of the Sermon (Gauguin). 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.”

“How small-minded”: BVG B8, 6/23/1888. 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?” “That deeply saddening Bible”: BVG B8, 6/23/1888. 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.”

“Artistic neurosis”: BVG B8, 6/23/1888. 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.” “Only Delacroix and Rembrandt”: BVG B8, 6/23/1888. 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.” “The rest rather make me laugh”: BVG B8, 6/23/1888. 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.”

Complete works of Balzac: BVG 508, 7/5/1888. 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.” “I have the thing”; “A starry night”: BVG 540, 9/22/1888. Van Gogh describes the painting to Theo only after he has destroyed it: “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. But I have it in my mind with colour—the starry night, the figure of Christ blue, the strongest blues, and the angel broken lemon yellow. And all the purples from a blood-red purple to ash in the landscape.” (JLB 685, 9/21/1888.)

“Too beautiful to dare”: BVG 587, 4/25/1889-4/28/1889: Van Gogh reveals the deep and troubling associations undermining his imagery in a letter to Theo the following April (1889) in which he ruminates on the sight of an old olive grove. Van Gogh’s imagination connects the old grove in Provence with the olive grove of Christ’s Gethsemane, and thence with his father’s overpowering and unapproachable religion. Context: BVG 587, 4/25/1889-4/28/1889: “It is like the pollard willows of our Dutch meadows or the oak bushes of our dunes, that is to say the rustle of an olive grove has something very secret in it, and immensely old. It is too beautiful for us to dare to paint it or be able to imagine it.” JLB 763, 4/28/1889: “It’s like the lopped willows of our Dutch meadows or the oak bushes of our dunes, that’s to say the murmur of an olive grove has something very intimate, immensely old about it. It’s too beautiful for me to dare paint it or be able to form an idea of it.” “Mercilessly destroyed”: BVG B19, 10/7/1888: Van Gogh reports this to Bernard in early October. Context: BVG B19, 10/7/1888: “I have mercilessly destroyed one important canvas—a ‘Christ with the Angel in Gethsemane’—and another one representing the ‘Poet against a Starry Sky’—in spite of the fact that the colour was right—because the form had not been studied beforehand from the model, which is necessary in such cases.” JLB 698, 10/5/1888: “I mercilessly destroyed an important canvas—a Christ with the angel in Gethsemane—as well as another one depicting the poet with a starry sky—because the form hadn’t been studied from the model beforehand, necessary in such cases—despite the fact that the colour was right.”

“I absolutely want to paint”: BVG W7, 9/9/1888-9/16/1888. Context: BVG W7, 9/9/1888-9/16/1888: “At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens.” JLB 678, 9/9/1888 and 9/14/1888: “I definitely want to paint a starry sky now. It often seems to me that the night is even more richly coloured than the day, coloured in the most intense violets, blues and greens.” “Harmonious”: JLB 691, 9/29/1888: Referring to Starry Night Over the Rhône (F 474 FJ 1592) and Ploughed Field (F 574 JH 1586), Van Gogh writes proudly, “If the work always went like that I’d have fewer worries about money, because people would come to it more easily if the technique continued to be more harmonious.” Context: BVG 543, 9/28/1888: “If the work always went on like that, I should be less worried about money, for it would be easier for people to take to them, if the technique kept on growing more harmonious.” JLB 691, 9/29/1888: “If the work always went like that I’d have fewer worries about money, because people would come to it more easily if the technique continued to be more harmonious.” “The feeling of the stars”: BVG 520, 8/11/1888. The translation has been slightly altered. Context: BVG 520, 8/11/1888: “And all the same to feel the stars and the infinite high and clear above you. Then life is almost enchanted after all. Oh! those who don’t believe in this sun here are real infidels.” JLB 663, 8/18/1888: “And still to feel the stars and the infinite, clearly, up there. Then life is almost magical, after all. Ah, those who don’t believe in the sun down here are truly blasphemous.” “Is this all”: BVG 506, 7/9/1888. Context: JLB 638, 7/10/1888 or 7/10/1888: “Is that all, or is there more, even?”

“I have a terrible need”: BVG 543, 9/28/1888. Van Gogh’s expression, which sidewinds into the following confession, has been abbreviated: “And it does me good to do what’s difficult. That doesn’t stop me having a tremendous need for, shall I say the word—for religion—so I go outside at night to paint the stars, and I always dream a painting like that, with a group of lively figures of the pals.” (JLB 691, 9/29/1888; emphasis in original.) Context: BVG 543, 9/28/1888: “It does me good to do difficult things. That does not prevent me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word?—of religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars, and I am always dreaming of a picture like this with a group of living figures of our comrades.”

