Notes: The Female Sitter

Notes for the Text

Young courtesans of Vittorio Corcos: Stolwijk and Thomson, p. 75: Stolwijk and Thomson elegantly summarize Vittorio Matteo Corcos’s signature image: “Corcos’s canvases present an image of womanhood which shores up twofold the (sexual) ideologies of the late 19th century. On the one hand, they show women as possessable, as objects of desire; on the other, they picture them as consumers. For whatever their implicit moral status, Corcos’s women, are definitely purchasers of costumes, furs and cosmetics; they are part of the culture of capital.” According to Stolwijk and Thomson, Theo’s gallery handled seventy paintings by Corcos between 1881 and 1890 (ibid.). Women of James Tissot: BVG 17, 6/16/1874: Van Gogh names the three Tissot paintings as Walk in the Snow, Walk on the Ramparts, and Marguerite in Church. Bailey lists the three Tissots in the Academy show as London Visitors, Waiting, and The Ball on Shipboard (Bailey, Young Vincent, pp. 23-24). Van Gogh makes no mention of the social realist painting that caused a sensation at the Royal Academy show that year, Luke Fildes’s Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward. Context: JLB 23, 6/16/1874: “There are beautiful things at the Royal Academy this year; among others Tissot has 3 paintings.”

Camille Corot: Stolwijk and Thomson, p. 89: “The work of Camille Corot … was of particular importance for Theo ... Of the 72 Corots listed in the stock books, 53 were bought by, and 52 sold by, 19, boulevard Montmartre (only 30 of these were the same). Theo’s gallery was the hub of the firm’s Corot trade, and he seems to have covered a broad scope of the artist’s work.” Les bûcheronnes: BVG 27, 5/31/1875: Bûcheronnes (Women Cutting Wood). Context JLB 34, 5/31/1875: “There are 3 Corots at the Salon, very beautiful, the most beautiful one, painted shortly before his death, ‘Women cutting wood’, will probably appear as a woodcut in L’Illustration or Le Monde Illustré.” St. John’s Eve: BVG 27, 5/31/1875. Context: JLB 34, 5/31/1875: “[Breton] has a beautiful painting at the Salon, ‘The feast of St John,’ peasant girls dancing on a summer evening round the St John’s bonfire, in the background the village with its church and the moon above it.”

Grand religious dramas: BVG 435, 11/18/1885-11/22/1885. Context: BVG 435, 11/18/1885-11/22/1885: “As for Rubens, I am looking forward to him very much, but do you object to my thinking Rubens’s conception and sentiment of his religious subjects theatrical, often even badly theatrical in the worst sense of the word?” JLB 543, 11/20/1885: “As for Rubens, I’m very much looking forward to him, but—don’t you often find that in terms of conception, in terms of the sentiment in his religious subjects, Rubens is theatrical, even badly theatrical?” Rubens and women: BVG 435, 11/18/1885-11/22/1885. (Emphasis added.) Context: BVG 435, 11/18/1885-11/22/1885: “That’s how it is in everything religious or philosophical he does, it is flat and hollow; but what he can paint is—women—like Boucher and better—there especially he gives one most to think about and there he is at his deepest.” JLB 543, 11/20/1885: “Thus with everything religious or philosophical he is flat and hollow, but what he can do is—women—like Boucher and better—it’s precisely there that he gives one most to think about and is deepest.” (Emphasis in original.)

“Blonde hair, face faces”: BVG 444, 1/12/1886-1/16/1886. Context: BVG 444, 1/12/1886-1/16/1886: “Of the same order, but in my opinion far more beautiful, is the charm of ‘The Deposition from the Cross,’ where the pale spot is repeated in the blonde hair, the fair face and neck of the female figures, whereas the somber surroundings are enormously rich because of the various low-toned harmonizing masses of red, dark green, black, gray and violet.” JLB 552, 1/12/1886-1/16/1886: “The same thing, but to my mind far more beautiful, is the charm of The descent from the Cross, where the pale spot is repeated by the blonde hair, pale faces and necks of the female figures, while the sombre setting is immensely rich because of those various low masses, brought together by the tone, of red, dark green, black, grey, violet.” Two Marys: BVG 436, 11/24/1885-11/27/1885. Context: JLB 544, 11/26/1885: “I agree with you that the figures in the foreground—those heads—in the Christ in Purgatory are very fine, finer than the rest, that’s to say the central figure. Those 2 blonde women’s heads, above all, are prime quality Rubens.” (Emphasis in original.)

