1r:1
My dear Theo,
You’ll already have received my letter of this morning, in which I’d included 50-franc note for Bing, and it’s about this Bing business again that I wanted to write to you. The fact is, we don’t know enough about Japanese art.
Fortunately, we know more about the French Japanese, the Impressionists. That’s definitely the essence and the main thing.
So Japanese art, properly speaking, already with its place in collections, already impossible to find in Japan itself, is becoming of secondary interest.
But this doesn’t mean that if I had a single day in which I could see Paris again I wouldn’t call at Bing’s precisely to go and see the Hokusais1 and other drawings from the true period. What Bing himself, by the way, also said to me when I so much admired the run-of-the-mill Japanese prints, that later I’d see that there’s also something else. Loti’s book, Mme Chrysanthème, taught me this: the apartments are bare, without decorations or ornaments.2 And it was that that awakened my curiosity about the excessively synthetic drawings of another period. Which are probably to our Japanese prints what a sober Millet is to a Monticelli. You know well enough that I’m not averse to Monticellis, myself.
Nor coloured Japanese prints, either, even when people tell me ‘you should get out of that habit’. But it seems to me, at the point we’ve reached, fairly indispensable to know the sober quality that is the equivalent of the colourless Millets.  1v:2
That has little or nothing to do with the stock, properly speaking, which may as well stay as it is.
Because I don’t tire of those figures and landscapes. And he has so many of them!
If I wasn’t so caught up and absorbed in work, how I’d like to sell all that lot! There’s not much to be earned from it, and that’s why nobody takes it up. Nevertheless, after a few years it will all become quite rare, will be sold more dearly. It’s for that reason that we shouldn’t scorn the small advantage that we have at present, of going through thousands to make our choice.
Now, if you give a whole Sunday to this yourself, if you choose new stock for about a hundred francs, you can tell yourself beforehand that you won’t sell those, having chosen them yourself (unless you don’t like them) — you can pay for them as and when, replacing them all the time. In the end, when the whole batch has been paid for at your leisure, you still have as many more in stock. And the result is that what we like best in the lot stays with us. And it’s by doing it this way that, in what’s currently at your place, there are  1v:3 already many old sheets that are worth a good 1 franc each.
So I urge you, keep the advantages of the stock and don’t get rid of the fine sheets; on the contrary, we profit by adding to them.
There are already some sheets that we have that are definitely worth 5 francs. My God, I wasn’t able to do as I wished, because I was just as excited about this lot of ten thousand Japanese prints to go through as Thoré about a sale of Dutch paintings, among which there were some interesting ones.3
Really, at present my work has kept me busy; I can’t do any more about it but I recommend Bing’s attic to you.4
I learned there myself, and I got Anquetin and Bernard to learn with me.5
Now, there’s still more to learn at Bing’s, and that’s why I urge you to keep our stock there, and access to the attics and cellars, and you see how far I am from seeing it as a speculation.
Supposing that it costs (myself, I don’t believe that we’d lose by it), it doesn’t cost an enormous amount.
What’s Reid doing??? He’ll already have been there on his own account, perhaps, as will Russell. I didn’t conceal that there were some at Bing’s, only I said they were 5 sous,6 which Bing himself had told me — or rather, the manager.7 If you keep the stock, then tell him once again that we often send people directly to him  1r:4 but that he must therefore keep his Japanese prints at the stated price — of 5 sous — not less. I’m telling you only this — I’ve gone through the lot four or 5 times; the sheets at our place are the result of replenishing the stock several times already.
Let’s continue in the same way. It has already been a great regret to me, who knows something about the lot, not to have paid at New Year myself, and chosen the new stock myself. Because you’re dazzled, there’s so much of it.
And in the other shops — it’s not the same thing at all, because people are afraid to go to Bing, thinking him expensive. Now, what I didn’t go through was the library, where there are hundreds, thousands of bound books.
Look, you’ll do well out of paying a visit to their manager — his name continues to escape me — make my profound excuses to him, please, but tell him that I was there three times at New Year to pay up, that afterwards came my journey to the south. And that will procure you a Claude Monet and other paintings, because if you take the trouble to dig out the Japanese prints, you certainly have the right to do exchanges with them, with the painters, for paintings.
But to break off our relations with Bing — oh no, never that.
Japanese art is something like the primitives, like the Greeks, like our old Dutchmen, Rembrandt, Potter, Hals, Vermeer, Ostade, Ruisdael. It doesn’t end.  2r:5
If, though, I saw Bing’s manager, I’d say to him that when you put yourself out to find collectors for his Japanese prints — you waste your whole day there without thinking about it, and at the end of it all, whether you sell or you don’t sell, you lose money on it.
And you, if you don’t want to lose on it, I would urge you to make some exchanges with painters whom you know — as Besnard still owes you a study, to tell the truth.8
Anyway, that’s perfectly natural, and the difficulty of working in Paris.
Today I sent Bernard 6 drawings after painted studies; I promised him 6 more and asked for an exchange of croquis after his painted studies.9
And there you have it, General Boulanger’s gone and done it again. It seems to me that both of them were right to fight, being unable to get along.10 That way at least there’s no stagnation, and both of them can only gain by it. Don’t you find he speaks very badly, Boulanger? He makes no impression in words at all. I don’t think him any the less serious for that, since he’ll be in the habit of using his voice for practical purposes, to explain things to his officers or to the managers of arsenals. But he makes no impression at all in public.  2v:6
All the same, it’s a funny city, Paris, where you have to live by wearing yourself out, and as long as you’re not half dead you can’t do a damned thing, and still. I’ve just read Victor Hugo’s L’année terrible. There’s hope there, but — .... that hope’s in the stars.11 I find that true, and well said, and beautiful; and what’s more, I readily believe it myself, too.
But let’s not forget that the earth’s a planet too, therefore a star or celestial globe. And what if all these other stars were the same!!!!!! It wouldn’t be very jolly, in fact you’d have to start all over again.
For art, now — for which you need time, it wouldn’t be bad to live more than one life. And it’s not without appeal to believe in the Greeks, the old Dutch and Japanese masters, continuing their glorious school on other globes. Anyway, that’s enough for today.
And look, there’s another Sunday got through, writing to you and writing to Bernard; however, I must say it didn’t seem long to me. Handshake.

