Notes: The Art of the Petit Boulevard

Notes for the Text

At twenty-three: Paul Signac was born November 11, 1863. Thus, if Van Gogh met him in early 1887, he was twenty-three at the time. Only a few blocks apart: Signac’s studio was located at 130, boulevard de Clichy, about a quarter mile from the Van Goghs’ rue Lepic apartment. His apartment was at 20, avenue de Clichy, just around the corner and only slightly further from Van Gogh’s apartment (King, p. 247). Although they never met as neighbors, Van Gogh and Signac had no doubt crossed paths at Tanguy’s store, where both were regulars. In his limited recollection of Van Gogh, Signac is specific but elusive on this point—”I first knew Van Gogh in le Père Tanguy’s shop”—but he gives no further details, suggesting that this initial encounter was recalled only as a consequence of their later interaction (Piérard, p. 101). According to Jullian, “One of Père Tanguy’s most constant visitors was Paul Signac” (Jullian, p. 74). A dozen of Signac’s canvases: Hulsker, p. 248. Quite by accident: Signac recalled to Coquiot: “I met [Van Gogh] several times at Asnières and Saint-Ouen”—a phrasing that seems to avoid implying that either the initial encounter or the subsequent encounters, were pre-arranged. His family’s house there: Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent Van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 30: Welsh-Ovcharov presumes that Signac’s Asnières studio was located in the home of his widowed mother at 42 bis, rue de Paris (ibid., p. 203). This could well be the place where Van Gogh saw some of Signac’s earlier work.

“Several times”: Quoted in Piérard, p. 101: Signac told Coquiot: “I met [Van Gogh] several times at Asnières and Saint-Ouen. We painted on the steep river-bank, took our lunch at a country estaminet [tavern] and walked back to Paris through the avenues of Saint-Ouen and Clichy.” Clichy was the community that lay between Paris and Asnières, and Saint-Ouen was a community just north and east of Clichy. Compared to the exaggerated claims of intimacy with Van Gogh advanced by other artists (especially Bernard and Gauguin), Signac’s account is terse and guarded, almost intentionally opaque. The “several” could apply only to “meetings,” not to the activities described. Indeed, it is not inconsistent with Signac’s language that the activities described all refer to the same, single encounter—not multiple extended encounters. Such a restrained reading is completely consistent with the rest of the record, which contains not a single piece of hard evidence that a close friendship existed between the two artists. Signac, who lived for more than forty-five years after Van Gogh’s death, left only a few slight recollections of his relationship with Van Gogh in the spring of 1887: this one to Coquiot—an account that is not specific, insightful, or particularly appreciative—and a letter from 1891 that refers to Van Gogh’s reed-pen drawings as “terrible” (Cachin, quoted in Van Crimpen, p. 234). Signac’s only detailed recollections of Van Gogh (in Coquiot’s 1923 biography [quoted in Hulsker, p. 403] and in Pels’s 1928 book [ibid., p. 402]) relate to his visit to Arles in 1889. Van Gogh said virtually nothing personal about Signac in his letters after leaving Paris until Signac showed up in Arles in late March 1889, three months after Van Gogh cut off part of his ear.

Theo (who described Signac in a letter to Jo Bonger not as Vincent’s friend but as “an acquaintance of mine” [b2050 V/1982, “Gogh, Theo van” to “Bonger, Jo”, 3/16/1889]) had importuned Signac, who was traveling to the southern coast of France, to stop on his way and check up on his troubled brother, who had been involuntarily committed to an asylum by the authorities in Arles (JLB 749, 3/16/1889). Vincent’s cool reaction to the prospect of Signac’s visit hardly befits the reunion of old friends: “It would certainly give me pleasure to see Signac if he must pass through here anyway” (JLB 751, 3/22/1889); and his description of the visit afterwards makes it sound almost as if the two were meeting for the first time: “I find Signac very calm, whereas people say he’s so violent, he gives me the impression of someone who has his self-confidence and balance” (JLB 752, 3/24/1889). After his hasty departure, Signac sent Theo a letter reporting on his visit in which he refers to Vincent throughout as “your brother,” never “Vincent.” In a startling failure of insight, attention, or honesty, he boldly vouched for Vincent’s “perfect health, physically and mentally” (BVG 581a, 3/26/1889; note that JLB do not translate this letter)—a story that he stuck with forty years later in his account to Pels (“Never did [Van Gogh] give me the impression of being a madman” [quoted in Hulsker, p. 402]). Signac also relayed to Theo the report of Vincent’s doctor as well as Vincent’s complaints about his meddlesome neighbors, summarizing sympathetically, “How dismal the life he is living must be for him” (ibid.). After leaving, Signac also sent Vincent a very brief, cordial postcard (signed “P. Signac”) from the town of Cassis, on the coast near Marseille. In it, he seems as concerned about his correspondence with Theo as about Vincent’s health (JLB 755, 4/8/1889). Vincent’s letter of thanks to Signac after his visit, like the letter to Livens in 1886, is strangely, simultaneously formal (“remain much obliged to you for your most friendly and beneficial visit”) and longingly intimate (“the best consolation, if not the only remedy, is, it still seems to me, profound friendships”) (JLB 756, 4/10/1889).

That longing for intimacy, apparently, soon morphed into delusion. Two weeks after Signac’s departure, Vincent wrote his brother: “Signac has asked me to join him in Cassis” (JLB 758, 4/14/1889-4/17/1889)—a claim that is not remotely suggested in Signac’s card nor in any of Vincent’s three intervening letters to Theo since Signac’s departure from Arles (JLB 752-754). Only a few weeks later, in his last letter before entering the asylum at St. Remy, Vincent mentions Signac one last time—”Is Signac back in Paris yet?” (JLB 768, 5/3/1889)—apparently having already forgotten that he was ensconced for the summer on the coast.

What this later story tells us about the relationship between Signac and Vincent in Paris is that the younger man was probably cordial in their chance encounters around Asnières (note how the Coquiot account finesses the issue of whether Signac sought out Vincent’s company or vice versa), but he shared the disdain for Vincent’s odd manners and rude enthusiasms that was, according to Theo’s own testimony, common among those who met Vincent in Paris at the time. This disdain is undoubtedly what discouraged their social interactions (Vincent’s absence from Signac’s soirées and Signac’s failure to make introductions) and probably also discouraged Vincent’s visits to Signac’s studio. Despite this consistent biographical picture, the literature generally clings to the view that the two artists enjoyed a close friendship in Paris, based largely on perceived affinities in their art.

Signac never introduced Van Gogh: A number of artists whom Signac knew and had regular contact with in the time he and Vincent reportedly painted together in Asnières either never met Vincent or did not meet him until later. Most notable among the latter are Lucien Pissarro, Émile Bernard, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat and (see Rewald, pp. 39, 55). It appears from a letter Vincent wrote after leaving Paris that Vincent and Theo encountered Signac once during the four or five months between Signac’s return to Paris in the fall of 1887 and Vincent’s departure in February 1888 (JLB 585, 3/16/1888). Welsh-Ovcharov takes this as proof not only of a “friendship” between Vincent and Signac but also that the friendship survived Signac’s long absence from Paris in 1887 (Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent Van Gogh, p. 32). However, this is the only recorded or recalled encounter between Van Gogh and Signac in the fall and winter of 1887–88—hardly a record that supports an inference of “friendship,” much less close friendship. While it is true that during Vincent’s last six months in Paris, his close association with Émile Bernard, who was feuding with Signac at the time, might have dampened his relations with Signac, that very dampening, if it occurred, speaks to the tenuousness of their connection.

The soirées he hosted: Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh, p. 203, n. 49. Sund says Signac hosted these soirées in his studio (Sund, True to Temperament: Van Gogh and French Naturalist Literature, p. 125), but Welsh-Ovcharov cites the fact that Charles Angrand’s account to Coquiot of the “ ’soirées de Signac’ [at] 20, avenue de Clichy,’ fails to mention Vincent in attendance” (Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh, p. 203, n. 49). The address given, 20, avenue de Clichy, is of Signac’s apartment, not his studio. It is possible that Van Gogh visited Signac’s studio at 130, boulevard de Clichy, even closer to the rue Lepic apartment than Signac’s apartment. Jullian claims that Van Gogh was “seen” at Signac’s studio in 1887, but provides no support (Jullian, p. 77). Hammacher, Welsh-Ovcharov, Cachin, and others assume that such visits were frequent, based solely on perceived relationships, both in style and subject matter, between some of Van Gogh’s works and some of Signac’s earlier works—presumably works that Van Gogh would have seen in Signac’s studio (Hammacher, in Welsh-Ovcharov, ed., pp. 143-144; Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh, p. 163; Cachin, in Van Crimpen, pp. 226-227).

While it is certainly possible that Van Gogh paid one or even several visits to Signac’s studio in Montmartre, his familiarity with Signac’s earlier work (i.e., 1883–86) could have been gained, as Welsh-Ovcharov points out, “from various public exhibitions, the works deposited chez Tanguy, [or] joint painting excursions” in addition to or rather than studio visits (Welsh-Ovcharov, p. 163). Given Van Gogh’s retentive eye, a single viewing could explain the apparent allusions to Signac’s earlier work in Van Gogh’s still lifes with Parisian novels from later that year (Still Life with French Novels and a Rose [F 359 JH 1332], Still Life with Plaster Statuette, a Rose and Two Novels [F 360 JH 1349]), assuming that the works do not merely have common models such as Monet (a possibility raised by Cachin and left open by Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh, p. 162). Furthermore, Van Gogh almost certainly visited Signac’s studio in Asnières, where some of the artist’s earlier works were undoubtedly available for viewing. Hammacher makes much more far-reaching claims about Van Gogh’s familiarity with and reliance on Signac’s early work (Hammacher, in Welsh-Ovcharov, ed., pp. 143-145), yet Van Gogh’s only recorded comments about Signac’s art relate solely to his Pointillist work and ideas, not to his earlier work (JLB 669, 8/26/1888; JLB 683, 9/18/1888; JLB 689, 9/26/1888).

