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651 To Emile Bernard. Arles, Monday, 30 July 1888.

metadata
No. 651 (Brieven 1990 653, Complete Letters B13)
From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Emile Bernard
Date: Arles, Monday, 30 July 1888

Source status
Original manuscript

Location
New York, Thaw Collection, The Morgan Library & Museum

Date
Assuming that Van Gogh honoured his promise to write again soon, the present letter dates from shortly after the previous one to Bernard (letter 649, of 29 July). The opening words accordingly appear to be an immediate continuation of their discussion about painting, while the drawings that Bernard had sent are examined at the end. Van Gogh’s new model, Joseph Roulin, who posed for him on 31 July, is not mentioned, despite the fact that the importance of painting portraits is stressed in this letter. On the assumption that he would have told Bernard about Roulin’s portrait if he had already painted it, as he did Theo and Willemien in letters 652 and 653, both of 31 July, we have dated this letter Monday, 30 July 1888.

original text
 1r:1
Mon cher copain Bernard.
Tu admettras, j’en doute aucunement, que ni toi ni moi ne puissions avoir de Velasquez et de Goya une idée complète de ce qu’ils etaient comme homme et comme peintres, car ni toi ni moi n’avons vu l’Espagne, leur pays et tant de belles choses qui sont restées dans le midi. N’empêche que ce que l’on en connait c’est déjà quelque chôse.1
Va sans dire que pour les gens du nord, Rembrandt en tête, il est excessivement désirable de connaître, en jugeant ces peintres, et leur oeuvre dans toute son étendue, et leur pays et l’histoire un peu intime et serrée de l’époque et des moeurs de l’antique pays.
J’y tiens à te répéter que ni Baudelaire ni toi ont une nette idée suffisamment en tant que Rembrandt.
Et en tant que quant à toi je ne saurais trop t’encourager à regarder longtemps grands et petits hollandais avant de t’arreter une opinion. Ici il s’agit non seulement de pierres precieuses étranges mais il s’agit de démeler des merveilles dans des merveilles.
Puis pas mal de strass dans les diamants. Ainsi pour moi qui 20 ans déjà durant étudie l’ecole de mon pays, la plupart des cas je ne répondrais même pas s’il en était question, tellement en général j’entends parler à côté de la question lorsqu’on discute les peintres du nord.
Ainsi à toi je n’ai qu’à répondre, Bah, regarde donc un peu mieux que ça, vraiment ça en vaut mille fois la peine.
Or si par exemple je pretends que l’Ostade du Louvre qui réprésente la famille du peintre, l’homme, la femme, la dizaine de gosses, est un tableau infiniment digne d’etude et de reflexion,2 ainsi que la paix de Munster de Terburg.3 Si dans la galerie du Louvre les tableaux que personellement je prefère et trouve les plus etonnants, sont très souvent oubliés par les artistes mêmes qui vont voir les Hollandais, alors j’en suis fort peu étonné, sachant que mon choix à moi dans cette galerie-là est fondé sur des connaissances en cette matière que la plupart des français ne sauraient avoir.
 1v:2
Mais si avec toi par exemple je differerais d’opinion à ces sujets, j’aurais confiance que tu me donnerais raison plus tard. Ce qui me navre au Louvre c’est de voir leur Rembrandts se gâter et les cretins de l’administration abîmer beaucoup de beaux tableaux. Ainsi la tonalité jaune embêtante de certaines toiles de Rembrandt est un effet de detoriation par humidite ou autres causes dans des cas que je pourrais te montrer au doigt.
Aussi difficile de dire quelle est la couleur de Rembrandt que de donner un nom aux gris Velasquez, on pourrait dire faute de mieux “or Rembrandt” et c’est ce qu’on fait, mais c’est bien vague.
Venant en France, moi j’ai peutêtre mieux que bien des francais eux memes senti Delacroix et Zola pour lesquels ma sincère et franche admiration est sans bornes.
Puisque j’avais une idee un peu complète de Rembrandt.– l’un, Delacroix, procède par les couleurs, l’autre, Rembrandt, par les valeurs mais ils s’equivalent.
Zola et Balzac en tant que peintres d’une société, d’une nature dans son ensemble, causent à ceux qui les aiment des emotions artistiques rares pour cela même qu’ils embrassent le tout de l’epoque qu’ils peignent. Si Delacroix peint l’humanité, la vie en general au lieu d’une époque, pas moins il est de la même famille de genies universels.
