Notes: Romanticism

Notes for the Text

Walked for an hour: Stokvis, p. 12: “Rev. Van Gogh did not allow his children to play in the streets: one hour per day the minister, accompanied by Madam and the governess of the girls, took the children out for a walk.” Included gardens and fields: Kools, p. 64. Cloud formation: b2231 V/1982, “Gogh-Carbentus, Anna C. van” to “Gogh, Theo van”, 2/5/1876: “Lately,” Anna wrote Theo in 1876, “the clouds are before us with silver edging—very beautiful.” Play of light on water: Du Quesne-Van Gogh, Personal Recollections of Vincent van Gogh, pp. 18-19. To enjoy sunsets: Kools, p. 66: Kools suggests, plausibly, that developed his taste for sunrises and sunsets from Dorus and Anna. Appreciate them more fully: Kools, p. 66. 128. “higher tones”: Kools, p. 64. The phrase is from a poem by Bernard ter Haar, a popular clergyman-poet (quoted in Silverman, p. 149). Qualified as “worship: Kools, p. 66. “You will find in [nature]”: Bulwer-Lytton, p. 15.

“A strange boy”: “een oarige”: Stokvis, p. 12. My youth was gloomy and cold”: BVG 347, 12/18/1883. Context: BVG 347, 12/18/1883: “My youth was gloomy and cold and sterile under the influence of the rayon noir.” JLB 403, 11/5/1883: “My youth has been austere and cold, and sterile under the influence of the black ray.” “I am going to refresh”: BVG 339a, 10/29/1883-11/15/1883. Context: BVG 339a, 10/29/1883-11/15/1883: “I am going to refresh, to rejuvenate myself in nature; I am going to attack things in a new way, and I will arrange my life in such a way that, let’s say, in a few years I shall have quite new and sure ground under my feet.” JLB 403, 11/5/1883: “I’m going to refresh, renew myself in nature, I’m just going to tackle it very differently, and I’ll arrange it in such a way that in a few years’ time, say, I have altogether new, firm ground beneath my feet.”

“I fell in the abyss”: BVG 76, 10/7/1876. Context: BVG 76, 10/7/1876: “‘I have been ill, my mind was tired, my soul disillusioned and my body suffering. I whom God has endowed at least with moral energy and a strong instinct of affection, I fell in the abyss of the most bitter discouragement and I felt with horror how a deadly poison penetrated my stifled heart. I spent three months on the moors, you know that beautiful region where the soul retires within itself and enjoys a delicious rest, where everything breathes calm and peace; where the soul in presence of God’s immaculate creation throws off the yoke of conventions, forgets society, and loosens its bonds, with the strength of renewed youth; where each thought takes the form of prayer, where everything that is not in harmony with fresh and free nature quits the heart.’” JLB 93, 10/7/1876-10/8/1876: “I have been ill. My spirit was weary, my soul disenchanted, my body sickly. I, whom God has at least endowed with moral energy and a vast instinct for affection, was falling into the depths of the bitterest discouragement, and I felt with terror a deadly poison creeping into my shriveled heart. I have spent three months on the heath: you know, that lovely region where the soul returns to itself and enjoys sweet repose; where everything exudes peace and tranquility; where the soul, in the presence of God’s immaculate creation, shakes off the yoke of convention, forgets society and frees itself from its bonds with the vigour of returning youth; where every thought takes on the form of prayer; where the heart is emptied of everything that is not in harmony with the freshness and freedom of nature.”

Found danger as well as comfort: Kools, p. 64: Citing a poem by the Dutch clergyman-poet Bernard rer Haar, Kools points out this inherent contradiction in the Romantic experience whereby the melancholy soul could be both “closely tied to nature” and “simultaneously overwhelmed by the unprecedented vastness of nature.” Reminded him of his alienation: Kools, p. 66: Kools makes the nice point that Van Gogh was made melancholy by the glories of nature as often as he was uplifted by them. God’s creation: Kools, p. 64. Lurching into the wilderness: Kools, p. 63. The argument that Van Gogh preferred the country to the city, which appears frequently in the literature, appears too simplistic. A better understanding of Van Gogh’s changeable view toward city and country is that, while in the city, he longed for the country, usually to escape problems that resulted from his inability to make or maintain rewarding contacts with other people; but, in the country, sooner or later, he longed for the city again because he found the country oppressively lonely.