Van Gogh expressed his gratitude: The question of Signac’s influence on Van Gogh’s art, because it does not admit of a definitive answer, has occasioned robust discussion. Welsh-Ovcharov captures the thrust of the literature: “it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Signac was the most important single influence for Van Gogh’s dramatic and total shift during Spring 1887, away from a lingering Realist and toward a mixed Impressionist-Pointillist style” (Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh, p. 165). The “shift” referred to was, like all the great shifts in Van Gogh’s art and life, the product of biographical forces first and foremost. Signac no doubt came into Van Gogh’s life at an opportune time, at a moment of extreme susceptibility to images and art that he had been looking at for a year and opposing for far longer than that. Thus, as Cachin recognizes, there was certainly a fortuitous coincidence between Van Gogh’s encounters with Signac in Asnières and his determination to lighten his palette under the threat of expulsion from the rue Lepic apartment and alienation from his brother (Cachin, p. 227).

That is not the same thing as a causal connection, however. Even to say that Signac’s appearance was catalytic is an exaggeration of its true role in re-shaping Van Gogh’s art; “contributory” would be closer to the mark. Secondly, the anachronistic categorizing of Van Gogh’s style and stylistic development is suspect. As a shorthand, labels like “Impressionist” and “Pointillist” can be helpful for study purposes, but they impose a distortive order and inevitability on a lived life that was—especially in Van Gogh’s case—disorderly and halting. Progress becomes a march rather than a wandering with occasionally fortuitous results. The commentary that cites Signac as a precedent for some of Van Gogh’s later still lifes, both in Paris and in Arles is credible; but only in the way that many other artists occasionally served as goals or points-of-departure for Van Gogh’s questing imagination. In all such cases, the key causal question is why he lighted on those artists or those images on those occasions? Others have made far more specific claims for the influence of Signac’s art—especially his earlier art—on Van Gogh’s work in 1886, 1887, and afterward (see, e.g., Hammacher, in Welsh-Ovcharov, ed., pp. 143-144).

Still others have stepped back from the stark assertion of Signac’s paramount influence and posited the more modest coincidental, contributory influence on Van Gogh’s art. Welsh-Ovcharov recognizes that broad claims about an artist’s sources or development should be hedged with Wittgensteinian reticence. (“This is not to say that the relationship [between Van Gogh and Signac] was so close that one must predicate an exclusive or even dominant influence from Signac” [Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh, p. 31]. “This fact alone should forewarn us against any simplistic supposition that Van Gogh was obliged by the rules of art history, so to speak, to follow the normal Realist, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist sequence” [ibid., p. 157].)

Lengthy, open-ended disputations of the sort occasioned by Van Gogh’s relationship to Signac will continue as long as Van Gogh’s art is studied, but care should be taken to separate such discussions from the biographical record. Especially when that record is thin, as in this case, it is tempting to fill it in with assumptions about personal affinities derived from the shifting, shadow world of perceived artistic affinities. This is a treacherous business. Hammacher’s claims for Van Gogh’s reliance on Signac’s earlier depictions of Butte Montmartre, are a perfect example (Hammacher, in Welsh-Ovcharov, ed., pp. 143-145). Such a reliance violates both the depth (frequency and breadth of mutual exposure) and the scope (intellectual and artistic exchange) of their known relationship. In short, their contact was far too slight and shallow for the kind of in-depth knowledge of Signac’s career that the claim requires.

If the works in question were more nearly identical, or if other explanations for their similarities were not so readily available (see Cachin, p. 229, who proposes Guillaumin as their shared model), then, in the absence of biographical evidence to the contrary, an artistic affinity might support the imputation of a personal affinity. But none of those counterweighing factors is present. The example of Van Gogh’s still lifes with Parisian novels, on the other hand, persuades precisely because the artistic and personal affinities align better—not perfectly, but better. The identity between the two sets of images is more pronounced and otherwise less explicable (excepting the remote possibility of a common model in Monet), while the biographical factors either remain unchanged or perhaps argue more favorably, if one makes the defensible inference that Van Gogh intended to reach out to Signac after the latter’s return to Paris in November 1887—an overture completely consistent with his efforts at that time to establish liaisons with many artists as part of his revived “joint enterprise” with his brother.

Whether in Signac’s company: Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent Van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, pp. 31-32: On the question of whether any of Van Gogh’s surviving paintings from the period were painted in Signac’s actual company, Welsh-Ovcharov observes: “Vincent probably painted alone more often than in the company of another artist, and landscape subjects attributed to 1887 for the two painters [Van Gogh and Signac] scarcely appear identical, even while often depicting similar settings along the Seine.” Île de la Grand Jatte: Van Gogh painted both a view of the Pont de la Grande Jatte (F 304 JH 1326), the bridge connecting the famous river island to the shore, and a view from the island, Shoreline of the Seine (F 293 JH 1269). In extrapolating the location from which Van Gogh painted the latter, Van Tilborgh writes: “The observation point is rather low, and therefore the landscape will not have been painted from a bridge but from one of the four islands in the river. As the distance to the shore does not look very big the following spots can be considered: the north side of the Île de Robinson, the south shore of both the Île de la Grand Jatte and that of the Île du Pont, and the south side of the Île de Buteaux” (Van Tilborgh, p. 111). At the end of May: Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent Van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 58. Welsh-Ovcharov cites a letter from Lucien to Camille Pissarro dated May 25, 1887, which includes the report that Signac had left Paris two days earlier for a long stay in Auvergne. Signac ended up in Collioure, a small town on the French Mediterranean coast very close to the Spanish border. He stayed there until around November 1887.

A work by Guillaumin: Stolwijk and Thomson, p. 124: Stolwijk and Thomson give the date of the sale as “six months” after the letter from Guillaumin in the spring of 1887. The purchase was not speculative, however. Theo sold it immediately to one of his regular stable of collectors, Jean Baptiste Casimir Dupuis, suggesting a pre-arrangement. The transaction may have been related to the attention Guillaumin received in October when an article about the collection of his friend and supporter, Eugène Murer, appeared in Cri du Peuple (21 October 1887) (Gray, p. 38). This is the same publication that ran, a month earlier, an invitation for artists to submit works for a hanging at the Théâtre Libre in late 1887, an invitation to which Van Gogh responded. Circulated widely: Gray, p. 14: Just a few examples of many: in 1873, Guillaumin signed the founding charter of the Société anonyme des artistes, peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs. His co-signers included Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Degas, and Pissarro. In 1884, he showed with both the Groupe des artistes indépendants in May, alongside Seurat, Signac, and the symbolist Odilon Redon; and with the Société des artistes indépendants at its first exhibition in December. Guillaumin kept virtually all the artists within the fractious Impressionist-neo-Impressionist community within his circle of friends and added to it Gauguin and younger painters like Paul Signac. He introduced many of the younger generation to the older, including Signac to Pissarro (ibid., p. 26). According to Gray: “Guillaumin’s studio had become a center for the younger group that was forming around Pissarro” (ibid.). A circle of loyal: Gray, p. 16.

A broker: BVG 514, 7/25/1888: Indeed, most of the brothers’ later communications about Guillaumin relate to the marketing of his work and the possibility of selling the work of others to or through him. There is hardly a word about the quality of his art. Van Gogh clearly felt similarly about John Peter Russell. In this letter from July 1888, he discusses with Theo how to market Gauguin’s work to either Russell or Guillaumin: “In short, [Russell is] not refusing to buy [a work by Gauguin], but is making it understood that he wouldn’t want poorer quality than ours. ... This is in any case better than nothing at all. I’ll write this to Gauguin and will ask him for croquis of paintings. We shouldn’t push this business and give up on R[ussell] for the time being, but consider the thing as an ongoing piece of business that will come off. And the same for Guillaumin” (JLB 650, 7/29/1888). Context: JLB 650, 7/29/1888: “I’ll write this to Gauguin and will ask him for croquis of paintings. We shouldn’t push this business and give up on R. for the time being, but consider the thing as an ongoing piece of business that will come off. And the same for Guillaumin, I’d like him to buy a figure by G.”

“I believe”: BVG B1, 9/22/1887-12/21/1887; JLB 575, December 1887: “I, for my part, did go to Guillaumin‘s anyway, but in the evening, and I thought that perhaps you didn’t know his address, which is 13 quai d’Anjou. I believe that, as a man, Guillaumin has sounder ideas than the others, and that if we were all like him we’d produce more good things and would have less time and inclination to be at each other’s throats” (JLB 575, December 1887). Tall and slender: Decaudin, p. 46: A contemporary described Bernard as “very tall, with a slight stoop as though embarrassed by being so tall, a very well developed head with fine, soft features, his expression serene and melancholy like a figure in a stained glass window, the halo effect made complete, when he is out and about, by his long hair and the broad flat brim of his hat, always tilted to the back of his head.” The reference to religious figures portrayed in stained-glass windows is, of course, filled with heavy-handed art-historical significance, betraying the benevolent eyes of a Bernard partisan. Gifted young protégé: Bernard, “Louis Anquetin, artiste-peintre,” p. 591.

Just missed each other: The uninitiated reader will be astonished to learn that this assertion touches on a fierce dispute in the literature. Until recently, the combatants fell roughly into two camps: commentators who accepted the veracity of Bernard’s account(s) more or less unquestioningly (Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, p. 22), and those who worked to reconcile Bernard’s accounts both with each other and with the known facts (Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 211). More recently, one prominent commentator, Louis van Tilborgh has taken a more skeptical view of Bernard’s recollections, pointing to a third way of reconstructing the “truth” of the artist’s relationship with Van Gogh. Bernard was a shameless re-shaper of history. He is known to have backdated paintings and probably photographs as well to establish his precedence over other painters, in particular, his “friends” Paul Gauguin and Louis Émile Anquetin (1861-1932; French artist). There is no apparent basis for the claim that Bernard did not play similar tricks with his accounts of Van Gogh. His purpose in doing so was clear enough: to inflate both their personal relationship and his role in the development of Van Gogh’s art at a time when the dead Van Gogh’s celebrity—the celebrity that Bernard always considered his due—was ascendant.

The question of when Bernard and Van Gogh met is only one of many battlefields on which Bernard’s veracity can be contested. This is partly because he himself gave multiple, conflicting versions of their first encounter. Van Tilborgh does an admirable job of parsing the variations on two basic storylines: (1) that Bernard and Van Gogh met at the Cormon studio when Van Gogh was a student there, and (2) that they met at Tanguy’s paint store. For a long time, the issue of when Van Gogh attended the Cormon studio was clouded by the first of these claims (Van Tilborgh, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, p. 47; n. 49-52). (In 1890, Bernard wrote, “I met Vincent Van Gogh for the first time at the Cormon workshop” [Bernard, “Vincent van Gogh,” n.p.].) Independent evidence pointed to an attendance in the spring of 1886, but Bernard was dismissed from the atelier in early spring, left Paris on April 6 for a walking tour in Brittany, and didn’t return until October. (See Van Tilborgh, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, pp. 37-41.)

