Le Christ Jaune
By Matt Kelly
My Dear Theo,
Be thankful you left home before they moved here. The light was better in Zundert, I recall. No lack of sunny days here, you understand, but something lacking in the light on sunny days. Same as everyone smiles on occasion, but not every smile is particularly good. Now and again you get a lovely bright smile—Johanna Bonger smile—and other smiles for a while thereafter are a little bit cold.
But of course the sun does what it pleases, same with Johanna Bonger.
Anyway, cold smiles. Ma says I'm welcome till I'm on firmer footing, and the other one, well, he mustn't tell a lie. If a father's rightly proud of his son who deals paintings, should he think less of the one who paints paintings? Haranguing Jesus for not being a minister, when really there'd be no ministering without some Jesusing too. When really it's been proven rather painfully that I can't cut it as a dealer or a minister. Granted I'm no savior nor even a painter as of yet, but I'm sleeping in the outbuilding and I'm painting all the time.
You've received the woodcuts? Perhaps you could hang them in your room and let them bring a little light to Paris. Bought them off an importer of Japonaiserie before I left Amsterdam, cleared him out of all he had. As you say, thrifty to buy in bulk. From the manner of printmaking over there, I imagine that in Japan the sunlight is most agreeable. Steady friendly sunlight, each thing looking just as it should, each fellow doing just as he would, woodcuts selling as tulips do here, artists making a decent living, lives with wives and children and such. Perhaps you could send the woodcuts back to me as promptly as you can.
Please send a hundred guilders along with the woodcuts, if you can manage. Exhausted your most recent hundred on canvas for a study of the trees here. Old Kerssemaker visited from Eindhoven, such a jolly cheery fellow that even Father had a laugh and a drink, and while we were together in the garden Kerssemaker put it in my head to paint the pollard oaks en plein air. They have the familial look, red leaves and rather scruffy, and I don't think I botched them too badly. Tolerable light that day, is why.
Anyway, Kerssemaker liked the canvas enough that he offered me a hundred guilders on the quiet. But of course I couldn't part with my oaks for money. Does one sell one's kin for a hundred guilders? No, quite the opposite, one sends one's kin a hundred guilders in the mail. Made him a farewell gift of it, in the end. Anyway, I've got no money and am rather lonely again. Please send a nice long letter with the hundred guilders, if you can manage.
With the oaks gone, it's just me and my potato eaters. Finished them in the outbuilding after Father banned me from painting in the house—would've used a dropcloth if he'd offered one. Dark lot, they are. Sending them along to you, as I've had my fill of looking at them. But maybe I ought to leave them here and join you in Paris myself?
From your loving brother, a good handshake,
Vincent
[Nuenen, 1885]
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Vincent,
Forgive, busy. Pastellists' exhibition / Tissot's exposition / Salon next week / wink of sleep / writing you.
Dubious about sunlight in Japan. Might be that people over there see things in better light on account of not drinking / smoking so much, eating good meal now and again, making amends w/ sick old parents before too late, etc. etc.
Enclosed hundred. If you won't ask Father won't lend, please stretch it as best you can. E.g., send one woodcut and let me keep, don't send thirty-four and ask to send back. E.g., don't buy thirty-four Japanese woodcuts. Unless you can eat paintings directly, sell for money when Kerssemaker offers to buy, spend money on food. Eat some food, for Christ's sake. One of your letters two from Ma: Vincent skinny skeleton, Vincent drunken stumbler, Vincent hopeless bachelor, etc. etc.
Received your potato eaters. Hmm. Dark, as you say. Dark like blinds are closed, sun's gone down. Like sun won't rise, crops won't grow. Like son's died on account of no crops and they're eating him in lieu of potatoes. Afraid unsalable—who'll pay to be made miserable? Make better light in your head if none in Nuenen?
Paris fine but overcrowded. One more painter would burst. Before Paris try Antwerp Bruges Brussels Drenthe Hague Leiden Koln Rotterdam, etc. etc.
Handshake.
Theo
[Paris, 1885]
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My Dear Theo,
Probably you're right about Japan. Though not about everywhere, necessarily. Even if it's on some other planet, I wager there's a someplace where the light's more agreeable.
Though the someplace isn't Antwerp. A sort of cold stare, the daylight here. Lukewarm sunrise as if to say, "Oh, it's only you again." Granted, it is only me again.