Octave Mouret: BVG 247, 11/24/1882: Whether or not Mouret is the “main character” of a novel that has only the loosest of plots, is not as obvious as Van Gogh claims. As Sund points out, the thread of his story often disappears in the sprawling tapestry of the book’s incidental organization (Sund, p. 65). Context: JLB 286, 11/24/1882: “He’s far better than most people, in many respects, but you won’t find him satisfactory any more than I do, and I sense an emptiness in him.” Mouret’s special power: Context: BVG 247, 11/24/1882: “He—Octave Mouret—is satisfied when he can readily sell his bales of ‘nouveautés’ (déballer des ballots de marchandises sur les trottoirs de Paris) [unloading his bales of goods on the sidewalks of Paris] he doesn’t seem to have any other aspiration except the conquest of women, and yet he does not really love them, for Zola perceives correctly, I think, when he says, ‘où percait son mépris pour la femme’ [where his contempt for women broke through].” JLB 286, 11/24/1882: “He—O. Mouret—is happy as long as he can sell his bales of novelties quickly (display his bales of goods on the pavements of Paris); he appears to have no other aspirations, except for conquests of women, and yet he wasn’t really fond of them, for Zola is right I believe when he says, ‘where his contempt for the female was apparent.’”

Van Gogh’s differences from Mouret: Context: JLB 286, 11/24/1882: “… you and I … have our roots in a family life of a different kind from Mouret’s, and moreover there will always be something of the Brabant fields and heath in us I hope, which is all the less erasable by years of city life because art renews and adds to it.” BVG 247, 11/24/1882: “He seems to be a product of his time—in reality more passive than active, notwithstanding his activity.” JLB 286, 11/24/1882: “He seems to me to be a product of the time, actually more passive than active—despite his activity.” BVG 333, 10/16/1883: “You once said to me, ‘I am like that man in Pot-Bouille’; I said, ‘No. If you were like that, you would do well to enter a new business; but you are deeper than he, and I do not know whether you are really a man of business; actually I see the artist in you at heart, the true artist.’” JLB 397, 10/16/1883: “You once said to me, ‘I’m something like that character in Pot-bouille’—I said, no. If you were that you would do well to go into a new business, but you’re deeper than him and I don’t know whether at bottom you are a man of business—at the very deepest depths I see in you the artist, the true artist.’”

After the disparaging reference in a letter from Drenthe (JLB 397, 10/16/1883), Van Gogh does not mention Mouret until September 1884 (JLB 458, 9/21/1884) and doesn’t mention Au bonheur des dames specifically until October: “You say you like Octave Mouret, you said you’re like him. Since last year I’ve also read the second volume, in which he pleases me much more than in the first.” (JLB 464, 10/2/1884, emphasis original.) It is not clear from this (“Since last year”), however, exactly when during the intervening year Van Gogh read Au bonheur des dames, which was published in 1883. He may have first read it in book form or in serialized form. A copy of the book appears in a painting from spring 1887, Three Novels (Still Life with Three Books [F 335 JH 1226]). Context: JLB 464, 10/2/1884: “You say you like Octave Mouret, you said you’re like him. Since last year I’ve also read the second volume, in which he pleases me much more than in the first.”

Guy de Maupassant: Criticizing books that do not end happily, Van Gogh thinks fondly of Guy de Maupassant’s stories, which mostly do. Context: JLB 707, 10/17/1888: “I much prefer Guy de Maupassant to [Jean] Richepin, for being more consoling.” BVG 482, 5/4/1888: Van Gogh wrote this from Arles in 1888. Context: BVG 482, 5/4/1888: “I should be heartily glad, I say, if a kind of Guy de Maupassant in painting came along to paint the beautiful people and things here lightheartedly.” JLB 604, 5/4/1888: “I’d be, I tell you—mightily pleased if in painting a man like Guy de Maupassant came along and cheerfully painted the beautiful people and things in these parts.”

