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In Our Time
Vincent Van Gogh (Archive Episode)
00:55:38
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Dutch painter of Sunflowers and Starry Nights.
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- [00:00]
Melvin Bragg
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- [00:06]
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- [00:16]
Christopher Riopel
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- [00:18]
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- [00:38]
Greg Jenner
Hello, I'm Greg Jenner, host of youf're Dead to Me, the comedy podcast from the BBC that takes history seriously. Each week I'm joined by a comedian and an expert historian to learn and laugh about the past. In our all new season, we cover unique areas of history that your school lessons may have missed, from getting ready in the Renaissance era to the Kellogg brothers. Listen to youo're Dead to Me now wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:04]
Melvin Bragg
Hello Starry nights and Sunflowers, Self portraits and simple chairs. These are images known the world over, and Vincent van Gogh painted them and around 900 others in the last decade of his short, brilliant life. And famously, by the time he killed himself when he was only 37, he sold only one. Yet within a few decades after his death, these extraordinary works, with all their color and life, became the most desirable of all modern art, propelled in part by the story of his artist's struggle with mental health. With me to discuss Vincent van Gogh, 1853-1890. Christopher Riopel, the Neil Westride, curator of post 1800 paintings at the National Gallery Martin Baillie, a leading Van Gogh specialist and and correspondent for the art newspaper and Francis Fowle, professor of 19th century art at the University of Edinburgh and senior curator at the National Galleries of Scotland. Francis, what do we know about the early life of Vincent van Gogh?
- [02:05]
Christopher Riopel
Well, we know a certain amount. Most of the knowledge we have of Van Gogh is through the letters and unfortunately, obviously there's not much correspondence from that early period. It's secondary information. So, for example, Joe Van Gogh Bonga, who was the Theo van Gogh's widow, tells us that he was quite a difficult child and one can assume from that that some of the kind of patterns which emerge in later life were formed in that earlier period. He had a very happy, very secure childhood and he was living in the south of Holland with his father and mother. His father was a parson. He had a post in the Dutch Reform Church. He was A Protestant minister and they were brought up in this area which is actually predominantly Catholic. And allegedly Bangor's mother Anna was quite a. She was actually quite a snobbish woman. I think she came from an upper middle class background in the Hague and she was concerned that her children should be brought up as proper Protestants and not mixed too much with the. The kind of local ruffians, one could say the local ruffians in. In the village, they were a very close family. They wrote to each other. You know, when he was older, particularly with Theo, who was his brother, the older of the two brothers that he had. He had to. Actually there were six of them in the family. He had three sisters, two brothers and he actually had another brother who was born exactly a year before him to the very day, who was also called Vincent. Not something which was uncommon in those days. It was quite usual for you to be named after a dead sibling.
- [03:37]
Melvin Bragg
Was he attracted to the idea of being any sort of artist? From an early age he was introduced.
- [03:42]
Christopher Riopel
To drawing by his parents. He was given drawing lessons, as were all the children. And actually we have. There's an early drawing from about 1864, when he was 11, which shows him really being. It's quite a competent drawing in fact of farmhouse and barn. And then when he went to school, he was actually sent away to school to boarding school. And the second school he went to, he was given drawing lessons there. So he would actually have learnt a certain amount. But he doesn't write about this at all at any point.
- [04:12]
Melvin Bragg
How did he become an art dealer and how did that help him?
- [04:15]
Christopher Riopel
So at the age of 16, after he'd left school, he left school at the age of 15 and their parents were kind of wondering what to do with him.
- [04:21]
Melvin Bragg
So they wondering if he was a bright chap.
- [04:24]
Christopher Riopel
Well, he was a bright chap, but he was also quite a difficult individual and found it difficult to kind of stick to anything. So he had three uncles who were art dealers and one in particular, Uncle Vincent, uncle sent. He had set up the Hague branch of the Goupil Gallery, which was a prestigious art dealers based in Paris and which had branches in Brussels and in America and in London. And so he, at the age of 16 he was sent to the Hague and taken under the wing of the manager there, who was a man called Ter Stegg, and had quite a happy time. It was a really important period for him because he was exposed to the art of the Hague school who a group of artists were interested in painting in a very realistic way. And his uncle had a collection of these modern artists. And after about four years he was moved to the London office. And he sent a list of the artists that he most admired to Theo. And among them you see not only these Hague School artists, these people like Anton Mauve, who was his cousin, the Maris Brothers, but also the Barbizon School, who were the precursors of Impressionism. So artists like Jean Francois Millet, the painter of the Sewer and the Angelus, who would have a huge impact on him later on.