Bustling town: Bonnet, pp. 4-5: Contrary to its frequent portrayal in the literature as a sleepy, remote village (most such portrayals are based on Van Gogh’s painting), Bonnet paints a picture of a vital, if small, commercial and agricultural center with a thriving middle class and many ties to surrounding cities, starting in the eighteenth century and continuing to the end of the nineteenth century. Saint-Rémy’s middle class, according to Bonnet, “had almost all grown up out of old country families who had prospered not only by cultivating or selectively breeding certain products (seeds, madder, teasels for carding wool, olives, oils etc) but also by trading them on the international market during the whole of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Adjoining their houses one can still see at several points the huge buildings (offices, shops, warehouses) which ensured a large number of jobs for the local work force. It is an aspect of both the rural and commercial sides of Saint-Rémy, the Saint-Rémy of both the farmer and the businessman, which for so long contributed to the economic stability and prosperity of the region.” (ibid., pp. 5-8.) Of six thousand: Coquiot, p. 198: Saint-Rémy was the principal town of its “canton”—provincial district. Twelfth-century church: A church was present on the site as early as 1122 CE and was subsequently and substantially enlarged. Much of the original structure, other than the fourteenth-century bell tower, collapsed in 1818 and was rebuilt. Simple chapel: Among Van Gogh’s most dramatic alterations to the real Saint Martin is his deletion of its two most conspicuous features: its dome and its neo-classical columned portico, built in 1821. Kôdera also notes that the church in Van Gogh’s painting “with its long spire is a Dutch style of architecture, totally different from St. Martin in Saint-Remy or any other Provençal churches” (Kôdera, p. 143).

Delacroix’s comforting scene: BVG 605, 9/7/1889-9/8/1889. Van Gogh draws the direct line between these two images, Eugène Delacroix’s La Pietxxx “Do portraits of saints”: BVG 605, 9/7/1889-9/8/1889: By the time Van Gogh articulates this ambition, in early September, it has passed. Why did he give up on this project, which must have been conceived—and was probably undertaken—during his month of attacks? For the same reason he scraped off his two attempts to depict Christ in the Garden of Gesthsemane the previous year: “The emotions that that causes are too strong though, I wouldn’t survive it—but later, later, I don’t say that I won’t mount a fresh attack.” (ibid.) The translation has been slightly altered. Context: BVG 605, 9/7/1889-9/8/1889: “And I must tell you, and you can see it in La Berceuse [F 504 JH 1655; F 506 JH 1670; F 507 JH 1672; or F 508 JH 1671], however unsuccessful and feeble that attempt may be, if I had had the strength to continue, then I should have done portraits of saints and holy women from life which would have seemed to belong to another age, and they would have been drawn from the bourgeoisie of today and yet would have had something in common with the very earliest Christians.” JLB 801, 9/10/1889: “So I must tell you it, and you can see it in the Berceuse, however failed and weak that attempt may be. Had I had the strength to continue, I’d have done portraits of saints and of holy women from life, and who would have appeared to be from another century and they would be citizens of the present day, and yet would have had something in common with very primitive Christians.”

“Bad luck”: BVG 605, 9/7/1889-9/8/1889. Context: BVG 605, 9/7/1889-9/8/1889: “I had a piece of bad luck this last time during my illness—that lithograph of Delacroix’s, La Pietxxx “Into some oil and paint”: BVG 605, 9/7/1889-9/8/1889. Context: BVG 605, 9/7/1889-9/8/1889: “I had a piece of bad luck this last time during my illness—that lithograph of Delacroix’s, La Pietxxx Ruining the lot of them: BVG 605, 9/7/1889-9/8/1889. It is often overlooked that Van Gogh’s “accident” involved a number of other prints, too, suggesting either that he spilled a container of “some oil and paint” onto a group of prints or, more likely, he lost balance or consciousness, and dropped or knocked a sheaf of prints onto a surface wet with oil and paint (JLB 801, 9/10/1889). Context: JLB 801, 9/10/1889: “Thus this time during my illness a misfortune happened to me—that lithograph of Delacroix, the Pietxxx “I was very sad”: BVG 605, 9/7/1889-9/8/1889. Context: BVG 605, 9/7/1889-9/8/1889: “I was very sad about it—so I have been busy painting it and you will see it one day on a size 5 or 6 canvas. I have made a copy of it which I think has some feeling. Besides, having seen Daniel and Les Odalisques and the portrait of [Alfred] Bruyas and La mulâtresse in Montpellier not long ago, I am still under the impression they made on me.” (See: Delacroix’s Daniel in the Lion’s Den; Algerian Women in their Apartments; Portrait of Alfred Bruyan; and Aline, the Mulatto Woman.) JLB 801, 9/10/1889: “I was sad about it—then in the meantime I occupied myself painting it, and you’ll see it one day, on a no. 5 or 6 canvas I’ve made a copy of it which I think has feeling—besides, having not long ago seen the Daniel and the Odalisques and the Portrait of Bruyas and the Mulatto woman at Montpellier, I’m still under the impression that it had on me.” Print of Rembrandt’s painting: According to JLB, the painting on which this print was based is no longer attributed to Rembrandt (JLB 797, 8/22/1889; n. 8). According to the same note, Theo must have sent Van Gogh the etching after the (supposed) Rembrandt angel by Charles Courtry. The other “Rembrandt” painting that preoccupied Van Gogh at the time, the Portrait of a Man in the Lacaze gallery at the Louvre, also known as Man with a Walking Stick, was also later de-attributed (JLB 797, 8/22/1889).