J’aime bien le dernier mot de je crois Silvestre, qui termine ainsi un article magistral:
ainsi mourut – presqu’en souriant – Eugène Delacroix, peintre de grande race – qui avait un soleil dans la tête et un orage dans le coeur – qui allait des guerriers aux saints – des saints aux amoureux – des amants aux tigres – et du tigre aux fleurs.4
Daumier est un bien grand genie aussi.–
Millet, encore un peintre d’une race entière et des milieux où elle vit.–
 1v:3
Possible que ces grands genies ne soient que des toqués et que pour avoir foi et admiration sans bornes pour eux il faille egalement etre toqué. Cela serait – je préfererais ma folie à la sagesse des autres.
Aller indirectement à Rembrandt est peutetre le chemin le plus direct. Parlons de Frans Hals.5 jamais il n’a peint des christs, des annonciations aux bergers, des anges ou des crucifixions et resurrections, jamais il n’a peint des femmes nues voluptueuses et bestiales.–6
il a fait des portraits, rien rien rien que cela.
Portraits de soldats,7 réunions d’officiers,8 portraits de magistrats assemblés pour les affaires de la republique,9 portraits de matrones à peau rose ou jaune, de blancs bonnets coiffés, de laine et de satin noir habillées, discutant le budget d’un orphelinat ou d’un hospice,10 il a fait le portrait de bons bourgeois en famille, l’homme, la femme, l’enfant,11 il a peint le buveur gris,12 la vieille marchande de poisson en hilarité de sorcière,13 la belle putain bohémienne,14 les bebes au maillot,15 le crane gentilhomme bon vivant, moustachu, botté et éperonné,16 il s’est peint lui et sa femme jeunes amoureux dans un jardin sur un banc de gazon après la premiere nuit de noce.17 il a peint les voyous et les gamins riants,18 il a peint les musiciens19 et il a peint une grosse cuisinière.20
Il n’en sait pas plus long que cela mais cela ––––––––––––––– vaut bien le paradis du Dante21 et les Michel Ange et les Rafael et les grecs même.22 C’est beau comme Zola et plus sain et plus gai, mais aussi vivant, parceque son époque etait plus saine et moins triste. Maintenant qu’est ce que Rembrandt.– la même chôse absolument – un peintre de portraits. Voilà d’abord l’idee saine, large, claire qu’il s’agit d’avoir des deux sommites hollandaises qui s’equivalent, avant d’entrer plus loin en matière.
 1r:4
Cela bien compris, Toute cette glorieuse republique, representée par ces deux féconds portraitistes, reconstituée à grands traits, nous conservons tres amples marges pour les paysages, les scenes d’interieur, les animaux, les sujets philosophiques.
Mais je t’en supplie, suis bien ce raisonnement droit que je m’efforce de te présenter d’une facon fort fort simple.
Fourre toi dans la tête ce Maître Frans Hals, peintre de portraits divers de toute une republique crane et vivante et immortelle. Fourre toi dans la tete le non moins grand et universel maitre peintre de portraits de la republique Hollandaise, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, homme large et naturaliste et sain autant que Hals lui-même. Et après nous verrons de cette source, Rembrandt, ecouler les élèves directs et vrais, Van der Meer de Delft, Fabritius, Nicolaes Maes, Pieter de Hooch, Bol, et les influencés par lui, Potter, Ruysdael, Ostade, Terburg. Je te nomme là Fabritius, duquel nous ne connaissons que – deux toiles23 – je ne nomme pas un tas de bons peintres et surtout pas le strass de ces diamants, bien introduit dans les cranes francais vulgaires, ce strass.
Suis-je, mon cher copain Bernard, très incompréhensible cette fois-ci. Je cherche à te faire voir la grande chose simple, la peinture de l’humanité, de toute une republique disons plutôt, par le simple moyen du portrait. Cela d’abord et avant tout, plus tard – – – si au sujet de Rembrandt nous aurons affaire un peu à de la magie, à des christs et des femmes nues,24 c’est fort intéressant – mais c’est pas le principal. Baudelaire qu’il taise son bec sur ce territoire, c’est des mots sonores et puis d’un creux!!!25 Prenons Baudelaire pour ce qu’il est, poete moderne ainsi que Musset en est un autre, mais qu’ils nous fichent la paix quand nous parlons peinture.
Poignee de main.