- [05:36]
Melvin Bragg
Martin, thank you very much. Martin Baillie, he turned or returned to religion. What marks that episode in his life?
- [05:45]
Martin Baillie
Well, his attitude to religion is actually fascinating and slightly surprising, if you like. He was brought up in this rather conventional Protestant society and as Francis said, his father was a pastor, so he had that sort of religious upbringing. He then came to England and he was eventually sacked as an art dealer. And he then went into a period of deep depression. And at that point he was taking a job as a teaching assistant in Isleworth in West London. And he suddenly became a, well, I would say obsessed with religion. And he wrote long letters to his family and his brother in particular, with long quotations from the Bible. And he became very evangelical, extremely. So that continued for several years after. He received several years, yes, indeed. And when he was in Holland, he then made the decision. He wanted to become a missionary in the Belgium coal mining area of the Borinage, which was a poverty stricken area. And he eventually spent two years there trying to preach to the miners. The problem was the miners didn't really want to hear what he said. They were really just engaged in the day to day struggle of living. He wasn't a very good communicator. And eventually he realized that he wasn't succeeding. So he left Belgium, he left the Borinage, and at that point he suddenly really abandoned religion. And from then onwards he had a fairly secular attitude towards life. I mean, I think he was a spiritual person, but he began to detest organized religion.
- [07:34]
Melvin Bragg
So what age are we talking about now when he leaves that?
- [07:37]
Martin Baillie
It was when he was in his mid-20s that he abandoned religion. Organized religion.
- [07:43]
Melvin Bragg
We're taking a bit of a jump. But it was then, only then, that he began to learn to paint. Is that true?
- [07:48]
Martin Baillie
Yes, he began by drawing rather than painting. But it was when he abandoned his job as a missionary, he wanted to do something else. And it may come as a surprise, but he suddenly decided he wanted to be an artist and he began by drawing. He didn't have any organized training at that point.
- [08:08]
Melvin Bragg
He Tried two or three times and got flopped. And he flopped every time, didn't he?
- [08:11]
Martin Baillie
He did. He started drawing by himself. He then ended up going to the Art Academy in Brussels and stayed probably just a few weeks. And I think he came bottom of the class, probably. And at that point he abandoned it.
- [08:24]
Melvin Bragg
Yes, and went to one or two others. But he taught himself. Can you tell us of the early process of him determined to keep on and how he taught himself?
- [08:33]
Martin Baillie
Yes, he taught himself essentially from manuals, and he would copy drawings in drawing manuals. So he did it himself. He was very determined. Without that, he wouldn't have succeeded. But of course, it was a rather lonely way of learning how to draw.
- [08:49]
Melvin Bragg
How was he making a living?
- [08:51]
Martin Baillie
He wasn't making a living. He was actually surviving. Well, when he was a missionary, he was surviving on almost nothing, and he was really in abject poverty as soon as he started becoming an artist. His brother Theo, his younger brother, gradually supported him financially, and that actually continued until the end of his life. And without that support, Vincent could never have been an art.
- [09:16]
Melvin Bragg
Can you go into close up about how he learned to paint? It's fascinating. There he is 27, he's done this, that and the other. He decides he will be a painter. He will be an artist.
- [09:26]
Martin Baillie
Yes.
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Melvin Bragg
And then what?
- [09:27]
Martin Baillie
Well, he decided to be an artist, and initially he drew, and it was only a year or two later, when he was in the Hague, that he started to use oil paint. And it was Anton Mauve who Francis mentioned who encouraged him to develop oil painting. And once he started, he again, he taught himself essentially, that he developed remarkably quickly in the space of just a few years.
- [09:55]
Melvin Bragg
Yes. Taught himself meant he looked at things and copied them.
- [09:58]
Martin Baillie
He would look at a landscape or a person, not copy the landscape or person, but that would inspire him. When he really became an artist, he really liked to be in front of the motif. He didn't use his imagination. He didn't want to rely on his imagination. He looked at a landscape and then interpreted it.