“Broken-hearted and dejected”: BVG 99, 5/31/1877: Van Gogh wrote this in Amsterdam in 1877, while studying for the clergy. Context: BVG 99, 5/31/1877: “It is good to believe that there is a God who knows what we want better than we do ourselves, and Who helps us whenever we are in need of it. And it is also good to believe that now, just as in olden days, an angel is not far from those who are sad—strengthened unto God—not only to those who are nearly angels themselves, but particularly to those who want the help of a higher power to be preserved from the evil, from the badness which we know is in the world and not far away from us—not far from those who are broken-hearted and dejected in spirit.” JLB 118, 5/31/1877: “It is good to believe that there is a God who knows what we need, better than we know it ourselves, and who helps us when we need help. It is also good to believe that, just as in the olden days, now, too, an angel is not far from those who feel godly sorrow—not only from those who are almost angels themselves, but especially those who need help from a higher power to keep them from evil, from the evil that we know is in the world and not far from us, not far from those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit.”

“The countenance of an angel”: BVG 72, 8/2/1876: Thirteen years earlier, at the start of his quest to become a preacher, Van Gogh recalled a sermon that his father had given during his stay in Etten immediately after Van Gogh’s humiliating dismissal from Goupil in Paris. “Then there is a ‘woe is me’ in them, and a beseeching ‘who shall deliver me from the body of this death’, and yet that is the best time of life, and blessed are they who reach that high peak. ... I’ve heard two men say that, one in Paris, the Rev. [Eugène] Bersier who, out of fear of a great bodily suffering that awaited him, exclaimed during his sermon, ‘Who shall deliver me of this dead body’ ... And I heard Pa say it (when I was home in April, in his sermon), but he said it in a soft voice, though it had a keener edge than the other, and he followed it with (and his countenance was like that of an angel) ‘the blessed above, they say “what you are now, I used to be: what I am now, you will one day be.”’” (JLB 87, 8/2/1876) (Elements from both translations have been combined and the words have been transposed slightly. Context: BVG 72, 8/2/1876: “The second time, it was Father who pronounced these words (in his sermon, in April, when I was home), although he spoke in a more calm and penetrating voice than usual, added (his face looked like that of an angel): The blissful from above say: what you are now, we once were, and what we are now, you will be one day.” JLB 87, 8/2/1876: “And I heard Pa say it (when I was home in April, in his sermon), but he said it in a soft voice, though it had a keener edge than the other, and he followed it with (and his countenance was like that of an angel) ‘the blessed above, they say “what you are now, I used to be: what I am now, you will one day be.”’” Large-scale versions: Pietxxx

