Notes: The Downtrodden

Notes for the Text

Visiting minister from Lyon: According to JBL, the visiting preacher that Sunday (February 17) was a Monsieur Dussauze, the minister at Sens, a community not near Lyons, as Van Gogh has it, but about 60 miles southeast of Paris (JLB 141, 2/19/1878; n. 13). He was a representative of the Société Évangélique de France. Already the most militant: Inwood, pp. 680-681: After the Revolution of 1848, the city had been in the forefront of the “Christian Socialism” movement; in 1869, female workers in the city’s silk industry went on strike—an unprecedented audacity; and of course the city had enjoyed a short-lived Commune in 1870 when workers’ debts were canceled and pawnshops emptied.

“Stories from the lives”: BVG 119, 2/18/1878. Context: BVG 119, 2/18/1878: “His sermon was mainly stories from the lives of the working people in the factories, and though he was not particularly eloquent and one could even hear that he spoke with some difficulty and effort, his words were still effective because they came from the heart—only such are powerful enough to touch other hearts.” JLB 141, 2/18/1878-2/19/1878: “His sermon consisted mainly of stories from the lives of factory workers there, and although he wasn’t especially eloquent as far as ease of expression goes, and though one even noticed how difficult it was for him and a little awkward, as it were, his words were moving nonetheless, because they came from the heart, and that alone has the power to make an impression on other hearts.” “One could hear”: BVG 119, 2/18/1878. JLB suggest that the preacher was a Monsieur Dussauze: “On Sunday, 17 February at 10 a.m., Monsieur Dussauze, minister at Sens and a representative of the Société Évangélique de France, preached the sermon in the Eglise Wallonne, in the place of the Rev. Gagnebin. Van Gogh says that this minister came ‘from the vicinity of Lyon’, but Sens is less than 100 km southeast of Paris. This Mission Évangélique is recorded in the sermon rota. See Godsdienstoefeningen 1742-1886.” (JLB 141 2/18/1878, n. 13.) Context: BVG 119, 2/18/1878: “His sermon was mainly stories from the lives of the working people in the factories, and though he was not particularly eloquent and one could even hear that he spoke with some difficulty and effort, his words were still effective because they came from the heart—only such are powerful enough to touch other hearts.” JLB 141, 2/18/1878-2/19/1878: “His sermon consisted mainly of stories from the lives of factory workers there, and although he wasn’t especially eloquent as far as ease of expression goes, and though one even noticed how difficult it was for him and a little awkward, as it were, his words were moving nonetheless, because they came from the heart, and that alone has the power to make an impression on other hearts.”

“A real Christian”: BVG 94, 4/30/1877. Context: BVG 94, 4/30/1877: “I hope and believe I will not repent my choosing to try to become a real Christian and a Christian worker.” JLB 113, 4/30/1877: “It is, I believe and trust, a choice not to be repented of, which I’ve made in an attempt to become a Christian and a Christian labourer.” “Good works”: BVG 120, 3/3/1878. Van Gogh began to repeat the word “work” with mantric frequency. As here, he transformed paintings and books from objects into “works”—acts of generosity, acts of spirituality, acts of love—no different than the evangelical works of the Lyons preacher among the poor. “[T]hat which is done with love is well done,” he argued. “If one is moved by some book or other, ... it’s because it’s written from the heart in simplicity and with poverty of spirit” (JLB 143, 4/3/1878, emphasis added). Context: BVG 120, 3/3/1878: “Speaking of good works, would you like to have a Flemish Imitation of Christ?” JLB 142, 3/3/1878: “Speaking of a good work, would you care to have a Flemish Imitation of Christ?” “Better to say”: BVG 121, 4/3/1878. Context: BVG 121, 4/3/1878: “Better to say but a few words, but filled with meaning, than to say many that are but idle sounds and as easy to utter as they are useless.” JLB 143, 4/3/1878: “If one were to say but few words, though ones with meaning, one would do better than to say many that were only empty sounds, and just as easy to utter as they were of little use.”

