Ugly Van Gogh’s, Monstrous Children

Every artist, even the geniuses, have their bad days.

Van Gogh did have them too, of course. And I’m talking only of the normal bad days, not the psychotic crisis bad days…

When that happened ugly painting resulted. There are a few of those in his almost one thousand catalogued paintings. Shall we love him less for that matter? of course not. The ugly paintings make him only human. And makes us kind of courageous since, usually, nobody dares to speak of those…not to diminish the genius…not the diminish the market value, also, maybe…

Anyway, here are some of Vincent’s ugly ones, the one I detest most being his cows…

Oh! les vaches!

Some even doubted the paternity of this painting. The local colors (except for the yellow sky, everything is depressingly local color: the cows are burnt sienna, the grass is depressingly green… I didn’t see any signature (“Vincent”) on this ugly cows, ugly painting…I wouldn’t sign it either… Of course, Vincent painted a lot, very quickly and sometimes, well, sometimes it was a flap study… Because, with a genuine modesty, he was calling most of his paintings “study”…

Then, there are the children’s portraits… (by the way, the “monstrous” from the title is not meant for his children’s portraits but for another genius children…Henri “Le Douanier” Rousseau…) Here there are some of them… None too beautiful and for certain not Vincent’s cup of tea…

Relatively ugly children’s portrait by Vincent

It is a Auvers sur Oise painting, one of the 70-72 paintings he produced, at a rhythm quite exceptional…He did mostly portraits and landscapes (probably more landscapes since he always had trouble in finding willing models for his portraits; usually, for money…) There is a thing about Vincent’s portraits. He declared more than one time his passion for the “modern” portrait and gave a lot of importance to the subject. Some of his greatest works are portraits, the famous Dr Gachet, Dr. Rey’s portrait, etc. The thing is well documented, though. With Dr. Gachet’s exception (but dr. Gachet was in himself a queer birdie…) very few of Vincent’s models appreciated the finished work… A good sample is Dr. Rey’s portrait (a very good one by today’s standards) which ended as a chicken’s den repairing material! the parents of Dr. Rey detested his representation of their son…)

But neither Adeline Ravoux (you see his portrait below) nor Marguerite Gachet were enchanted by their image…

Adeline Ravoux portrait

Truth to be told, I kind of dislike it too, especially the color of her skin… it looks like that of a cadaver after staying in water for a week or two… Nor did Adeline liked the other portrait of hers…

Second portrait of Adeline R.

Truth to be told also, Gauguin had the same problem. For instance, his portrait “La Belle Angèle”, a gift he gave to his landlady in Bretagne, was not at all considered as a successful representation of the lady and rejected …

La belle and mean Angele

Of course, model’s tastes were, more often than not, very conventional and a lot of feminine vanity was (as always) involved… I had myself this situation, as a street portrayer, for instance with this old lady which considered herself ill-reproduced (I’ve tried to draw only a small fraction of her many wrinkles and creases…)

My refused portrait of and old hag

Imagine that she asked to be refunded the measly 7 $ in change she paid for this portrait… Oh, vanitas vanitates! (or something like that…)

Anyway, the most unsuccessful portraits were the children ones…The one with the twins is one of them…

the ugly twins

The brick color of the faces, the forced smiles, the very old looking hands…ok, not the most brilliant representation of children… True, this is a genuine Vincent, with his style well imprinted on the painting… Still, his children are kind of sinister… Speaking of sinister and monstrous children, Rousseau’s children come to mind… here there are some eloquent samples:

Arse on rock pick “children” by Le Douanier Rousseau

Shy little ? girl

queer child

These were commissioned works, I think, and I don’t know how they were received and if the clients payed their due… If one wanted a nice, cute portrait of their child, I wouldn’t have advised Rousseau as the man for the job… Even if, the thing has to be said, these paintings are perfect; perfect colors, perfect composition, perfect harmonization and unity… Well, the design is not conventionally perfect but yes, these paintings, considered from an objective point of view (not from parents’ point of view…) are great, perfect paintings… strange, of course, even sinister, a bit…but perfect…

Back to Vincent’s portraits… Some say Vincent’s works in his Auvers sur Oise period were uneven… They were, as it happens. Nobody, no genius, can always produce masterpieces. These are a hard thing to come by.

And Vincent has plenty of them even in his last 2 months of life. No shame and no blame in producing some less enjoyable (at least for the models or the model’s parents – a long time dead and buried anyway…) portraits and cow’s rare end portraits… All those make Vincent more human, more close to us, imperfect, non-geniuses painters…

Vincent’s “suicide” : some more thoughts

No, I did not change my mind. I still think (feel, too) that the way Naifeh & Smith present the death of Van Gogh is the best hypothesis ever, the most convincing.