You'll be pleased to know I've been frugal. Things may be different in Paris, but in winter here it's more economical to warm oneself with strong drink than with a gas stove. Of course, it's my bad luck that just when I'm good and properly schnockered, the daylight warms up to me. Then of course I've got to try and paint what's out the window. At sunset everything's covered in glory, including drunken novice painters, and as I work I know it's my finest yet, it'll be our first salable painting and far from our last, and on every mantel in every Brabant home there'll be a van Gogh throwing off more warmth than the fire, little redhead kleuters huddled around it, and far from being stingy we'll share the proceeds with hungry lonely artists who've nowhere to sleep but the floor. Finish the painting the bottle by sundown then fall asleep on the floor.
Wake stiff as a board with a wrecked sailor's thirst and the reproving sun out the window. Shameful painting on the easel. Bad headache of a canvas with the color and composition of vomit on the floor. Vomit on the floor with the color and composition of paint on the canvas. On top of the vomit I've ruined my clothes, was my last tolerable set, last metre of canvas. No credit left at the shop, left Nuenen without patching things up, day closer to over than being begun.
So you'll be pleased to know that I'm swearing off liquor for the time being. Incidentally, I've spent the Academie money on tobacco and coffee and will need more for a gas stove. Plus more for clothes and ten metres of canvas. Plus the Academie money.
What a goddamn bas good brother you are to make me promise that I'll stick with the Academie. The drawing-master is a little prickly a bit pigheaded a little prick a big pigfucker has his own way of doing things. Insists that we draw from the outline and omit the background—putting the subject in the straightjacket, he calls it. Putting it on the cross, more like. In an unfurnished room with an unsmiling model are all sorts of funny tricky shadows, half-hidden like children in the hide-and-seek game, and if one doesn't want to draw them all, well, one needn't draw at all then.
I must say, Theo, it's no better when you ask me to brighten things up. Inattention, dereliction, intoxication—no, it was inveterate honesty that made me unsuited for the last thing, the things before that thing. Now, that's not to speak ill of Father, or of you—that's not to say there's something dishonest about being a minister or a dealer. Except that as a dealer one sometimes has to stand beneath some shoddy Head of Christ replica, when the customer asks if it's real has to smile one's best smile.
Anyway, I'm in need of money for a tooth-fixer. Tooth-faker, even. Missing so many already that I look over forty, and it's asking too much of anyone to marry a fellow who's old and impoverished. New nobody, old somebody, neither is hopeless. Was planning to have the remaining teeth filed down and capped, was scrimping money by way of skipping meals—but for whatever reason I got dizzy-headed at the easel and took a fall. Knocked my mouth on the windowsill, from what I gather. Well, it was the charwoman who gathered them in her little dishrag, three of my premolars like throwaway pearls. Proposal on some better planet, woman handing jewels to man, but really she only stopped by to say she's moving to Rotterdam.
Quiet here until I find a new charwoman. I wonder, Theo, do you ever shut your blinds on the winter sun, close your eyes on your latest wasted canvas, lie there corpse-like until you hear a knock on the door, and at the door it's the painter's-model you hired yesterday to knock on your door in five days' time, grim old man of a painter's-model there in your doorway like the Ghost of Christmas Future? Well, Theo, you wouldn't need to worry about such things, if you had a good trusty roommate. How are things in Paris, incidentally? In your spacious rooms in Paris?
Incidentally I've painted a grim old man in wintry light. Sent him along to you, as I think Paris will do him good.
From your loving brother, a good handshake,
Vincent
[Antwerp, 1885]
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Vincent,
This week Tassaert retrospective / Durand-Ruel sale / Goupil Christmas social / writing you.
Received your old man. More personable than potato eaters. More of a person. Recognizably human person rather than greyskinned mooncalf in Brabant peasant bonnet. Still, very dark. No falsehood, brightening him up a bit, more a form of prophecy. Fudge a few cheerful paintings afford a gas stove, good hot meal, etc. etc., find oneself cheerful by nature.
Pity you aren't coping w/ your drawing-master. Could be that he speaks roughly to your face but behind your back is rather fond of you. Better to play the good pupil than have it out with him, since after you've said something cutting he might drop dead in short order. Not to say you'd have his blood on your hands, only that you'd be forgiven for thinking you did, for moving somewhere new and drinking like fish, spending like prodigal, etc. etc.
Re: money doing all I can. Enclosed enough for few teeth at least. As for finding wife, well, trick is to act like the sort of fellow who's already got one. Am told that's the trick. You know, dress sharply and make little comments that in one sense are harmless and in another are rather disgusting? Father-would've-smacked-you comments, you know.