One from Gauguin: BVG T20, 11/16/1889. Like his review of Bernard’s work contained in the same letter, Theo’s expressed opinion of Gauguin’s work was sympathetic, despite his later grumblings about not being able to sell any of that work: “What an excellent workman he is ... worked with care ... very beautiful” (JLB 819, 11/16/1889; emphasis in original). As with Bernard, he follows praise with pointed criticism: “It’s obviously bizarre and doesn’t express a very clear idea” (ibid.). But Theo apparently had fully accepted the contemporary notion of the power of “primitive” art. He excused Gauguin’s excesses with a trope of fashionable wisdom: “it’s beautiful like a piece of Japanese work, the significance of which is also hard to grasp, at least for a European, but in which one must admire the combinations of lines and the beautiful pieces. The whole has a very sonorous tone. I’d very much like you to be able to see it. You would certainly like it.” (ibid.) This is the compliment to which Van Gogh replies dismissively: “now isn’t the moment to ask me to approve of friend G[auguin]’s composition” (JLB 820, 11/19/1889). Context: JLB 819, 11/16/1889: “I enclose a letter which Gauguin sent me for you.” And one from Bernard: BVG 614, 11/17/1889. Context: JLB 820, 11/19/1889: “Bernard also wrote to me, complaining about a heap of things while resigning himself like the good boy he is, but not happy at all; with all his talent, all his work, all his sobriety, it appears that home is often a hell for him.” “I think you will like it”: Gauguin, Paul Gauguin: 45 Lettresxxx à Vincent, Théo et Jo van Gogh, edited by Douglas Cooper (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij, 1983). “It has vermilion hair”: ibid.

Bernard sent photographs: According to JLB, the paintings of which Bernard sent photographs were The Adoration of the Shepherds, The Annunciation, and Christ Meeting his Mother (JLB 823, n. 4). “Those biblical paintings”: BVG B21, 11/20/1889. Context: BVG B21, 11/20/1889: “So, my dear fellow, those biblical paintings of yours are hopeless. There are only a few who make such a mistake, and a mistake it is, but once you have turned your back on it, I dare say the results will be marvelous! Sometimes our mistakes show us the right way.” JLB 822, 11/26/1889: “So, they’re a setback, my dear fellow, your biblical paintings, but ... there are few who make mistakes like that, and it’s an error, but your return from it will be, I dare to say, astonishing, and it’s by making mistakes that one sometimes finds the way.” “Bogus”; “Spurious”: BVG B21, 11/20/1889. Context: BVG B21, 11/20/1889: “Let me make it perfectly clear that I was looking forward to seeing the sort of things that are in that painting of yours which Gauguin has, those Breton women walking in a meadow so beautifully composed, the colour with such naive distinction. And you are trading that in for something—I won’t prevaricate—bogus, spurious!” JLB 822, 11/26/1889: “But this is enough for you to understand that I would long to see things of yours again, like the painting of yours that Gauguin has, those Breton women walking in a meadow, the arrangement of which is so beautiful, the colour so naively distinguished. Ah, you’re exchanging that for something—must one say the word—something artificial—something affected.”

“Appalling”: BVG B21, 11/20/1889. “And when I compare that with that nightmare of a Christ au jardin des oliviers, well, it makes me feel sad, and I herewith ask you again, crying out loud and giving you a piece of my mind with all the power of my lungs, to please become a little more yourself again. The Christ carrying his Cross is atrocious. Are the splashes of colour in it harmonious? But I won’t let you off the hook for a commonplace—commonplace, you hear—in the composition.” (JLB 822, 11/26/1889.) Van Gogh emphatically capitalizes the first use of “commonplace” (“PONCIF”). The painting that Van Gogh refers to as “Christ carrying his Cross” has been identified as Bernard’s Christ Meeting his Mother (JLB 822, 11/26/1889; n. 11). Context: BVG B21, 11/20/1889: “Le Christ portant sa croix is appalling.” JLB 822, 11/26/1889: “The Christ carrying his Cross is atrocious.” “Nightmare”: BVG B21, 11/20/1889. Context: BVG B21, 11/20/1889: “And when I compare that with the nightmare of a Christ au jardin des oliviers, then, good God, I mourn, and with this letter I ask you once more, shouting at the top of my voice: please try to be yourself again!” JLB 822, 11/26/1889: “And when I compare that with that nightmare of a Christ in the Garden of Olives, well, it makes me feel sad, and I herewith ask you again, crying out loud and giving you a piece of my mind with all the power of my lungs, to please become a little more yourself again.”

Apoplectic derision: BVG B21, 11/20/1889. Note the uncomfortable reference to an image very close to Van Gogh’s recent experience: an “epileptic fit” (JLB 822, 11/26/1889). The association of the fit with priests on their knees suggests that Van Gogh was aware of the belief, common at the time in scientific opinion on the subject, that religious hysteria and epilepsy were related dysfunctions of the brain. Context: JLB 822, 11/26/1889: “Look, in the adoration of the shepherds, the landscape charms me too much for me to dare to criticize, and nevertheless, it’s too great an impossibility to imagine a birth like that, on the very road, the mother who starts praying instead of giving suck, the fat ecclesiastical bigwigs, kneeling as if in an epileptic fit, God knows how or why they’re there.” “Medieval tapestries”: BVG B21, 11/20/1889. Context: BVG B21, 11/20/1889: “That, my friend, is what people everywhere, from France to America, have felt. And having performed a feat like that, can you really contemplate reverting to medieval tapestries?” JLB 822, 11/26/1889: “Now, my friend—people have felt that from France to America. After that, would you go back to renewing medieval tapestries for us?”