To reconcile the conflicting evidence, commentators had either to argue, as Rewald did, that Bernard returned to the atelier prior to his departure in April and saw Van Gogh at work, or to argue that Van Gogh attended Cormon’s studio in the fall of 1886 (Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, p. 22). (In 1903, Bernard “clarified” his account by insisting that he first met Van Gogh at Cormon’s studio after returning from his Brittany trip [Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 211]). Others argued that perhaps Van Gogh had split his time at the atelier between the spring and the fall. (More recent analysis (2001) has put this contorted chronology to rest [Van Heugten, pp. 21-22].) But the efforts to reconcile Bernard’s accounts are ultimately doomed. Welsh-Ovcharov, who proceeds through the evidence with great care and sympathy for Bernard, is left with a muddle. Almost all of Bernard’s accounts give or imply an 1886 date for his initial encounter with Van Gogh; yet in 1893 his first recorded recollection of the date of their meeting states forthrightly: “It is in 1887 that I met him [in] the shop of père Tanguy” (Bernard, “Extraits de lettres à Émile Bernard,” n.p.).

While some commentators dismiss this “1887” as a slip of the pen (see, e.g., Van Tilborgh, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, p. 47, n. 51), it is far more consistent with Bernard’s personality and ambition that he revised his story in subsequent tellings to put himself together with the famous Vincent van Gogh at the earliest possible moment, thus eclipsing other artists, like Anquetin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Gauguin, who came into Vincent’s life in the second half of 1887 as a result of Theo’s entry into the market for vanguard art. Welsh-Ovcharov discredits (rightly, it seems) the photograph of two men seated at a table in an outdoor cafe in Asnières that Bernard produced as proof of a relationship with Vincent prior to the fall-winter of 1887 (Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 59). Bernard claimed that the picture showed Vincent and him even though the man at the table with him is unidentifiable because his back is to the camera. Someone (Bernard?) inscribed the photograph “1886” (ibid.). Ultimately, Welsh-Ovcharov arrives at a conclusion that Bernard and Vincent may have encountered each other at Tanguy’s or elsewhere in the fall-winter of 1886-87, but the connection did not “take” (i.e., develop into a friendship) until the second half of 1887 (ibid., p. 33).

The same store: Bernard’s earliest claim (in 1890) about his first encounter with Van Gogh was that they met at Cormon’s workshop (Bernard, “Vincent van Gogh,” n.p.). By 1893, he had changed the location to Tanguy’s store, perhaps because the initial claim could be checked against the memories of others, while an encounter at Tanguy’s store was basically irrefutable (Bernard, “Extraits de lettres à Émile Bernard,” n.p.). (Compare Angrand’s comment to Coquiot: “I remember very little about [Van Gogh]. No doubt we met at Tanguy’s sometimes.” [Coquiot, p. 149.]) In a clever sleight of pen, Bernard implies without saying that their initial encounter at the paint store marked the beginning of their friendship: “I met him, in the small, pious chapel that was the shop of père Tanguy [at] 9 rue de Clauzel. I have said elsewhere the astonishing surprise that I felt when I saw his strange face and the visit that he asked me to make to his studio, rue Lepic.” In a subsequent telling, Bernard injects the word “later” between the encounter at Tanguy’s and the development of their friendship (“Later, when we had become friends, he initiated me into all his projects—and how many there were!”) allowing for the possibility of an unspecified delay—a few days? many months?—between his first sighting of Van Gogh and the initiation of their friendship. (Bernard, Les Hommes d’Aujourd’hui, p. 283.) Paths could have crossed: Bernard imagined a variety of such scenarios in his many accounts of their relationship.

Le Tambourin: BVG 510, 7/15/1888. In a letter from Arles in July 1888, Van Gogh claimed: “The exhibition of Japanese prints that I had at the Tambourin had quite an influence on Anquetin and Bernard” (JLB 640, 7/15/1888). Perhaps the only reliable inference that can be drawn from this statement is that Bernard, on a visit to Le Tambourin in spring of 1887, noticed some Japanese prints hanging on the walls, although he probably did not know that Van Gogh had hung them there in the hopes of selling them, or, indeed, who Van Gogh was. In every other regard, the passage smacks both of Bernard’s usual fawning and of Van Gogh’s desperate need, isolated in Arles, to assure himself of his continued relevance. Japanese imagery was ubiquitous in Paris at the time and neither Bernard nor Anquetin could have found Van Gogh’s inexpensive prints anything more than a curiosity in Agostina Segatori’s notorious Italian tavern. When Bernard began to court Van Gogh in the fall of 1887, his flattering recollection of this “exhibition” and its importance to him (prompted, perhaps, by Van Gogh’s boasts about it) undoubtedly served to seal his place in Vincent’s (and therefore Theo’s) favor. In his subsequent accounts, of course, Bernard recycled many of the stories that Van Gogh undoubtedly told him about his troubled relationship with Segatori, presenting them as his own first-hand recollections and adding layers of romantic elaboration (Bernard, “Souvenirs sur Van Gogh,” p. 394; Bernard, “Julian Tanguy, Called Le Père Tanguy,” n.p., in Stein, ed., p. 93). This would explain Bernard’s odd reference to Segatori in one of these accounts as “a beautiful Romanian woman” (Bernard, “Souvenirs sur Van Gogh,” p. 394). Context: JLB 640, 7/15/1888: “The exhibition of Japanese prints that I had at the Tambourin had quite an influence on Anquetin and Bernard, but it was such a disaster.”

The necessary introductions: Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 30: Welsh-Ovcharov points out the oddity of Signac’s failure to introduce Bernard and Van Gogh in the spring of 1887, even though Signac had tried and failed sometime that winter to persuade Bernard to Neo-Impressionism: “Significantly, neither Bernard’s nor Signac’s accounts allow for communal painting among the three artists at Asnières, where, incidentally, both Bernard and Signac had studios available in 1887.” Van Gogh’s brief career is littered with “missed” introductions—surely a sign that the artists he happened to meet had no interest in introducing him to their friends. Another example is Eugène Boch, a painter who was a friend of both John Peter Russell and Toulouse-Lautrec at the time Van Gogh knew them, but whom Van Gogh did not meet until he had moved to Arles and was introduced by a painter who happened to be in the same area, Dodge MacKnight (Steven, Boyle-Turner, Dorn, Jirat-Wasiutynski, and Vogelaar, p. 32).

Record the fact: It is surely significant that in the extensive correspondence between Van Gogh and Bernard after Van Gogh left Paris in February 1888, there is no mention, fond or otherwise, of the circumstances or the agency under which they first met. In contrast, Bernard did write to his parents when he met Lucien Pissarro at Tanguy’s shop in February 28, 1887 (Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism, p. 263). In the same letter, presumably, he informed them of meeting Charles Angrand also. Toulouse-Lautrec never mentions Van Gogh in his correspondence from the winter 1886-87 and Van Gogh does not mention seeing Toulouse-Lautrec until July 1887 (JLB 571, 7/17/1887-7/19/1887). Route to Theo’s favor: Steven, Boyle-Turner, Dorn, Jirat-Wasiutynski, and Vogelaar, p. 33: “Vincent’s closer circle of acquaintances seems initially to have been limited to conventionally oriented artists, even at the Atelier Cormon. However, in time (and particularly after artists started realizing that they could gain access to the art dealer Theo by way of ’copain’ Vincent—as did Gauguin” in the spring of 1888).”

Before the end of the summer: Bernard, “Souvenirs sur Van Gogh,” p. 39: Bernard inadvertently provides additional support for dating the beginning of their relationship to late summer of 1887. See this account from 1924, for additional information. In this source, Bernard makes references to Tanguy and Cormon’s studio, which are sheer confabulation. The inadvertently revealing details here are the references to Guillaumin and Signac.

Theo and Vincent did not make their first contacts with either Guillaumin or Signac until the spring of 1887. Bernard left Paris in May and did not return until July. Furthermore, Bernard’s descriptions of Vincent visiting his studio at his family’s house in Asnières must date from after the summer trip because his family moved to the Asnières house while he was away in Brittany (Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, pp. 32-33). After carefully weighing all the evidence, Welsh-Ovcharov concludes that the “working association” between Vincent and Bernard began after Bernard’s return from his summer trip (ibid.).

Parents’ new home: Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, pp. 32-33: The house, located at 5, avenue Beaulieu, is described as a “commodious residence.” Bernard’s parents moved there in the early summer 1887, while Bernard was away in Brittany. A small, wooden studio: Bernard in, Van Gogh, Vincent, pp. 91-92. According to Welsh-Ovcharov, this atelier was built for Bernard by his “solicitous grandmother”—which makes sense given his father’s reported hostility to his artistic ambitions (Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, pp. 32-33). They exchanged enthusiasms: Bernard, “Vincent van Gogh,” n.p.: This can not only be inferred from subsequent developments, but it can also be distilled from Bernard’s soufflé accounts: “Later, when were already friends, he initiated me into all of his projects ... and how many of them he initiated!” Perhaps canvases: Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, p. 56: According to Rewald, Bernard claimed that on his first visit to the Van Gogh’s apartment on the rue Lepic, he and Van Gogh exchanged paintings “in commemoration of their first meeting.” Since the reference to “first meeting” is almost certainly a contrivance, there is good reason to suspect the reported exchange is as well.

May have painted together: Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 59: Apart from Bernard’s inflated and/or invented recollections, Welsh-Ovcharov identifies one piece of evidence to support some joint painting expeditions in Asnières in the late summer of 1887: a drawing by Bernard identified as ‘Vincent Peignant’ [Vincent painting].” According to Welsh-Ovcharov, “[it] seems to indicate a more likely identification of Vincent with a straw hat intently painting in plein air. The style of the drawing and the summer setting indicate an 1887 date and most likely represents Bernard’s own out of door atelier in Asnières” (ibid.). Bernard’s account of the two artists both painting portraits of Tanguy in the wooden atelier in Asnières (see ibid., p. 33) is highly suspect. In the sensation that followed Van Gogh’s death in 1890, his portrait of Tanguy and their association received tremendous attention in the Paris art world, turning the crotchety paint dealer into something of a celebrity. The portraits were quickly elevated to iconic status. The purpose of Bernard’s account was likely to associate himself more closely with this early example of Van Gogh’s cloisonnist, Japanese-influenced work, allowing him (Bernard) to claim that it was produced under his influence and before Van Gogh’s contact with Anquetin, Gauguin, or others. One or more of the portraits may indeed have been done around this time (fall, 1887), however, as Welsh-Ovcharov argues on the basis of JLB 574, October 1887 (ibid.).

