Chapter 9: A Closer Look at Vincent van Gogh Through his Letters and Art

The art works of the post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) can be seen as visionary and transformative.  Each painting seems to reflect a brilliant sensitivity that van Gogh had to his natural surroundings and the mysteries of the cosmos. The bold colours and brush strokes that van Gogh used reflect intense emotional states. van Gogh’s letters include many poetic verses and symbols. In his letters to his brother Theo, Vincent reveals his insights and reflections on nature, people, and landscapes. He provides details on his choices of subjects to paint, the colours his uses, and his overall approach to paintings. van Gogh’s letters further reveal detailed commentary on contemporaries like Paul Gauguin and artists like Francois Millet, Raphael, Eugene Delacroix, and Rembrandt. His close observation and attention to colour, line, landscape, and people, are evident in his work. Van Gogh was aware of the precarious and fickle nature of the art dealing world; his letters to Theo reveal his deep introspection about the ephemeral nature of life, the meaning of life, and the tension between being true to oneself and surviving in a world of rejection and judgement. His appreciation and love for his brother Theo feature in all his correspondences to Theo.

During the short time van Gogh stayed in Arles until his death (1889-90), he produced an astonishing 187 paintings. Despite the brilliance of his artistic talents and despite his uncanny sensitivity and awareness of the human condition and nature around him, Vincent could not break free of the doubt, malaise, and deep depression that ultimately led to his untimely death. In a decade, van Gogh created over 2,000 art works. His influence on art continues to this day. As you read his letter excerpts and then view selected paintings, what impression do you have of Vincent van Gogh and his perspectives about life, love, art, and nature?  You can explore more of van Gogh’s works through a virtual tour of the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The letter excerpts featured in this chapter are from W.H. Auden’s (1963) van Gogh: A self-portrait: Letters revealing his life as a painter. E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc.

Alienation and Depression: Excerpts from Letters to Theo

Vincent van Gogh struggled with loneliness, melancholy, and insecurities. His resilience, courage work ethic, and passion to see and document the beauty of life is reflected throughout his art: “one must bear hardships in order to ripen.” (van Gogh, in Auden, 1963, p. 136). van Gogh’s words reveal his keen insight and almost prophetic sense of his destiny. van Gogh is keenly awareness of the importance of community yet recognizes that while he is an observer, he feels like an outsider, not really connected as a full participant who is accepted, valued, and understood:

I feel older only when I think that most people who know me consider me a failure, and that it might really be so if some things do not change for the better and when I think it might be so. I feel it so intensely that it quite depresses me and makes me as downhearted as if it were really so. In a calmer and more normal mood I am sometimes glad that thirty years have passed, and not without teaching me something for the future, and I feel strength and energy for the next thirty years, if I live that long.”

And in my imagination, I see years of serious work ahead of me, and happier than the first thirty.

How I will be in reality doesn’t depend only on myself, the world and circumstances must also contribute to it.

What concerns me and what I am responsible for is making the most of my circumstances and trying my best to make progress…

Well, many things in life really begin at the age of thirty, and certainly all is not over then. But one doesn’t expect to get from life what one has already learned it cannot give; rather one begins to see more and ore clearly that life is only a kind of sowing time, ad the harvest is not here. (van Gogh, Letter to Theo, 1883, in Auden (Ed.), p. 136).

In a letter to his beloved brother Theo, Vincent writes about the “élan of his bony carcass” in a self-portrait dedicated to fellow-painter Paul Gauguin:

These days I have an extraordinary feverish energy; at the moment I am struggling with a landscape that has a blue sky over an immense vine, green, purple, yellow, with black and orange branches. Little figures of ladies with red sunshades and of vintagers with their carts enliven it even more. In the foreground, gray sand….

I have a portrait of myself, all ash-colored. The ashen-gray color that is the result of mixing malachite green with an orange hue, on pale malachite ground, all in all in harmony with the reddish-brown clothes. But as I also exaggerate my personality, I have in the first place aimed at the character of a simple bonze* worshipping the Eternal Buddha. It has cost me a lot of trouble, yet I shall have to do it all over again if I want to succeed in expression what I mean…” (p.336).

*A bonze is a Japanese or Chinese monk. It is important to note that Vincent van Gogh wrote many of his letters in French; as a result of the translation, there may be variations in meaning of the interpretation of words and phrases.

“It is a painter’s duty to make an idea into his work” – Vincent van Gogh, 1885.

van Gogh’s empathy for others’ suffering is evident in his paintings like “The Potato Eaters.” In a letter to his brother Theo, van Gogh explains: “I have tried to emphasize that those people, eating their potatoes in the lamplight, have dug the earth with those very hands they put in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labor, and how they have honestly earned their food” (van Gogh, 1885, in Auden (Ed), p. 137). van Gogh saw “something noble, something great” about individuals’ motivation to survive amid adversity. In his observations, van Gogh saw a larger spiritual panorama that connected individuals to the land and the larger cosmos. van Gogh projects his own sense of isolation, loneliness, and solitude onto his landscapes and portraits. He hoped that his paintings might teach and enlighten individuals unfamiliar with the harshness of peasant life. 

Stars and Celestial Locomotion

“Painters—to take them alone—dead and buried speak to the next generation or to several succeeding generations through their work. Is that all, or is there more to come? Perhaps death is not the hardest thing in a painter’s life.

For my own part, I declare I know nothing whatever about it, but looking at the stars always makes me dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. One thing undoubtedly true in this reasoning is that we cannot get to a star while we are alive, any more than we can take the train when we are dead.