“Tremble”: BVG B21, 11/20/1889. Context: BVG B21, 11/20/1889: “No, I can’t call that sound, for if I am at all capable of spiritual ecstasy, then I feel exalted in the face of truth, of what is possible, which means I bow down before the study—one that had enough power in it to make a Millet tremble—of peasants carrying a calf born in the fields back home to the farm.” JLB 822, 11/26/1889: “Because I adore the true, the possible, were I ever capable of spiritual fervour; so I bow before that study, so powerful that it makes you tremble, by père Millet—peasants carrying to the farmhouse a calf born in the fields.” “What is possible”: BVG B21, 11/20/1889.The prophet and Messiah of this one true God, of course, was Millet. Context: BVG B21, 11/20/1889: “No, I can’t call that sound, for if I am at all capable of spiritual ecstasy, then I feel exalted in the face of truth, of what is possible, which means I bow down before the study—one that had enough power in it to make a Millet tremble—of peasants carrying a calf born in the fields back home to the farm.” JLB 822, 11/26/1889: “Because I adore the true, the possible, were I ever capable of spiritual fervour; so I bow before that study, so powerful that it makes you tremble, by père Millet—peasants carrying to the farmhouse a calf born in the fields.” “Spiritual ecstasy”: BVG B21, 11/20/1889. Context: BVG B21, 11/20/1889: “No, I can’t call that sound, for if I am at all capable of spiritual ecstasy, then I feel exalted in the face of truth, of what is possible, which means I bow down before the study—one that had enough power in it to make a Millet tremble—of peasants carrying a calf born in the fields back home to the farm.” JLB 822, 11/26/1889: “Because I adore the true, the possible, were I ever capable of spiritual fervour; so I bow before that study, so powerful that it makes you tremble, by père Millet—peasants carrying to the farmhouse a calf born in the fields.”

“I feel more and more”: BVG 490, 5/26/1888. Context: JLB 613, 5/26/1888: “I’m thinking more and more that we shouldn’t judge the Good Lord by this world, because it’s one of his studies that turned out badly. But what of it, in failed studies—when you’re really fond of the artist—you don’t find much to criticize—you keep quiet. But we’re within our rights to ask for something better. We’d have to see other works by the same hand though. This world was clearly cobbled together in haste, in one of those bad moments when its author no longer knew what he was doing, and didn’t have his wits about him. What legend tells us about the Good Lord is that he went to enormous trouble over this study of his for a world. I’m inclined to believe that the legend tells the truth, but then the study is worked to death in several ways. It’s only the great masters who make such mistakes; that’s perhaps the best consolation, as we’re then within our rights to hope to see revenge taken by the same creative hand. And—then—this life—criticized so much and for such good, even excellent reasons—we—shouldn’t take it for anything other than it is, and we’ll be left with the hope of seeing better than that in another life.”

Notes for Plates

So what Rembrandt alone: BVG 597, 7/2/1889 | JLB 784, 7/2/1889. I have my bonds: BVG 71, 7/8/1876 | JLB 86, 7/8/1876. Your letter and the prints: BVG 71, 7/8/1876 | JLB 86, 7/8/1876. ‘Christ in Gethsemane’: BVG 84, 1/21/1877 | JLB 101, 1/27/1877. Try to grasp the essence: BVG 133, 7/1/1880 | JLB 155, 6/22/1880, 6/24/1880. I thank you very much: BVG 630, 5/2/1890 | JLB 865. 5/1/1890. The Delacroix is a Pietà: BVG W14 9/19/1889 | JLB 804, 9/19/1889. Although I have certain reservations: BVG 416, 7/1/1885-7/15/1885 | JLB 512, 7/6/1885. The more people: BVG 418, 7/1/1885 | JLB 515, 7/14/1885. “If you want to persevere”: Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: In Three Books (De imitatione Christi), translated and edited by Joseph N. Tylenda with a preface by Sally Cunneen (New York: Vintage Spiritual Classics, 1998), p. 21. I have a terrible need: BVG 543, 9/28/1888 | JLB 691, 9/29/1888.