Van Gogh appears to group Maupassant’s Bel-Ami with other “masterpieces” of Naturalist literature, defining their common characteristic as the fact that they “paint life as we feel it ourselves and thus satisfy that need which we have, that people tell us the truth” (JLB 574, October 1887). He provides both a sample list of titles: “De Goncourt [Edmond or Jules], for example, in Germinie Lacerteux, La fille Elisa, Zola in La joie de vivre and L’assommoir”; and a more extensive list of authors: “Zola, Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, De Goncourt, Richepin, Daudet, Huysmans.” (ibid.) To this he adds, “Maupassant’s masterpiece is Bel-ami” (ibid.).

Sund draws a distinction between Van Gogh’s more serious appreciation of the older Naturalists, with their dedication to “truth, life as it is,” and his appreciation of Maupassant—i.e., “the lightest of Naturalist fare” (Sund, p. 140). However, the transition of Van Gogh’s taste in literature to lighter fare (culminating in his obsession with Daudet’s comic Tartarin series in Arles) appears to be symptomatic of his increasing disconnection from the real world. Just as his art undergoes a passage from the exaggeratedly dark “de terre” world of Millet and the Potato Eaters to the magically bright world of the wheatfield outside his dark asylum cell at St. Remy, so his taste in literature undergoes a similar withdrawal from reality. Welsh-Ovcharov recognizes this “lightening” transition in Van Gogh’s art, especially his palette, but likely misattributes it to a change in Van Gogh’s appreciation of Zola (Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh, p. 41). Welsh-Ovcharov argues that after he arrived in Paris, Van Gogh turned from a philosophical appreciation of Zola to a descriptive appreciation (ibid.). Van Gogh’s first appreciation of Zola (Un page d’amour) was more descriptive than philosophical (JLB 244, 7/6/1882), and his ultimate appreciation more autobiographical than descriptive. Context: BVG W1, 6/21/1887-12/21/1887: “Maupassant’s masterpiece is Bel Ami. I hope to be able to get it for you.” JLB 574, October 1887: “Maupassant’s masterpiece is Bel-ami; I hope to be able to get it for you.”

Proposal to Kee Vos BVG 154, 11/7/1881. Context: BVG 154, 11/7/1881: “And then I began—at first crudely, awkwardly, but still firmly—and I ended with the words, Kee, I love you as myself ...” JLB 180, 11/7/1881: “And then I began—at first clumsily, awkwardly and yet resolutely, and it ended with the words ‘Kee, I feel exactly as though you were the closest person to me and I the closest person to you in the fullest sense of the word, I love you as I love myself’ ...” Kee Vos recently widowed: Van Gogh’s mother went to “console” her sister and niece, Kee, in November 1878, soon after Vos’s death (b2443 V/1982, “Gogh, Theodorus van” to “Gogh, Theo van”, 11/1/1878). Later the same winter, Kee and her son came to Prinsenhage to stay with Uncle Cent and Aunt Cornelia. In August, 1879, Anna wrote that “Uncle and Aunt Stricker will come at the end of August or the beginning of September. Kee Vos and Jan will also come sometime.” (b2491 V/1982, “Gogh, Theodorus en Anna C. van” to “Gogh, Theo van”, 8/10/1879.) Whether this visit actually happened is unclear because, immediately afterwards, Van Gogh entered the terrible winter of 1879–80 during which he probably did not write and the family letters are mostly missing. “Never, no, never!”: BVG 153, 11/3/1881. Context: BVG 153, 11/3/1881: “Should I resign myself to that “never, no, never,” or consider the matter not yet settled and done with, keep in good heart and not give up?” JLB 179, 11/3/1881: “Then I was in an awful dilemma about what to do, to resign myself to that no, nay, never, or—not yet to regard the matter as over and done with, and to take courage and not give up yet.”