“Mendes”: Mendes da Costa, in Stein, ed., p. 44. “Natural wisdom”: JLB 143, 4/3/18787: “… it is good to be very knowledgeable about the things that are hidden from the wise and prudent of the world but that are revealed as though by nature to the poor and simple, to women and babes. For what can one learn that is better than that which God has put by nature into every human soul, that which in the depths of every soul lives and loves, hopes and believes, unless one should willfully destroy it?” Also, for the first time on record, Van Gogh disparaged the sermons that had been his staple for almost a year. “In the country one would probably have been able to hear a lark,” he observed caustically, “but that’s difficult in the city, unless one notices the sounds of the lark’s song in the voice of some old minister whose words come from a heart tuned like a lark’s” (JLB 142, 3/3/1878). This comment could be read another way. Van Gogh may be acknowledging the possibility that good messages (the lark’s voice) can be heard occasionally in the sermons he is listening to. However, the gist of the comment is still that most of these sermons do not rise to that standard. “Laborers, your life”: BVG 121, 4/3/1878. Van Gogh quoted much of this from Emile Souvestre’s Les Derniers Bretons: “O laboureurs! vous menez une vie dure dans le monde ... O laboureurs! vous souffrez dans la vie; laboureurs, vous êtes bien heureux! ... frères la vie est triste.” (Souvestre, p. 277.) (Emile Souvestre [1806-1854; French writer]) Context: BVG 121, 4/3/1878: “Those who merit the words: ‘Laboureurs, votre vie est triste, laboureurs, vous souffrez dans la vie, laboureurs, vous êtes bien-heureaux,’ [Labourers, your life is bleak, labourers, your life is full of suffering, labourers, you are blessed.] It is they who bear the marks of ‘toute une vie de lutte et de travail soutenu sans flêchir jamais.’ [a whole life of struggle and labour borne unflinchingly] It is right to try to become like that.” JLB 143, 4/3/1878: “For who are they, those in whom one most clearly notices something higher?—it is those to whom the words ‘workers, your life is sad, workers, you suffer in life, workers, you are blessed’ are applicable, it is those who show the signs of ‘bearing a whole life of strife and work without giving way’. It is good to try and become thus.”

“Picturesque”: BVG 102, 7/15/1877. Even the reference to “workers’ houses” appears to refer to the picturesqueness of the houses, not to the lives of the people inside them (JLB 122, 7/15/1877). Context: BVG 102, 7/15/1877: “It is full of windmills and sawmills, workmen’s cottages with little gardens, also old houses, everything; it is very populous, and the quarter is cut up by many small canals and waterways full of boats and all kinds of picturesque bridges, etc.” JLB 122, 7/15/1877: “There are a great many mills, saw-mills, workers’ houses with little gardens, old houses too, of all kinds, and very populous, and the area is criss-crossed by all kinds of small canals and waterways full of barges, and all kinds of picturesque bridges and so on.” “It is right”: BVG 121, 4/3/1878; emphasis added. Context: JLB 143, 4/3/1878: “ It is good to try and become thus.” Worst labor unrest: Secrétan-Rollier, Van Gogh chez les gueules noires, p. 52: “To sum up, van Gogh arrives in the heart of a population crushed by poverty, wretchedness and humiliation and ready to revolt.” Borinage had spearheaded: Piérard, The Tragic Life of Vincent van Gogh, p. 42: “The Borin district was then, and is still to-day, one of the most socialistic places in the whole country.” This is confirmed by Eugenia Herbert, who notes that “Belgium was, next to England, the most highly industrialized nation in Europe,” and conditions “were worse in Belgium than elsewhere because of the surplus labor force and the exigencies of foreign competition” (Herbert, pp. 9-10). As a result, Belgium had experienced “a steady history of class conflict, especially in the coal mines and metallurgical enterprises” (ibid., p. 9).