Granted, in big foreign city, where fashions change w/ wind, one can dress carefully and at considerable expense only to be called "Dutch gutter-dweller" by long-gloved Parisian woman in Montmartre garden. Make remark that in native tongue would've been suitably suggestive but in good-not-perfect French is taken to mean, "I would die and die again, to allay your heartburn." And so a pleasant fellow w/ good paying job can find himself alone. Doesn't mean he should give up / seek bachelor roommate.
Anyway, please don't come without writing, as I may have company at any given time.
Handshake.
Theo
[Paris, 1886]
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My Dear Theo!
Your charwoman, though probably an excellent lady in most respects, was most unwelcoming. Only got in your door because she mistook me for you, at least until I smiled back at her, and when I said I was your brother she seemed more rather than less determined to throw me back into the foyer. Anyway, I was keener to stay put than she was to see me gone.
There was some talk about not coming here without writing you, so from an overabundance of caution I'm writing you now from your living room. Now, you may be surprised to find me here, and it's crossed my mind that you may even be peeved—but then you'll see the woodcuts where I've arranged them along the hallway, on the mantel, atop the nightstands, and you'll grow ebullient in that good Japanese light, you'll see straight away that we'll do some great things here, by way of opening our own gallery, good honest paintings from good honest brothers, "Brother, honestly I was peeved at first, but it's all come off so well that I wish I'd been more welcoming."
But really, Theo, I can't stand here writing you all day! I've got to take a stab at painting the rooftops in the sunlight. Pushed excess furniture into your room, and really you ought to have a dropcloth handy for sparing the floorboards. Well, we'll sort all that when you get home. Where do you keep the liquor? Coffee's lovely except that the hands tend to tremble.
From your loving roommate, an imminent handshake!
Vincent
[Paris, 1886]
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V.
Gone to meet Uncle C. re: gallery funding. Knocked on your door, probably you're painting daydreaming daydrinking asleep.
Anyway leaving note where you'll find it. Don't take it all with the note, as not paid again till end of month. Just want to say that you needn't hurry after me. In fact you need to stay put, as I have subtle artful plan re: what to say to Uncle C.
And if S. stops by while I'm out, don't be so appalling to her.
Or nice to her. Are you trying to be nice or appalling to her? Whatever you're being be otherwise. Re: whether she and I are compatible, what's needed is sort of van 't Hoff experiment w/ no confounding influences. What can one conclude, standing at fireside in woman's embrace, arm on her waist, her head nestled on shoulder, swaying together as if to silent music of spheres, her eyes closed like sleeping angel's, slowly she opens them, soliciting kiss—but her eyes alight on unshaven unblinking self-portrait of one's brother on mantel, then on unshaven unblinking face of one's brother in the flesh, emerging from guestroom contrary to promises, and she shrieks little shriek then makes rapid excuses to leave?
Easier to say what needs saying without saying to your face. Damn you whole kitchen's full of your stupid confounding faces.
Don't hang work without asking / don't paint me while I'm napping on chaise longue / don't nap on chaise longue while filthy with turpentine / if you must nap don't snore / Jesus Vincent you snore like a foghorn / don't write Ma complaining I order you about / don't write money order for nine hundred francs for Gauguin's lousy paintings.
Really it's too much with Gauguin. Happy you've made a friend, but maybe you don't know what's involved? Not one's job to feed friend keep friend in good clothes buy friend's shitty artwork. Not as if friend is brother. Breadbox empty this morning, and since you take all your grains distilled, must've been Gauguin who emptied it, pilfered the loaf the butter preserves too and two of your better paintings and as "payment" left behind obscene napkin-drawing of Breton bather. Would put me off my food if any food left. Anyway you've ruined breakfast.
Ruined dinner last night. Went to Le Tambourin on blvd de Clichy, walls lousy with your flower studies—first thought was delirium from overwork, second was that behind my back you'd managed to sell, third was delirium from overwork—then proprietor stomped out from kitchen and seized me by collar, where was her money for hanging your pieces, where was her money for floating your tab, "Where do you get off, you rufous Flemish prick?" Ripped my shirt before she realized I wasn't you, when I said I was your brother she took my billfold / tossed me into street.
Christ, we don't even look alike. Didn't look alike. Take in a stray take after him. Not that you're a dog, Vincent, but by God you've got some mangy habits.