So to me it seems possible that cholera, gravel, tuberculosis, and cancer are celestial means of locomotion, just as steamboats, buses and railways are the terrestrial means. To die quietly of old age would be to go there on foot.”-Vincent van Gogh, Arles, July 16, 1888, Auden, Letters, p. 199.

Dr. Paul-Ferdinand Gachet (1828-1909)

Dr. Gachet was a French physician who looked after Vincent Van Gogh during the final months of his life. van Gogh found remarkable similarities between himself and Dr. Gachet; they were in some way like mirror images of each other. Like van Gogh, Gachet suffered from anxiety, melancholia, and more than likely, an addiction to absinthe, an anise-flavoured alcoholic spirit. In a letter to Theo, Vincent recounts his impressions of Dr. Gachet:

I have seen Dr. Gachet, who gives me the impression of being rather eccentric, but his experience as a doctor must keep him balanced enough to combat the nervous trouble from which he certainly seems to me to be suffering at least as seriously as I. I told Dr. Gachet that for 4 francs a day, I should think the inn he had shown me preferable, but that 6 was francs too much, considering the expenses I have. It was useless for him to say that I should be quieter there, enough is enough.

[Dr. Gachet’s] house is full of black antiques, black, black, black, except for the impressionist pictures mentioned. The impression I got of him was not unfavourable. When he spoke of Belgium and the days of the old painters, his grief-hardened face grew smiling again, and I really think that I shall go on being friends with him and that I shall do his portrait.

Then he said that I must work boldly on, and not think at all of what went wrong with me. (Van Gogh, letter to Theo, May, 1890, in Auden (Ed.), Letters, p. 195).

van Gogh saw gardens and flowers as symbols of hope, beauty, harmony, serenity, and joy. Flowers like the irises and sunflowers are often associated with hope, valour, courage, and faith. In his depiction of trees, garden landscapes, flowers, and blossoms, van Gogh was able to experiment with colour, texture, and design. The exhilaration found in painting was in contrast to van Gogh’s emotional suffering. One year before his death, Vincent wrote to his brother Theo:

Well, I with my mental disease, I keep thinking of so many other artists suffering mentally, and I tell myself that this does not prevent one from exercising the painter’s profession as if nothing were amiss…I know well that healing comes—if one is brave—from within through profound resignation to suffering and death, through the surrender of your own will and of your self-love. But that is no use to me, I love to paint, to see people and things and everything that makes our life—artificial—if you like. ( van Gogh in Auden, 1963, Letters, p. 175).

A Dedication to Art and the Search for Meaning and Peace amid Turmoil

The volume of artistic work that Vincent van Gogh completed in his short life was remarkable. The one constant in his life was painting; his art became a mediator between a difficult world and van Gogh’s own inner search for peace and meaning. van Gogh’s life was dedicated to an artistic vision that continues to inspire many. In his painting “The mulberry tree” the tree grows out of a rocky terrain; intense orange, yellow, purple, and blue colours work to create a dynamic landscape where the tree reflects strength and power. Light takes on an almost supernatural glow. The brilliant hues and brush strokes of van Gogh reflect his deep knowledge of colour theory and his insight and sensitivity to nature—seasons, landscapes, people, birds, floral, and fauna. Despite the intense psychological stresses, he found time to paint. van Gogh’s work also reflected his keen awareness of the “modern” direction that painting was going in; in this respect, van Gogh’s was ahead of his time and his work was not appreciated until after his tragic death. van Gogh’s work was visionary and transformative.

“For you cannot imagine any carpet as splendid as that deep brownish-red in the glow of an autumn evening sun, tempered by the trees.

From that ground young beech trees spring up which catch light on one side and are brilliant green there; the shadowy sides of those stems are a warm, deep black-green.

Behind those saplings, behind that brownish-red soil, is a sky very delicate bluish gray, warm, hardly blue, all aglow—and against it all is a hazy border of green and a network of little stems and yellowish leaves…. (Letter to Theo, p. 385 in Auden). ”

For more information about Vincent Van Gogh’s biography, please open this link from the Van Gogh Museum here.

“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.” – Vincent van Gogh.

A Brilliant Mind

Despite his brilliance, acute sensitivity, remarkable talent and love for life, a part of Vincent van Gogh was in deep psychic pain. He saw the beauty in wheat fields, flowers, work, and people but ultimately these talents could not be applied to save himself. van Gogh’s letters and paintings leave a legacy of life that should be cherished, celebrated, and revered. Vincent saw life in mystical ways yet remained alienated and outcast by many, with the exception of his brother Theo van Gogh. The poem “Alone” by Edgar Allen Poe can be connected in many ways to van Gogh’s inner struggles. Both artists made major contributions to culture and art yet they felt misunderstood throughout their lives.

“Alone” by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

Source: American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century (1993)

The Starry Night is based on van Gogh’s direct observations as well as his imagination, memories, and emotions. The steeple of the church, for example, resembles those common in his native Holland, not in France. The whirling forms in the sky, on the other hand, match published astronomical observations of clouds of dust and gas known as nebulae. At once balanced and expressive, the composition is structured by his ordered placement of the cypress, steeple, and central nebulae, while his countless short brushstrokes and thickly applied paint set its surface in roiling motion. Such a combination of visual contrasts was generated by an artist who found beauty and interest in the night, which, for him, was “much more alive and richly colored than the day.

Museum of Modern Art Notes: Reality through an Artist’s Eyes

In a letter to his brother Theo, van Gogh wrote passionately about painting a scene as he experienced, imagined, and, ultimately, interpreted it, not as it was expected to be rendered. Comparing painting to playing music, he argued: “We painters are always asked to compose ourselves and to be nothing but composers. Very well – but in music it isn’t so […] in music […] a composer’s interpretation is something […].”⁶