Bernard also claimed that Van Gogh “began” a portrait of him in the Asnières studio, “but having quarreled with my father, who refused to go along with his advice concerning my future, he grew so angry that he abandoned my portrait and carried off, unfinished, that of Tanguy, flinging it still wet under his arm. Then he left without a backward glance and never set foot in our house again.” (Quoted in Van Gogh, Vincent, in Stein, ed., pp. 91-92.) Despite opportunities to complete the portrait of Bernard in the rue Lepic apartment, no such portrait has survived, nor is it mentioned, nor was it Van Gogh’s practice to paint portraits of artist friends—he preferred to exchange self-portraits. Nor has any evidence surfaced from the surviving portraits of Tanguy to support the careless handling Bernard describes. The reported incident between Van Gogh and Bernard’s father, like so many of Bernard’s stories, reeks of invention: the parallel to Van Gogh’s fights with his own father—stories known to Bernard by the time he wrote this account in 1911—and the convenient way it advances the narrative of Bernard as a rebel (like Van Gogh), make it deeply suspect.

Fraternal solidarity: Just as in his relations with Theo and Rappard, Vincent imagined an identity with Bernard that extended from physical ailments to spiritual aspirations, and included both flattering and unflattering traits. “[Bernard] sometimes crazy and mean,” he wrote from Arles in September 1888, “but I’m certainly not the one who has the right to blame him for that, because I know the same neurosis too much myself, and I know that he wouldn’t blame me either” (JLB 683, 9/18/1888). Vincent pushed on Bernard the books and art that he himself enjoyed, persuaded of the identity of their taste in all things. While he and Bernard were both still in Paris, Vincent wrote the younger man a letter: “I recommend that you read Tolstoy’s Les Légendes Russes, and I’ll also let you have the article on E. Delacroix that I’ve spoken to you about” (JLB 575, December 1887). As in his relationship with Rappard, he used the same patronizing, older-brother tone that he used with Theo: “I don’t think your portrait of yourself will be your last, or your best—although all in all it’s frightfully you” (ibid.). That tone can be heard from Arles in Vincent’s famous claim about his trips with Bernard and Anquetin to the shop of Siegfried Bing (a dealer in oriental art, especially Japanese prints): “I learned there myself, and I got Anquetin and Bernard to learn with me” (JLB 642, 7/15/1888). Inevitably, Vincent’s exaggerated sense of fraternal solidarity expressed itself in a plan for Bernard to come join him in Arles, just as he had wished for Theo to join him in Drenthe (JLB 587, 3/18/1888; JLB 578, 2/24/1888).

Tyrannical viscosity: Van Gogh’s belief in fraternal solidarity did not brook exceptions or laxity. Rewald reports a fight between the two artists over Bernard’s appreciation for the work of Odilon Redon, a symbolist—an appreciation Van Gogh did not share (Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, p. 61). Such disputes, of course, were hardly unusual among avant-garde artists. But rifts between “brothers” were unthinkable and intolerable. At a time when Van Gogh and Bernard were both still living in Paris, they fought so bitterly over pointillism (Van Gogh defending Signac) that Van Gogh felt compelled to write a letter to mend the break (JLB 575, December 1887). But, as in his relationships with Theo and Rappard, Vincent’s unshakeable belief in fraternal solidarity would not admit the possibility of a real difference of opinion. Instead, he could only assume that Bernard would eventually come around to his (Van Gogh’s) way of seeing, thus restoring the inevitable unity of their vision: “I persist in believing that—not because I gave you a piece of my mind,” he wrote, “but because it will become your own conviction” (ibid.).

These ideas belonged originally: Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism, p. 237: Welsh-Ovcharov cites Anquetin’s The Mower, dated to summer of 1887, as “the earliest datable example of Anquetin’s Cloisonist style.” In 1889, Anquetin exhibited the work under the title L’été (Summer). The reclusive Paul Cézanne: Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism, p. 290. In addition to Welsh-Ovcharov’s analysis that Bernard’s paintings from the winter of 1887-88 “evince a pictorial conception analogous to this one and equal indebtedness to Cézanne,” there is Van Gogh’s memory, in August 1888, of Bernard’s “unbridled admiration for Cézanne” (JLB 642, 7/15/1888). “An intruder in art”: Bernard, “Louis Anquetin, artiste-peintre,” p. 594. “What is the point”: House, in Homburg, ed., p. 168; emphasis added: In his famous review in March 1888, ”Aux XX et aux Indépendants—Le Cloisonnisme,” in La Revue Indépendante, Edouard Dujardin not only articulated the new movement in art, he also gave it a name: Cloisonnisme. In tracing the gestation of these ideas and images, it should be noted that Dujardin and Louis Anquetin were close friends throughout this period. “One should grasp”: John House, in Cornelia Homburg, Elizabeth C. Childs, John House, and Richard Thomson, Vincent van Gogh and the Painters of the Petit Boulevard. (St. Louis: Saint Louis Art Museum and Rizzoli, 2001), p. 168; emphasis added, March 1888, ”Aux XX et aux Indépendants—Le Cloisonnisme,” in La Revue Indépendante, Edouard Dujardin not only articulated the new movement in art, he also gave it a name: Cloisonnisme. In tracing the gestation of these ideas and images, it should be noted that Dujardin and Louis Anquetin were close friends throughout this period.

Van Gogh had seen neither: The contention here that Anquetin and Toulouse-Lautrec did not move into Van Gogh’s orbits until the fall of 1887 runs counter to the weight of the literature, especially in regard to Toulouse-Lautrec. Van Heugten suggests that the two artists (Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec) visited Le Mirliton together as early as December 1886, and proposes that Van Gogh “helped” Toulouse-Lautrec at “receptions” held at the infamous cabaret where Toulouse-Lautrec was a regular (Van Heugten, pp. 108 and 231). Welsh-Ovcharov puts the two artists together ”de temps en temps” during the same period, at Toulouse-Lautrec’s studio (Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 17). These statements depend on a single recollection by Suzanne Valadon, Toulouse-Lautrec’s model and mistress, of Van Gogh attending “weekly gatherings of artists” at Toulouse-Lautrec’s studio (Valadon, in Stein, ed., p. 87), a recollection that is undated (Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 35).

Valadon’s story likely dates to the fall-winter of 1887-88. If Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec had any associations during the winter of 1886-87, Bernard, who was close to Toulouse-Lautrec and Anquetin during the period, would have recalled them, which he did not. (The same applies to any relations between Van Gogh and Anquetin in the earlier period.) As for the dating of the “portrait” that Toulouse-Lautrec made of Van Gogh, it is a pure invention of Bernard’s that it was painted at Le Tambourin (see Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 60), a claim which, if true, would put Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec together in the early part of 1887. Bernard did not know Van Gogh in the winter, spring, or early summer of 1886-87 when Van Gogh’s drama with Segatori began and played itself out. Without Bernard’s testimony, the portrait is not specifically dateable. Welsh-Ovcharov notes that “problems exist in dating Toulouse-Lautrec’s oeuvre circa 1885-87” and advises that the question of Van Gogh’s “influence” on Toulouse-Lautrec’s portrait should be left open (Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 205). Coquiot claimed that Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec left Cormon’s studio together (Coquiot, p. 146), but the account of Hartrick, another Cormon student who attended the atelier with Toulouse-Lautrec in the 1886-87 season, states categorically, “I cannot remember seeing Toulouse-Lautrec in the company of Vincent” (Hartrick, p. 50).

Biographically, the earlier dating is inconsistent with Theo’s accounts of Vincent’s alienating behavior in Paris that winter and with the cool reactions of other artists, such as Signac and Angrand, toward Vincent’s occasional efforts to make connections with his fellow painters. Although the literature long adhered to the story that Vincent introduced Theo to artists like Toulouse-Lautrec (see Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, p. 67), it is far more likely that Theo developed a relationship with Toulouse-Lautrec before Vincent and purposefully did not bring his brother into it for many months. In May, just about the time Theo and Vincent were reconciling (temporarily), Toulouse-Lautrec left for Arcachon for the summer, so Theo could not have brought Vincent into their relationship until the fall. It seems far more likely that Bernard, who assiduously developed his relationships with both Toulouse-Lautrec and Anquetin, brought Toulouse-Lautrec and Vincent together for their brief association in the last months of 1887. Even then, they interacted only tangentially, at a remove: Toulouse-Lautrec as a satellite of Bernard’s; Vincent as a satellite of his brother.

Except in passing: BVG 461, 6/21/1887-9/22/1887: The implication is that Van Gogh saw Toulouse-Lautrec in or near his apartment building on the rue Lepic, where Portier dealt out of an apartment on the ground floor. The “I think” strongly suggests that the two artists did not have a conversation—an index to the intimacy of their relationship. Context: JLB 571, 7/17/1887-7/19/1887: “I saw Toulouse-Lautrec today, he’s sold a picture, through Portier I think.” Degas-like glimpses: Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 174: Welsh-Ovcharov refers to Toulouse-Lautrec at this time as “the best known Degasophile of all.” Lautrec’s proven saleability: Stolwijk and Thomson, p. 81: Van Gogh recorded in a letter to Charles Angrand that Theo had “a very fine de Gas” in his gallery as of October 1886. Stolwijk and Thomson comment that because the work does not appear in the stock books, it was probably on consignment (ibid., p. 107). Still, this would be evidence that (1) someone was interested in Toulouse-Lautrec’s work; and (2) Theo believed the transaction worthy of space in his gallery. Lautrec found reassurance: Stolwijk and Thomson, p. 137.

Other artists were drawn: Artists like Victor Vignon, another overlooked impressionist; Emile Schuffenecker, a late-starting ex-banker with a pretty, pastellist’s touch; and Auguste Lepère, an avant-garde printmaker. Vignon was a student of Corot (a staple of Theo’s regular business), who had exhibited with the Impressionists in the early 1880s. Indeed, the first “impressionist” painting that Theo purchased was one by Vignon.