Written too long now I'll have to run down rue Lepic w/ canvas under my arm and long-gloved ladies will laugh "There goes Vincent w/ his folly" or worse yet "There goes one of them or the other one." To show Uncle C. am taking your Luxembourg garden.
Admittedly it's rather good.
Hndshk.
T.
[Paris, 1887]
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Friend Theo,
Would I keep writing you, if I were still sore about it? Even if months passed without you writing me, I wouldn't write—if I were still sore about it. But here I am writing again, without you having written, so what's the truth except that I'm not sore about it anymore? So please write. Letters are more wel as welcome as money.
It can't be that you're sore with me. Suppose it's true that S. would've had you if she hadn't hated the sight of me—well, who am I except your own lovable self in four years' time? Younger brother's luck, having your future around to weed out fickle admirers. In time you'll feel thankful for how it turned out, as I've come to feel thankful for your many suggestions as to where else I might live.
Thankful for the light down here. Yellow southern sunlight, bright and overbright. Gauguin reads the scientific journals—knows something of everything, clever devil—and says it's a thinning of the atmospheric ether. Sky stretched taut, he says. Nothing to regret about Paris, but if there were anything to regret it would be the false sense you've gotten of Gauguin. It's asking too much of you and me—of anyone but Gauguin, really—to understand his work, but it's the sort of thing where one infers the quality of the paintings from the quality of Gauguin. Has lots of lovely bright ideas on the pastoral-as-urban and the primitive-as-modern, speaks gorgeously about them. Lots of lovely white teeth.
Heaven on earth—we rise with the sun and breakfast together, stroll to the terrace and paint the sunflowers. I'm quite taken with them. The flowers, not the paintings. The paintings aren't any good as of yet. Each morning I start afresh with stems in a vase, with all the confidence in the world, but the result is always lacking. By afternoon the light's dimmed somewhat, and the florets have begun to droop if only slightly, and for the life of me I can't remember what either looked like in the morning. Damned frustrating. Sending you an instance of the problem—dispose of it as you would any other wilted thing. Gauguin's done a sort of joke-study of me as I work, and I worry that his flippant flowers are better than the ones I mean in earnest. He's been somewhat premature with my hairline, but after all he's a futurist.
Now don't fret about overwork, since we've made a rule of heading for the night café at sundown. But don't fret about overindulgence. It's only that Gauguin can hardly go without me, since I'm good for all his drinks company, and that Madame Ginoux has her eye on me. Well, Gauguin says she does, though I don't hope. We spend a good long time sitting and drinking and waiting for her to show. Granted, she doesn't always show, though it's no fault of hers or mine, since really it's a dismal café when you take a good long look. Sullen drunkard staring back at you, sipping piss-yellow pastis, your bladder overfull of it, head too heavy on your hand, elbow sweating-slipping along the greasy bartop, sopping up the gaslight like the drunkard's jaundiced eyewhites, and even Gauguin who's a handsome devil looks a kind of brute in the café, a fiendish selfish character.
Fiendish selfish character who makes little comments that in one sense are harmless and in another are rather disgusting, who when I come back from the jakes gives me this pissy sidelong look like, "Oh, it's only you." Granted, it is only me, but before he deigned to come to Arles it was only me for months, alone in the yellow house but making it homely, fitting gas for winter painting, painting summer flowers for display along the hallway, on the mantel, atop the nightstands, all of them well-intentioned if defective in technique.
All my talk is of technique and how to better it, I lay the impasto on too thick, I admit—but as I'm admitting he turns away from me, toward Madame Ginoux who's suddenly on the stool beside him. Gives her the toothy devil's grin, pays for her gin as if it were his money to spend, as if it weren't enough that he's already got the wife and five kids in Copenhagen, sale of three paintings in Paris, and as his oafish head's turned I can see right into his horrible hairy ear, no wonder he doesn't listen properly, earful of hair like a waxy black spider, spider with damned stupid ideas about urban pastoralism, modern primitivism, what the fuck are those anyway?
If not technique, then what should I ask him about except how's his wife lately, how's his clap lately—and they're not so good, Theo, not in front of Madame Ginoux. She storms out then he storms out then I trail him back to the house, starless wordless walk with clenched fists when really he ought to be thanking me. Who am I except his own bachelor self from a decade previous, who lacking a wife wouldn't dream of dishonoring her? Case of self-hatred, when he wings his shoe at me, flings my perspective-frame down the stairwell, with his old fencing saber menaces my latest self-portr—but these are matters between roommates, Theo, and I know you've no patience for such things.
