and to realize who she is and where she is, that this picture alone would make me hesitate to say definitely that Van Gogh could not have achieved his ideal if only he had lived, and if only he had found the type whose pictorial advocacy he might have undertaken.
Here in this picture, all the dramatic effect of budding womanhood, of which Schopenhauer spoke so scornfully, is concentrated into a head and a pair of shoulders. All the mystery and charm of mere potentialities, undefined and still untried, is told in a thrilling and fairy-like combination of lemon yellow, black, Prussian blue, and the most delicate of pinks. The freshness is that of an old Dutch master like Johannes Hannot, for instance, who could paint fruit to look cold and raw on a pitch-black ground.[11] This virgin, too, like all virgins, is cold and raw—and the effect is due to the masterly and almost devilish skill with which her qualities have been marshalled in her portrait, against a pitch-black ground.
It is a wonderful work.[12] Maybe it stands as the only justification of all Van Gogh’s otherwise overweening aspirations. In any case it makes me feel that if he had lived, he would have learnt to regret even more than he already did, that no artist-legislator existed to inspire his brush and give his art some deeper meaning.
With regard to the rest of his figure work, I can only say I am unsympathetic. And to all those who may accuse me of Philistinism and the like for my refusal to agree with the extravagant encomiums they lavish upon his figure pictures, I can only reply by pointing to Van Gogh’s own modest and very sensible words: “Any figure that I paint is generally dreadful, even in my own eyes. How much more hideous must it therefore be in the eyes of other people” (page 69).
And now what did the admirable Gauguin have to do with all this? What part did he play in this final development of his friend’s genius and in directing his brother artist’s last thoughts and hopes?
We do not need to be told, we feel sure from our knowledge of the two men’s work, that Gauguin played a great part in Van Gogh’s life at this time. We also know that Gauguin was an older, more able, and more experienced painter than the Dutchman, with a personality whose influence is said to have been irresistible.
It was in vain that Van Gogh tried to hold him at arm’s length. It was in vain that he pointed to the narrowness of Gauguin’s forehead, which he held to be a proof of imbecility; in the end he had to yield, and was, as Gauguin declares: “forcé de me reconnaitre une grande’ intelligence.”[13]
“Quand je suis arrivé à Arles,” says Gauguin, “Vincent se cherchait, tandis que moi, beaucoup plus vieux, j’étais un homme fait. … Van Gogh sans perdre un pouce de son originalité, a trouvé de moi un enseignement fécond.”[14]
And Van Gogh was as ready to admit this as we are compelled to recognize its truth. Writing to Albert Aurier, he once said: “Je dois beaucoup à’ Paul Gauguin.” But his latest and best work, as also the ideals and aims of his last years constitute the most convincing evidence we have of the great influence Gauguin exercised over him, and although the older man was ready to acknowledge that the seeds he sowed in Van Gogh fell upon “un terrain riche et fécond,” it is impossible to overlook the great value of these seeds.
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