Painted with Words: Vincent van Gogh's Letters to Émile Bernard
Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Avenue at 37th Street
New York City
(212) 685-0008
September 28, 2007 to January 6, 2008
By FIELD KALLOP
Vincent van Gogh Letter to Emile Bernard, Arles, ca. June 20, 1899 (Letter 7, folio 2)
pen and balck ink on two sheets of cream machine-made laid paper, 20.5 x 26.8 cm
Thaw Collection, The Morgan Library & Museum. Photography by Joseph Zehavi, 2006.
COVER November 2007: Letter to Émile Bernard, Arles, 18 March 1888, Letter 2 (detail)
Painted with Words: Vincent van Gogh’s Letters to Émile Bernard, an exhibition of twenty letters written by Vincent van Gogh to the artist and poet Émile Bernard, with supporting paintings and works on paper by both artists, marks an exceptional occasion: a chance to be up close to the private thoughts and feelings, personal hopes and goals, that were integral to the creative processUnseen by scholars for nearly seventy years, and never before exhibited to the public, these letters offer a rare and intimate look at the beliefs and practices of a legendary master. While the missives have been reproduced several times in books and magazines, this opportunity to examine the actual yellowed sheets, scrawled and sketched upon by the artist himself, is truly unique.
While Van Gogh is one of the most renowned and generally adored artists of all timecomparatively few of his admirers have a sense of his true character. He tends to be considered a mentally unstable genius, a kind of oddball recluse, who continually suffered from depression, spending time at the end of his life in a mental asylum. During these final years, he famously sliced off a portion of his own ear, and eventually committed suicide. Though always recognized for his talent, he is often regarded as tragically troubled.
Van Gogh wrote these letters to his younger friend and artistic protégé Bernard during 1887 and 1888, while the Dutch painter was living in the South of France, and Bernard was mostly in Brittany. The two artists had become acquainted in Paris in 1886 and quickly became friends; van Gogh was then thirty-three, Bernard eighteen. After van Gogh’s relocation to Arles, the artists embarked on a two-year correspondence that chronicled their activities and reflections, although regrettablyBernard’s missives did not survive. During his lifetime, van Gogh wrote hundreds of letters to his friends and family, and while his correspondence with his brother Theo is the most well-known, these missives to Bernard present a different voice and offer new insight into van Gogh’s person.
Throughout his letters, Van Gogh is frank and spontaneous, funny at times, and even crass. He is serious, sometimes sad, and on occasion endearingly vulnerable. He discusses his daily activities, makes observations about his rural surroundings, and meditates on his latest creative projects. Even commonplace anecdotes are amusing. In a note from April 19th, 1888, he recounts that, “I worked one to death yesterday, of a cherry tree against blue sky, the young shoots of the leaves were orange and gold, the clusters of flowers white. That, against the blue green of the sky, was darned glorious.” Later, on June 19, he wonders, “But when will I do the starry sky, then, that painting that’s always on my mind?” Van Gogh realized this vision shortly thereafter in Starry Night Over the Rhone (1888), which is not included in the exhibition
Many of the letters contain beautiful sketches, often times as a visualization of a new idea. It is enthralling to read his careful descriptions, and to then examine theses preliminary drawings, which are precursors to more polished paintings. The missives contain studies related to works such as The Sower (1888), The Langlois Bridge (1888), Cottages at Saintes-Maries (1888), Boats on the Beach at Sainte-Maries (1888), and View of Arles at Sunset (1888). In many cases, the Morgan has provided the finished works.
In a letter from April 12th, 1888, van Gogh includes a sketch of “an entrance to a Provençal orchard,” which depicts a narrow road running through a cluster of fruit trees; tall, dark cypresses loom in the distance. The drawing is rough, the marks hastily – but carefully – made. The artist indicates intended colors and other details; he writes phrases such as “big blue sky” at the top of the drawing, “pink peach tree” amidst a tangle of branches to the left, and “white pear tree” above a tree to the right. “Emerald-green garlic” and “lilac” are scattered below, and a “blue-green ditch with water” sits beside a “yellow path.” His plan seems disarmingly simple.
One of two paintings that van Gogh completed of this subject hangs next to the sketch. Orchard Surrounded by Cypresses (1888) bears much resemblance to its preparatory drawing, but it is more colorful and alive. The brushstrokes are quick, and the palette is vibrant. It is not only enlightening, but also exciting, to witness this intermediary step in van Gogh’s creative process. In his sketch, we see how the artist initially conceived of an idea; he interpreted his environment, created a composition, and chose a basic color scheme. Through his painting we are able to better understand the ways in which he employed color, applied paint, and fully realized his initial vision. While the drawing reveals the bare bones of the work, the finished painting is the more complicated, and more beautiful, end product.
Van Gogh often adopted the role of older and wiser brother figure to Bernard:He compliments, criticizes and advises his younger friend. He is eager to learn about Bernard’s new work, and asks him frequently to send sketches; often Bernard complied. Van Gogh derives “enormous pleasure” from some, and openly disapproves of others. He also counsels Bernard on how to live his life and make his art. He continually advises his less worldly friend to study art history, and in a letter from August 4th, 1888, shares this belief: “If we do not know what to do, my dear old Bernard, then let’s do the same as they [painters of the Italian Renaissance, the Dutch masters, and various French artists], if only so as not to allow our scarce mental powers to evaporate in sterile metaphysical meditations that aren’t bottling chaos, which is chaotic for the very reason that it won’t fit into any glass of our caliber.” Van Gogh firmly believed that painting should be rooted in the real, not based on the imagination, and repeatedly asserts the importance of “immersing oneself in reality.”
Feeling isolated in Arles, van Gogh also solicited his colleague’s advice. In a letter from June 7th, 1888, he asks Bernard about “A technical question. Do give me your opinion in next letter.” Later that month, on June 27th, he writes: “I’m…utterly incapable of judging my own work. I can’t see whether the studies are good or bad.” We learn that, despite his enormous body of work and the facility with which is seems to have been created, van Gogh often struggled; he was at times unsure and frustrated. He also asks Bernard repeatedly to come to the South of France to paint with him, and discusses his wishes for Gauguin to join them as well. At the end of September, 1888, he writes, “I would like you to come enormously, and if Gauguin comes too, all that we will regret will be that it’s winter and not the warm season.” His loneliness is evident, as is his eagerness for camaraderie and his want for artistic collaboration.
It becomes apparent that van Gogh considered the exchange of ideas with other artists a crucial part of creative development. In a letter from June 7th, 1888, he declares that, “More and more it seems to me that the paintings that ought to be made, the paintings that are necessary, indispensable for painting today to be fully itself…exceed the power of an isolated individual, and will therefore probably be created by groups of men combining to carry out a shared idea.” Van Gogh wrote his last letter to Bernard in the fall of 1888. During the following year, he suffered from mental illness and spent time at a sanatorium in Saínt-Rémy; he died in the summer of 1890. Following van Gogh’s death, Bernard was a champion of his work. He organized the first retrospective of van Gogh’s paintings in Paris in 1892, and a year later published a selection of his letters in the monthly arts periodical Mercure de France. This exhibition not only affords a profound understanding of a master’s work, but endows us with renewed affection for his person.
