Van Gogh in Arles

Not long ago I read The Yellow House by Martin Gayford, an account of the nine weeks in which Van Gogh and Gauguin lived and worked together in the town of Arles in Provence. Van Gogh had settled there first, and had furnished and decorated his yellow house so as to welcome Gauguin, the more established artist. Van Gogh admired Gauguin, but admiration was mingled with resentment, as it so often is. Gauguin urged Van Gogh to paint “from his head”—that is, from memory—an approach that didn’t work for Van Gogh.

This was a period of high creativity and high accomplishment for Van Gogh, during which he painted his self-portrait as a Buddhist monk, the Night Cafe, some of his famous sunflowers, and his portraits of the Roulin family. Yet such were the strains that the nine weeks ended with Van Gogh throwing a glass of absinthe at Gauguin (allegedly), threatening him with a razor (on better authority), and finally cutting off all or part of his ear and delivering it to one of the local prostitutes whom Van Gogh and his houseguest had become familiar with.

After finishing the book, I read the hundred pages or so in the Penguin edition of The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh that cover his time in Arles. Below are a couple of excerpts from a letter he wrote to Gauguin before his arrival: touching in their hopefulness and deference.

I must tell you that even while working I think continually about the plan of setting up a studio in which you and I will be permanent residents, but which both of us want to turn into a shelter and refuge for friends, against the times when they find that the struggle is getting too much for them....

I feel sure that if from now on you were to consider yourself the head of this studio, which we shall try to ensure will become a refuge for many—little by little, as our unremitting labour provides us with the means of completing it—I’m sure that you would then feel more or less consoled for the present ordeals of penury and ill-health, seeing that we shall probably be devoting our lives to a generation of painters that will last a long while to come…

I have made a special decoration, the Poet’s Garden, for the room you will have (there is a first draft of it among the sketches in Bernard’s possession—it was later simplified.)… I have tried to distil in the decoration the essence of what constitutes the immutable character of this country.