Painting by George Henry Boughton: BVG 74, 8/26/1876. Context: JLB 89, 8/26/1876: “Have I ever told you about that painting by Boughton, ‘The pilgrim’s progress’? The painting was God’s Speed! (1874). Bailey and De Leeuw detail the painting’s history and “rediscovery” (Bailey, Young Vincent, p. 97 and De Leeuw, p. 51). It is a subject of no small controversy whether Van Gogh intentionally altered the details of Boughton’s “God’s Speed!” in order to construct his homily or whether he simply “misremembered” it (Druick and Zegers, p. 19), “mistook” it (Bailey, Young Vincent, pp. 98-99) or “confused” it (De Leeuw, p. 60). JLB throw doubt on the entire proposition that “God’s Speed!” was the painting that Van Gogh was trying, however imperfectly, to recall (JLB 89, 8/26/1876; n. 12). Their argument again appears to rest on the marked differences between Van Gogh’s “word painting” and Boughton’s picture. It bears repeating in this regard that Van Gogh’s memory of images was astonishingly precise, over far longer periods than the two years between the time he presumably saw the Boughton painting and his use of it in his sermon. On the other hand, if the image did not speak to his concerns (emotional or artistic) at the time of viewing, it is more likely that its details did not register very sharply or deeply. (The enormous size of the painting [48”x 72”] would have made it hard to ignore.) There remains a possibility that Boughton’s painting was, indeed, the starting point for the image that Van Gogh created in his sermon (and in a letter to Theo around the same time [JLB 89, 8/26/1876]).

In late November, presumably by chance, Van Gogh encountered the same or a related image on a visit to his former boss, Mr. Obach: “At Mr. Obach’s I saw the painting, or rather the sketch, by Boughton: the pilgrim’s progress” (JLB 99, 11/25/1876). It is a subject of additional disagreement how this image related to the God’s Speed! on which Van Gogh may (or may not) have based his sermon image. There is no record of any work by the name of “Pilgrim’s Progress” in Boughton’s oeuvre, but the timing complicates Bailey’s suggestion that Van Gogh’s “mistakes” about the painting in his sermon “resulted from seeing the picture in black and white” at Obach’s (Bailey, Young Vincent, pp. 98-99). De Leeuw disputes whether the work that Van Gogh saw at Obach’s was, in fact, a black-and-white sketch, or just a smaller painted version of the very large original (De Leeuw, p. 54).

“Splendor”: BVG 60, 4/14/1876-4/17/1876; JLB 76, 4/17/1876. Context: I once saw a very beautiful picture, it was a landscape at evening. In the distance on the right hand side a row of hills appearing blue in the evening mist. Above those hills the splendour of the sunset, the grey clouds with their linings of silver and gold and purple” (JLB 76, 4/17/1876). “The gray clouds”: BVG 60, 4/14/1876-4/17/1876; JLB 76, 4/17/1876. Context: I once saw a very beautiful picture, it was a landscape at evening. In the distance on the right hand side a row of hills appearing blue in the evening mist. Above those hills the splendour of the sunset, the grey clouds with their linings of silver and gold and purple” (JLB 76, 4/17/1876). “It was so beautiful”: BVG 91, 4/8/1877. Context: JLB 110, 4/8/1877: “It was so beautiful there on the heath, even though it was dark one could make out the heath and the pine-woods and the marshes stretching far and wide.” Burnished that image: Van Gogh described his view of the heath that night: “It reminded me of that illustration by Bodmer that’s hanging in Pa’s study” (JLB 110, 4/8/1877). The Swiss artist Karl Bodmer was affiliated with the Barbizon colony and associated with Millet. The image referred to may have been Bodmer’s La Nature Chez Elle (Nature at Home), which was in Van Gogh’s collection of prints. (See Chetham, pp. 165-166.) “The sky was”: BVG 91, 4/8/1877. Van Gogh’s account of this nocturnal journey is internally inconsistent, suggesting that it was at least partly invented/imagined. He could only “make out the heath and the pine-woods and the marshes stretching far and wide” if there was at least partial moonlight. Yet he also says the night was “dark” and “grey” (in BVG “overcast”), except for the inevitable (but surely inadequate for viewing the landscape) light from “the evening star [that] shone through the clouds” (JLB 110, 4/8/1877). Context: JLB 110, 4/8/1877: “The sky was grey but the evening star shone through the clouds, and now and then other stars were visible too.”

