← Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society
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- [00:00]
Kate Lister
Hi, I'm your host Kate Lister. If you would like Betwixt the Sheets ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit with a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every single week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:27]
Gina Goldhammer
Picture Palm beach, glittering parties and people who seem to have it all. Now imagine what happens when that world starts to crack in the award winning Where Snowbirds Play by Gina Goldhammer Phillips arrival turns privilege on its head, exposing rivalries, scandals and a search for redemption. It's witty, absorbing and a little unsettling in the best way. Where Snowbirds Play by Gina Goldhammer is available now in paperback, ebook and audiobook.
- [00:57]
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- [00:58]
Tayo Meedendorp
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- [01:00]
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- [01:02]
Tayo Meedendorp
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- [01:03]
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- [01:27]
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- [01:50]
Kate Lister
Hello my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Liston. You are listening to Betwixt the Sheets. Hello. Welcome back. Thanks for dropping by. Hi. Lovely to see you. We'll put the kettle on. But before we do, I have to tell you and any newbies who've wandered in. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects. And you should be an adult too. Oh God, I feel safer. Do you feel safer? Is everyone less triggered? Excellent. Right, on with the show. I do love an evening stroll betwixt us, don't you? And this one just feels extra special. We're strolling through the village of St. Remy de Provence in 1889. The stars are out. It's a very starry, starry night. And not far from here, one Vincent van Gogh. Actually, how the hell you pronounce this man's name will feature quite prominently. But whatever you call him, he's gazing up at the stars from his asylum room and feeling inspired to put paint on canvas. What will become Starry Night is being created, and maybe he knows it, maybe he doesn't. Maybe, I suspect he probably does. But this is gonna be a masterpiece. Behind the paintbrush lies a fascinating figure as complex and colorful as anything he ever chose to paint. The people that know him and loved him, and there were a few, describe a very volatile person, somebody who, like, he's good at doing a painting, but I don't think you want him around for too long, if you know what I mean. He's also a man that was au fait with brothels and taverns and, well, quite a bit of absinthe. Yeah, a complex person. And I can't wait to find out more about him. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the the history of sex scandal in society with me Kate Lister. However it is that you pronounce his name. Van Gogh. Van Gogh. Van Gogh. Van Hooker, whatever it is. One thing is for certain that Vincent knew a thing or two about translating his feelings to canvas. We all know about his tragic struggles with mental health, but what else do we know about this man's life? What's the story about his obsession with a sex worker in the Hague? Did he really cut his ear off? And why did he do and who were the greatest loves of his life? Well, joining me today is Tayo Meedendorp, senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum to help us get to know this man a little bit better. So sunflowers and easels at the ready, everybody. Let's do this. Hello and welcome to betwixt the sheets. It's only Tayo Meeden dop. How are you doing? Doing?
- [05:00]
Tayo Meedendorp
I'm good, thank you. Kate, thanks very much and thanks for joining in this today's program.
- [05:05]
Kate Lister
Oh, no, it's an absolute pleasure. I've been wanting to talk about. Well, hang on, hang on. How are we going to say this? Because that's. That's the first question that I am going to start with here. I would say Van Gogh. The Americans say Van Gogh. And I know that you as a Dutch person, a Dutch speaker, and he was Dutch. How would he have said his own name?
- [05:29]
Tayo Meedendorp
He would have said his own name as Van Gogh. That's right. These gut ruled GS. That we have in our language. But there is a reason why he always cite Vincent, because he knew that his last name would not exactly work in the art society. And even the first time that he ever exhibited is that Theo in the catalog wrote that the artist was Vincent van Gogh. And he explicitly wrote to his brother, said, never mention his last name again. It's Vincent. Because people can't pronounce my last name. And from the first start, when he signed his first works, it was Vincent. I'm used to saying Van Gogh because Van Gogh is different. I mean, Van Gogh is more or less international, you might say. So I probably switch between Vincent van Gogh and Van Gogh.
- [06:10]
Kate Lister
Should we say go? I'm going to go for go. I don't trust myself with the correct pronunciation. That must have been really irritating for him that people couldn't pronounce his last name.
- [06:19]
Tayo Meedendorp
I'm not quite sure. I mean, he had a very good, straightforward first name. It put him on the ranks of Rembrandt, I mean, Michelangelo, Leonardo.
- [06:27]
Kate Lister
Yes, good point. Yeah. He had just Vincent.
- [06:30]
Tayo Meedendorp
Yeah, just Vincent. I don't think he was exactly that conscious about using his name in that sense, as his work would have been known by this, simply by his first name. But it did come in handy.
- [06:41]
Kate Lister
Well, one of the most famous artists today has got to be up there, hasn't he, with the Renaissance? I mean, if you say famous artist, it's probably Vincent is the one most people would be thinking of.
- [06:51]
Tayo Meedendorp
I'm afraid it is, yeah. I mean, I remember from going around the world sometimes. I remember being in a holiday all in the way in most southern points in Europe and in South America, on fireland. And we came there, we were tired and everything, and we checked into our hotel and it came into the room. And what was on the wall? A reproduction of Vincent's orchard, one of the only orchards. You can't escape him. It's a bit like Coca Cola. And it's a bit the same with Vincent.
- [07:16]
Kate Lister
Yes, well, you certainly can't escape him because you're a senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum.
- [07:24]
Tayo Meedendorp
He's been following me for quite some time.
- [07:27]
Kate Lister
What brought you to study, man? His life and his work.
