683

Br. 1990: 687 | CL: 539
From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Date: Arles, Tuesday, 18 September 1888
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1. This was letter 682.
2. Path in the public garden (F 470 / JH 1582 [2716]); see letter 682.
[2716]
3. Path in the public garden (F 471 / JH 1613 [2737]). Van Gogh describes this painting later in the letter.
[2737]
4. As well as the two works referred to above, Van Gogh had a third painting of the park: The public garden (‘The poet’s garden’) (F 468 / JH 1578 [2713]). See letter 681.
[2713]
5. The night café (F 463 / JH 1575 [2711]) and Café terrace at night (F 467 / JH 1580 [2714]).
[2711] [2714]
6. Sunflowers in a vase (F 453 / JH 1559 [2701]), Sunflowers in a vase (F 459 / JH 1560 [2702]), Sunflowers in a vase (F 456 / JH 1561 [2703]) and Sunflowers in a vase (F 454 / JH 1562 [2704]).
[2701] [2702] [2703] [2704]
7. Eugène Boch (‘The poet’) (F 462 / JH 1574 [2710]) and Self-portrait (F 476/ JH 1581 [2715]).
[2710] [2715]
8. This painting of a factory and a red sun is not known; cf. letter 680, n. 10.
9. Quay with sand barges (F 449 / JH 1558 [2700]).
[2700]
10. The old mill (F 550 / JH 1577 [2712]).
[2712]
11. Rue du Bout d’Arles ran from the Roubine du Roi Canal to rue des Récollets; the ‘maisons de tolérance’ (brothels) were in these two streets. Van Gogh meant the public garden to the south-east of place Lamartine. See letter 604, n. 2, for the other parks.
12. An allusion to Boccaccio’s sensual nature, which Van Gogh had read about in the article ‘Boccace d’après ses oeuvres et les témoignages contemporains’ by Cochin discussed later in the letter (see n. 15 below). Cochin said, among other things, that the young Boccaccio lived a dissipated life in Naples (p. 377).
13. An allusion to the chapter entitled ‘Les aspirations de l’automne’ in Michelet’s L’amour; see letter 14, n. 19.
14. Nothing is known about a quarrel between Bernard and Gauguin in the winter of 1887-1888. The two artists had not got on well at their first meeting in Pont-Aven in 1886. Bernard wrote about this in 1895: ‘The welcome Mr Gauguin gave me was extremely frosty, and that year there was nothing but the strangest antipathy between us.’ (L’accueil que me fit M. Gauguin fut un des plus glacés, et cette année-là il ne se manifesta entre nous que la plus étrange antipathie.) See Bernard 1994, vol. 2, p. 71.
15. This is the article by Henry Cochin mentioned above, ‘Boccace d’après ses oeuvres et les témoignages contemporains’, Revue des Deux Mondes 58 (15 July 1888), 3rd series, vol. 88, pp. 373-413 (see also letter 665, n. 12). It discusses Boccaccio’s friendship with Francesco Petrarch at length. The author quotes from their letters several times.
Dante is also referred to often in the article; Giotto is mentioned twice and Botticelli only once (and then very much in passing). Aside from Botticelli – whom Van Gogh added later – his summing up accords with that on the last page of the article: ‘Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Giotto, all the men were dead who had, after ten centuries, revived classical Latin glory’ (Dante, Petrarque, Boccace, Giotto, tous les hommes étaient morts, qui avaient, après dix siècles, revivifié l’antique gloire latine) (p. 413).
16. Petrarch spent much of his youth in Avignon, the residence of the popes. After studying in Montpellier and Bologna he returned there and remained for some considerable time. Avignon was important above all as the place where the poet met his muse Laura, on 6 April 1327 in the Church of St Claire.
17. The public garden (‘The poet’s garden’) (F 468 / JH 1578 [2713]).
[2713]
18. Van Gogh based his remark about the sickly Giotto on Cochin’s article (‘Boccace d’après ses oeuvres et les témoignages contemporains’; see n. 15 above); he also referred to the passage in question in letter 665. It reads in full: ‘Giotto, ugly and sickly but radiating natural genius, was painting scenes from the Divine Comedy at the Château de l’Oeuf. The king, full of respect and admiration, spent his days with the painter, delighting in the brazen charm of his Florentine speech and putting up with the most caustic witticisms from him. He heaped honours on him and wanted to keep him in Naples and make him “the first man of his kingdom”.’ (Giotto, laid et chétif, mais rayonnant de génie naturel, peignait au château de l’OEuf des scènes de la Divine Comédie. Et le roi, plein de respect et d’admiration, passait ses journées auprès du peintre, prenant plaisir à la grâce hardie de son language florentin, souffrant de lui les saillies les plus mordantes, le comblant d’honneurs, voulant le retenir à Naples et en faire “le premier homme de son royaume”.) (p. 378).
19. Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Pleasant land, c. 1882 (New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, Mary Gertrude Abbey Fund) had been on show at the Puvis de Chavannes retrospective at Durand-Ruel’s in Paris from 20 November-20 December 1887 (cat. no. 83). Ill. 314 [314].
[314]
20. The character of Tartarin in Daudet’s eponymous novels, Tartarin sur les Alpes and Tartarin de Tarascon , which are set in the south of France. See letter 583, n. 9.
21. The marble statue ‘Venus of Arles’ is a Roman copy of an Aphrodite by Praxiteles from the end of the first century BC (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Cf. Baedeker 1889-2, p. 211. It was excavated in the Théâtre Antique in Arles in 1651 and given to Louis xiv for his palace at Versailles in 1684. The sculptor François Girardon restored the statue, adding arms and placing an apple in the goddess’s hand. The version Van Gogh saw in Arles is an early nineteenth-century plaster copy of the statue as restored by Girardon. Ill. 2246 [2246] (Musée de l’Arles antique, Documentation).
[2246]
22. Van Gogh was probably mistaken in the place name and meant the Venus de Milo (Melos) in the Louvre, from the first century BC, attributed to Alexandros of Antioch. Ill. 2248 [2248]. Van Gogh might conceivably also be referring to the only other statue of Venus on display in the museum in Arles at the time: Head of a Goddess (Venus?). (Musée de l’Arles antique, Documentation).
[2248]
23. Monet had painted landscapes in Antibes in the spring of 1888 and Theo had exhibited some of them; see letter 625, n. 5.
24. This would be the paint he had ordered in letter 677.
25. Theo had suggested that Vincent might exhibit at La Revue Indépendante: see letter 677, n. 16.
26. See letter 673, n. 6, for this reference to Daudet’s L’immortel.
27. This proverb occurs in Daudet’s Numa Roumestan. The novel, which Van Gogh had read in 1884 (see letter 439, n. 4), ends with a lengthy passage about the Provencal saying ‘Gau de carriero, doulou d’ostau’ (‘Joie de rue, douleur de maison’), which is also the last sentence of the book.
28. Van Gogh had received a letter from Bernard the previous day; see letter 682.
29. In 1912, in the magazine De Amsterdammer, Anton Kerssemakers recalled: ‘He was always comparing painting with music, and so as to get a better understanding of the gradation of tones, he started to take piano lessons with an old music teacher, who was also an organist, in E[indhoven]. This didn’t last long, though, because during the lessons Van Gogh kept comparing the notes of the piano with Prussian blue and dark green or dark ochre to bright cadmium, and so the poor man thought he must be dealing with a madman and became so afraid of him that he stopped the lessons.’ Quoted in Verzamelde brieven 1973, vol. 3, p. 95. Charles Blanc had written in Les artistes de mon temps: ‘Colour can be learned like music’ (Le coloris s’apprend comme la musique). See Blanc 1876, p. 62.
30. L’indicateur marseillais 1888 lists 23 carpenters (menuisiers); we do not know who Van Gogh got to make his stretching frames.
31. By ‘the square no. 30 canvas’ and ‘the no. 10 canvas, portrait’ Van Gogh is referring in general to the canvas sizes for which he was seeking frames, although he did already have specific works in mind: The public garden (‘The poet’s garden’) (F 468 / JH 1578 [2713]), which he sent to Theo in a walnut frame in May 1889 (see letter 777), and Eugène Boch (‘The poet’) (F 462 / JH 1574 [2710]), which he planned to hang in his bedroom (see letter 693).
[2713] [2710]
32. Van Gogh had ordered 5 metres of canvas in letter 680; in letter 687 he confirmed that he had received it.
33. Cf. for this view the following passage in Voltaire’s Candide: ‘Let’s work without thinking, said Martin, it is the only way to make life bearable’ (Travaillons sans raisonner, dit Martin; c’est le seul moyen de rendre la vie supportable). Voltaire, Romans et Contes. Ed. Frédéric Deloffre and Jacques van den Heuvel. Paris 1979, chapter 30, p. 233.
a. Read: ‘not because anything special is going on’.
34. Van Gogh is referring here to Gustave Kahn’s criticism of his paintings; see letter 594, n. 15.
35. In Jean Richepin’s Césarine (1888), the title character, who is labelled as mad by those around her because of her promiscuous lifestyle, says: ‘Everything in life is resolved, on the whole, even the most extraordinary actions, by a series of careful equations’ (Tout se résout, en somme, dans la vie, même les actes les plus extraordinaires, par des équations bien faites) (see 4th ed. Paris 1888, p. 258).