The Barque of Dante: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Barque_of_Dante Welsh-Ovcharov lists the other Delacroix works discussed in Charles Blanc that Van Gogh was likely to have studied in Paris: Femmes d ‘Alger, the Taking of Constantinople by the Crusaders, and the Apollo Ceiling, in the Louvre, and “various paintings such as versions of the and Jesus Endormi seen elsewhere, and, of course, from the San Sulpice frescoes” (Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 132). “Delacroix was his god”: Gauzi, “Lautrec et son Temps,” in Stein, ed., p. 71. Two years later, in Arles, Van Gogh wrote: “When Delacroix paints humanity, life in general instead of an epoch, he belongs to the same family of universal geniuses all the same” (JLB 651, 7/30/1888).

Charles Blanc: Blanc was an art historian and bureaucrat (director of the Department of Decorative Arts at the Ministry of Interior in Paris) before finding his true calling late in life as a critic and theorist. Van Gogh first encountered Blanc while working at Goupil in 1875. At that time he was familiar with at least the two volumes of Blanc’s seven-volume Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles (History of Painters in All Schools) (1863-1868) that pertained to Dutch art (École Hollandaise) (JLB 47, 9/12/1875). He may also have known the volume École Anglaise, although he does not mention it until years later (JLB 543, 11/20/1885).

“Truly elementary”: BVG 401, 4/13/1885-4/17/1885. Context: BVG 401, 4/13/1885-4/17/1885: “There are only three colours which are truly elementary in nature, and which, when they are mixed two at a time, produce three more composite colours which may be called secondary, to whit: orange, green and violet.” JLB 494, 4/18/1885: “There are only three truly elementary colours, which, by being mixed two by two, create three other composite colours, called binaries: orange, green and violet.” “Contrast”: BVG 401, 4/13/1885-4/17/1885. Context: BVG 401, 4/13/1885-4/17/1885: “Each of the three primitive colours is rightly called complementary with regard to the corresponding secondary colours. Thus blue is the complementary colour of orange; yellow, the complementary colour of violet; and red, the complementary colour of green. Conversely, each of the combined colours is the complementary colour of the primitive one not used in the mixture. This mutual intensification is what is called the law of simultaneous contrast.” JLB 494, 4/18/1885: “Each of the three primary colours is rightly called Complementary in relation to the binary colour that corresponds with it. Thus blue is the complementary of orange, yellow is the complementary of violet, and red the complementary of green. Vice versa, each of the composite colours is the complementary of the primary colour not used in the mixture. This reciprocal heightening is what’s called the law of simultaneous contrast.” The More violent the struggle: BVG 401, 4/13/1885-4/17/1885. Context: BVG 401, 4/13/1885-4/17/1885: “When the complementary colours are produced in equal strength, that is to say in the same degree of vividness and brightness, their juxtaposition will intensify them each to such a violent intensity that the human eye can hardly bear the sight of it.” JLB 494, 4/18/1885: “If the complementary colours are taken at equal value, that’s to say, at the same degree of brightness and light, their juxtaposition will raise both the one and the other to an intensity so violent that human eyes will scarcely be able to bear to look at it.”