t. à t.
Vincent

Je n’aime pas autant que les autres ton dessin lubricité, j’aime l’arbre cependant, il a beaucoup d’allure.26

translation
 1r:1
My dear old Bernard.
You’ll agree, I’ve no doubt at all, that neither you nor I can have a full idea of what Velázquez and Goya were like as men and as painters, because neither you nor I have seen Spain, their country, and so many fine things that have remained in the south. Even so, what we know of them does count for something in itself.1
It goes without saying that for the northerners, Rembrandt first and foremost, it’s extremely desirable, when judging these painters, to know both their work in its full extent and their country, and the rather intimate and hidden history of those days, and of the customs of the ancient country.
I want to repeat to you that neither Baudelaire nor you has a sufficiently clear idea when it comes to Rembrandt.
And when it comes to you, I couldn’t encourage you enough to take a long look at major and minor Dutchmen before arriving at an opinion. Here it’s not just a matter of strange precious stones, but it’s a matter of sorting out marvels from among marvels.
And a fair amount of paste from among the diamonds. Thus for myself, having been studying my country’s school for 20 years now, in most cases I wouldn’t even reply if the subject came up, so much do I generally hear people talk beside the point when the painters of the north are being discussed.
So to you I can only reply, come on, just look a little more closely than that; really, it’s worth the effort a thousand times over.
Now if, for example, I claim that the Van Ostade in the Louvre, which shows the painter’s family, the man, the wife, the ten or so kids, is a painting infinitely deserving of study and thought,2 just like Ter Borch’s Peace of Münster.3 If the paintings in the gallery in the Louvre that I personally prefer and find the most astonishing are very often forgotten by the very artists who go to see the Dutchmen, then I’m not in the least surprised, knowing that my own choice in that gallery is based on a knowledge of this subject that most of the French couldn’t have.  1v:2
But if, for example, my opinion differed from yours on those subjects, I’m confident that you would agree with me later. What grieves me at the Louvre is to see their Rembrandts getting spoiled and the cretins in the administration damaging many beautiful paintings. Thus the annoying yellow tonality of certain canvases by Rembrandt is an effect of deterioration through humidity or other causes, instances of which I could point out to you.
As difficult to say what Rembrandt’s colour is as to give a name to the Velázquez greys; we could say, for want of something better, ‘Rembrandt gold’, and that’s what we do, but that’s quite vague.
Having come to France I have, perhaps better than many Frenchmen themselves, felt Delacroix and Zola, for whom my sincere and frank admiration is boundless.
Since I had a fairly complete idea of Rembrandt. One, Delacroix, proceeds by way of colours, the other, Rembrandt, by values, but they’re on a par.
Zola and Balzac, as painters of a society, of reality as a whole, arouse rare artistic emotions in those who love them, for the very reason that they embrace the whole epoch that they paint. When Delacroix paints humanity, life in general instead of an epoch, he belongs to the same family of universal geniuses all the same.
I love the closing words of Silvestre, I think it was, who ends a masterly article like this:
Thus died — almost smiling — Eugène Delacroix, a painter of high breeding — who had a sun in his head and a thunderstorm in his heart — who went from warriors to saints — from saints to lovers — from lovers to tigers — and from the tiger to flowers.4