Savvy, bosomy: Bernard, “Julian Tanguy, Called Le Père Tanguy,” in Stein, ed., p. 93: Anatomical amplitude was undoubtedly the point of Bernard’s colorful description of Segatori as “an extremely beautiful Italian woman, a former model, who let sprawl her robust and imposing charms onto a bar-top she made exclusively hers.” Bohemian signora: Gachet, p. 6. Languorous authority: Coquiot, pp. 126-127: “Une grande et belle fille brune, aimable et un peu languissante, Agostina Segattori.” “Imposing charm”: Bernard, “Julian Tanguy, Called Le Père Tanguy,” in Stein, ed., p. 93: This is Émile Bernard’s assessment of Segatori: “an extremely beautiful Italian woman, a former model, who let sprawl her robust and imposing charms onto a bar-top she made exclusively hers.”

Van Gogh’s paintings at Le Tambourin: The story of Van Gogh showing his paintings at Le Tambourin sometime in the winter-spring of 1886-87 is a muddled one. From Van Gogh’s letter in the summer of 1887, we hear only about the denouement of the relationship with Segatori (JLB 572, 7/23/1887-7/25/1887). Le Tambourin is about to be sold and Van Gogh is worried about the ownership of his paintings that are still on the walls. He wants them back and Segatori (or somebody speaking for her) has apparently refused, claiming that they belong to the establishment. Other than this bare, backward-looking account, we have only Bernard’s changing and scarcely reliable testimony as to how the paintings came to be there in the first place. His initial account is straightforward enough: “Vincent agreed to do several paintings a week for Le Tambourin in exchange for meals. He wound up covering the large walls of the establishment with his studies. They were mostly flower studies.” (Bernard, in Stein, p. 93.) The arrangement Bernard describes here is consistent with the “dispute” over ownership of the paintings the following summer. In a later “souvenir” about Van Gogh, however, Bernard overlays the original story with a heavy gloss of romance, both amorous and artistic: “[Van Gogh] had fallen in love with the proprietress, it struck him as amusing to invade the place, which was dotted with inferior work, with his passionate intransigence. So he visited Le Tambourin assiduously, and then courted the beautiful Romanian [sic], bringing her painted flowers which last forever instead of real flowers which fade. His gallantry and custom were welcomed, but as his paintings were not hung he demanded an exhibition; this was done because of the business he brought to the restaurant. Indeed, not content with coming by himself, he had brought Toulouse-Lautrec, Anquetin and others, persuading them that there was a future in a place where the beauty of the Lady and his flower paintings created an attractive and youthful feel.” (Bernard, “Souvenirs sur Van Gogh,” p. 394.)

Virtually every detail of this lavish re-telling can be dismissed or discounted. While there is a possibility that Van Gogh became emotionally involved with the aging but still sensuous Segatori—a woman fifteen to twenty years his senior but whose Italian warmth and flirtatious charms must have been a welcome contrast to his mother’s northern iciness and disapproval, the initial arrangement was not based on amore in either direction. Segatori was already showing art in her restaurant and Van Gogh had already proposed earning money by painting “theme” still-lifes for retailers and restauranteurs. The fit of buyer and seller was obvious. Once that fit was established, the next logical step was for the proprietress to pay the painter “in kind”: i.e., with food and drink rather than cash. This is not to take sides in the subsequent controversy over ownership of the paintings. It would have been very much like Van Gogh to hang as many paintings as he could, regardless of the meals he took, subject only to available space and Segatori’s tolerance. This would account for Bernard’s report that Van Gogh “invaded the place ... with his passionate intransigence.” However, it is surely Bernard’s embellishment that Van Gogh had the power, either amorous or artistic, to “demand” an exhibition, and we know from other, more honest testimony, that far from drawing people to the restaurant with “their attractive and youthful feel,” Van Gogh’s work was more likely to frighten them away.

