611

Br. 1990: 613 | CL: 489
From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Date: Arles, on or about Sunday, 20 May 1888
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1. It is not clear what specific symptoms led Theo to consult Dr Gruby, but the physician evidently diagnosed the ‘heart disease’, about which nothing further is explained. Vincent suggests that Theo’s fatigue and lassitude result from the heart problem, so that the cause was not the potassium iodide that Theo was taking. At the time this was a widely prescribed remedy for a cough, something from which Theo frequently suffered. Potassium iodide was also much used in cases of cerebral syphilis, the disease that killed Theo in January 1891. Since Vincent starts the letter by confessing straightaway that he was ‘upset’ by Theo’s news, a connection with this illness seems the most obvious. See on Theo’s illness Voskuil 1992-2 (and the associated reactions). Vincent continued to enquire after Theo’s health until well into October (letter 705).
2. Christian Mourier-Petersen.
a. Read: ‘demeure’.
3. In 1886 Eugène Levaillant de la Boissière (age 45, of independent means), his wife Clara Levaillant de la Boissière (age 29) and their 12-year-old daughter Eugénie Jeanne were registered as the occupants of an apartment on the first floor of 1 boulevard de Clichy. Nothing more is known about the family. Marcelin Perruchot’s restaurant was on the ground floor; he was also a wine merchant in Asnières. See exhib. cat. Martigny 2000, pp. 142-146. Van Gogh had done a lot of work in the immediate vicinity, and depicted the building in Bank of the Seine with the Clichy bridge (F 302 / JH 1322), The Seine with the Clichy bridge (F 303 / JH 1323 [2553]) and Trees on a slope (F 291 / JH 1314).
[2553]
b. Read: ‘demeure’.
4. From what Van Gogh says, it would appear that the family lived in Paris (‘in town’) and only stayed in Asnières during the summer. He says that the countess is ‘far from young’, but he has either seriously overestimated her age or is referring to an older woman, possibly the count’s mother, so that the ‘daughter’ – who is also ‘a lady’ – is the count’s 29-year-old wife, not the 12-year-old girl. No further details have been found in the records in Asnières.
It emerges from a note dated 9 November 1929 in the archives of the Thannhauser art gallery that the Charpentier gallery offered five small paintings by Van Gogh that belonged to ‘a family from Asnières with whom Van Gogh had lived and to whom he had given them’ (‘einer Familie aus Asnières, bei der Van Gogh wohnte und die er dieser schenkte’). See Heinz Holtmann et al. Thannhauser: Händler, Sammler, Stifter. Cologne 2006, p. 48. This must be a reference to the Levaillant de la Boissière family (although Van Gogh never lived with them). The works in question were Woman sewing (F 126a / JH 655), 42.5 x 33 cm; Head of a woman (F 146a / JH 565), 43.5 x 37 cm; The viaduct (F 239 / JH 1267), 32.7 x 41 cm; Woman peeling potatoes (F 365r / JH 654), which had the Self-portrait with a straw hat on the back (F 365v / JH 1354), 41 x 31.5 cm; and Landscape with snow (F 290 / JH 1360 [2564]), 38 x 46 cm. The latter must have been one of the two small paintings that Van Gogh gave to Mourier in Arles to deliver to Theo in Paris. The other one has not been identified. It is not possible to make out which of the remaining four works were the ‘2 small ones’ he gave the family ‘last year’.
[704] [705] [2564]
5. Evidently Theo had asked Vincent to send drawings for the second exhibition of the Nederlandsche Etsclub, which was to be held at Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam. Vincent mentions Dordrecht because the artist and critic Jan Veth of Dordrecht was organizing the exhibition – in a letter of 15 May, Veth had asked Theo to loan etchings, lithographs and drawings (FR b3573). See also letter 620, n. 5.
6. Still life with coffee pot (F 410 / JH 1426 [2609]). In the margin next to the letter sketch of the same name after the work (F - / JH 1427) Van Gogh noted that it was a no. 30 canvas, whereas it is actually a no. 25 ‘figure’ canvas, 81 x 65 cm. Cf. exhib. cat. New York 1984, p. 46. He omitted the painted border in the letter sketch and in the sketch he sent to Bernard with letter 622.
It seems obvious that Van Gogh painted this still life and the one referred to below on 16 and 17 May, because it rained on those days and he could not work outdoors (Météo-France).
[2609]
7. Wild flowers in a majolica jug (F 600 / JH 1424 [2607]).
[2607]
8. Contrary to what Van Gogh thought, the Dane had actually been painting for longer than he had himself. Mourier-Petersen attended the academy in Copenhagen from 1880 to 1883 and was a member of the group of dissident artists there who wanted to establish a free academy. He had evidently been reticent about his background. See Larsson 1993, pp. 12-13, 18.
9. Daudet, Le Nabab, chap. 14. See Daudet 1986-1994, vol. 2, p. 675.
10. Burty’s preface to Exposition de l’oeuvre de Corot, the catalogue of the Corot exhibition of 1875, begins with these words of Corot’s; Van Gogh had been to the exhibition (letter 34): ‘On one of the last mornings before his death, Corot said to one of his friends: “Last night I saw in my dreams a landscape in which the sky was entirely pink. The clouds were pink too. It was delightful. I remember it very clearly. It will be wonderful to paint”’ (Un des derniers matins qui précédèrent sa mort, Corot dit à un de ses amis: “J’ai vu cette nuit en rêve un paysage dont le ciel était tout rose. Les nuages aussi étaient roses. C’était délicieux. Je me le rappelle très bien. Ce sera admirable à peindre.”) See exhib. cat. Paris 1875-2, p. 5. See also letter 439, n. 13.
11. Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Hope, c. 1872 (Paris, Musée d’Orsay). Ill. 315 [315]. Van Gogh saw this work at the Puvis de Chavannes retrospective which ran from 20 November to 20 December 1887 at Durand-Ruel’s, where it was exhibited as cat. no. 30. We know from letter 829 that he had been to this exhibition.
[315]