674 To Theo van Gogh. Arles, Tuesday, 4 September 1888.

metadata

No. 674 (Brieven 1990 678, Complete Letters 532)
From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Date: Arles, Tuesday, 4 September 1888

Source status

Original manuscript

Location

Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, inv. nos. b574 a-b V/1962 and b584 b V/1962

Date

Since Van Gogh says in letter 673 of Monday, 3 September that he will be seeing Boch again ‘tomorrow’, and he writes in the present letter that he expects him ‘this morning’, we have dated this letter Tuesday, 4 September 1888.

Arrangement

The sheet with the paint order that we place at the end of this letter led a nomadic existence in earlier editions. Jo van Gogh-Bonger did not include it in Brieven1914; in Verzamelde brieven 1952-54 her son V.W. van Gogh put it with letter 758; in De brieven 1990 it was printed with letter 685. Dorn suggested placing it with letter 677 (Dorn 1990, p. 505). His argument is that in letter 676 Van Gogh says ‘I'll write to you tomorrow on the subject of this coarse paint’ (ll. 87-88) and that the list discussed here is the outcome of that intention.

We see the remark at the top of the list (ll. 149-151) more as an instruction than as a resumption of the subject in question. In part for this reason we think that the list was an order that Theo was to give to Tasset. Our decision to put the order with the present letter is based on two factors. Van Gogh writes that he wants to replace a previous order with a larger one, and duly encloses a list (ll. 37-39), but his change of mind came too late to stop the original order from being delivered. It is at any rate highly unlikely that the order he received, which he refers to in letter 676, was the revised version; the intervening period of four days is too short. After Theo received the new order enclosed with the present letter, he must have heard from Tasset that the original order was already on its way to Arles, so he would not have placed the new order. This reconstruction also explains why the sheet has survived.

Secondly, the letter mentions the link between the degree of coarseness of the pigment and the size of the tubes (ll. 40-43); we believe that the remark at the top of the list, where this connection is also made (ll. 149-151), refers to this.

Ongoing topics

Boch’s visit to Theo (673)

Gauguin coming to Arles (602)

Willemien’s visit to Paris (660)

original text

1r:1

mon cher Theo

Je t’écris en attendant Bock le belge qui va partir ce matin de bonne heure.1 il a déjà 33 ans dont 10 ans de Paris et de voyage.– Sa soeur est plus agée que lui encore.2 Quoique jusqu’ici il n’aie pas encore été grand chôse comme peintre, si par son retour au pays il peut secouer enfin son fainéantisme produit par l’énervement Parisien et la fréquentation des fainéants, alors il se trouve à l’entrée tout juste d’une carrière de vrai peintre.

Il est bien de son paysa car dans son parler et dans ses manières moi je reconnais fort bien l’accent de son pays, la timidité de ces charbonniers auquels je pense encore si souvent. Tu verras probablement ses deux tableaux qu’il apporte, le dessin en est faible mais la couleur commence déjà à être vivante.3 Sa soeur va peutêtre faire un tour en Hollande4 et vaguement j’y ai pensé que je voudrais bien que notre soeur à nous et elle se rencontrent. J’ai toujours espérance que Wil trouvera par notre intermédiaire à se marier avec un artiste. Or pour arriver à cela il faudrait qu’elle soit un peu dans le mouvement. Si la soeur à Bock va effectivement en Hollande il n’y aurait qu’à dire à Bock que si elle veut faire des études à Breda elle peut loger chez la mère et la soeur.

1v:2

Ils y seront à la maison pour les quelques frais bien peu importants (ils logent assez de gens inutiles) mais enfin ce serait une occasion de faire connaissance. Mais n’insistons pas trop.