“Like blue-veined marble”: Zola, p. 121. Life expectancy averaged forty-five years: Secrétan-Rollier, Van Gogh chez les gueules noires, p. 72: “Pollution and silicosis reduce[d] a miner’s life expectancy to 40 or 50 years.” “Nobody had yet”: Zola, p. 93. “As though they”: Secrétan-Rollier, Van Gogh chez les gueules noires, p. 42. “Vast, dismal human herd”: Secrétan-Rollier, Van Gogh chez les gueules noires, p. 34. Toward the ominous beacons: Zola, pp. 135-136. Fantastical metal scaffolding: Secrétan-Rollier, Van Gogh chez les gueules noires, pp. 17, 18. Great turning wheel: Secrétan-Rollier, Van Gogh chez les gueules noires, p. 72. Incessant ringing of bells: Secrétan-Rollier, Van Gogh chez les gueules noires, pp. 17-18. Moat of cinder: Zola, pp. 78-79. Stinking gas: Secrétan-Rollier, Van Gogh chez les gueules noires, p. 72. “Like some evil beast”: Zola, p. 28.

Hundreds of broken workers: Piérard, The Tragic Life of Vincent van Gogh, p. 44: “A little later at La Boule, at Quaregnon, there were many hundreds killed.” “There have been”: BVG 129, 4/1/1879. Context: BVG 129, April 1879: “Since that time there have been many cases of typhoid and malignant fever, of what they call la sotte fièvre, which gives them bad dreams like nightmares and makes them delirious.” JLB 151, 4/1/1879-4/16/1879: “But since then there have been quite a few cases of typhus and virulent fever, including what is known as ‘foolish fever’, which causes one to have bad dreams such as nightmares and delirium.” “In one house”: Ibid.

Les Cours de dessin: BVG 136, 9/24/1880. Van Gogh references Cours de dessin by Charles Bargue multiple times in his letters. According to JLB, Cours de dessin was primarily known as “a series of drawing examples published by Goupil & Cie as loose leaves” (JLB 136, 12/3/1877-12/4/1877; n. 22). It was also a drawing course (JLB 157, 9/7/1880; n. 9). Bargue’s publication was broken into two volumes: Modèles d’après la bosse and Modèles d’après les maîtres (JLB 136, 12/3/1877-12/4/1877). More than two years earlier, Van Gogh referred already to having “a sheet from Bargue’s Cours de dessin (the drawing examples), 1st part, No. 39, Anne of Brittany” hanging in his room (JLB 136, 12/3/1877-12/4/1877). Context: JLB 158, 9/24/1880: “I’m still working on Bargue’s Cours de dessin, and plan to finish it before undertaking anything else, since day by day it exercises and strengthens both my hand and my mind, and I wouldn’t be able to feel sufficiently indebted to Mr. Tersteeg for having so generously lent them to me. These models are excellent.” “From nature”: BVG 553b, 10/2/1888. Eight years later, Van Gogh wrote a friend that “in short, it was in the Borinage that I began to work from nature for the first time”(JLB 693, 10/2/1888). Context: BVG 553b, 10/2/1888: “As a matter of fact it was in the Borinage that I first started to work from nature.” JLB 693, 10/2/1888: “In short, it was in the Borinage that I began to work from nature for the first time.”

“I could not keep”: BVG 135, 9/7/1880: Van Gogh reported finishing this drawing after his first completion of the Exercices au fusain, but before finishing the last two parts of the Cours de dessin. Context: BVG 135, 9/7/1880: “Yet I could not keep from sketching in a rather large size the drawing of the miners going to the shaft which I sent you a hasty sketch of, though I changed the placement of the figures a little.” JLB 157, 9/7/1880: “However, I couldn’t help sketching, in fairly large dimensions, the drawing of the miners going to the pit, of which I sent you the croquis, changing the arrangement of the figures slightly.”

“Soul”: BVG 117, 1/9/1878. As already noted, Van Gogh opposes his concept of “soul” to the more conventional concept of “beauty” in art: “I would much rather see an ugly woman by Israëls or Millet or a little old woman by E. Frère, for what does a beautiful body such as Phryné’s really matter? Animals have that too, perhaps more so than people, but animals don’t have a soul like the one that animates the people painted by Israëls or Millet or Frère.” (JLB 139, 1/9/1878-1/10/1878.) Context: BVG 117, 1/9/1878: “Animals have it too, perhaps even more than men; but the soul, as it lives in the people painted by Israëls or Millet or Frère, that is what animals never have.” JLB 139, 1/9/1878-1/10/1878: “Animals have that too, perhaps more so than people, but animals don’t have a soul like the one that animates the people painted by Israëls or Millet or Frère …” “Richer in spirit”: BVG 117, 1/9/1878. Context: BVG 117, 1/9/1878: “Is not life given us to become richer in spirit, even though the outward appearance may suffer?” JLB 139, 1/9/1878-1/10/1878: “… hasn’t life been given to us to become rich in our hearts, even if our appearance suffers from it?” “More beautiful”: Ibid.