But I have to underline a few things:

First, I am convinced that if this godsend accident, this Deus ex machina bullet, shot on a very odd angle and in quite odd place (in their 11 pages Appendix: A Note on Vincent’s fatal wound, which is the place N & S discuss in detail their hypothesis, using all and every source available, it appears clearly that not only the angle and the place of the wound were odd but it is almost certain the bullet was shot FROM A DISTANCE! ) wouldn’t have happen, Vincent would have done it himself, sooner or later that year.

I repeat, Vincent would have done it himself, sooner or later that year. I don’t believe he would have seen another spring.

In a very interesting earlier book on Van Gogh by M.E. TRALBAUT (VAN GOGH, Hachette, 1960) the author (one that I trust, relatively) listed at least 4 possible causes for Vincent to commit suicide:

1. Vincent wanted to free himself (and to free Theo and Jo, at the same time) from the material dependency to Theo; variant: Vincent feared that Theo would discontinue their “contract” (money for paintings&drawings), their partnership, and he would have been without means of existence, in an impossibility to continue painting.

2. The last chance “founding a family” plan for Vincent, failed. The affair he had (nothing 100% certain but very probable) with Marguerite Gachet was stopped by the “good” and “non-conformist” doctor Gachet (not that non-conformist as to give his young daughter in marriage to an artist with mental problems – he was suppose to treat those, was he? – and no revenue other than the stipend from his brother; in a way, as a father, one can understand his point of view…).

In Maurice Pialat movie, Vincent, on his death bed, silently smacks the “good” dr. Gachet in the face! (and the cooling off of his relation with dr. Gachet is evident in his last letters – he lost all hope that the doctor, in Auvers only during the week-ends, usually  – could help him in any way and considered the good doctor “even sicker” than himself.)

3. His creative power, after a first (last!) burst of energy in Auvers, the quality of his paintings, the vigor, the originality, were fading away. And what would have been Vincent without his creative power? It is true that his paintings and drawings created in Auvers (at an amazingly impetuous and vertiginous rate) are of unequal quality. Some are great “morceaux de bravoure” picturale, original (original even in comparison with his Arles and Rémy de Provence periods) and stunning. Here are a few samples:

Meules de foin à Auvers, Dallas Museum of Art

or

And others, if they  are truly painted by Vincent (and not imitations or forgeries  in the style of Van Gogh, made either by the old dr. Gachet or by his son Paul; in a very passionate – too passionate? – book entitled: L’Affaire Gachet: L’audace des bandits, Benoît Landais brings strong arguments to that effect… we’ll talk some more about his book later…) which could be considered, at most, studies, unfinished works, “des études ratées”… Most of them aren’t signed which could be very significant, one way or another… Here are some awful samples of those:

The cows, supposedly after Jordaens (a reproduction from, Yes! fishy! - dr. Gachet's collection)

4. Finally, last but not least, Vincent would have feared a new madness attack. The last days of July before his “suicide” were, truly, extremely stressful. His intempestive visit to Theo & Jo, in Paris, didn’t go well AT ALL (how could it? Theo and Jo were already high strung because of little Vincent sickness, probably they quarreled a lot for other reasons too…one was, for sure, the money for Vincent,  so Vincent himself, not the “paramount of tact and discretion”, was the last thing they needed to “calm down” !).

Harsh words were no doubt exchanged and all the above reasons (and probably others that only Vincent knew) could have triggered a new psychotic episode in a more healthy, normal, person…

M.E. Tralbaut lists all these as possible individual causes for Vincent’s “suicide” (he is just resuming the most important, already present in the Van Gogh bibliography, quite impressive even in the 60 ties).

In my humble opinion, ALL those reasons to kill himself (and some we don’t know about, more darker and sordid, maybe) would have inevitably end up in a real deal, effective, suicide. Probably by drowning (a method he mentions in a letter or two and that Sien, the only woman he lived with, used to end her miserable life years later…)

Considering how he hated cold weather and how puny, claustrophobic and depressing his last room was at the Ravoux inn,

The puny, stuffy room at the Ravoux inn.

adding all the serious reasons to end it enumerated above, my bet would be that, even if he wouldn’t have “been suicided” by the  trigger happy René Sécretan and his defective revolver, Vincent would have died by his own hand before the spring…

But this is speculation, of course. And that’s what everybody does,  doesn’t it? The only difference is that some, like Naifeh and Smith, diligently make their homework…

Note. Sorry for the quality of the reproductions. They are there just to prove my point and I hope nobody will sue me for copyright infringement… But, at least,  the text is mine (and not in public domain, yet…)

An unknown (to me!) photo of Vincent Van Gogh at Jesus age!