- [07:30]
Tayo Meedendorp
Yeah. It's weirdly enough, it's more or less by chance when I began starting art history, it was in the early 80s, 1980s, when you're young, you're 18, 19 years old, and you think, well, everything's already been written about these famous artists like Vincent and like Rembrandt and all the other ones. And then by Chance I. I was supposed to be having an internship in Amsterdam at the film Museum, because I was also doing something with film history and that didn't go through. And then somebody arranged for me that I could do an internship in the Van Gogh Museum. And I hadn't thought about it, but then I was allowed, which was great. I'm four and a half years. It was in 1988, I believe, I was allowed to make an exhibition here with Vincent's drawings. And he illustrated magazines that he collected and the prints thereof. And in the end it was such a nice subject in the sense that not much had been written about it. And I wrote my thesis about it and I simply graduated. And as my university level in Vincent, I've always had this particular liking to work in a sense that because I didn't immediately have a job here at the Van Gogh Museum of Lever, I had to find my way, you might say I worked for university first and did research on occult movements in late 19th century art for something completely different. But at the same time, living in Amsterdam since the early 1990s, I would always do guided tours in the Van Gogh Museum. And then in the end I first got a job at another museum, the Krullemund Museum in the Netherlands, which has the second largest collection of works, drawings, paintings as well as drawings in the world. And there we made with Team 2 collection catalogues of the Vaughch paintings and the Vaughch drawings. And that's when I really went in deep, you might say, searching after that. As of 2009, I am associated with Van Gogh Museum as a researcher now senior researcher, become a little bit older and all my life is dedicated to the life and work of Vincent Far Gogh.
- [09:18]
Kate Lister
Vincent is one of those artists where the man and his life and his mythology seems to be inextricably tied up with his art. Like, I know we're supposed to separate the art from the artist. And there are artists who. Renaissance artists, we know their works. We know next to nothing about the person who did it, but the work is famous. Vincent has this mythology as. And you can disabuse me of this, but this tortured artist, this madman roving the fields in Provence, raving and shouting, and eventually taking his own life. How much of that do you think is tied up with his artwork? Can you separate them?
- [10:01]
Tayo Meedendorp
Well, we try to a little bit. I mean, it's impossible to entirely separate it, but you have to be careful to associate everything he made with it. What we do is in fact make some kind of distinguishment would be Distinguished earlier from the later period and in that. Which more or less means that the time that he was in the south of France, so when he was in Paris, which is in his development, very important, two years that he was there, because his work completely changes, but also his life changes, being in a big city, and he becomes more and more addicted to alcohol. So he had an alcohol problem which he developed in Paris and with a situation by himself. He was melancholic at heart, which did not mean that he was severely depressive or something like that, but he was like, well, you have these even as children, they're a bit apart. They can be melancholic. They're more to themselves. That doesn't necessarily mean that they have some kind of a disease or whatever or matter, but it's their situation in life. And with Vincent, when you start to abuse alcohol and things like that, things can get worse. And it is quite clear from when he was in the south of France, in Arles, and when Gauguin came and he was hoping that something would flourish, that they would work together and they would make a next step, because he was ambitious as well in getting modern art further off the ground. And that totally collapsed. And when he came to the period in a rage that he cut off his ear, inflicted pain on him himself, you might say, from that moment on, when he was hospitalized and he came into hospital, and it was only two, three days when he was in hospital and he didn't have access to alcohol, that he had probably his first psychosis that was in hospital. So it was not a psychosis which led to him cutting off his. But it was the not getting to the alcohol, I mean, the abstimation of alcohol, that created the problem. And that's the major point where his life is going to change and how he looks at life in general. So after that period, he's only in hospital for two weeks, and then he comes back to his yellow house, to the studio, and then he has the idea, and even the doctors were quite surprised, is that he felt like, well, he had some kind of a flu or whatever, or cold. And, boy, you can get better from a cold by him, that you can get better from madness in that respect.
- [12:09]
Kate Lister
Okay.
- [12:09]
Tayo Meedendorp
And he started. Yeah, and he started painting again. But after a couple of weeks, he had another small crisis and he went back to the hospital for a couple of days, and then he went back to the yellow house. And then he got another crisis. And then the people in the area where he was living in Arles, they signed a petition to get him out of there, because this madman, and it was, you might say, created by the people living around him that they didn't trust him with the children he was chasing after, the women. We don't know exactly now, it's true, but it was more or less reason to get him out of the area. At first it was the idea perhaps that he could live somewhere else in Arles. But this petition like that the mayor has to do something. And at some point it was like, okay, he went back to hospital and he lived in fact in hospital, although he was not really sick. And they tried to look for some other place. But there were only two possibilities. Either he should go somewhere else, or he had to be taken into an asylum or some kind of incident locked away that of course they didn't want. And then in the end, the pastor who. Who took care of him a little bit in Arles, and he was of the Protestant faith, took care and found this asylum of this institute in St. Remy, 50 kilometers north of 25, 40, 50 kilometers north of Arles, where it was a private institute. So you were voluntarily hospitalized. And you could also leave if you wanted to. If you were deliberately, I mean, if you were in fact locked away, it would have been very difficult to get out of it again. And for him it was the most important thing is to get back to his rest, because he realized that this is not probably going away easily. What he had these crisis. It was crisis in between the crisis, he was pretty lucid. So there was. And he looked back on his crisis of what's going on with me? Can I cure from this? And then the big blow came, in fact in the summer of 1889. So that's a year before Foray took his own life in the asylum is he suffered a very severe crisis Vivo psychosis was largest of bat for six weeks in which he could not paint. And when he came out of that crisis, he more or less realizes, okay, my situation is not gonna change. I'm going to have to deal with these crises and see what I can make of it. And then it was work, work, work. So he dedicated everything to be able to work as much as possible, as you might say, not to think too much about his problems.
- [14:23]
Kate Lister
Am I right in thinking that he came to art quite well for the time quite late in Life. He was 27 by the time he decided, I want to be an artist. So what was he doing before that? What was. What was the 27 years leading up to that?
- [14:39]
Tayo Meedendorp
I did a lot of things. Yeah, a Lot of things.
- [14:41]
Kate Lister
I get the impression that he's quite a difficult person to know. That like, if you knew Vincent, you would probably. And like, you know, if you saw his number pop up on your phone, you might be a bit like, oh God, not today. No, no, not again. Was there signs of this as a young man or is this something that developed with alcohol and with age?