Ever yours,
Vincent

If our sisters could bring us some more wood engravings and things like Gavarni’s La masquerade humaine, 100 lithographs, the Charles Keenes, of which there were a good 200, it wouldn’t be bad. There’s also a very fine book, Anatomy for artists.12

642

Br. 1990: 646 | CL: 511
From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Date: Arles, Sunday, 15 July 1888
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2. See letter 628, n. 20, for Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème; for the passage about the bare houses, see letter 639, n. 11.
a. Read: ‘aussi’.
3. During the study trips he took for his art-historical publications E.J.T. Thoré (who wrote under the pseudonym W. Bürger) also built up his own collection, with the emphasis on seventeenth-century Dutch and nineteenth-century French art; see Frances Suzman Jowell, ‘Thoré-Bürger’s art collection: “a rather unusual gallery of bric-à-brac”’, Simiolus; Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 30 (2003), no. 1/2, pp. 54-119; esp. pp. 82-89.
5. This has been taken to mean that Van Gogh introduced Anquetin and Bernard to Bing (cf. Welsh-Ovcharov in exhib. cat. Paris 1988, pp. 18, 31). But that is not what Van Gogh says; what he actually says is that he learned at Bing’s and that he then got Anquetin and Bernard to learn with him. This may have been at Bing’s, but Van Gogh could also mean that he passed on what he had learned to Anquetin and Bernard. In letter 640 Van Gogh writes that his exhibition in Le Tambourin had a great influence on Anquetin and Bernard.
6. Vincent and Theo only paid 3 sous per sheet; evidently they had persuaded Bing to give them a discount. See letter 640.
7. In letter 676 Van Gogh mentions a branch manager called Lévy – this is probably who he means.
8. In an undated letter to Theo (who handled work for him from time to time) Besnard asked for 200 francs as a matter of urgency: ‘I really must have 200 francs by tomorrow afternoon. You’re the only one I can confide in. In return, you can choose whichever watercolour you like from those I have left in the house’ (J’ai absolument besoin de deux cents francs pour demain après midi. Il n’y a que vous à qui je puisse me confier. Vous choisirez en échange l’aquarelle qui vous plaira parmi celles qui me restent à la maison) (FR b1168). Vincent may be referring to this arrangement. Besnard’s oil study The parting, n.d. (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum) was in the estate. Ill. 580 [580].
[580]
9. See letter 641, n. 1, for the batch of six drawings sent to Bernard. Soon afterwards Van Gogh sent him another nine sketches after painted studies (see letter 643). For his part, Bernard sent a series of ten sketches, for which Van Gogh thanked him in letter 649.
10. On 13 July Boulanger had fought a duel with Président du Conseil Charles Floquet, an opponent of the Boulangist movement. Boulanger had been seriously injured and had lost the duel. Van Gogh may heave heard Boulanger speak in Paris; as minister of war he had often spoken in public in 1886-1887. However he might also have based his opinion on the lengthy reports of Boulanger’s appearances in the daily and weekly press. See Garrigues 1991, for the duel: pp. 183-184. His speeches were published in Les discours du Général Boulanger depuis le 4 août 1881 jusqu’au 4 septembre 1887. Paris 1888.
11. In Hugo’s anthology L’année terrible (1872), which deals with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, he discusses the role of the stars in the present and the hereafter several times.
12. For these prints and books that were still in the Netherlands, see letter 626, n. 9. For Gavarni’s La mascarade humaine, see letter 626, n. 10. For Marshall’s Anatomy for artists, see letter 626, n. 11 . There is now only one print by Charles Keene in the estate; it came from Punch (t*989).