Friendly handshake.
Vincent
[Arles, 1888]
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Dear Vincent,
Foghorn snorer you are. Had a good long chat before you dozed off again, but the doctor bets you won't recall. Ought to attribute all sorts of improbable promises to you, "I'll become a bookkeeper," "I'll become a teetotaler," etc. etc. Payback for silly things you've said I said when I was little.
But truthfully you've said nothing except that Gauguin isn't to blame. Hmm. "Ma, it wasn't Vincent who brought the cur home," "Ma, it wasn't Vincent who fed the cur your Brabant-bread"—well, who was it all those times? Far from convinced that Gauguin didn't do the thing himself, and if not he might've intervened. Duty as your friend and roommate. He stopped by yesterday but only to chisel me for train fare to Lyon. Would've sent him first-class to moon via dirigible if only to see him gone.
Will dawn on you that you have to leave too. Walked to yellow house to retrieve fresh clothes for you, way back waylaid by pack of vicious Rhônish children, mistook me for you, some harsh comments made, e.g., "redhead sunstruck fuck," some hard objects thrown, e.g., stones. Comments probably crueler if my Provençal were better, stones are stones everywhere. Word's spreading of your latest, as whore to whom you gave severed ear friend who found your missing thing has regained faculty of speech. Already your landlord has new lessee—dumped your canvases in the alley but distrained your furniture.
Doctor Rey suggests a suitable place in Saint-Rémy. Wrong to call it an asylum, lots of good upstanding fellows there and you'd be permitted to paint, but if Rey mentions an asylum it's this place in Saint-Rémy he's mentioning. Failing that, he's given me the name of a Dr. Gachet in Auvers, has a way with epileptic eccentric fellows. Failing that, well, Ma's still vigorous if not so much as before, perhaps Breda will suit you better than Nuenen. Failing all that, well, we'll send you first-class to Japan via steamship for sojourn in one of your woodcuts.
Though surely it's a one-off? Excess of Gauguin, if not excess of work or drink as Rey's been saying. Bad day at Goupil I've been known to thump my head against the desk, who knows what else in few years' time? Well, not exactly this, but you're not so cracked is all I mean to say. Only frustrated, though I wish you wouldn't be. Father was never going to smile on this and women don't go for art so much as for sales and as for sales it's harder to make any if you haven't made any yet. Your latest are bright but perhaps overbright so please don't get your hopes up. Anyway it might not go ill to leave off for a while.
If not here when your mind clears I've had to go back to Paris. Really you're welcome in Paris but perhaps you'll feel otherwise on account of my not living alone anymore. Maybe you heard from Ma or Wil that I called on Jo Bonger and she said yes and probably you should've heard it straight from me. Being a good old Zundert girl she's unused to the filth in Parisian food / water / air and has taken ill herself. See to her then work then you again.
Good firm handshake,
Theo,
[Arles, 1889]
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My Dear Theo,
I won't take it ill, if you and the Mrs. find noplace to hang it. Though if there's space, perhaps it's near the little kleuter's crib? It's a child's painting, you see, a painting for a child. Willful hopeful nonsense, old man's self-indulgence, Provence blossoms in Hiroshige's style against the Zundert sky as I recall it, blue so soft it's nearly yellow.
You'll be pleased to know I've been frugal. In lieu of money Gachet agreed to take paintings, studies of his family and such, such a pleasing proposition that I started right away on him. But as I worked I got to thinking, thought a hole in it as you'd say. Thought the whole thing's perverse and pointless, paintings of the healer for the painter's healing, treatment not worth a damn since the paintings aren't either, grimaced back at Gachet's grimace, he knows I know he knows it's hopeless. Running short of Prussian blue with all the thunderheads here.
Well, so be it. The sun's eye wanders, mine can too. You know the old refrains—"It was mutual," "We remain the closest of friends," "I have something better lined up, anyway."
Starlight, is what. Side-effect of Saint-Rémy, maybe. Nothing wrong with Saint-Rémy, but if there were anything wrong it would be that the days were a living hell less pleasant than the nights. Immureds flinging food at me, "pasty custard bastard," better to be locked in my cell, alone with the stars through the barred window. You have my night sky study, first and worst of many. In stars the complementaries blend, warm blue and cool yellow, lovely unearthly coupling, brothering mothering Fatherling muttering, "Vincent, darling, can't you see it's all right, it'll be just fine in the