Schuffenecker, like his friend Paul Gauguin, quit his job as a stockbroker after the market crash of 1882 and turned to art. He quickly made a mark, helping to found the Salon des Indépendants in 1884 and taking part in the eighth and final Impressionist Exhibition in 1886.

Lepère painted only sporadically in his career, choosing to focus instead on revolutionizing the art of printmaking. He contributed wood-engravings to magazines, but specialized in single-sheet woodcuts, thus elevating the status of engraving from a craft to an art, and of engravers from craftsmen to artists. Nevertheless, the Lepère work in the collection of the Van Gogh brothers was a painting, Montmartre in the Snow (n.d.) (illustrated in Stolwijk and Thomson, p. 163). Stolwijk and Thomson speculate that the painting was the result of an exchange for a painting of Van Gogh’s (ibid., p. 161).

Merely tolerated him: Hartrick, p. 46: “I think the French generally rather tolerated him on account of his brother Theodore’s position in Goupil’s.” The tendency of Paris artists to “tolerate” Vincent because of his connection to Theo, as reported by Hartrick, appears to have become more pronounced, not less, as the appearance of a “joint enterprise” between the two brothers became more substantial and credible. The exhibition that Vincent organized at the Restaurant du Chalet in November 1887 could only have reinforced that appearance. Guillaumin’s: Gray, p. 26: According to Gray, Guillaumin’s studio, at 13, quai d’Anjou (formerly Daubigny’s studio and next door to Paul Cézanne’s studio at no. 15) “had become a center for the younger group that was forming around Pissarro.” Of course, it was a volatile time for art, artists, and their relationships, so it is difficult to list exactly which artists were favoring Guillaumin’s studio at what time. By the last quarter of 1887, Guillaumin had married and lived with his wife at 19, rue Servandoni, near the church of Saint-Sulpice (ibid , p. 37). They seldom included him: Valadon, in Stein, ed., p. 87: “No one took notice [of his painting]. He sat across from it, surveying the glances, seldom joining in the conversation.”

Van Gogh “arrived carrying”: Valadon, in Stein, ed., p. 87: This is from the account of Suzanne Valadon, as told to Florent Pels in 1928. Valadon modeled for and lived with Toulouse-Lautrec at 7, rue Tourlacque (also 27, rue Coulaincourt; the building was on the corner), which was only a block from the Van Gogh brothers at 54, rue Lepic. “I remember Van Gogh coming to our weekly gatherings at Toulouse-Lautrec’s. He arrived carrying a heavy canvas under his arm, put it down in a corner but well in the light, and waited for us to pay some attention to it. No one took notice. He sat across from it, surveying the glances, seldom joining in the conversation. Then, tired, he would leave, carrying back his latest work. But the next week he would come back, commencing and recommencing with the same stratagem.” This forty-year-old, undated memory is the sole foundation for arguments common in the literature that Vincent and Toulouse-Lautrec had regular commerce and enjoyed a friendship (or at least collegiality) in the winter of 1886-87, thus its dating becomes important. Quite apart from the substance of Valadon’s account, which underscores Vincent’s alienation from Toulouse-Lautrec’s circle, not his intimacy with it (see Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, pp. 28-29), the scene she describes appears to date from the winter of 1887-88, not the earlier winter.

Here are the relevant dating parameters: Toulouse-Lautrec took his studio at 7, rue Tourlaque in the summer of 1886, after Vincent had left Cormon’s. Toulouse-Lautrec was absent from Paris in August and September 1886 (ibid.) and then returned to Cormon’s, where he met a new classmate, A.S. Hartrick. In his memoir, Hartrick says that he never saw Vincent with Toulouse-Lautrec (Hartrick, p. 50). Toulouse-Lautrec left Cormon’s late in 1886, but remained very close with his Cormon classmates Anquetin and Bernard. Without doubt, if Toulouse-Lautrec and Vincent had maintained any significant contact that winter, Bernard would have been involved, but Bernard did not enter the Van Gogh brothers’ circle until the fall of 1887, his own claims notwithstanding. If Gauzi is correct and Toulouse-Lautrec did not meet Valadon until early 1887 (see Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism, p. 334), then the “weekly gatherings” Valadon describes could not have begun until sometime thereafter (she remained at Toulouse-Lautrec’s for about two years). But Toulouse-Lautrec left Paris in May 1887, which leaves a window of only one or two months (March-April)—right at the peak of the turmoil in the Van Gogh brothers’ relationship—for Vincent’s visits to Toulouse-Lautrec’s studio as described by Valadon. It is inevitable that Toulouse-Lautrec, like Bernard and most other avant-garde artists in Paris, visited Le Tambourin tavern that winter, but there is no evidence from him that he saw or noticed Vincent’s works on the walls at Segatori’s notorious eatery. (If Valadon is correct and “no one took notice” of them in the studio, why would he?)

Dreaded his visits: Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, p. 35: “Guillaumin somewhat dreaded van Gogh’s visits as the Dutchman was always so excitable.” Rewald bases this on Coquiot’s detailed account.

“Entourage of artists”: BVG T3, 10/27/1888. This characterization comes from a letter Theo wrote to Vincent a year later (October 1888) when Vincent was in Arles anxiously awaiting the arrival of Paul Gauguin: “You can, if you wish, do something for me; that’s to continue as in the past and create for us a circle of artists and friends, something which I’m utterly incapable of doing by myself and which you, however, have more or less created since you’ve been in France” (JLB 713, 10/27/1888). Inevitably, this single sentence has inspired waves of conjecture about Vincent’s contribution to the contemporary art scene in Paris during his time there, even more so because hard evidence from the period is so scarce. Rewald is typical: “Indeed at Vincent’s insistence, Theo was able, during the winter of 1887-88, to buy works by younger artists whom he and Vincent wished to encourage. He was grateful to Vincent for having created for them both a circle of painters and new friends, admitting freely that he would have been unable to do so himself” (Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, p. 67).

Subsequent commentators like Welsh-Ovcharov and Stolwijk have demonstrated convincingly that (1) Vincent’s interactions with other painters in Paris were far more limited in time and scope than Theo suggests (Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 252) and (2) that Theo’s financial support of the brothers’ “circle of painters and new friends” was far more limited during the Paris period than Rewald infers (Stolwijk and Thomson). Even without these formidable rebuttals, Theo’s exhortation to Vincent could be readily dismissed as just another case of Theo, the peacemaker, putting family harmony, reassurance, and encouragement above factual accuracy. (Theo’s letter to Wil immediately after Vincent’s departure from Paris in February 1888 falls into the same category: “I have got to know many painters through him and he is very well thought of in their circles” [b0914 V/1962, “Gogh, Theo van” to “Gogh, Willemina van”, 2/24/1888].

The passage is probably most useful as an insight into how Theo mollified and encouraged Vincent during the brothers’ time together in Paris in the last months of 1887 and early 1888 when they briefly pursued their long-talked-about “joint enterprise” in relative harmony. Theo must have made special efforts to convince Vincent that his participation made a genuine contribution to the project and that the other artists were not merely humoring him to gain access to Theo and Goupil. The latter was, in fact, the truth—but a painful one to Vincent who always smarted over his dependence on his younger brother. Surely Theo’s claim that he was “absolutely incapable of doing [it] by my own self” is insupportable—as he proved when Vincent left Paris in February 1888 and Theo’s business with the very same vanguard artists, and others, flourished. Much of the brothers’ interaction during the post-Paris period can be seen as Theo trying to perpetuate the consoling fiction that he articulates here: that Vincent had played and would continue to play a crucial role in the success of Theo’s enterprise on the entresol. Context: BVG T3, 10/27/1888: “You may do something for me if you like—that is, go on as in the past, and create an entourage of artists and friends for us, something which I am absolutely incapable of doing by my own self, and which you have been able to do, more or less, since you came to France.” JLB 713, 10/27/1888: “You can, if you wish, do something for me; that’s to continue as in the past and create for us a circle of artists and friends, something which I’m utterly incapable of doing by myself and which you, however, have more or less created since you’ve been in France.”

He made introductions: Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 32. According to a later letter, Vincent and Theo visited Signac’s studio sometime in the winter of 1887-88, presumably after Signac’s return to Paris in November (JLB 585, 3/16/1888). Interestingly, Theo was not impressed and he did no business with Signac, which suggests that Vincent’s influence over his brother’s business decisions were limited. Wrote letters: The only letter to survive from this period is JLB 575, December 1887, which Vincent sent to Bernard while both were still staying in Paris, probably around the end of 1887 or beginning of 1888. (Presumably, Bernard had left on a brief trip.) Surely this is only the tip of the iceberg. Vincent did not hesitate to pick up a pen, whether in support, supplication, or complaint. The exhortatory (and self-justifying) tone of the letter to Bernard is undoubtedly typical: “Until then, do all you can to build yourself up, because you’ll need quite a bit of spirit. If you work hard that year, I believe that you may well succeed in having a fair stock of canvases, some of which we’ll try to sell for you, knowing that you’ll need pocket money to pay for models.” (JLB 575, December 1887.) Note how the letter also adopts the fraternal “we” that Vincent always used in letters to Theo when he wanted to emphasize their bond. The letters that Vincent showered on Theo and other members of the brothers’ circle as soon as he left Paris in February 1888 likely represent the emergence of a train from a long tunnel: surely he was “sharing” these instructions, insights, and encouragements throughout his stay in Paris, in both written and verbal form, whenever and wherever possible.

Dispensed relentless advice: It can be inferred from the substance and tone of the letters that Vincent wrote to Theo and others immediately before and after leaving Paris in February 1888. His departure did not mark the beginning of the inevitable campaign of persuasion, the campaign merely went from verbal to letter form. In JLB 575, December 1887, he presumes to tell Bernard how to manage his military service in a way that will safeguard both his “right to work” (“choose a garrison”) and his health (“You mustn’t arrive there too anaemic or too agitated”). “I don’t see it as a very great misfortune for you that you have to join the army,” he writes encouragingly, “but as a very grave ordeal, from which, if you emerge from it, you’ll emerge a very great artist” (ibid.). His letters to Theo, still in February, are full of advice on how to handle competing dealers like Reid (JLB 578, 2/24/1888), elaborate schemes for cornering the market for Monticellis (ibid.), and advice on handling his bosses (JLB 580, 2/27/1888). He also proposes to write fellow artists with money, like Russell, to encourage purchases or arrange favorable exchanges (JLB 582, 3/2/1888). He sends letters to fellow artists announcing his brother’s successes at Boussod & Valladon and listing celebrity visitors to the entresol (“Guy de Maupassant, among others, had been there, and said that from now on he would often revisit boulevard Montmartre” [JLB 628, 6/19/1888]). He sends Gauguin Russell’s address and Russell Gauguin’s address (JLB 583, 3/9/1888). He writes Bernard and Toulouse-Lautrec “because I solemnly promised to” (JLB 585, 3/16/1888) but sends the letters to Theo to forward—undoubtedly hoping that, if Theo delivers them, their recipients will be more likely to write him back. It seems all but certain that Vincent engaged in exactly the same kind of promotion of the brothers’ enterprise while in Paris.