- [15:03]
Tayo Meedendorp
Yeah, well, at the end it developed an age. He only lived to do 37. I mean, his career is only 10 years. It was his entire career as an artist. No, he was the son of a. Well, there was a family of six and he was the eldest and family of the. His father was a Protestant minister. And either in the far Gogh family, you became. Either you would work for an art gallery or you became a minister. So there was the two flavors, you might say. So he had a couple of uncles who had an art gallery. And the most fortunate one was Uncle Vincent. So he's also called Vincent van Gogh, Uncle Szent, Uncle Vincent. And he had an art gallery in the Hague. And he took care a little bit of both the boys, Vincent and Theo, of his brother Theodore. And Vincent started working in the gallery in the Hague when he was 16 years old. So in 69, oh, he had some school training at first in Zundert in the little village where he came from, but was also privately tutored, so kind of nanny somebody who took care of that. And he went to sort high school but not finish it in Tilburg. He appeared quite a good student. I mean, when he was at high school he knew his French, he knew his English, he knew his German. And when he went to England, oh, he worked in the Hague first for three years at the firm of Compagn, as it was called the art gallery, who had several franchises comes from Paris. But he also had an office in London and he was promoted to go to London in 1873. So when he was 20 years old and he worked until 75 and then at that point, 75, 76, some problems occur, as I said. So he was a bit to himself, you might say, at first, but he liked working in the art galleries and his work there. And he learned a lot about art and he had an incredible memory. I mean, it's like a computer, it's like a database. But he remembered everything he saw. It's amazing that even much later when he was an artist, that he can remember very vividly not only paintings, but also passages from literature and everything. So it is really, really amazing. So he was an avid reader as well. We would go to museums, we'd go to galleries, we'd go to exhibitions. So he fueled himself up, you might say. But he came into a crisis and said, we don't know exactly what it started, but probably had something to do with rejected love that he had. Around 75 in England. But he was sent away when there was a new gallery opening of Copil in London. They took over Holloway and Sons close to Covent Garden. And he was hoping to be part of that, but he was sent to Paris. So it was like that. He was not allowed there. And that felt as a blow. And when he was in Paris and later he was fired from the art gallery is that his attention was shifted more and more towards religion. So he really got something in the idea. So religion was taking the place of art, you might say, in this. Back then, he was trying to find some solace in religion. And in that. Of course, he had a father who was a Protestant minister. And he was thinking about, well, I have to do something like father did. I have to make. Make myself useful for the community, help people. I mean, that part has always been very close to Vincent, as. Also as an almost, I'd say, natural inclination is to help people. So he could be quiet on one side. He could be socially very inept. But his idea was always to help people. And he was looking also for relationships. I mean, he had several relationships during his life. The earliest serious relationship was he when he was 20 years old, which was still in the Hague. He was incredibly in love with a girl his age, Caroline, also 20 years at the time, but she chose someone else, and he took it greatly. And he realized afterwards, when he thought about it this. Then it was not a relationship which on the same level, in the sense that he was giving a lot but was not getting. And what I've backed.
- [18:46]
Kate Lister
We've all been there, Vincent.
- [18:48]
Tayo Meedendorp
Yeah, exactly. And, well, his ideas about relationships and love are very much rooted in. Partly in the Bible and what he learned from home. I mean, to. To have a family was very important, but also which he learned from literature, especially Jules Michelet, the French author who wrote La Femme, the Woman and l' Amour on love. Partly traditionalist, you might say, Michele, but also very progressive in the sense that he gave women a very precise place in society. I mean, that they were actually an active part of society. The highest thing to achieve was a kind of bond between men and women, where one was equal, but a man had to take care of the woman. But the woman had an active part in society, in life as well. With children, obviously, but also a part of society. And his ideas were very much influenced by that, you might say. And so he was always looking for a kind of a relationship like that, but unfortunately he always failed. And that has something to do probably also with his, you might say, stubbornness. I mean, it's a sense, like he just said, when he pops up on your phone with Vincent, he seems very intense. Yeah, this will take me two hours on the phone. Do I have the time?
- [19:56]
Kate Lister
Yeah, exactly that of like, oh God.
- [19:58]
Tayo Meedendorp
He'S phone in again with Gohan discussing. And that's also in the relation. I mean, in the end, his greatest friend and the greatest relation that he maintained was that with his brother, his younger brother, Fia.
- [20:07]
Kate Lister
He really loved him, didn't he? They loved each other.
- [20:09]
Tayo Meedendorp
Yeah, absolutely. And it's not always like happy times. I mean, it's also. There are also serious depressions in their relationship as well. But in the end they really cling to each other and they're together, they are one. And what he was looking for a woman together. They are one. In fact, he had it with his brother.
- [20:30]
Kate Lister
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- [21:54]
Gina Goldhammer
Picture Palm beach glittering parties and people who seem to have it all. Now imagine what happens when that world starts to crack. In the award winning Where Snowbirds Play by Gina Goldhammer. Philip's arrival turns privilege on its head, exposing rivalries, scandals and a search for redemption. It's witty, absorbing and a little unsettling in the best way. Where Snowbirds Play by Gina Goldhammer is available now in paperback, ebook and audio.
- [22:23]
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Why choose a sleep number?
- [22:25]
Tayo Meedendorp
Smart bed Can I make my sight softer?
- [22:27]
Sleep Number Advertiser
Can I make my sight firmer?
- [22:28]
Tayo Meedendorp
Can we sleep cooler?
- [22:30]
Sleep Number Advertiser
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- [22:54]
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- [23:26]
Kate Lister
He doesn't seem to take rejection very well, does Vincent. From from what I know of him. Is he. I mean nobody does. Nobody likes being dumped or told no or anything like that. But he seems to it particularly hard. Would you say that that's true?
- [23:44]
Tayo Meedendorp
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Well, if the first love, like Caroline, for instance. Okay. But like when he was more when he was fired from Kupil. Well, probably didn't care so much because he wanted to do something in the church. But his rejection with women, the most serious one, is the one that he got in 1881, when he was just beginning as an artist and was living with his parents in Brabant. And that summer in 1881, a cousin of his came by whose husband had ris died and who was widowed and she had a son and he fell in love with her madly and she didn't want to have anything to do with him. So it was categorically as he said, no, never ever it was like that. But he was harassing him more or less, you might say, for over two months, writing very, very long letters and also to his brother and to other people. I mean his longest letters are from this period, trying to how he has to to gather to fall her emotions in a sense that in the end it was meant itself that she lived in Amsterdam, she went back to Amsterdam, that he Went to Amsterdam and visited the family and more or less embarked on them just at dinner time. And they opened the door and said, is Kay. Kay was her name? Is Kay in? And they said, no, she's not in. And then he entered the room and he saw that one spot at the table was empty, that she had just left, didn't want to meet him. So he knew she was there. And what he then did is quite exceptional. He put his hand in the candle, burning candle.