For the moment, I just want to share with you this unknown to me photo of Vincent, I found in a new book by Benoit Landais (known especially as a nonconformist critic of the Gachet family legend and the one who unveiled the false Dr Gachet portrait still in the Louvre – ok, Orsay Museum…)

Here it is:

Fragile, hiper sensitive, maybe older than the 33 years old he had at the moment, with bright, liquid and very light colored eyes, Vincent smiles for this almost conventional photo. He<s even dressed "officially" and has a bow tie (or something…) And, of course, he looks just like his self portraits… The photo was taken by a Victor Morin and probably, considering the age, he is in Paris…

Vincent knew it…

The letter I will cite you a phrase from was written the 04 th of May 1890. Vincent Van Gogh was, at the time, preparing to move out from the St. Remy de Provence asylum to Auvers-sur-Oise, where he hopped Dr. Gachet, “the friend of artists”, will help him. He also wanted to return to more northern places, the south of France, with its great, blinding sun and the maddening “mistral”, having got the best of him… Even the best things, in excess, could do you harm…

Vincent was, at the time, recovering from another “attack” of his sickness (not even now, almost 120 years later, the specialists couldn’t decide, for sure, what his sickness was: epilepsy? schizophrenia? any other of a great number of other mental sicknesses? that proves how scientific psychiatry and psychology are, for that matter…) He wanted to get out of the asylum as soon as possible since he knew “that attacks like the one I have just had have invariably been followed by three or four months of complete calm” and h planned to settle in Auvers-sur-Oise before another attack happened… By the way, about three months later he will put a bullet in his belly (or around… this detail is not sure either) which kind of strenghtens the explanation that he killed himself, partially, at least, because he was afraid of totally losing his mind…

But what really got my attention in this letter 631 from the 04 th of May 1890 was the following phrase :

…”I shall be out of doors over there. I’m sure that my zest for work will get the better of me and make me indifferent to everything else, as well as put me in a good humour.”

It’s no big discovery or surprise here. Probably the Anciens (Greeks and Romans, Indians and Chinese, etc.) knew this already. The beneficial effect of working on something you love to work – in Vincent’s case – drawing and painting, is no spectacular novelty. Still, to read his words on this, a few months before his suicide, and to know from my own experience how much good can do you to passionately draw and paint when you are down, blue and ready to burst did a lot of good to me. Maybe some others will read about this and drawing and painting (or, for that matter, writting or singing, sculpting or dancing, etc. any other creative endeavor) will be again a life saver… Ok, it was just a life improver for Vincent (and probably he killed himself only when he thought that he was declining in his work or that another attack will prevent him for ever drawing and painting again…) but that doesn’t mean it cannot work out for a lot of others, out there… I can testify to that myself and a lot of other people, from all times, would have been living a miserable life if this “creative endeavor” would have not existed…

I illustrate this post with a portrait painted by Vincent in his last days of staying at the St. Remy asylum, a portrait which is not the first of this kind in his work (an early drawing called “Facing eternity” – or something to this effect – may have been the inspiration for this; or he could have painted another old resident of the asylum):

Vincent Van Gogh, “Le viel homme triste” , Otterlo, Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller, Amsterdam

Little monsters

 

In 1999-2000 (I think) I’ve followed an etching course at the Bishop’s University. The plan was to complete a BFI (Bachelor in Fine Arts)… It didn’t work finally that way (I was too old and too tired to be a student again; more than that, it’s not for free…) but I’ve learned how to make an aquaforte, an aquatinta, etc. The teacher was a very good one (she came from Montreal) and I regret to say I do not remember her name… She did tell me I have some gift for engraving and was very encouraging (in which she made a big contrast with the bastard – a mean, envious bastard – who taught drawing…)

Vincent Van Gogh is supposed to have done one single engraving in his life (a portrait of dr. Gachet…but B. Landais, in a book called “L’affaire Gachet” says – and I have to confess he was pretty convincing! – that, in fact, the engraving, as some of the “Van Gogh” Paul Gachet jr. had donated to the Louvre in 1954, aren’t painted by Vincent but by the good doctor Gachet OR by his son…)  Me, I’ve done two etching, a aquaforte and this one, a small aquatinta… Both have as subjects monsters. This one’s “monsters” are little… Then, just as these days, I was pretty much depressed… I try to get out of it writing & painting… I cannot hope you’ll LIKE it. But I still hope you’ll be interested…