Seulement c’est chez les Bock une maison de peintre, les deux enfants étant dans le métier, avec cela ils ne sont pas sans le sou.5

Maintenant il y a juste une semaine que je t’ai envoyé une commande de couleurs. et une lettre pour Tasset pour lui demander s’il pourrait fournir de la couleur broyée à gros grain à meilleur marché. Actuellement je me trouve presque à bout de toute ma provision de couleur – en tout il me reste une douzaine & demie de tubes divers. Il est donc nécessaire que je remplace la commande en question par une autre. que tu trouveras ci jointe.6

Si Tasset ne pourrait pas faire de la couleur à meilleur marché il faudrait envoyer les tubes doubles comme d’habitude mais il m’en faudrait dans ce format de tubes 2 fois davantage. Tant que je ne les aurai pas il me faudra dessiner car je suis épuisé en tant que quant à la couleur.

1v:3

Ni Gauguin ni Bernard ne m’ont écrit de nouveau. Je crois que Gauguin s’en fout complètement voyant que cela ne se fait pas tout de suite et moi de mon côté voyant que 6 mois durant Gauguin se débrouille tout de même, cesse de croire à l’urgence de venir à son aide.–

Or soyons prudents là-dedans. Si cela ne lui va pas ici il pourrait me faire des reproches: “pourquoi m’as tu fait venir dans ce sale pays”.

Et je ne veux pas de ça.

Naturellement nous pouvons rester amis avec Gauguin tout de même mais je ne vois que trop que son attention est ailleurs.

Je me dis, agissons comme s’il n’était pas là, alors s’il vient tant mieux, s’il ne vient pas tant pis.

Que je voudrais m’établir de façon à avoir un chez moi. Je ne cesse de me dire que si dans le commencement nous 1r:4 eussions dépensé pour nous meubler même 500 francs nous aurions deja regagné le tout et j’aurais les meubles et je serais délivré déjà des logeurs. Je n’insiste pas mais ce n’est pas sage ce que nous faisons actuellement. Il y aura toujours des artistes de passage ici, désireux d’échapper aux rigueurs du nord. Et je sens moi que je serai toujours de ce nombre. Vrai que mieux vaudrait probablement d’aller un peu plus bas où l’on serait plus abrité. Vrai que cela ne sera pas absolument commode à trouver mais raison de plus, en s’etablissant ici les frais de déménagement ne sauraient être énormes. d’ici par ex. à Bordighera ou ailleurs à la hauteur de Nice. Une fois installés nous y resterions toute notre vie. Attendre qu’on soit bien riche c’est un triste systeme et voila ce que je n’aime pas dans les de Goncourt quoique ce soit la verité – ils finissent par acheter leur chez eux et leur tranquilité cent mille francs.7 Or nous l’aurions à moins de mille en tant que d’avoir un atelier dans le midi où nous pourrions loger quelqu’un.

2r:5

Mais s’il faut faire fortune avant......... on sera complètement névrosé au moment d’entrer dans ce repos et cela est pire que l’etat actuel où nous pouvons encore supporter tous les bruits. Mais soyons sages pour savoir que nous nous abrutissons tout de même.

Il vaut mieux loger les autres que de ne pas être logé soi-même ici, surtout en logeant chez le logeur qui meme en payant ne procure pas un logement où l’on est chez soi.

Pour Gauguin il se laisse peut être aller à veaub l’eau sans s’occuper de l’avenir c’est probable. Et peutêtre il dit que je serai toujours là et qu’il a notre parole.

Mais il est encore temps de la retirer et vraiment je m’en sens bien tenté car faute de lui naturellement je m’occuperais d’une autre combinaison. Tandis qu’à présent on est tenu. Si Gauguin trouve de quoi vivre tout de même, a-t-on le droit de le déranger. J’évite d’écrire à Gauguin de peur de dire trop carrément, voilà bien des mois que nous trouvons de quoi vivre chez les logeurs mais que nous prétendons ne pas pouvoir nous rejoindre tout en nous epuisant meme pour l’avenir. 2v:6 Si vous eussiez voulu, pourquoi ne m’avez vous pas dit de venir dans le Nord, je l’aurais déjà fait.