- [25:13]
Kate Lister
Vincent.
- [25:14]
Tayo Meedendorp
Vincent. And he said, I only want to see her for as long as I can hold my hand in the candle. And then they took. That didn't work? No, that didn't work. He took his hand out of the candle, they bandaged him, they took care of him, and he slept in a small hotel. And they escorted him back to the hotel, very intense. But that same evening, he went to a prostitute.
- [25:34]
Kate Lister
Let's talk about that. Because Vincent, his attitude, his relationships with women is fascinating because he will put them on a pedestal and he will become obsessive and devote and do this. I'm gonna put my hand in a candle. All of this stuff. But he regularly visited brothels and sex workers and one of his most influential muses. I am gonna get this name horribly, horribly wrong. Sien Hornig.
- [26:01]
Tayo Meedendorp
Sien Hornig. Yeah, that's right.
- [26:02]
Kate Lister
Seene Hoenig. Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about her? Who she was and how he viewed sex workers? Because I think this is. This is quite fascinating.
- [26:11]
Tayo Meedendorp
Even already in the Hague, when he was at the Kupil Gallery, he would sometimes visit the sex workers and to get some relief, as they. It is, yes, something. You have to see it into perspective, as they did in the 19th century, as a. If a man couldn't get enough satisfaction by some of his libido. So she went to a brothel. So to relieve yourself in a certain way, as it was called a hygienic solution.
- [26:32]
Kate Lister
They just look almost like they're going to the gym, don't they? Almost like, oh, I'll just nip down to the brothel.
- [26:39]
Tayo Meedendorp
What he was kind of is, remember from Italy, for instance, that when a young boy is about 15, 6 years old, his father takes him to a brothel. That's a bit weird. It was there and they made use of it. Theo as well. And the thing is that when he was to Amsterdam, he went to visit K. It didn't work out. Then he went to the Hague immediately afterwards, and he never really returned home. So he moved to the Hague to start his career, and he had his Cousin by marriage, Anton Mauve, who was an artist and a renowned artist at that time, who taught him a little bit the first things about painting and helped him along a little in his drawing. And then quite early on in 1882, he ran into Sean, who he only introduced in the letters, not immediately, although he mentioned that he got a new model. And in the end this model appeared to be seen. What I always have found very fascinating is that at first he doesn't call her Sin, he calls her Christine. And Christine is a more typical. Probably was not her Elias. I mean, it was probably her working name. And he only, maybe only later found out what his real name was, because her real name was Klasina. And Sin is short for Klassina. But Christine might very well have been her working name, but she probably also wasn't quite sure what she had with this. And she started as a model and in fact she was temporary out of sex work because she was pregnant for him, in a very important aspect of taking care of was taking care of her, was saving her, was in the fact is that a woman, and that's partly influenced by what he read about Michelair is a woman should never be abandoned, should never be left alone. She should be taken careful, especially when she's in great misery. At that time his life was very difficult as well. I mean, having that much money and trying to work out as an artist, he referred to it as the ground floor of life. I mean, it's like. It's the lowest of the base, you might say. And this scene, he saw something as okay, someone to be saved, someone that he could love. So he wasn't quite sure whether he loved her, but in the end he did. We're pretty sure that he had some special feelings for her, but very much related to the idea of indeed saving her, taking care of her. And he did in a very nice way. And it's in a way that they lived together, I mean, in the apartment he had. She had to go to hospital to deliver the baby. And when she came back she moved in with him and he had a slightly larger, larger apartment he could arrange next door. And they lived there for well over a year together. And of course in those days you should not live together with unmarried, with a woman who had two children in this respect. So everybody around him was looking as was taking his hands off him and was making comments. This is something that you don't do and in a way, quite rightfully, I believe, is that he was very much opposed to that. And how can you not take care of someone. I mean, he had these feelings to help this woman. But it was an agreement also that the parents obviously didn't like it. Theo disapproved of it. And they made an arrangement that he didn't write about it anymore. And it's very typical because up to the summer, you might say, he talks about. Sometimes she refers to her as the woman or so. And they would go into the dunes and they would have a picnic there and things like that. But then from some moment on, he doesn't mention her anymore. But they still live together. So not to affront as if she's not there.
- [29:43]
Kate Lister
In a weird way, we just won't mention it.
- [29:46]
Tayo Meedendorp
Just don't mention it. Yeah.
- [29:47]
Kate Lister
Were they lovers, Vincent and Sin?
- [29:50]
Tayo Meedendorp
Yes, they must have been. Absolutely. Afterwards. This also his first possibility, an attempt to get a nude model. There's always been Vincent several points to study figure and to study figure painting. In his heart, he wanted to be a portrait painter and a figure painter. So not so many known for his landscapes. But he really wanted to be a figure. And there are several times that he tries to do it. And one other way, of course, to learn how to paint and draw figures is to do nude drawing. I mean, it's from the Academy, everybody practices it. But it was always very difficult for him to get people available to pose for him in the nude. He often complained about this. But Vicini had a model. Though we do not have many of these studies. We know that he made several studies, nude studies of her. But we have a very famous one, which is a drawing called. Which he met a lithograph of. It's called Sorrow. And that's her pregnant, naked in silhouette, sitting and having her hands over her head in deep sorrow. It's a very touching and very moving drawing. He made a drawing. He made a second drawing of it. And he wrote a little caption underneath it, which he took from. From Michelin, which is exactly fun. A woman should never be left alone, abandoned. And that's what he tried to do in his own life. In this case. I mean, what he saw is that if you really wanted to be a true success in life, you had to have a family, someone to take care for, you had to have children. Well, these children were not his own children, but he took care of the children. And the best thing would be that you also have a successful professional life, that the two work together. Well, in the end it's appeared is that that art, you might say, took over that other kind of life. He has always been finding all those 10 years, you might say that he was active as an artist also for some kind of family life.
- [31:32]
Kate Lister
Why didn't they get married? They lived together for a year. I don't know if we have anything from seeing that like in her own voice, any letters from her or anything to give us a perspective of what she thought of this very intense man trying to save her. And nothing at all.