One in four: Van der Heijden, pp. 108-109: Van der Heijden puts the figure at twenty-six percent. He also makes a convincing argument from the data that many of the approximately 440 weavers registered in Nuenen in the 1880s were only part-timers who worked other jobs. “Most of the weavers only did that work for part of the year, often supplemented by a modest farm (or perhaps vice versa). The farmer-weaver combination was the most common, but certainly not the only one” (ibid.). Van Uitert concurs: “For most of the 430 weavers that Nuenen numbered in 1884 linen weaving brought in only part of their income.” (Van Uitert, pp. 146-147.) Van der Heijden’s data stands in contrast to the arguments of Pollock and others that the weavers of Nuenen “were not artisans, living off their plots of land and weaving for themselves or for local use. They were not part-time weavers, weaving in winter and landworking in summer. They were sweated labour, outworkers for local factories.” (Pollock, “Labour—Modern and Rural,” pp. 35-36.)

The effort to make Van Gogh into a champion of the downtrodden has produced an overemphasis on his weaver images as icons of the cruelties of nineteenth-century capitalism. The only real basis in the record for these claims is one letter that Van Gogh wrote in which he detailed the economic plight of the weavers: “A weaver who works hard makes a piece of 60 ells, say, in a week. While he weaves, a woman has to spool for him; that is winding yarn on to the bobbins—so there are two who are working and have to live on it. On that piece he makes a net profit of, say, 4.50 guilders in that week—and nowadays when he takes it to the manufacturer he’s often told that he can only bring a new piece in a week or a fortnight’s time. So not only wages low, but work fairly scarce.” (JLB 479, 1/23/1885.) But this letter was written in January 1885, more than a year after Van Gogh arrived in Nuenen and at least five months after the weavers were no longer a primary subject for his art. It’s detailed accounting—completely lacking in indignation—was almost certainly calculated to make Theo feel guilty about a job offer he had recently received paying 1,000 francs a month, not to draw attention to the plight of the weavers. Van Gogh’s intimate knowledge may have been the result of his close association at the time with the peasant family of Gordina (Dien, Sien) de Groot (1855-1927; Van Gogh’s lover in Nuenen).

Monstrous black looms: BVG R44, 3/10/1884-3/20/1884. Context: JLB 437, 3/13/1884: “I drew the figure in after all—but I don’t want to say anything with it except: ‘when that black monster of begrimed oak with all its slats somehow shows up like this against the greyness in which it stands, then there, in the centre of it, sits a black ape or goblin or apparition, and clatters with those slats from early till late.’” (Emphasis in original.) Tumbledown cottages: De Brouwer, Van Gogh en Nuenen, p. 110: According to De Brouwer, one of Van Gogh’s weaver-models, Toon Swinkels “lived in a small tumbledown house at the current Berg [a part of the village of Nuenen south of the parsonage].” Wives and children: Van Heugten, p. 66. Van Gogh reports, “While [the weaver] weaves, a woman has to spool for him; that is winding yarn on to the bobbins—so there are two who are working and have to live on it” (JLB 479, 1/23/1885; emphasis in original).