Daumier is also a really great genius.
Millet, another painter of an entire race and the settings in which it lives.  1v:3
Possible that these great geniuses are no more than crazies, and that to have faith and boundless admiration for them you’d have to be a crazy too. That may well be — I would prefer my madness to other people’s wisdom.
To go to Rembrandt indirectly is perhaps the most direct route. Let’s talk about Frans Hals.5 Never did he paint Christs, annunciations to shepherds, angels or crucifixions and resurrections; never did he paint voluptuous and bestial naked women.6
He painted portraits; nothing nothing nothing but that.
Portraits of soldiers,7 gatherings of officers,8 portraits of magistrates assembled for the business of the republic,9 portraits of matrons with pink or yellow skin, wearing white bonnets, dressed in wool and black satin, discussing the budget of an orphanage or an almshouse;10 he did portraits of good citizens with their families, the man, his wife, his child;11 he painted the tipsy drinker,12 the old fishwife full of a witch’s mirth,13 the beautiful gypsy whore,14 babies in swaddling-clothes,15 the gallant, bon vivant gentleman, moustachioed, booted and spurred;16 he painted himself and his wife as young lovers on a turf bench in a garden, after their first wedding night.17 He painted guttersnipes and laughing urchins,18 he painted musicians19 and he painted a fat cook.20
He doesn’t know much more than that, but it’s ———————————— well worth Dante’s Paradise21 and the Michelangelos and Raphaels and even the Greeks.22 It’s beautiful like Zola, and healthier and more cheerful, but just as alive, because his epoch was healthier and less sad. Now what is Rembrandt? The same thing entirely — a painter of portraits. That’s the healthy, broad, clear idea that one must have first of all of the two eminent Dutchmen, who are on a par, before going into the subject more deeply.  1r:4
This fully understood, All this glorious republic, represented by these two prolific portraitists, re-created in broad strokes, we retain very wide margins for landscapes, interior scenes, animals, philosophical subjects.
But I beg you, follow this straightforward argument carefully, which I’m doing my utmost to present to you in a very very simple way.
Get him into your head, this Master Frans Hals, painter of various portraits of a whole self-assured and lively and immortal republic. Get into your head the no less great and universal master portrait painter of the Dutch Republic, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, a broad and naturalistic and healthy man, as much as Hals himself. And after that we’ll see flowing from that source, Rembrandt, the direct and true pupils, Vermeer of Delft, Fabritius, Nicolas Maes, Pieter de Hooch, Bol; and those influenced by him, Potter, Ruisdael, Ostade, Ter Borch. I mention Fabritius to you there, by whom we know only — two canvases23 — I don’t mention a heap of good painters, and especially not the paste among these diamonds, paste firmly embedded in ordinary French skulls.
Am I, my dear old Bernard, terribly incomprehensible this time? I’m trying to make you see the great simple thing, the painting of humanity, let’s rather say of a whole republic, through the simple medium of the portrait. This first and foremost; later — — — if, on the subject of Rembrandt, we’re dealing to some extent with magic, with Christs and nude women,24 it’s very interesting — but it’s not the main thing. Let Baudelaire hold his tongue in this department, they’re resounding words, and how hollow!!!25 Let’s take Baudelaire for what he is, a modern poet just as Musset is another, but let them leave us alone when we’re talking painting.
Handshake.