- [31:48]
Tayo Meedendorp
There were no letters. They tried to get some contact around 1900, when she was still alive. In the end she took her own life. She drowned herself. And I think it was 1904, 1905 in Antwerp. She moved from the Hague first to Rotterdam. And in the end it appears that it was impossible for her to get out of the environment that she was in. And Vincent felt in 1883, so at the point before he would go away, the relationship got got a bit more tense and he felt that other people were trying to get her away from him. And he said, well, but when I leave her, she will go back to her old profession. And he didn't want that. But in the end it was simply impossible to stay together. So the idea of marriage, well, as I said, so he didn't write about it anymore. Yes, but probably it would have been very, very difficult. The family, for instance, the father. For him it was also like. It was in a sense very immoral because it was also two different classes. He was a middle class son, she was of course lower class. They were always thinking about.
- [32:48]
Kate Lister
They were never going to sign off on that one.
- [32:50]
Tayo Meedendorp
No, it's always like they were so much aware of the people around them and how they would look at the family. And that's something that Vincent really hated. I mean, it's my life and I can do what I want. I'm not taking that all into consideration. I mean, it's what I want. And that makes him always this problem with his family, especially his parents.
- [33:09]
Kate Lister
God, there must have been been tearing the hair out, for instance. But he.
- [33:15]
Tayo Meedendorp
There are a lot of worries.
- [33:17]
Kate Lister
So we said that he's very intense, he writes these epic letters. But in the letters that he's writing you do kind of get like little bits and pieces of. He wasn't writing to his family about his sex life, but I understand he wrote to friends about it and he was quite open and forthright with it, with that kind of. Of I guess that Dutch honesty that you're very famous for.
- [33:41]
Tayo Meedendorp
Well, up to a certain point. I mean, he is sometimes very open hearted to his brother. But if it's really getting Saucy, you might say, is then. Well, we talk about it when I see you next week. So sometimes you bit. But in fact, when it was in the south of France, there was no opportunity to meet each other. So it's a bit more into the open. And maybe not so much to Theo, but more to Emile Bernard. So his colleague in Paris, who was younger, who had his own problem with relationships and women as a young adult. And Vincent is most openly about sex, you might say, and sex workers and brothels and things in Letters with Emily Bernard. And Bernard is also. We had this very nice exhibition just on St. Vincent and a whole series of drawings that he had made surrounding around the theme of the brothel, which of course was also for artists, a new subject. The attention for artists to pay attention to this part of life, of the lower life, you might say, of the heart, harsh life. And of the. Yeah, the hard life. Like to lose it in the brothels as well. And what society was like was a serious topic within modern art.
- [34:45]
Kate Lister
Yeah.
- [34:46]
Tayo Meedendorp
And Vincent Nelson did paint some nudes when he was in Paris. He only painted three nudes. We only know three. And we know a couple of sketches. There was one of a copulating couple even and didn't know that. Yeah, it's very unknown. It's our collection. It's what we described it in our collection catalog of the Paris period. But there is one sex work, cleaning herself. So like Degas would do over a small tin bath. And there is one over a copulating couple, which you don't see very often, which is very. I mean, that's something not meant for. For public, some. Something private, but which is always keep in mind is that with Vincent was one of his major examples in art was Rembrandt. And Rembrandt made beautiful etchings and drawings and. And between his etching, there is also a very, very beautiful etching of a copulating couple in bed. It's very intimate. It's like you're peeping through the bed.
- [35:38]
Kate Lister
Yes, I remember that now. Yes, he does.
- [35:43]
Tayo Meedendorp
You don't see it often in art. I mean, people. No, but this must have been in his mind as a subject. Not for something to make a serious drawing to sell, obviously, but kind of like a private thing. Yeah, and lots of these fascinating. And especially in prints, you find, well, erotic prints in the 19th century which were sold not. But you could always get the hang of that. There were people collecting them. There's also this sense of mystery, of course, and secretiveness around it. So it's more in that category, you might say.
- [36:12]
Kate Lister
We have got to talk about the most famous incident that people know about Van Gogh's life. And probably the one that, as a researcher Van Gogh, you're like, really? We have to talk about this one again, the ear. Because that sex work is in that story too. Like the story that is commonly relayed is that he cut his ear off. And he went to a local brothel. And he gave it to a woman that was working there. And Gauguin was there too.
- [36:38]
Tayo Meedendorp
And Gauguin was dead. Well, Gauguin was at a moment out of sight. Well, Gauguin was in Arles.
- [36:43]
Kate Lister
Obviously, I don't like Gauguin. He seems like a real shit to me. But even I would have to concede that Vincent was quite. That he might have had a point when he said that Vincent was too much for him to handle.
- [36:56]
Tayo Meedendorp
Well, the thing Gauguin came to Arle on the idea that he was going to some kind of pure pupil. I mean, we must realize is that when they only met very briefly in Paris. Because Gauguin was away all the time. He was in Brittany or in Martinique. And he came back from Martinique in November 87. And Vincent Extension a small exhibition of his own work. In a Toulouse La trek in Emil Bernard. Gauguin visited and then they got into contact. But then, already in February next year, Vincent was gone. And Gauguin would go back to Brittany. So there was only a brief that they made that. But for Vincent, discovering the work that he brought back from Martinique. These tropical works that he loved very much. He was saying, okay, this is the man who is one of the most important around the world. He has seen those places where nobody hardly ever comes. But maybe the future of art. Where everything is colorful and nice and bright. And he was influenced by Japanese prints, for instance. And he was looking for these bright works in a bright society. And if you had the possibility, he would have gone to Indonesia, maybe even Japan. But the South Front was the closest he could get, you might say, to such an area. And then he wanted, obviously Gauguin to come. And finally, when he had his studio all to himself. That he also could live there. He tried to persuade again very persistently. And when you reach Leeds, it's really like that Gauguin is holding it off a little bit. In the sense. I've got no money, I feel ill, things like that. But then Theo sold one of his paintings and he had money. So he had no longer that. Excuse me. So he did come and for the idea to stay there for a year to work together in this little yellow house. And the idea that he was going to teach someone and someone he's going to work with, which is very telling I always thought, is that one of the first letters that Gauguin wrote back when he was in Ariel to his friend Schofenacker is said, well, I'm here with fin center. It's going all right. I was here as some kind of teacher. But he's criticizing everything I make.