Regular monthly stipends: Van Gogh apparently discussed his plan for a combination of artists—a “union” in which established, saleable artists would contribute the proceeds from some sales to a fund which would pay the expenses of lesser-known, unsalable artists (like himself)—while still in Paris. Bernard mentions Van Gogh’s plan in his memoirs, although it is not clear if he is referring to discussions in Paris or later letters (Bernard, Les Hommes d’Aujourd’hui, pp. 283-284). Van Gogh later wrote Gauguin that, while in Paris, he had discussed with other artists “the measures which should be taken to safeguard the livelihood of painters and the material they need for production (paint and canvas), and how the artists [can] be guaranteed a direct percentage of the price paid for their paintings when they [are] no longer in [his] possession” (JLB 700, 10/9/1888 or 10/10/1888; translated by Stolwijk, p. 44). “Set aside petty jealousies”: BVG B1, 9/22/1887-12/21/1887. Van Gogh wrote this to Bernard soon after the Du Chalet show (JLB 575, December 1887). Context: BVG B1, 9/22/1887-12/21/1887: “I shall be glad to do all I can to make a success of what we began in the café, but I think that the primary condition on which success depends is to set aside all petty jealousies, for only union is strength.” JLB 575, December 1887: “I’ll gladly do all I can to make a success of what was started in the dining-room, but I believe that the first condition for success is to put aside petty jealousies; it’s only unity that makes strength” “Unity and strength”: BVG B1, 9/22/1887-12/21/1887 and JLB 575, December 1887: Elements of both translations are used. Context: BVG B1, 9/22/1887-12/21/1887: “I shall be glad to do all I can to make a success of what we began in the café, but I think that the primary condition on which success depends is to set aside all petty jealousies, for only union is strength.” JLB 575, December 1887: “I’ll gladly do all I can to make a success of what was started in the dining-room, but I believe that the first condition for success is to put aside petty jealousies; it’s only unity that makes strength.” “Surely the common”: BVG B1, 9/22/1887-12/21/1887. Context: JLB 575, December 1887: “It’s well worth sacrificing selfishness, the ‘each man for himself’, in the common interest.”

Borrowing a coinage: Murray, pp. 130-131: Murray indicates that Toulouse-Lautrec “refer[red] to artists in terms of the avenues where they exhibited,” and that observation is supported by Rewald who quotes Théo van Rysselberghe’s account of inviting Toulouse-Lautrec to participate in the Vingt exhibition in Brussels in January 1890: “The idea of being represented … with some [painters] of the rue de Seize [where the Georges Petit galleries were located] and the rue Lafitte [Durand-Ruel] strikes him as very chic ... “ (Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, p. 319). While neither Murray nor Rewald claims for Toulouse-Lautrec first use, Van Gogh’s first recorded use of the terms “Petit Boulevard” and “Grand Boulevard” comes after he left Paris and in a context that suggests the terms were not original to him but in common usage: “[I] shouldn’t be surprised if Tersteeg took the view that we can’t do without the Grand Boulevard artists—and if he advised you to persuade them to take the initiative in an association by giving paintings that would become common property and cease to belong to them individually. It seems to me that the Petit Boulevard would be morally obliged to join in response to a proposal from that side” (JLB 584, 3/10/1888).

Later, Welsh-Ovcharov notes that Van Gogh sometimes confused the meaning of the term “petit boulevard,” again suggesting that he did not coin it (Welsh-Ovcharov, Van Gogh, p. 26, n. 5). The habit in the literature of attributing the term to Van Gogh is, like so many other miscues, traceable to Bernard’s later, inflated accounts.

A pastel portrait: This portrait, which is owned by the Van Gogh Foundation, is generally dated to the first quarter of 1887. There is no direct evidence, however, of any contact between Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec during this period, much less the intimacy of contact that would precipitate a portrait of this kind; and there is much circumstantial evidence to the contrary. The two former Cormon classmates do not appear to have had any consistent contact until Bernard, as intermediary, brought Toulouse-Lautrec back into Van Gogh’s orbit in the last quarter of 1887, and therefore this work must date from that period. The same is probably true of some of Van Gogh’s works that have been dated to early 1887, or even late 1886, on the basis of a perceived affinity with or proximity to Toulouse-Lautrec at that time. This would include Woman Sitting by a Cradle (F 369 JH 1206), Flowerpot with Chives (F 337 JH 1229), Still Life with Absinthe (F 339 JH 1238), and Still Life with Decanter and Lemons on a Plate (F 340 JH 1239), as well as many drawings.

A glass of absinthe: Still Life with Absinthe, F 339, JH 1239, Spring 1887, oil on canvas, 18.3 x 13 in., 46.5 x 33 cm., Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. This image appears to be a direct response to the portrait that Toulouse-Lautrec painted of Van Gogh. Van Gogh may even have intended to show the same scene from his point of view. For the same reasons Toulouse-Lautrec’s portrait appears to have been painted toward the end of 1887, not the beginning, this still-life appears to have been done around the same time. Van Tilborgh argues its similarities to the portrait of Agostina Segatori Van Gogh painted in early 1887 (Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Cafe du Tambourin [F 370 JH 1208]), and therefore its contemporaneity with that image; but neither the stylistic nor the pictorial elements seem closely related (Van Tilborgh, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, pp. 85-90). Still Life with Absinthe (F 339 JH 1238) is brushed in the combination of clear outlines, feathery strokes, and soft colors that distinguishes Toulouse-Lautrec’s pastel, while the figure in Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Cafe du Tambourin (F 370 JH 1208) is done in a heavier, more painterly manner. The subject in Still Life with Absinthe (F 339 JH 1238) is clearly absinthe, not the beer that Segatori is drinking in Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Cafe du Tambourin (F 370 JH 1208). While Van Gogh may have been trying to straddle genres with his portrait of Segatori as a female einzelgänger (p. 79), the connection of this modern type (an independent woman drinking alone at a bar) to the still life in Still Life with Absinthe (F 339 JH 1238), while interesting, is surely too tenuous to secure a dating, especially when weighed against the circumstantial evidence that Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec had no dealings in early 1887.

Monochrome canvases: Murray, p. 125: Anquetin invented the theory of “dominant color tones” in the summer of 1887 while staying at his family’s house in Etrepagny. His first work in this idiom (known variously as Été [Summer] and The Mower), which was dominantly yellow, was known to Van Gogh, as was Anquetin’s second known picture of this type, Avenue de Clichy: Soir, Cinq Heures (Avenue de Clichy: Five O’Clock in the Evening), depicting the sidewalk in front of a gas-lit butcher shop, which is dominantly blue. By general consensus, these works served as models for many of Van Gogh’s later monochromatic works in Provence: including his wheat field paintings predominantly in yellow (e.g., Wheat Fields with Reaper at Sunrise [F 618 JH 1773]) and, most famously, the Night Café (F 463 JH 1575) which is predominantly blue. Bernard later offered an explanation for how Anquetin came up with this innovative approach to color (which defied common wisdom about complementaries): “He had decided on it when, looking through the coloured panes of a glass door, he noticed the extraordinarily influential effect of one dominant tone on the rest, assimilating them to itself by association” (Bernard, “Louis Anquetin, artiste-peintre,” p. 595). Murray reports that the doors of the Anquetin house in Etrepagny did have panes of colored glass (“that were very popular in those days”), but Bernard’s narrative conveniently relates Anquetin’s theory to Bernard’s argument that the new art was based in part on the precedent of medieval stained-glass windows (Murray, p. 125). Therefore, this story may be an effort by Bernard to claim co-credit for the art that became known as Cloisonnism and/or subordinate Anquetin’s formalist theories to his own symbolist formulations.

A still life of apples: Still Life with Baskets of Apples, F 379 JH 1341, Autumn 1887-1888, oil on canvas, 18.1 x 21.7 in., 46 x 55 cm., The Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Sydney M. Shoenberg, Sr. Guillaumin introduced violent: Fénéon called Guillaumin “this furious colorist, this beautiful painter of landscapes gorged with sap” (Gray, p. 33). Van Gogh fired back: Italian Woman (Agostina Segatori), F 381 JH 1355, December 1887, oil on canvas, 31.9 x 23.6 in., 81 x 60 cm., Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Canvases of blazing color: Italian Woman (Agostina Segatori), F 381 JH 1355, December 1887, oil on canvas, 31.9 x 23.6 in., 81 x 60 cm., Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Still lifes of French novels: The paintings are Self-Portrait with Straw Hat (F 469 JH 1310) and Still Life: French Novels (F 358 JH 1612). The latter has, until recently, been dated to the last part of 1888, during Van Gogh’s stay in Arles. However, Hendriks argues persuasively that the later dating for Still Life: French Novels (F 358 JH 1612) is insupportable and the work should be redated to October-November 1887 (Hendriks, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, pp. 158-159). Indeed, Hendriks claims that Still Life: French Novels (F 358 JH 1612) precedes the larger work, Self-Portrait with Straw Hat (F 469 JH 1310), and was a study for it (Hendriks, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, p. 160). As to Cachin’s argument that both Signac and Van Gogh may have been working from a shared inspiration, namely Monet, the timing of these paintings, at the moment of Signac’s return to Paris and Theo’s new interest in his work, argues against such a explanation for their similarity. The greater likelihood is that Van Gogh wished to renew his relationship with Signac as a way of proving to Theo his value to their joint enterprise. After all, Signac was one of the few painters in this circle with whom Van Gogh could legitimately claim (in his own mind, at least) a prior relationship and therefore offer his brother an introduction. A third surviving painting of books Still Life with Three Books (F 335 JH 1226); currently dated to January-February 1887 [Hendriks, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, p. 10]) may have been an earlier shared image with Signac, which the later two images were meant to invoke; or it may simply be misdated and belong to the later group.