Cela aurait couté un simple billet de cent francs alors qu’aujourd’hui durant ces mois que cela traîne j’ai déjà payé ce même billet à mon logeur et vous chez le vôtre avez dû faire la même chôse ou vous avez fait 100 francs de dettes. Ce qui fait déjà au moins 100 francs de pure perte pour absolument rien.

Voila ce que j’ai sur le coeur et qui me fait dire que tant lui que moi agissons actuellement comme des fous. Est ce vrai ou non. Certes la vérité est même encore plus grave. Si lui n’est pas dans la nécessité de changer sa vie, il est ou bien plus riche que moi ou bien il a considerablement davantage de chance. Se ruiner coûte plus cher que réussir et certes c’est de notre faute si nous n’avons pas davantage de paix.

Poignée de main et à bientôt car j’espère bien que tu trouveras encore le temps de me reparler du sejour chez toi de notre soeur.

t. à t.

Vincent

Bock sera chez toi probablement dans une semaine ou dix jours.

En comptant les tournesols j’ai actuellement encore ici une quinzaine de nouvelles études.8

3r:7

Couleurs broyées à plus gros grain en grands tubes comme les grands tubes de blanc d’argent et de zinc.— pour la décoration.

	Cobalt		grands tubes	6
	Outremer			6
	Vert véronese			6
	Vert émeraude			6
	Vermillon			2
	Chrome	1 citron		6
	,,	2		6
	,,	3		6
	Mine orange			2
	Ocre jaune			1
6	Blanc de zinc			6
6	Blanc d’argent			6

3v:8

	Petits tubes
6	Bleu de Prusse
6	Laque Geranium
6	Carmin
6	Laque ordinaire

translation

1r:1

My dear Theo

I write to you while waiting for Boch, the Belgian, who’s leaving early this morning.1 He’s already 33 years old, including 10 years of Paris and travels. His sister is even older than he is.2 Although until now he hasn’t been anything very much as a painter yet, if by returning to his country he can at last shake off his idleness, caused by the enervation in Paris, and by keeping company with idlers, then he’ll find himself on the very threshold of a career as a true painter.

He’s very much of his country, because in his speech and in his manners I recognized very clearly the accent of his country, the timidity of those miners, whom I still think about so often. You’ll probably see his two paintings that he’s bringing; the drawing in them is poor, but the colour is already beginning to be lively.3 His sister will perhaps make a tour in Holland,4 and I’ve thought in a vague way that I’d really like it if our own sister and she were to meet. I always have hopes that through us, Wil may be able to marry an artist. Now to bring that about she’d have to be a little bit up to date. If Boch’s sister actually goes to Holland, we’d only have to say to Boch that if she wants to study in Breda, she can stay with our mother and our sister. 1v:2

That’ll put them to some very small expenses at home (they put up enough useless people), but after all, it would be an opportunity to become acquainted. But let’s not press the point.

But at the Bochs’ home, it’s a household of painters; the two children being in the profession, with that they’re not penniless.5

Now I sent you an order for colours exactly a week ago. And a letter for Tasset, asking him if he could supply coarsely ground colours more cheaply. At this very moment I’m almost at the end of my supply of colours — altogether I’ve about a dozen and a half different tubes left. So it’s necessary for me to replace the order in question with another. Which you’ll find attached.6

If Tasset couldn’t do colours more cheaply, you’d have to send double tubes as usual, but I’d need twice as many tubes of that size. Until I have them I’ll have to draw, because I’ve run out as far as colours are concerned. 1v:3

Neither Gauguin nor Bernard has written to me again. I believe that Gauguin doesn’t give a damn, seeing that it isn’t happening right away, and for my part, seeing that Gauguin has been managing anyway for 6 months, I’m ceasing to believe in the urgent need to come to his assistance.

Now let’s be careful about it. If it doesn’t suit him, he could reproach me: ‘why have you made me come to this filthy part of the country?’

And I don’t want any of that.

Of course, we can remain friends with Gauguin all the same, but I see all too clearly that his attention is elsewhere.