“Spoke a symbolic language”: BVG 503, 6/28/1888. Context: BVG 503, 6/28/1888: “This is the point. The ‘Christ in the Boat’ by Eugène Delacroix and Millet’s ‘The Sower’ are absolutely different in execution. The ‘Christ in the Boat’—I am speaking of the sketch in blue and green with touches of violet, red and a little citron-yellow for the nimbus, the halo—speaks a symbolic language through colour alone.” JLB 634, 6/28/1888: “The question remains this—Christ’s boat by Eugène Delacroix and Millet’s sower are of entirely different workmanship. Christ’s Boat—I’m talking about the blue and green sketch with touches of purple and red and a little lemon yellow for the halo, the aureole—speaks a symbolic language through colour itself.” “Something passionate and eternal”: BVG 477a, 4/21/1888. Context: BVG 477a, 4/21/1888: “Surely Monticelli gives us not, neither pretends to give us, local colour or even local truth. But gives us something passionate and eternal—the rich colour and rich sun of the glorious South in a true colourist way parallel with Delacroix’s conception of the South” JLB 598, 4/19/1888: “Surely Monticelli gives us not, neither pretends to give us, local colour or even local truth. But gives us something passionate and eternal—the rich coulour and rich sun of the glorious south in a true colourists way parallel with Delacroix’s conception of the south.”

“Universal genius”: BVG B13, 7/25/1888. Context: BVG B13, 7/25/1888: “When Delacroix paints humanity, life in general, instead of an epoch, he belongs no less to the same family of universal geniuses.” JLB 651, 7/30/1888: “When Delacroix paints humanity, life in general instead of an epoch, he belongs to the same family of universal geniuses all the same.” “Paints humanity”: BVG B13, 7/25/1888. Context: BVG B13, 7/25/1888: “When Delacroix paints humanity, life in general, instead of an epoch, he belongs no less to the same family of universal geniuses.” JLB 651, 7/30/1888: “When Delacroix paints humanity, life in general instead of an epoch, he belongs to the same family of universal geniuses all the same.” “When Delacroix paints”: JLB 526, 8/8/1885-8/15/1885; BVG R58, 9/1/1885. “The closing words of Silvestre”: BVG B13, 7/25/1888. Context: JLB 651 7/30/1888. “I’ve read a splendid article about him by Silvestre. To write for you a few words from it that occur to me right now—the end of the article went like this: thus died, almost smiling, Eugène Delacroix—a painter of high breeding—who had a sun in his head and a thunderstorm in his heart—who—from warriors went to saints—from saints to lovers—from lovers to tigers—and from tigers to flowers” (JLB 651 7/30/1888).

“Romance and romanticism”: JLB 537, 10/28/1885. Context: “Delacroix, Millet, Corot, Dupré, Daubigny, Breton , 30 more names, do they not form the heart of this century where art is concerned, and all of them, do they not have their roots in romanticism, even if they surpassed romanticism? Romance and romanticism are our era, and one must have imagination, sentiment in painting. HAPPILY, realism and naturalism are not free of them” (JLB 537, 10/28/1885).

Notes for the Plates

I love the closing words of Silvestre: BVG B13, 7/25/1888 | JLB 651, 7/30/1888. Delacroix tried again: BVG 444, 1/12/1886-1/16/1886 | JLB 552, 1/12/1886-1/16/1886. I read somewhere: BVG R58, 9/1/1885 | JLB 526, 8/8/1885-8/15/1885. Now I’m going to read: BVG 277, 3/30/1883-4/1/1883 | JLB 333, 3/29/1883, 4/1/1883. I would like to have: BVG 607, 9/19/1889 | JLB 805, 9/20/1889. People will also recognize Isabey: BVG 443, 1/1/1886-1/15/1886 | JLB 551, 1/2/1886. A man who is far superior to me: BVG 610, 10/8/1889 | JLB 810, 10/8/1889.