Restless pointillist brush: Hendriks mounts a substantial argument that the two paintings of Parisian novels are both forward-looking and backward looking—that they represent “a conflicting conception of the art of painting” (Hendriks, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, p. 158-160). In the earlier study (Still Life: French Novels [F 358 JH 1612]), she finds Bernard’s Cloissonist influence in the fact that Van Gogh “filled in quickly” the preparatory drawing, “painted broadly everywhere,” executed the background “evenly,” and “applied” the book covers separately (ibid., p. 159). Still Life: French Novels (F 358 JH 1612), she writes, “was more in agreement with Bernard’s recommendation to work ‘selon un système de teintes presque plates’ [according to a system of colors almost flat]” (ibid.),” and represents “an effort to produce an oil painting in the style of a Japanese print” (ibid., p. 160). The second, larger painting (Still Life with French Novels and a Rose [F 359 JH 1332]), in contrast, is elaborately finished, harking back clearly to the stippled paintings of the spring in Asnières and elsewhere. “For this version he chose a systematic scheme of small loose stripes and loose touches, complemented by hatching” (ibid.). Hendriks argues that Van Gogh “abandoned” the cloisonnist approach after the first of these two efforts, “perhaps overcome by fear about the execution of this new, revolutionary approach” (ibid.).

There are other ways to interpret the differences between these two contemporaneous renderings of the same motif, however. One is that the characteristics of Still Life: French Novels (F 358 JH 1612) that Hendriks isolates as cloisonnist (quick application, broad brush, flat areas of fill-in) could simply reflect the preparatory nature of the image. The other is that Van Gogh was following multiple examples, serving multiple masters. Indeed, there is evidence that Van Gogh and Bernard had a falling-out at the end of 1887 specifically over the value of Pointillism in general and Bernard’s hostility toward Signac in particular. (“I persist in believing that—not because I gave you a piece of my mind but because it will become your own conviction ... that Signac and the others who are doing pointillism often make very beautiful things with it” (JLB 575, December 1887). Thus, Van Gogh could have chosen to depict this motif in one way for Signac and fellow Pointillists like Pissarro, and in a very different way for Bernard.

He drafted ambitious manifestos: “Notes Synthétiques” (1885). “Spiritual, enigmatic”: “Notes Synthétiques” (1885). A new role model, Cézanne: Silverman, p. 18. He laid elaborate plans: According to the latest scholarship, Gauguin concocted a fake manuscript, purportedly by an eighteenth-century Turkish (or Persian [Druick and Zegers, p. 202]) scholar which confirmed all of Georges Seurat’s new theories. While acknowledging that the manuscript text “is surprisingly similar to Seurat’s artistic program,” Lövgren suggests, somewhat generously, “that the episode was a result of discussions of La Grande Jatte by the two painters” (Lövgren, p. 117). It appears more likely that the fabricated manuscript represents an effort by Gauguin (by no means his last) to expropriate another artist’s work by laying the groundwork for a claim of precedence. “A sailor’s art”: Camille Pissarro to Lucien Pissarro, 1/23/1887, quoted in Druick and Zegers, p. 70.

“Period of incubation”: Gauguin, in Stein, ed., p. 124: “You should know that I have never had the cerebral facility that others, without any trouble, find at the tip of their brushes. Those others get off the train, pick up their palette, and in no time at all set you down a sunlight effect. ... In every country, I need a period of incubation to learn each time the essence of the plants, the trees, of all of nature, in short—so varied and so capricious, never wanting to let itself be divined or revealed. So it was several weeks before I clearly sensed the sharp flavor of Arles and its environs.” At the time (on October 27, 1888), Gauguin wrote Theo to the same effect: “It will take me some time to get to know the character of the countryside and I do not count on doing any serious work for a month. Everything I paint between now and then will be in the nature of an exercise and trial” (Gauguin, Paul Gauguin: 45 lettres à Vincent, Théo et Jo van Gogh, p. 61). A month at least: Gauguin, Paul Gauguin: 45 lettres à Vincent, Théo et Jo van Gogh, pp. 61-65. “Learning the essence”: Gauguin, in Stein, ed., p. 124.

“Documents”: Druick and Zegers, p. 206. Synthesize into tableaux: Druick and Zegers, p. 206. “Those who wait”: BVG 553, 10/14/1888. The translation has been paraphrased. Context: BVG 553, 10/14/1888: “If I had worked more quietly, you can easily see that the mistral would have caught me again. If it is fine here you must take advantage of it, otherwise you would never do anything. JLB 704, 10/15/1888: “If I’d worked more calmly, you can see clearly that the mistral would have caught me out again. Ah, if the weather’s fine here you have to take advantage of it, otherwise you’d never do anything.”

Blocking in colors: Druick and Zegers, pp. 178-180. And fierce intent: BVG B16, 9/18/1888. Note that this is exactly the opposite of what Vincent tells Theo he is doing. Vincent’s descriptions of his work method to his brother emphasize the calculations that go into his work, while here, to Bernard, he emphasizes his spontaneity. To some extent, he is just telling both parties what they want to hear (Theo was concerned about Vincent’s expensive consumption of paint; Bernard, about the Symbolist mandate to remain open to the unconscious). The truth about Vincent’s artistic process lies somewhere between these two extremes of calculation and spontaneity. Context: JLB 684, 9/19/1888-9/25/1888: “Projects so often fall through, and the best calculations you make; while by taking advantage of chance, and working from day to day without bias, you do a whole lot of unforeseen things.” “Generally speaking”: Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, pp. 235-236.

“I never work from memory”: BVG B19, 10/7/1888: It is interesting to note that, as Gauguin’s arrival approached, Vincent’s defiance on this issue weakened. Only ten days after this absolute rejection—and less than a week before Gauguin’s appearance in Arles—Vincent writes Bernard: “Anyway, you’ll see it with the others, and we’ll talk about it. Because I often don’t know what I’m doing, working almost like a sleepwalker” (JLB 706, 10/17/1888). By describing his working method in terms of an altered state of dream-like consciousness, Vincent is clearly trying to close the gap, in practice, between his devotion to nature and Gauguin’s call to pure imagination. The claim is impossible to reconcile in any meaningful way with Vincent’s many protests to Theo about the numerous “calculations” that go into his work. Context: BVG B19, 10/7/1888: “I won’t sign this study, for I never work from memory. There is some colour in it which will please you, but once again, I have painted a study for you which I should have preferred not to paint.” JLB 698, 10/5/1888: “But I don’t want to sign this study, because I never work from memory—there will be colour in it, which will suit you, but to repeat, here I’m doing a study for you that I would prefer not to do.” “My attention”: BVG B19, 10/7/1888. Context: BVG B19, 10/7/1888: “I don’t mean I won’t do it after another ten years of painting studies, but, to tell the honest truth, my attention is so fixed on what is possible and really exists that I hardly have the desire or the courage to strive for the ideal as it might result from my abstract studies.” JLB 698, 10/5/1888: “Later, after another ten years of studies, all right, but in very truth I have so much curiosity for what’s possible and what really exists that I have so little desire or courage to search for the ideal, in so far as it could result from my abstract studies.” (Emphasis in original.)

The first Sunday of November: BVG 559, 11/6/1888: This would have been Sunday, November 4, 1888. Context: JLB 717, 11/3/1888: “But if only you’d been with us on Sunday! We saw a red vineyard, completely red like red wine. In the distance it became yellow, and then a green sky with a sun, fields violet and sparkling yellow here and there after the rain in which the setting sun was reflected.” Vineyards: BVG 537, 9/16/1888: In September, Van Gogh wrote about a previous walk in the vineyards. This was apparently preparatory to the “campaign” of paintings of the grape harvest that he anticipated in July: “The wheatfields—that has been an opportunity to work, like the orchards in blossom. And I only just have time to prepare myself for the new campaign, the one on the vineyards” (JLB 631, 6/25/1888). By early October, he apparently had launched the campaign: “I have an extraordinary fever for work these days, at present I’m grappling with a landscape with blue sky above an immense green, purple, yellow vine with black and orange shoots. Little figures of ladies with red sunshades, little figures of grape-pickers with their cart further liven it up” (JLB 695, 10/3/1888). “If you saw the vineyards! There are bunches weighing a kilo, even—the grape is magnificent this year, from the fine autumn days coming at the end of a summer that left much to be desired” (JLB 702, 10/10/1888 or 10/11/1888, emphasis in original). Despite this excitement, all that remains of the campaign, if there was one, is a single canvas, The Green Vineyard (F 475 JH 1595), painted in September. Context: BVG 537, 9/16/1888: “I went for a splendid walk by myself today among the vineyards.” JLB 681, 9/16/1888: “I took a magnificent walk by myself in the vineyards today.” “Gauguin gives me the courage”: BVG 562, 11/16/1888. Context: BVG 562, 11/16/1888:” Gauguin gives me the courage to imagine things, and certainly things from the imagination take on a more mysterious character.” JLB 719, 11/11/1888 or 11/12/1888:” Gauguin gives me courage to imagine, and the things of the imagination do indeed take on a more mysterious character.”

Constructed their competing visions: Van Gogh’s painting is The Red Vineyard (F 495 JH 1626); Gauguin’s painting acquired two names as the artist’s ambitions for the work morphed and swelled. In a letter to Theo from November 1888, he referred to it with this descriptive phrase: “La Vendange ou La Pauvresse” (The Grape Harvest or The Pauperess) (W 317) (Paul Gauguin to Theo van Gogh, letter 183, c. 11/22/1888, in Merlhès, Correspondence de Paul Gauguin: Documents, témoignages, p. 288). For the painting’s first exhibition at Café Volpini in 1889, he entitled it Misères humaines (Human Miseries) (W 317), which has remained its most commonly used title. (See Welsh-Ovcharov, pp. 190-191.) A single worker: Druick and Zegers thoroughly explore the iconography of this figure, proposing everything from Dürer’s ”Melancholia I” to Millet’s peasants to Van Gogh’s own “Sorrow” (Druick and Zegers, pp. 191-194).