I say to myself, let’s behave as if he wasn’t there, then if he comes, so much the better, if he doesn’t come, too bad.

How I’d like to set myself up so that I could have a home of my own! I never stop telling myself that if at the start we’d 1r:4 spent even 500 francs on furnishing, we would already have recouped all of it, and I would have furniture and I would be free of lodging-house keepers by now. I’m not pressing the point, but what we’re doing now isn’t wise. There will always be artists passing through here, wishing to escape the harshness of the north. And I feel myself that I’ll always be among that number. True that it would probably be better to go a bit further down, where you’d be more sheltered. True that it won’t be entirely easy to find, but all the more reason; if we set ourselves up here, the costs of moving shouldn’t be enormous. From here to Bordighera, for example, or somewhere near Nice. Once we’d settled, we’d stay there for the rest of our lives. Waiting until you’re very rich is a sorry system, and that’s what I don’t like about the De Goncourts, although it’s the truth — they end up paying a hundred thousand francs for their home and their peace of mind.7 Now we’d have it for less than a thousand, in that we’d have a studio in the south where we could put someone up. 2r:5

But if we have to make a fortune first......... we’ll be totally neurotic by the time we reach that sort of tranquillity, and that’s worse than our present state, in which we can still stand all sorts of noises. But let’s be wise enough to know that we’re getting dull-witted all the same.

It’s better to lodge others than not to be lodged ourselves here, especially lodging with an innkeeper, which even when you pay doesn’t provide you with a lodging where you feel at home.

As for Gauguin, he’s perhaps letting himself drift with the current without thinking about the future, it’s likely. And perhaps he’s saying that I’ll always be there, and that he has our word.

But there’s still time to take it back, and truly I feel very tempted to do so, because failing him, I would of course think about another partnership. Whereas at present we’re held to it. If Gauguin finds enough to live on as it is, have we the right to bother him? I’m avoiding writing to Gauguin for fear of saying too bluntly, look, for many months now we’ve been finding enough to live with lodging-house keepers, but claiming that we can’t join together, while at the same time even wearing ourselves out for the future. 2v:6 If you’d wished, why didn’t you tell me to come to the north? I’d have done it by now.

It would have cost a mere hundred-franc note, whereas today, during these months that it’s been dragging on, I’ve already paid that same note to my lodging-house keeper, and you must have done the same with yours, or you’ve gone into debt for 100 francs. Which by now makes at least 100 francs pure waste for absolutely nothing.

That’s what rankles with me, and what makes me say that both he and I are behaving like madmen at the moment. Is that true or not? In fact, the truth is even more serious. If he’s not in need of changing his way of life, he’s either much richer than me or he has considerably better luck. Ruining oneself costs more than succeeding, and it’s certainly our fault if we haven’t more peace.

Handshake and more soon, because I really hope that you’ll still find time to tell me more about our sister’s stay with you.

Ever yours,

Vincent

Boch will probably be with you in a week or ten days.

Including the sunflowers, I still have about fifteen new studies here at the moment.8

3r:7

Colours, ground more coarsely, in large tubes like the large tubes of silver white and zinc. For the decoration.

	Cobalt		large tubes	6
	Ultramarine			6
	Veronese green			6
	Emerald green			6
	Vermilion			2
	Chrome	1 lemon		6
	,,	2		6
	,,	3		6
	Orange lead			2
	Yellow ochre			1
6	Zinc white			6
6	Silver white			6

3v:8

	Small tubes
6	Prussian blue
6	Geranium lake
6	Carmine
6	Ordinary lake

notes

1. See letter 669, n. 16, for Boch’s departure from Arles.

2. Boch turned 33 on 1 September 1888. His sister Anna was seven years older. Boch had lived in Paris since 1879 and travelled widely: In 1881 he went to Italy, and between 1885 and 1910 he visited, among other places, Corsica, Spain, the south of France, the Balearics and Algeria. See exhib. cat. Saarbrücken 1971, pp. 44, 47-48.

a. ‘Être bien de son pays’ is a French expression that means ‘to know nothing of the world, to be simple, naive’, but Van Gogh uses it literally.