- [10:18]
Melvin Bragg
He didn't only do landscape, he did a lot of people, and particularly people who are working. He did a lot of people at work or just having finished work. In that parlance, they would be called peasants. How does the potato eaters fit in here? Could you tell the listeners what that is and how it fits in?
- [10:34]
Martin Baillie
Yes. I mean, the portraits you're discussing are those mostly those that he did in the village of Newnan where his parents were living, and he was staying with them to save money, and the local peas were willing or some of them were willing to pose for fairly small sums of money. So he had people to pose for him. He did quite a lot of individual portraits and then after about a year of that, he had this ambition of putting them together in a scene. And the scene is the Potato Eaters, which is a rather dark painting of an interior with a handful of people sitting around the table having their evening meal. They're eating potatoes, no surprise there. And this was quite ambitious to bring all of these individual portraits and individual people together in a scene. And he regarded it as his first important painting. I mean, it's quite unlike the Van Gogh that we actually know, because the colors are dark and we think of Van Gogh as with these exuberant, complementary colors. But this was the period when he was beginning to paint in the Netherlands and they were dark pictures.
- [11:45]
Melvin Bragg
Why do you think the that was?
- [11:46]
Martin Baillie
I think it was partly based on the art of the Netherlands at the time, the Hague School paintings, painters were generally working in dark colours, not necessarily quite as dark. Now, I'm wondering from your question whether you think it might have reflected his mood or not. That's very difficult to say. He always found life difficult and there were lots of difficulties in Noonan. I think he didn't feel bold enough to go into colours. He. He really explored colors later in his life when he moved to Paris and he saw the work of the Impressionists, and that was key.
- [12:21]
Melvin Bragg
We'll come to that. Thank you very much, Chris Hurripel. He's moving quickly at this stage, isn't it, for him? He's been to. He's been to the Hague, he's been to London, where he's fallen in love with the work of Charles Dickens. And we told he read a great deal of Dickens. He also taught himself languages, English, French, a bit of German, and read widely, we're told, while he was in this country, I might say. And the 1886 in Paris, what did that bring him?
- [12:48]
Francis Fowle
Paris was a kind of revelation for him. His brother Theo was there, was working as an art dealer, was making friends among the avant garde. So when Vincent arrives in Paris in March of 1886, he already has a milieu into which he can insert himself, and it's a very, very exciting one. His brother Theo had told him in advance, all the young artists are using color, bright color, so he had a sense of what he was going to see. But he also found himself among struggling artists, to be sure, but of immense sophistication. They lived in Paris, after all. But, for example, his friend Gauguin had been literally everywhere in the world, had grown up in Peru, spoke several languages. His grandmother, Flora Tristan, was a fascinating radical politician. So suddenly he was moving among people who expanded him intellectually and made him, what I would say greatly, daring. Color soon enters his. His art with great force.
- [14:01]
Melvin Bragg
Can we take two steps back? When he got to Paris, does he meet. We know Gauguin. We'll talk about Gauguin later. But who else did he meet? Was he part of the groups which seemed to sprout all over the place in Paris at that time?
- [14:14]
Francis Fowle
Exactly. And he was meeting so many people, not only French, like Toulouse Lautrec, a great aristocrat, Seurat, whom he admired.
- [14:25]
Melvin Bragg
He tried to imitate him, didn't he?
- [14:26]
Francis Fowle
And tried to imitate. At various points he also meets foreigners. John Russell, the Australian, and they become very close friends. Alex Reid, the Glasgow art dealer. And they become friends. So suddenly his horizons are expanding both artistically and in terms of friendships in his own painting.
- [14:49]
Melvin Bragg
What does he paint at that time?
- [14:51]
Francis Fowle
He continues at first to paint in what I would call the Dutch style he'd been working in. So the old shoes with laces looks like a Dutch picture. But very quickly he was moving.
- [15:02]
Melvin Bragg
Rembrandt is one of his heroes.
- [15:03]
Francis Fowle
Rembrandt was a hero very quickly, though. He comes to paint Paris, particularly the edges of Paris up in Montmartre, where the city is giving way to the countryside, or the countryside is being turned into city, as you watched. And he was fascinated by that point of transition between city and country. And some of his most interesting works of those two years in Paris are about the city itself.
