But, you say, I do not expect you take that advice literally; I was just afraid you were too fond of spending your days in idleness, and I thought you had to put an end to it. May I observe that this is a rather strange sort of ‘idleness’. It is somewhat difficult for me to defend myself, but I should be very sorry if, sooner or later, you could not see it differently.[37]
The Weaver, Nuenen, February 1884.
Oil on canvas, 36.6 x 45 cm.
Private collection.
The Cottage, Nuenen, 1885.
Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 79 cm.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Woman (“Sien”) Seated near the Stove, The Hague, March-April 1882.
Pencil, pen and brush in black ink (faded to brown in parts) and white opaque watercolour on laid paper (two sheets), 50 x 61 cm.
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.
Sorrow, The Hague, November 1882.
Lithograph, 38.9 x 29.2 cm.
Private collection.
Van Gogh compared his unproductive period with a bird’s change of feathers:
As the moulting time […] is for birds, so adversity or misfortune is the difficult time for us human beings. One can stay in it – in that time of moulting – one can also emerge renewed; but anyhow it must not be done in public and it is not at all amusing, therefore the only thing to do is to hide oneself. Well, so be it.[38]
The ‘renewed’ van Gogh made two important decisions: first, he resolved to determine the course of his life entirely on his own and not to seek his family’s advice; second, he set out to put his passions to good use:
When I was in other surroundings, in the surroundings of pictures and works of art, you know how violent a passion I had for them, reaching the highest pitch of enthusiasm. And I am not sorry about it, for even now, far from that land, I am often homesick for the land of pictures.[39]
Peasant Woman in a White Bonnet, Nuenen, December 1884-January 1885.
Lead pencil and charcoal, 33.6 x 20.9 cm.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Homesick for the world of art, van Gogh moved to Brussels in October 1880. He began to study with reproductions and models: “There are laws of proportions, of light and shadow, of perspective, which one must know in order to be able to draw well; without that knowledge, it always remains a fruitless struggle, and one never creates anything.”[40] Though his father disapproved of his decision, he supported his son financially. Theo, who by that time had begun working in Goupil’s branch in Paris, also sent him money.
In the spring of 1881, to reduce his expenses, van Gogh moved to the vicarage in Etten, where his father had been working for some time. The young painter did not suffer from material wants, but his family neither understood nor supported his ideas:
Father and Mother are very good to me in that they do everything to feed me well, etc. Of course I appreciate it very much, but it cannot be denied that food and drink and sleep are not enough for a man, that he longs for something nobler and higher – aye, he positively cannot do without it.[41]
Girl in a Wood, The Hague, August 1882.
Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 39 x 59 cm.
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.
Beach at Scheveningen, The Hague, August 1882.
Oil on canvas, 34.5 x 51 cm.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Woman with a Broom, Nuenen, March-April 1885.
Oil on canvas, 41 x 27 cm.
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.
At this time, “something nobler and higher” meant, first of all, not the artistic work, but his love for his cousin Kee. Although she had resisted his advances, he continued trying to win her heart. His family was ashamed by his persistence, and openly criticized his passion. After a particularly heated argument during the Christmas holidays in 1881, the pastor ordered his wayward son to leave.
Two years later Vincent returned to the family nest for the last time. With this final break, he abandoned the family name, and began signing his canvases simply ‘Vincent.’ The event that precipitated the rupture was van Gogh’s decision to take up residence in The Hague with the prostitute Christina Hoornik, also called Sien. In May 1882 he wrote to Theo:
Last winter I met a pregnant woman, deserted by a man whose child she carried. A pregnant woman who had to walk the streets in winter, had to earn her bread, you understand how. I took this woman for a model, and I have worked with her all the winter. I could not pay her the full wages of a model, but that did not prevent my paying her rent, and thank God, so far I have been able to protect her and her child from hunger and cold by sharing my own bread with her.[42]
The compassion he felt for the pregnant woman was coupled with his longing to have a nest: “I have a feeling of being at home when I am with her, as though she gives me my own hearth, a feeling that our lives are interwoven.”[43]
The family reacted with reproaches, exhortations, and threats. Once again, the familiar pattern recurs: van Gogh’s parents could not understand the behaviour of their son, but they cared about his well-being. In the winter of 1883 they sent him a package of clothes which included a woman’s coat. For some time van Gogh had been dependent on people who did not accept him, a paradox which prompted him to think at length about the relationship between art and money. He wrote to Theo: “I will succeed in earning money to keep myself, not in luxury, but as one who eats his bread in the sweat of his brow.”[44] In the years to come, van Gogh would defend the artist as a productive, and therefore respectable, member of society. He began sending Theo some of his pictures in exchange for the money he sent; in this way Theo became his employer rather than his patron.
In The Hague, van Gogh focused on figurative drawing. Sien was his most important model: “I find in her exactly what I want: her life has been rough, and sorrow and adversity have put their marks upon her – now I can do something with her.”[45] Van Gogh’s conception of women was quite far removed from the classical ideal of beauty. On one occasion, he expressed his opinion in these terms:
The
L 132, in: The complete letters…, I: 192.
L 133, in: The complete letters…, I: 194.
L 133, in: The complete letters…, I: 194.
L 138, in: The complete letters…, I: 211.
L 159, in: The complete letters…, I: 269.
L 192, in: The complete letters…, I: 349.
L 212, in: The complete letters…, I: 396.
L 197, in: The complete letters…, I: 366.
R 8, in: The complete letters…, III: 323.