“More museum than café”: Oberthur, p. 57: Oberthur quotes from a publicity flyer for Le Tambourin: “At the Tambourin you’ll find none of those bare and delapidated [sic] walk that account for the poor originality in most inns. You’ll find nothing in common with those pretentious cafes whose gilded ceilings leave you blinded and senseless. It is a cozy little corner, more museum than café, revealing in its decor the touch of a woman of taste. It is indeed Madame Agostina Segatori, proprietress of Le Tambourin, who has brought together, sorted and hung with artistic feeling the works of masters, transforming her establishment into one of the most interesting art galleries in existence.”

“No longer handsome”: BVG 201, 6/2/1882-6/3/1882. Context: BVG 201, 6/2/1882: “And she is useful to me just because she is no longer handsome, no longer young, no longer coquettish, no longer foolish.” JLB 234, 6/1/1882-6/2/1882: “And the fact that she’s no longer beautiful, no longer young, no longer silly, no longer coquettish—those are the very things that make it possible for me to do something with her.” “Unbearable”: BVG 194, 5/4/1882-5/12/1882. Context: BVG 194, 5/4/1882-5/12/1882: “First, her speech, which is very ugly and is a result of her illness; then her temper, caused by a nervous disposition, so that she has fits of anger which would be unbearable to most people.” JLB 225, 5/10/1882: “First of all, her speech, which is ugly and which is the result of her illness, then her temper, which stems from a nervous disposition, causing her to have moods that many would find unbearable.” “Poor creature”: BVG 217, 7/19/1882. Context: BVG 217, 7/19/1882: “The poor creature has had a very hard time of it.” JLB 248, 7/19/1882: “The poor creature has suffered appallingly.” “An angel”: BVG 201, 6/2/1882-6/3/1882. Van Gogh says that Sien “is rather like the Angel of the passion by Landelle” (JLB 234, 6/1/1882-6/2/1882). The reference is to the French artist Charles Zacharie Landelle (1821-1908), protégé of Ary Scheffer (1795-1858; French artist, born in Holland), student of Paul Delaroche, and Goupil contractor, well known for his numerous pictures of pretty young girls. Context: BVG 201, 6/3/1882: “Her type of profile resembles ‘L’Ange de la Passion’ by Landelle, you know the one I mean, a kneeling figure; the print is published by Goupil.” JLB 234, 6/1/1882-6/2/1882: “Now, her profile is rather like the Angel of the passion by Landelle, you know that I mean a kneeling figure—the print is published by Goupil.” “I have a feeling”: BVG 212, 7/6/1882. Elements have been combined from both translations. Context: BVG 212, 7/6/1882: “I have a feeling of being at home when I’m with her, a sense that she brings my own hearth with her.” JLB 244, 7/6/1882: “I have a sense of being at home when I’m with her, a sense that she brings my ‘hearth and home’ with her ...” (Emphasis in original.)

 “[Uncle Cor] asked me”: BVG 117, 1/9/1878-1/10/1878. Context: JLB 139, 1/9/1878-1/10/1878: “C.M. sked me if I didn’t find the Phryné by Gérôme beautiful, and I said 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, and hasn’t life been given to us to become rich in our hearts, even if our appearance suffers from it? I feel very little sympathy for that statue after Gérôme, for I see not one sign of reason in it, and a couple of hands that bear the signs of work are more beautiful than such as are seen on that statue.” “Greek”: James, p. 256. “Intensely feminine”: James, pp. 261.

Notes for the Plates

It all comes down to the degree: BVG 406, 5/4/1885-5/5/1885 | JLB 500, 5/4/1885, 5/5/1885. “Lady with a Glove”: BVG 590, 5/3/1889 | JLB 768, 5/3/1889. As far as Miss Segatori is concerned: BVG 462, 6/21/1887-9/22/1887 | JLB 572, 7/23/1887-7/25/1887. As for the Arlésiennes: BVG 482, 5/4/1888 | JLB 604, 5/4/1888. A Greek statue: BVG B12, end of July 1888 | JLB 649, 7/29/2888. It gives me enormous pleasure: BVG 643, 6/17/1890 | JLB RM23, 6/17/1890.