- [38:48]
Kate Lister
Oh, no.
- [38:48]
Tayo Meedendorp
And it's quite clear that it was a very intense two months and a lot of discussion about art. And it also appears that they don't like the same artists. And they try to make up of going together for a day to Montpellier to a museum to look at art and discuss things and try to get together. But in the end, it simply blows. And Vincent, what he does see at that moment is that his dream of working together, of creating a space for him and other artists where they can work together, not to had to be there all together at the same time. But that there was a space in the south of France, but in Brittany and other places where people with the same ideas could work together, was endangered.
- [39:28]
Kate Lister
Because Vincent really believed, didn't he, that he would get Gauguin there and then together they would forge this creative movement that would take over the world. And Gagan's turned up thinking, all right, I'll go and do a bit of teaching.
- [39:42]
Tayo Meedendorp
Yeah, but it's a bit like. But also at the same time, Gauguin also very much respecting what Vincent is doing. It's a reflection in the sense of that both know from each other that they have something to say in art. It's very different. The main difference between the two is that. And that's the criticism of Gauguin on Vincent. And that's the reason why Vincent wanted Gauguin to come over, is that he wanted to learn better, to paint by heart, from memory. Vincent is an artist who is always very much in the realist tradition, but very much dependent of the motive in front of him. But one of the highest thing in art is that you can also sit in your studio and compose a painting just with the sketches that you have, just creating something in your mind. And Gauguin was much more of an artist like that. So he would sketch in nature, but then he would go back to the studio and then make his paintings. He hardly ever painted in that sense, outside life, you might say. And Vincent did try his hand at some of works at that time from memory, but those are not really his Best works. I mean, it's quite telling that if he doesn't have a model and if he doesn't have the motif in front of him, he is more or less lost. And that's the reason why he came so late in art, only at 27, because he had been drawing all the time before that. But there was no idea that he would ever turn it to any kind of profession because he realized that his drawing was not very good. It was only that he learned something about when he. Well, when Theo more or less suggested to him, because after so many things wrong, he was even a preacher in the mining works district in Belgium. He tried to become a minister of the church and things like that, that all failed. And he had this horrible year of not knowing what to do. And then this brother said, well, you always have art in your head, you always talk about art. Why don't you become an artist? A drawer, an illustrator or something for magazines. He never really thought about it because his drawing was no good. But then he said, okay, then I try my hand at that. And then that Yoda thinks he goes for it all the way and it's drawing, drawing, drawing. But he realized, indeed is that he needed tools to get a grip on world around him. Because if he would paint a church or whatever, or a landscape just by heart, he had no really idea of what's closer by, what's further away. Make it, yeah, perspective. So he had all these kinds of equipment that would help him with that. He would square and he would look through a grid to get the right proportions and then work from it. And he used that grid for a very, very long time. And with that he could get a cripple nature. And he learned, obviously learned. And then afterwards he could do without the grid. But then the shaky feeling for perspective come back. But then he becomes an expressive force and it becomes something which is undeniably some part of what makes Vincent's work so unique. So it's never a photograph, although you can recognize all kinds of things within the. Where it is. And you can see details in church, in background, things like that. But he plays with. With it. I mean, what is in front of him is to be entangled onto painting, but he has to have it in front of him. And that's where it went wrong with Gauguin. And you might say, and at some point he felt threatened that he drank too much. And at some point Gauguin felt threatened by Vincent's rages, probably.
- [42:46]
Kate Lister
Didn't Gauguin say that he would wake up in the middle of the night. And Vincent was just standing there looking at him. That would freak out anybody out.
- [42:53]
Tayo Meedendorp
Exactly. And that was the reason that he decided not to stay in the yellow house anymore. But he went to a hotel in the city and that evening Vincent cut off his ear and indeed went to the brothel they usually went to every two weeks and presented to one of the sex workers, Rachel, which is her working name. And of course she fainted and he went back to the Yellow House and he was found the next morning. And he was brought to hospital and he was unconscious because he lost a lot of blood. But they even. They also retrieved the ear. And at some point, we know the doctor, Dr. Ray, who treated him in the hospital, looked at the possibility of perhaps sawing the ear back on. But it was too long. I mean, it was too long. The separation was been too long. And he even said later that he had the ear on alcohol on his desk for quite some time. Time.
- [43:44]
Kate Lister
Oh, wow. Okay.
- [43:45]
Tayo Meedendorp
Yeah. It's a bit of a silly story, but you get all kinds of weird anecdotes when you. And you.
- [43:53]
Kate Lister
Why? I know that we'll never know the answer to this, because you would need here. Why the ear? I mean, from what you've been saying, he does have a history of self harm. The putting your hand in a candle for dramatic effect is quite worrying. Why the ear and why the. I mean, maybe it was just he was in a mania, he wasn't making sense. But why did he do that?
- [44:14]
Tayo Meedendorp
I think you can compare it with the idea of the hand in the candle and what he also did when he was in Amsterdam and when he was working, trying to become a minister of the church, that he had to learn algebra and Latin and things like that. He didn't do his lessons and he would flog himself and he would. Just like the Franciscan would do, or he would lock himself out of his house so he couldn't get back in and spend a night in the wintry cold to punish him. So this, when you. When you're in some kind of intense mental pain, you inflict some physical pain to relieve that. That pain and that anxiety that you have. And then cutting off an ear, a nose or whatever, a finger, or cutting yourself in generally, is a way to find some kind of relief in this. So it must be explained, that kind of thing. It's been explained in all kinds of ways in the sense that also that the Gauguin chopped it off with one of his swords, which is quite hilarious.
- [45:07]
Kate Lister
I heard that he'd visited A bullfight in Spain where they cut the ear off or something like that.
- [45:13]
Tayo Meedendorp
No, they visited the bull in Ireland. Bullfights. Yeah. But they didn't cut off ears. I mean it was because there was the provincial bullfights and they had. These people had to get roses of things and flowers from the horns of the bull. But the bull was not killed. But obviously he knew from bullfights that indeed the ear is cut off and you present the ear to the beautiful lady in the audience. So it looks like this symbolic chair of presenting your ear. Just the thing that he said with. Here's something to remember me by.