3. We do not know which two paintings Boch took to Paris. For his work from this period see letter 650, n. 17.

4. Nothing is known about a visit to the Netherlands by Anna Boch in this period. She stayed there on several occasions in the early part of the twentieth century. See exhib. cat. Saarbrücken 1971, pp. 14, 30.

5. Victor Boch, Eugène and Anna’s father, was managing director of the china factory Villeroy & Boch in La Louvière. In 1881 he had spent two months travelling through Italy with his children, going to museums. See exhib. cat. Saarbrücken 1971, p. 47.

6. Van Gogh had enclosed this paint order and letter for Tasset with letter 668, sent on 23 or 24 August, in other words rather more than ‘a week ago’. On 8 September (letter 676) he confirmed that Tasset’s consignment had arrived. In view of the short intervening period, this cannot possibly have been the new order sent with the present letter, so it must be the order that went with letter 668. See also Arrangement above.

7. Van Gogh is referring here to what Jules and Edmond de Goncourt noted in their Journal on 12 September 1868: ‘After buying this house for almost a hundred thousand francs, which bourgeois logic would view as totally unreasonable given our limited funds, we offer two thousand francs, which is more than the Emperor or de Rothschild would pay for a passing fancy, for a Japanese monstrosity, a fascinating bronze, which something told us we just had to have’. (Après l’achat de cette maison de près de cent mille francs, cette maison si déraisonnable au point de vue de la raison bourgeoise devant notre petite fortune, nous offrons deux mille francs, un prix dépassant le prix d’un caprice de l’Empereur ou de Rothschild, pour un monstre japonais, un bronze fascinatoire, que je ne sais quoi nous dit que nous devons posséder.) See Goncourt 1887-1906, vol. 3, p. 234. In the months of August and September 1868 they are full of their house, and write more than once about how expensive it is; cf. e.g. 4 August 1868 and 16 April 1869 (pp. 223, 289).

In La maison d’un artiste (1881) Edmond de Goncourt gave a detailed description of his house at 53 boulevard Montmorency. All the works of art in it are listed as if it were a museum guide. The descriptions serve in part to rehabilitate eighteenth-century art and the artistic treasures of French culture. See La maison d’un artiste. With a postscript by Pol Neveux. 2 vols. Paris n.d.

Various authors have regarded this passage as an allusion to La maison d’un artiste, see Van Uitert 1993, pp. 139-140 and Dorn 1990, pp. 40, 233 (n. 36), however nowhere is there an explicit indication that Van Gogh had read this book; in letter 677 he did, though, refer to ‘une maison d’un artiste’ (an artist’s house). Cf. also letter 681, n. 6.

b. Read: ‘vau’. Van Gogh mentioned the novel A vau-l’eau by J.K. Huysmans in letter 669.

8. Van Gogh had made four paintings of sunflowers: F 453 / JH 1559 , F 459 / JH 1560 , F 456 / JH 1561 and F 454 / JH 1562 . The new studies in any event also included the following works, mentioned in letters 659-673: Patience Escalier (‘The peasant’) (F 443 / JH 1548 ), Thistles (F 447 / JH 1550 ), Caravans with fairground travellers (F 445 / JH 1554 ), Railway carriages (F 446 / JH 1553 ), Quay with sand barges (F 449 / JH 1558 ), the unknown study of thistles and butterflies (letter 666), Patience Escalier (‘The peasant’) (F 444 / JH 1563 ), a flower still life (letter 671), Shoes (F 461 / JH 1569 ) and Eugène Boch (‘The poet’) (F 462 / JH 1574 ). This brings the number of studies to fourteen; two other flower still lifes (see letter 671, n. 3) and the two versions of Sand barges (F 437 / JH 1570 and F 438 / JH 1571 ) may also have been done in the second half of August (see letter 666, n. 10).