- [15:32]
Melvin Bragg
How much self belief do you think he had at that time? He's just started painting. He's among people who are already establishing reputations. They might be small, but the reputation is made by very clever people. And they know they're in that. He's sort of nowhere. So how did he keep his self belief going?
- [15:51]
Francis Fowle
I think that among the lessons he saw when he got to Paris and saw the Impressionists, as Martin mentioned, he saw that new young artists had to do it for themselves. They were organizing their own exhibitions, they were contacting dealers, they were contacting critics. They were, in a way that had never really been the case before, taking charge of their own careers because they knew no one was going to be helping them in the state or anything else. And I think observing this in certain ways emboldened him to really begin to. To think big, to. To emulate ambitious people like Gauguin and.
- [16:32]
Melvin Bragg
Seurat but he's still being supported by his brother.
- [16:35]
Francis Fowle
He's still. Yes.
- [16:36]
Melvin Bragg
No. And this is not. I mean, good for the brother. I'm not being sarcastic about it. It was tremendous.
- [16:40]
Francis Fowle
No, his. It. It. Theo is one of the heroes of modern art for supporting him. So, yes, he needed a lot of help, I think.
- [16:48]
Melvin Bragg
Yes. Francis Gauguin enters the picture. What's his significance to Van Gogh?
- [16:55]
Christopher Riopel
I think he was very important. The person that has been kind of left out, though, is Emile Bernard, who is the link, really, I feel he's kind of crucial link between Van Gogh and Gauguin. And he was one of the artists that he met at the Atelier Cormont when he. Which was a studio he attended, and it was run by a man called Fernand Caumont. And Emile Bernard was there too, and was similarly unconventional. And so he found in him a soulmate. So there's a lot. There's correspondence between him and Bernard, and there's a. Also correspondence between him and Gauguin. And actually, one of the things that was really impressive about Gauguin was that he'd already established himself outside Paris at this artist colony at Pont Aven in Brittany. And he had a whole entourage of acolytes, of disciples. So he was a really kind of very confident individual. But at the same time, he was struggling. He was struggling to be recognized. He'd just come back when they met, from Martinique, from the Caribbean island of Martinique. And he was very keen to make a connection with Theo Van Gogh because he was an art dealer and he wanted Theo to take him under his wing. So I think he saw really a route to Teo through Vincent. But at the same time, they also had this. He, Bernard and Gauguin, Vincent Gauguin. Bernard had this common interest, in a way, challenging Impressionism and moving beyond Impressionism and thinking in a much more abstract way. This is the word that Gauguin uses. He talks about art as being an abstraction. And so he encourages both Bernard and Van Gogh to think with the mind rather than with the eye. And this is something which actually Van Gogh struggles with quite a great deal, but they form this little.
- [18:37]
Melvin Bragg
Why do you think he struggles with it?
- [18:38]
Christopher Riopel
He struggled with it because he was much happier when he was painting in front of nature and being immersed in the countryside.
- [18:48]
Greg Jenner
Hello, I'm Greg Jenner, host of youf're Dead to Me, the comedy podcast from the BBC that takes history seriously. Each week I'm joined by a comedian and an expert historian to learn and laugh about the past in our all new season, we cover unique areas of history that your school lessons may have missed. From getting ready in the Renaissance era to the Kellogg brothers. Listen to youo're Dead to Me now, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:14]
Melvin Bragg
Martin. He was treading water in Paris and then he. And then he decided to move yet again and he went to Arles in Provence. And we have the sun and the sunflowers and. And so on. Why did he go there?
- [19:28]
Martin Baillie
Well, I think he always thought somewhere else would be better than where he was. He'd been in Paris for two years and although it had been very exciting, life there was very hectic and I think he found it a bit much in the end. He also said he'd been drinking heavily and with all the bars of Montmartre just around the corner, that must have been quite tempting for a young man. He also felt that I think he could work better. He loved working outside in the landscape. And he was therefore attracted by Provence in the south of France where the weather was warmer. And whether he could work outside. And he thought life would be cheaper. I'm not sure whether it actually was because of course he had to rent somewhere. And in Paris he just stayed with his brother. But the day to day expenses would have been cheaper there. So he headed off and he settled down and he had a good year.
- [20:24]
Melvin Bragg
Yes. Tell us about the sunflowers.