Isolated from him: De Brouwer, Van Gogh en Nuenen, p. 110: The few available eyewitness accounts of Van Gogh’s time with the weavers indicate that he did not socialize with them—at least not at this time. Indeed, he seems to have avoided doing so. De Brouwer records the recollections of Toon Swinkels, who posed for some of Van Gogh’s weaver drawings and paintings. “About the posing he remembered that he always had to keep working.” It is one of the most dubious—and yet most durable—notions in the Van Gogh literature that Van Gogh befriended the poor and oppressed that he portrayed. Eliot’s hermit weaver: Eliot, p. 42: Van Gogh does not specifically mention Silas Marner at this time, but its memory must have haunted Van Gogh’s first contacts with the cottage weavers of Nuenen. Here is a passage, consummately beautiful, that would have cemented forever Van Gogh’s solidarity with the hermit weaver of Raveloe: “Any one who had looked at him as the red light shone upon his pale face, strange straining eyes, and meagre form, would perhaps have understood the mixture of contemptuous pity, dread, and suspicion with which he was regarded by his neighbours in Raveloe. Yet few men could be more harmless than poor Marner. In his truthful simple soul, not even the growing greed and worship of gold could beget any vice directly injurious to others. The light of his faith quite put out, and his affections made desolate, he had clung with all the force of his nature to his work and his money; and like all objects to which a man devotes himself, they had fashioned him into correspondence with themselves. His loom, as he wrought in it without ceasing, had in its turn wrought on him, and confirmed more and more the monotonous craving for its monotonous response.” “Monotonous response”: Eliot, p. 42: “The livelong day [Silas] sat in his loom, his ear filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of sameness in the brownish web, his muscles moving with such even repetition that their pause seemed almost as much a constraint as the holding of his breath.” “Every man’s work”: Eliot, pp. 16-17.

Problems in perspective: Van Heugten, p. 64: Van Heugten describes one particularly unsuccessful effort, Weaver (F 1116 JH 462), a drawing in chalk, pen, and ink: “As an exercise in perspective it is a complete failure. Van Gogh appears to have observed the subject from two different levels. We look straight at the warp beam, at the bottom of the drawing, for nothing can be seen of the warp threads running to the shafts. The weaver is also viewed from low down, for if he had been drawn from normal eye level part of his face, at least, would have been hidden by the pulleys (to which the leather straps in the centre of the drawing are attached). Several parts of the loom, however, are shown from above, such as the slay and the bobbin box, which is attached to the loom on the left. Another odd feature is the window set so low down in the wall.” Another image that shows many of the same problems, as well as unsuccessful foreshortening, is Weaver, Seen from the Front (F 27 JH 503). “One must sit”: Van der Heijden, pp. 112-113.

With their backs to him: Weaver with Other Figures in Front of Loom (F 1111 JH 483) and Weaver Standing in Front of a Loom (F 33 JH 489). Revealed only in profile: Interior with a Weaver Facing Right (F 1110 JH 437), Interior with a Weaver Facing Right (F 1109 JH 439), Weaver Facing Right (Half-Figure) (F 26 JH 450), Weaver Facing Right (F 1108 JH 451), Weaver, with a Baby in a Highchair (F 1118 JH 452), Weaver (F 1121 JH 453), Weaver (F 1122 JH 454), Weaver Facing Right (F 162 JH 457), Weaver Arranging Threads (F 32 JH 480), Weaver Standing in Front of a Loom (F 1134 JH 481), Weaver, Arranging Threads (F 1688 JH 482), Old Man Reeling Yarn (F 371 JH 498), and Weaver Near an Open Window (F 24 JH 500).

Simple silhouettes: BVG 367, 4/30/1884: Van Gogh describes this as a nocturnal image: “I saw ... dark, bowed figures against the light, which stood out against the colour of the piece. Great shadows cast on the white walls by the laths and beams of the loom.” (JLB 445, 4/30/1884.) But the images that follow this program are mostly daytime images: (F 1109 JH 439), Weaver Arranging Threads (F 35 JH 478), Weaver Arranging Threads (F 32 JH 480), and Weaver Facing Left (F 116av JH 499). There are a few images (Weaver Facing Left [F 1124 JH 456] and Weaver, Seen from the Front [F 30 JH 479]) in which the figure of the weaver is cast in silhouette by light reflecting off a wall, which could be intended to suggest nighttime. There are also images in which Van Gogh uses the light, either direct or reflected, to etch the weaver’s face in outline only: Weaver Facing Right (F 1108 JH 451), Weaver Near an Open Window (F 24 JH 500), and Weaver, Interior with Three Small Windows (F 37 JH 501). Context: JLB 445, 4/30/1884: “I recently also saw coloured pieces woven in the evening—where I’ll take you sometime should you come here. When I saw it, they were also just arranging the threads, so dark, bowed figures against the light, which stood out against the colour of the piece. Great shadows cast on the white walls by the laths and beams of the loom.” Barely distinguishable: Weaver (F 1114 JH 444), Weaver (F 1107 JH 445), Weaver Facing Right (F 1108 JH 451), Weaver Facing Right (F 162 JH 457), and Weaver, Seen from the Front (F 30 JH 479).