Doleful: Paul Gauguin to Émile Schuffenecker, l. 193, 12/20/1888, in Merlhès, Correspondence de Paul Gauguin: Documents, témoignages, p. 306: The phrase is Gauguin’s, but his explanation to Schuffenecker sheds no real light on why she is desolate: “Have you noticed a desolate women in The Grape Harvest [W 317]? She is not by nature lacking in intelligence, charm or any of nature’s gifts. She is a woman. Her chin resting on her hands, she has few thoughts in her mind but feels consoled on this land (nothing but the land) drenched in sunlight by the sun’s red triangle. And a woman in black is passing by, looking at her like a sister.” Somewhat sheepishly, it seems, he adds, “Explanation in painting does not mean description.” Druick and Zegers see Van Gogh’s influence in this explication, but its abstruseness is perfectly consistent with Gauguin’s symbolist language elsewhere (Druick and Zegers, pp. 193-194). Pickvance translates the first sentence of the same letter more expansively: “Do you notice in the Vintage a poor disconsolate being,” and adds a quote from a letter Gauguin wrote to Theo, in which he referred to the central figure as “a poor woman totally bewitched” (Pickvance, p. 205). This relates to the alternate title he gave the work: Grape Harvest, or the Poor Woman. Pickvance goes on to speculate, on the basis of previous and subsequent works, that Gauguin “may have wanted an image of death, or a notion of perpetual labor or of sexual indiscretion” (ibid., p. 206). Mathews suggests intriguingly that the dolorous figure in The Grape Harvest may have been a depiction of Gauguin’s host: “a conscious or unconscious reference to the misery that resulted from Van Gogh’s [unreturned] love for Gauguin” (Mathews, p. 135).

“Very fine”: BVG 559, 11/6/1888. Context: BVG 559, 11/6/1888: “Just now he has in hand some women in a vineyard, altogether from memory, but if he does not spoil it or leave it unfinished it will be very fine and very unusual.” JLB 717, 11/3/1888: “At the moment he’s working on some women in a vineyard, entirely from memory, but if he doesn’t spoil it or leave it there unfinished it will be very fine and very strange.” “Things from the imagination”: BVG 562, 11/16/1888: An adverb in Bonger’s translation has been re-positioned. Context: BVG 562, 11/16/1888: “Gauguin gives me the courage to imagine things, and certainly things from the imagination take on a more mysterious character.” JLB 719, 11/11/1888 or 11/12/1888: “Gauguin gives me courage to imagine, and the things of the imagination do indeed take on a more mysterious character.”

The parsonage garden: BVG 562, 11/16/1888: The painting is Memory of the Garden at Etten (F 496 JH 1630). Druick and Zegers and others retitle the work A Memory in the Garden (Etten and Nuenen), drawing in Vincent’s later stay in the Nuenen parsonage because, Druick and Zegers say, the painting “evokes the plots of land connected to the parsonages at both Etten and Nuenen, where the Van Gogh family lived successively from 1875 until the reverend’s death in 1885” (Druick and Zegers, p. 200). Vincent does later refer to the painting as “that thing I did of the garden at Nuenen,” but we think this is a slip, and not a Freudian one (JLB 723, 12/1/1888). An association with Nuenen runs counter both to the spirit of the painting and to Vincent’s explicit designation of the work at the time of its creation as “[a] reminiscence of our garden at Etten” (JLB 719, 11/11/1888 or 11/12/1888). The two parsonages had completely different emotional significances for Vincent and to conflate them would be to elevate Vincent’s later error to biographical and/or art-historical significance. Vincent had done some of his first surviving drawings from nature in the Etten parsonage garden, he had sketched there with Anton van Rappard (ibid.), and he had sat in the garden under the pergola that his brother Cor built there, a scene that he depicted with tender care in an early drawing (Garden with Arbor [F 902 JH 09]). In 1876, Vincent’s father wrote Theo (and, at this early juncture, probably Vincent, too) about the “gorgeous” Etten garden (b2753 V/1982, “Gogh, Theodorus en Anna C. van” to “Gogh, Theo van”, 6/17/1876): “We are looking forward to sitting in the garden with you, that hut is so nice and useful for those who easily catch something, and outside, one has a nice view of the trees” (b2758 V/1982, “Gogh-Carbentus, Anna C. van” to “Gogh, Theo van”, 7/6/1876). Context: JLB 719, 11/11/1888 or 11/12/1888: “I’ve been working on two canvases. A reminiscence of our garden at Etten with cabbages, cypresses, dahlias and figures.” “Let us suppose”: BVG W9, 11/16/1888. Context: BVG W9, 11/16/1888: “All the same, let us suppose that the two ladies out for a walk are you and our mother; …” JLB 720, 11/12/1888: “In the same way, let’s suppose that these two women walking are you and our mother.” A dark hood: BVG W9, 11/16/1888. In his early description of the image to Wil, Vincent says only this about the clothing on the figure of his mother: “The old one has a blue-violet shawl, almost black.” At some later point, Vincent added dashes of blue and red to the “almost black” shawl that shrouds the figure. Context: JLB 720, 11/12/1888: “The younger of the two women walking is wearing a Scottish shawl with green and orange checks and carrying a red parasol. The old one has a blue-violet shawl, almost black. But a bunch of dahlias, some lemon yellow, others variegated pink and white, explode against this sombre figure.”

Multicolored flowers: BVG W9, 11/16/1888: Vincent describes the assortment of blossoms depicted in A Memory of the Garden at some length to Wil, who obviously shared his (and his mother’s) love of flowers. Context: JLB 720, 11/12/1888: “But a bunch of dahlias, some lemon yellow, others variegated pink and white, explode against this sombre figure. Behind them a few emerald-green cedar or cypress bushes. Behind these cypresses one catches a glimpse of a bed of pale green and red cabbages, surrounded by a border of little white flowers. The sandy path is a raw orange, the foliage of two beds of scarlet geraniums is very green. Finally, in the middle ground is a maidservant dressed in blue who’s arranging plants with a profusion of white, pink, yellow and vermilion-red flowers.” From the muted tonalities: Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, pp. 233-234: “It is true that from that time [Gauguin’s arrival] on Vincent changed his palette, yet he did so in order to achieve softer harmonies ... van Gogh became more intent on mellower sonorities.”

Unable to achieve: BVG 560, 12/4/1888. By Van Gogh’s own admission: “I feel that habit is also necessary for works of the imagination,” he wrote in early December, obviously discouraged in his efforts thus far in creating de tête images (JLB 723, 12/1/1888). Context: JLB 723, 12/1/1888: “Only I’ve spoiled that thing I did of the garden at Nuenen and I feel that habit is also necessary for works of the imagination.” He returned to the canvas: Druick and Zegers, p. 203: According to Druick and Zegers, “Microscopic examination reveals that in an earlier state, the painting corresponded more closely to a letter sketch sent to Wil [JLB 720, 11/12/1888]: the older woman’s silhouette was slimmer and her wrist exposed, the younger woman’s shoulder lower and her head and coiffure smaller, the edge of the umbrella rounded, the servant’s hips wider, the foreground flowers sparser, the sunflowers simple orbs, the older woman’s shawl and the servant’s dress modeled without stippling. ... The dots of paint—possibly applied directly from the tubes—in fact evoke the time-consuming pointillist procedure that Van Gogh had rejected as insufficiently expressive.” Announced an insurgency: Roskill, p. 147: Roskill comments: “At the time of his stay with van Gogh, the use of ‘little dots’ by Seurat’s followers was absolute anathema to Gauguin. So there was obviously an element of resistance to Gauguin’s judgment in the expedient which van Gogh adopted here [i.e., in Memory in the Garden]. And this in turn is probably the reason why, in his late-life memoir, Gauguin unkindly and quite unjustly charged van Gogh with having been ‘immersed in the neo-impressionist school’ at the time of his own arrival at Arles.” Van Gogh’s assessment in early December that his stippling revisions “spoiled that thing I did of the garden at Nuenen,” may reflect Gauguin’s judgment more than his own (JLB 723, 12/1/1888).

“In spite of himself”: BVG 563, 11/23/1888. Druick and Zegers comment astutely on this passage in JLB 721 from late November “the way [Van Gogh] characterized his move in a new direction is revealing ... The double ‘in spite of’ and the qualified ‘more or less’ speak volumes about his resistance to Gauguin’s suggestions and about the attendant arguments to which he obliquely alluded in the rest of the letter” (Druick and Zegers, p. 206). Context: BVG 563, 11/23/1888: “Gauguin, in spite of himself and in spite of me, has more or less proved to me that it is time I was varying my work a little. I am beginning to compose from memory, and all my studies will still be useful for that sort of work, recalling to me things I have seen.” JLB 721, 11/19/1888: “Gauguin, in spite of himself and in spite of me, has proved to me a little that it was time for me to vary things a bit—I’m beginning to compose from memory, and all my studies will still be useful to me for that work, as they remind me of former things I’ve seen.”

Notes for the Plates

I found Signac very quiet: BVG 581, 3/24/1889 | JLB 752, 3/24/1889. Gachet has a Guillaumin: BVG 638, 6/3/1890 | JLB 877, 6/3/1890. What you say of Guillaumin: BVG 611, 10/25/1889 | JLB 815, 10/25/1889. That inexpressible quality: BVG B14, 8/4/1888 | JLB 655, 8/5/1888. I saw Bernard’s still life: BVG 478, 4/21/1888 | JLB 600, 4/20/1888. You should know: BVG 560, 12/4/1888 | JLB 723, 12/1/1888. Now I’ve just received: BVG 545, 10/7/1888 | JLB 697, 10/4/1888 or 10/5/1888. The Gauguin is more studied: BVG 545, 10/7/1888 | JLB 697, 10/4/1888 or 10/5/1888. I wrote to Gauguin: BVG 545, 10/7/1888 | JLB 697, 10/4/1888 or 10/5/1888. De Lautrec has an excellent portrait: BVG T29, 3/29/1890 | JLB 858, 3/19/1890. The Lautrecs have just arrived: BVG 505, 7/8/1888 | JLB 637, 7/8/1888 or 7/9/1888. Gauguin is a truly great master: BVG 545, 10/7/1888 | JLB 697, 10/4/1888 or 10/5/1888. Theo once bought: BVG W5, 7/31/1888 | JLB 653, 7/31/1888. At the moment: BVG 559, 11/6/1888 | JLB 717, 11/3/1888. I owe a great deal: BVG 626a, 2/10/1890-2/11/1890 | JLB 853, 2/9/1890 or 2/10/1890.