- [45:41]
Kate Lister
To the woman from the brothel.
- [45:42]
Tayo Meedendorp
To the woman. Yeah. In the brothel.
- [45:44]
Kate Lister
Wow.
- [45:44]
Tayo Meedendorp
Probably one of the women he knew then. Probably. And maybe who have made fun of him or whatever. Or that she didn't see him and then. And that he wanted her and that he gave her something. Well, she probably will remembered for the rest of her life. Remember that, Won't she remember that? So it's in that you might say. But it's only that he had no full recollection of what he had done.
- [46:05]
Kate Lister
No. He doesn't sound like he was.
- [46:06]
Tayo Meedendorp
Well, no. And of course, when he was hospitalized and he got his psychosis slightly afterwards. Is that his memory? There is a. It's a bit between two things. He didn't want to talk about it anymore and write about it anymore and he didn't remember much of it anymore.
- [46:24]
Kate Lister
I'll be back with Tayo after this short break.
- [46:36]
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- [47:47]
Kate Lister
Gonna continue along the rather grim Theme here because I have only just recently learned that there is some debate around whether or not he did shoot himself or whether somebody else shot him, or whether it was an accident. I was just wondering what your take was on that. Cause until recently I'd never heard that. I thought that it was just he did it to himself.
- [48:07]
Tayo Meedendorp
It's something that started with the biography, which was published in 2011, I believe, of Nife and Smith, a new biography. And they had an appendix in the back of the book as the possibility that the Vincent did not took his own life, was shot by two young boys, one or two young boys accidentally or perpetually in Auvers Survase. But this is a new myth, you might say.
- [48:28]
Kate Lister
Yeah, it's not true.
- [48:30]
Tayo Meedendorp
It's not true. It is quite clear from Vincent, as I discussed in the beginning, is that once he cut off his ear and got into this crisis, I mean, the idea of suicide was lurking on him. It's even shortly before he went into hospital in Saint Remys. I mean, he voluntarily hospitalized himself for a year in a mental institution. I mean, thinking about it only because he was not mad. He had this crisis and he could think about this crisis. When you read his letters from Saint Remy, I mean, it's incredible how he thinks about his own personal melancholic situation.
- [49:04]
Kate Lister
He has insight into it.
- [49:06]
Tayo Meedendorp
Yeah, and how he fights his anxieties and tries to get out of that. But one thing is, of course is what is playing in his mind is one solution is taking your own life. He writes to Theo when he goes to the hospital. He says, well, if it wasn't for you, I'll probably turn to suicide. But I probably too coward to do it. But together we are a bulwark against society. I mean, together we can go on. And what's going on in the. So then we have this whole series that he is trying to get back his grip on life in the asylum where he has this major crisis in the summer, but he has another one at the end and also realizing I'm not going to get better here, so I better leave because this doesn't bother work. And in the end, so he's trying to look for something else. And Theo in the meantime found a place for him in Auvers hoarse So it's not good for him to go back to Paris because it's too busy. I mean, there's too much going around. He needs quiet to work in quiet. And he finds this place Novaire Suise. Camille Pizarro, who was living a bit further away, emphasized that Auvers, because There was a doctor, Dr. Cacher, who might keep an eye on him. And he was a patron of the Arch. You might say he was an amateur artist himself. He was an etcher. He was etching. He knew Pizarro very well. And so that was okay. So he went over as he was, and he was more or less taken care of. But in the meantime, in those pastimes, FIA went married. Theo had something that Vincent never realized. It was a family. I mean, having met a woman mentally in love, two as one, as Vincent always wanted. And they had this baby. Vincent Willem was named after him, was born in January 1890. And Vincent met his nephew when he came to Paris, when he was from Ceremy, Paris, and went to Auvers. He first saw the wife of Theo, Jo Vorgoch, Jo Bonger and the little nephew. And then he went to Auversouise. But what he also realized is that the bond that the two brothers had, there was somebody new there. There was a wife as well, and a boy. There was a family. And Vincent loved that. I mean, that was good for his brother. But it also changed his situation a little bit, because before that, it was them together, together. And he realized when he was in Ove? Su, there was a point after a month when he was there, he was thinking also looking for something permanent to stay or stay in a cafe, but something permanent maybe something permanent that Theo and his wife could also use in the summer to stay there. Because, I mean, the city is bad to grow up for a little boy and have a bus to be in the countryside. But Theo at some point had his own problems that appeared. And in July, this is the month that Vincent took his own life. In the beginning of July, there was a serious crisis in the relationship because Theo was thinking about leaving the art gallery where he was working. Because he didn't like his bosses anymore, because they were keeping him short. And he was overreacting a little bit. But he gave an ultimatum to his bosses in the sense that if I don't get a raise, I will quit building and I start my own business. And so it was discussed with Joe and Vincent. And Vincent and Joe were clear, clearly opposed to this. But Theo, in a way, as being a Van Gogh, I mean, was just as stubborn sometimes as his brother could be and their father could be, for that matter. He pushed through. So he did give an ultimatum to his bosses. In the end, Vincent went back to oversuasen and really came in a very melancholic mood. That's when he painted the wheat field with crows. He made three big paintings in the chance to get back on his feet again. And he rode afterwards. The brushes were almost falling from his hands, from emotion when he was painting them. And he made free paintings, which is interesting to look at because they say something. And that's when his personal life says something about what his artwork is. So he realizes, of course, that an artwork is not an illustration of an artist's personal life. I mean, it has to do its way on its own in the world, but it has to reflect the emotions that the artist put into it, which resonance is resonance with people looking at it. When the resonance is right, that's something the artist. But of course, there was the wheat field, which is very dramatic. These growths mean it's anxiety, it's fear. And then he painted another very wide landscape of thunderclouds going away and the sun is breaking through. So it's a very peaceful landscape, you might say so, with the thunderstorms going away. Because nature itself is also healthy. And it's something that consoles you as well. Constellation as well. And then he made a third painting. And that's remarkable because that third painting, also in a very white form forward, was the house of Ger d', Aubigny, another painter, a French painter, a very successful painter from the earlier generation, who had died in 76, but who lived in Auverg. And the widow of Daubigny was still living in that house. And that painting of the house of Daubigny with a cat in the yard and the widow of Daubigny itself, that was what an artistic life really should be. One with the countryside, being an artist and have a family and raise a family there. And that's what do we succeeded in doing that. So