He produced dozens: Van Heugten, p. 50: According to Van Heugten’s count, there are sixteen finished drawings of weavers that survive, as well as ten paintings. We are assuming that some of both, and more of the former, have not survived. Pollock’s count is slightly different: “Between January and July 1884 Vincent van Gogh produced over thirty paintings, drawings and watercolours of weavers working at their looms” (Pollock, “Labour—Modern and Rural,” p. 25). Beam, strut, and spindle: Zemel, in Van Uitert, ed., p. 53: Zemel is responsible for this felicitous sequence: “No knob, hook, curve or corner escaped Van Gogh’s attention. Every beam, strut, spindle is so carefully rendered, so vigorously hatched and cross-hatched, that the loom acquires an almost animate presence and individuality.” Big canvases: Van Uitert, p. 151: Referring to one of the weaver paintings: “That this was an ambitious painting is evident from its size, for Vincent gave up a large and thus expensive canvas.” The surviving weaver paintings range from as small as Weaver Arranging Threads (F 32 JH 480) (7.7 x 16.1 in., 19.5 x 41 cm.) to as large as Weaver Near an Open Window (F 24 JH 500) (16.8 x 36.6 in., 68 x 93 cm.). The latter painting, however, is on cardboard; the largest painting on canvas from the series is Weaver, Seen from the Front (F 30 JH 479) (27.6 x 33.5 in., 70 x 85 cm.). Most are at the upper end of this range. Of a total of ten paintings, seven measure 48 cm. (19 in.) or more in height, and six measure 60 cm. (23½ in.) or more in width.

“Pleasant and attractive”: BVG 230, 9/11/1882. The translation has been altered slightly. Context: BVG 230, 9/11/1882: “Well, I hope this little bench, though perhaps not yet saleable, will show you that I am not averse to choosing subjects sometimes which are pleasant or attractive and, as such, will find buyers sooner than things of a more gloomy sentiment.” JLB 262, 9/11/1882: “Well, I hope that the small bench, even if not yet saleable, will show you that I have nothing against tackling subjects with something agreeable or pleasant about them, which are thus more likely to find buyers than things with a more sombre sentiment.” “Things of a gloomier sentiment”: Ibid.

“So much delight”: BVG 418, 7/1/1885; JLB 515, 7/14/1885. Context: “I know of nothing else in which I take so much delight” (JLB 515, 7/14/1885). “Worship of sorrow”: BVG 295, 6/22/1883; JLB 356, 6/22/1883. Context: “Carlyle also says, ‘Knowest thou that Worship of sorrow—the temple thereof founded some eighteen hundred years ago now lies in ruins, yet its sacred lamp is still burning’. If I think of Degroux, say, or what you sometimes wrote to me of Daumier, say, I find in them something of worship of sorrow” (JLB 356, 6/22/1883).

Notes for the Plates

I ask you, what sort of a man: BVG 418, 7/1/1885 | JLB 515, 7/14/1885. Tonight I am too much occupied: BVG 423 9/1/1885-9/15/1885 | JLB 531, 9/2/1885. I like landscape: BVG 140 1/1/1881 | JLB 162 1/1881. There are moments: BVG 295, 6/22/1883 | JLB 356, 6/22/1883. The past few days: BVG 255, 12/28/1882-12/30/1882 | JLB 296, 12/27/1882. Now that we begin to talk about figure drawing: BVG 418, 7/1/1885 | JLB 515, 7/14/1885. I begin to long for Daumier: BVG 265, 2/8/1883 | JLB 310, 2/8/1883. The four ages of the drinker: BVG R13, 9/18/1882-9/19/1882 | JLB 267, 9/19/1882.