Ever yours,
Vincent

I don’t like your drawing Lubricity as much as the others; I like the tree, though, it has a great look.26
notes
1. Van Gogh was here thinking above all of the paintings by Velázquez and Goya in the Louvre, with which he and Bernard were familiar. The works by Velázquez were The Infanta Maria-Margarita , The Infanta Maria-Theresa, Gathering of thirteen characters, Portrait of a priest of Toledo and Philip iv of Spain. The Goya in the Louvre was the portrait Ferdinand Guillamardet. See letter 852 and Baedeker 1889, pp. 113, 129.
2. Adriaen van Ostade, Family portrait, formerly known as The painter’s family 1654 (Paris, Musée du Louvre). See letter 42, n. 7.
3. Gerard ter Borch, The swearing of the oath of ratification of the Treaty of Münster, 1648 (London, National Gallery). Ill. 1370 .
4. See for this quotation from Silvestre, Eugène Delacroix: letter 526, n. 2. Van Gogh lent this book to Bernard, as we know from letter 735.
5. Van Gogh had got to know quite a few works by Frans Hals from reproductions when he was working at Goupil & Cie, as well as from the originals in the museum in Haarlem, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Louvre in Paris.
6. This passage was prompted by Van Gogh’s objections to Bernard’s works of these subjects.
7. Hals made at least one work that can be described as the portrait of a soldier: Portrait of a man wearing a cuirass, c. 1638-1640 (Washington, National Gallery of Art, Mellon Collection). However, it is not certain that this is the one Van Gogh meant.
8. Hals painted several group portraits of officers. Van Gogh certainly knew the large canvas painted jointly by Hals and Pieter Codde: The company of Captain Reynier Reael and Lieutenant Cornelis Michielsz Blaeuw (‘The meagre company’) : see letter 534, n. 4.
9. There are two known group portraits of governors of institutions that fit this description: The regents of St Elizabeth’s Hospital, c. 1641 (Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum) and The regents of the Old Men’s Alms House, 1664 (Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum). Ill. 154 and Ill. 155 .
10. Frans Hals, The regentesses of the Old Men’s Alms House, 1664 (Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum). Ill. 2205 .
11. The following are candidates for these family portraits by Hals: Family portrait in a landscape, c. 1620 (private collection); Family portrait, c. 1635 (Cincinnati Art Museum), and Family group in a landscape, c. 1648 (Madrid, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection). See exhib. cat. Washington 1989, pp. 156-160 (cat. no. 10), 270-272 (cat. no. 49), 317-319 (cat. no. 67).
12. Frans Hals, The merry drinker ; see letter 534, n. 8.
13. Van Gogh was probably thinking of Malle Babbe and a smoker, which was attributed to Hals at the time. It shows the grimacing face of the old woman above a table laden with fish (Dresden, Gemäldegalerie). Ill. 2206 . Nowadays this anonymous work is regarded as a pastiche of Hals.
14. Frans Hals, Gypsy girl, 1628-1630 (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Ill. 2207 .
15. We do not know which work or works Van Gogh is referring to here.
16. Frans Hals, Willem van Heythuysen, c. 1638 (Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts). Ill. 2208 .
17. Van Gogh means Hals’s portrait of Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laen; see letter 536, n. 16.
18. Hals painted several ‘guttersnipes and laughing urchins’, but it is impossible to make out whether Van Gogh was thinking of any one in particular. Cf. exhib. cat. Washington 1989, pp. 176-177, cat. no. 16.
19. Hals made a number of paintings of musicians, so it is impossible to identify the one Van Gogh is referring to. Cf. exhib. cat. Washington 1989, pp. 168-171 (cat. no. 14), 174-175 (cat. no. 15), 202-203 (cat. no. 25-26), 205-207 (cat. no. 28).
20. It is hard to say which painting of a cook Van Gogh meant. Perhaps it was Young woman with a glass and flagon (Washington, The Corcoran Gallery of Art). Cf. Slive 1970-1974, vol. 3, p. 15, cat. no. 22.
21. ‘Paradise’ is the third and final part of Dante’s Divine comedy (1313-1321).
22. The adverb ‘même’ (even) can refer to the Greeks, but also to ‘the Michelangelos, Raphaels and the Greeks’ as a whole.
23. Today there are only twelve paintings that are attributed to Carel Fabritius, and in Van Gogh’s day, too, it was known that his oeuvre was small. E.J.T. Thoré (writing under the pseudonym of W. Bürger), who was largely responsible for the rediscovery of Fabritius, attributed nine paintings to him in the second volume of his Musées de la Hollande. According to Thoré, the brothers Bernart (Barent) and Carel Fabritius were one and the same person. See exhib. cat. The Hague 2004 and Thoré 1858-1860, vol. 2, pp. 170-176. One work that Van Gogh certainly knew was the Rotterdam self-portrait (see letter 155, n. 18). It is possible that he used the word ‘deux’ (two) in the sense of ‘only a few’.
24. Van Gogh would have been referring to the paintings by Rembrandt in the Louvre: the figure of Christ in The pilgrims at Emmaus , and the nude women in Bathsheba bathing and Susannah bathing (now regarded as a copy after Rembrandt). See letters 34 and 536.
25. In his 1911 edition, Bernard placed a note here to explain why Van Gogh was so vehement; see letter 649, n. 6.
26. See letter 649 for Bernard’ drawing Lubricity : Although the 1911 edition renders ‘l’arbre’ (the tree) as ‘l’Arbre’, giving the impression that there was a second drawing, this must simply be a reference to the tree in Lubricity. Van Gogh did not use a capital letter.