it's that sequence of terror in the wheat field with crows, of, well, nature is consoling. And in the end, and this is what it should be, it's almost a triptych in the sense of. But it's also a realization that he would never have this. And in the end, Theo, who gave in and did not quit the job and stayed working at the firm, he never wrote this to Vincent. It was a time of emotional things. Because the young boy was born who had not. They had not been to Holland. They had only a holiday in the summer, so they were going to Holland. Vincent was hoping that Feo would come to him again and they would visit him. And Theo never did. And his mind was somewhere else, was with his family, and went to Holland. And Vincent felt alone. And he Never wrote to Vincent that he did stay to his job. So the last letter that Vincent wrote actually begins with, I don't know what to do. Gentleman said to you, so clearly not knowing what was going on. And, well, that's the last thing we know. And it was at a point indeed that he could also not have done it. That's the thing. We had an exhibition and we wrote a book about this in 2016, on the verge of Insanity, where we really focused as a reaction on the murder theory. So we went back to the sources, okay, what exactly did happen? And to spell it out, you might say, and it's quite clear that he was going in a downward spiral in a certain way. And then there is this moment that you decide that you're going to do it. And even when we talked about experts in suicide and say, yeah, I mean, in the end, it was also possible he didn't do it, but he did it. He did it, he did it. And he shot himself. He meant to shot himself in the heart. The bullets ricocheted on the ribs. It was located close to a rib, but it was a small caliber gun. And so it didn't kill him immediately. And he managed to walk back. He did it in the fields. Yeah, he walked back to the inn where he was staying. What I found that one of the most tragic things is that when Emile Bernard wrote very shortly afterwards, because he was at the funeral at the time, and then when he heard from Dr. Cashier, is that when Cashier tried to help him, he said, I will do everything to help you. And then Vincent is reportedly have said, is that then I'll have to do it all over again. So it is quite clear that. So that he was, in a way, sadly enough, it was the only solution he saw is that to be no longer a burden to anyone in the sense, you might say.
- [56:34]
Kate Lister
Really tragic. But as a final question to you, I want you to imagine that the Van Gogh Museum where you work has caught fire. And it's terrible. It's burning to the ground. And you have enough time to get in there and get one item from your collection to help the world remember who this man was. What are you gonna go for? Is it a painting? Is it a letter? Is it what? What would you go for?
- [57:01]
Tayo Meedendorp
This is an impossible question. I mean, I know. Well, the thing is, people usually also always ask you, what's your favorite, favorite painting? And that usually tends to shift a little bit. But one which has always been very, very dear to me from the beginning watching only even before I Studied Van Gogh intensely. And at that moment, when I met, when worked into Van Gogh, it was always on loan to the museum next door, the Stelig Museum. It's a painting we have studied afterwards intensely. It's from our collection, obviously, and it is his last painting painting. And it is the painting that has to do with his suicide and with his death. And that's a painting of tree roots. It's a close up. He painted it the morning that he killed himself. And we know that he had on his body. In his pocket he had a letter. It was not a real letter to Fear, but it was the concept of a letter that Vincent sent to Fear. And the concept of the letter was slightly even more personal to Theo himself. And he put it in his pocket, obviously, so that he knew that Theo would find it when he was dead. So it was not lying around somewhere. But it was some kind of message for afterlife, which is also that the suicide was planned in that respect. Even then it couldn't happen. And then nobody knew about this. But that's what we know about it. And the painting, in a way is perhaps a painted adieu. Because what we see is a close up of tree roots, bare tree roots in a chalky ground getting loose, erosion going on. It's clinging to life. I mean, it's the forces of nature and nature trying to survive. And sometimes you have to give in. And that's the last painting he made. So that has a special connection. It's impossible to choose one. And it's always in the top of the museum. So I mean, if you have got all the way to the top, to save that one would be difficult. And there is another one, I would like to say, but it's not in our collection. If some kind of disaster would happen. And that's a painting that we discovered in 2013, a painting from the Aro period, which was unknown till then and which came to us for authentication and which was presented to us. This is Lisa van Gogh. And it turned out to be a real thing. Oh, it's a sunset at Montmajour. It's a landscape painting that he did in Arles. It's perhaps not the most famous painting because it's only known since the last 10, 10, 15 years. But the discovery was quite incredible because we before a painting like that would not be out there still. I mean, we know so much about him, so. And it is a very insightful painting art historically, in the sense that it is one of the first paintings with very heavy impasto that he did outdoors. So there are, there are areas which are, well, quite okay, but there are areas which are not so okay. And he even wrote about the painting in his letters. So that's a painting if that was ever endangered, I would love to save.
- [59:48]
Kate Lister
That's the one. Tayo, you have been, been so wonderful to talk to. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work and Van Gogh's work as well, where can they find you?
- [59:59]
Tayo Meedendorp
They can find me at the Met Van Gogh Museum, obviously, I worked as a senior researcher. Come to our museum, see the works. We have this year, a wonderful exhibition at the end of the year on Roulin, which you're probably familiar with, the postman Roulin, that he painted the portrait. While we're going to have an exhibition which we make together with Portrait, Boston Museum of Fine Arts on the Roulin family. So what we tried to do is get as many of all the portraits that he did together that's never been done. So first in Boston in March. In the end, it's called Vaghogh and the Roulands together again at last. And in the fall, it will be in Amsterdam. For people coming home from England, it will be perhaps a little bit cheaper to come over to Amsterdam instead of Boston.
- [60:41]
Kate Lister
Amazing. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us today. You've been marvelous.
- [60:46]
Tayo Meedendorp
Thank you. Bye bye.
- [60:50]
Kate Lister
Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Tayo for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along wherever it is you get your podcasts coming up. We have got episodes on the sex lives of medieval royals and the truth about Roald Dahl all coming your way. And if you would like us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello or perhaps send us some Van Gogh paintings, then you can do so@betwixtistoryhit.com this podcast was edited by Tim Arstel and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again on Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by history hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic sound.
- [61:36]
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Tayo Meedendorp
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