- [20:26]
Martin Baillie
Van Gogh had painted some cut sunflowers when he was in Paris for still lifes. But the sunflowers that we know and love are the still lifes which he painted in Arles in the summer, in August 1888. And he painted them partly because he wanted to decorate Gauguin's bedroom. He was hoping that Gauguin would come. And Gauguin kept delaying coming from Brittany to stay with him in the yellow house. And sunflowers are exuberant flowers. August is the time to pick them and to paint them. And he was obviously excited. He loved taking advantage of the different seasons. And sunflowers symbolized the summer. And for him the sun had great symbolic importance. And they are astonishing works. He did four different versions of the sunflowers. We all tend to think that the one we know is the only one, but there were four. And the most important is the one that's in the National Gallery in London, which is the yellow sunflowers on the yellow background. And that has become an icon.
- [21:34]
Melvin Bragg
Do you want to comment on the sunflowers?
- [21:36]
Christopher Riopel
Well, I think Chris should comment on the one in the National Gallery, but I would. I Was going to say that as well as these four there are. He actually painted the subject numerous times because it was. It became almost something which one associates with him. And actually, when he first met Gauguin, he gave him two of his sunflower paintings, which were just cut sunflowers in one or two flowers just lying on a surface, as if that was also something which represented him. So I think it was something very personal to him and something which he associated with Provence as well.
- [22:05]
Francis Fowle
And yes, Gauguin very much admired the sunflowers he had seen in Paris. But when he gets to Arles and sees the National Gallery sunflowers hanging on his wall in his bedroom in the Yellow House, he is startled because he sees how far Van Gogh has jumped ahead in his art. Van Gogh had said to him, when you come to Provence, you will be the leader, I will be the follower. I will be the follower. But what Gauguin realizes so quickly is that in certain ways, Van Gogh has. Has jumped ahead of him.
- [22:45]
Melvin Bragg
Yes, the relationship with them didn't last all that long, did it?
- [22:49]
Francis Fowle
They worked together throughout the autumn of 88, but by Christmas, I think the differences in their personalities, but also their aesthetic differences, what they thought was important in modern painting had diverged so much. And Martin alluded to it, the difference between observing nature and painting from it and freeform creating that Gauguin favored had driven them apart.
- [23:18]
Melvin Bragg
He sounds very difficult. Pizarro said, got it here. This man will either go mad or leave us way behind.
- [23:27]
Francis Fowle
He did both.
- [23:29]
Martin Baillie
They were both difficult. Both Van Gogh and Gauguin, in their different ways, were difficult. And that's why it didn't work, their collaboration.
- [23:37]
Melvin Bragg
In the end, it seems odd, looking at the paintings, you think, how could it possibly ever have worked? And thinking about the lives they were leading. Yes, Gauguin left him. And it's about that time that we have the infamous cutting off of the ear.
- [23:52]
Francis Fowle
It seems to have followed very, very closely upon this breakup that we imagine happened in the street right at Christmas time. He was. Vincent was discombobulated by it. And Gauguin stomps back off north and he's left alone, which must have been a kind of psychic shock for him.
- [24:15]
Melvin Bragg
Well, can we just. It's a bit gory, but everybody knows about it. It's one of the big things I know about Van Gogh. So he was obviously got very depressed. You tell the story well, after they.
- [24:27]
Francis Fowle
Had met in the street and had this falling. Falling out, he goes home. I'm not quite sure of the time frame, but Chops away at the lobe of his ear, I think it was most which anyone who's ever had a cut on the ear knows there's an awful lot of blood right there at the surface. So it must have looked quite horrific. He goes to the doctor. He's bandaged up. He paints himself with these bandages around him. He remains focused enough, as it were, to report on what has happened in quite astonishing pictures.
- [25:02]
Melvin Bragg
Yes, but that is the first visible sign to everybody else that all things are not well.
- [25:09]
Francis Fowle
Yes. And assigned to himself because he then goes to the asylum, first of all in Arles itself, and is under doctor's care there.
- [25:19]
Melvin Bragg
Can you take us through the asylum process?
- [25:22]
Christopher Riopel
Yes. So, first of all, he goes to the hospital in Arles and then he transfers. He's under a doctor called Felix Rey, who diagnoses epilepsy, which is. Which is questionable. But he. Obviously, there's no real conclusion about what he did suffer from, although there are various theories. So he then admitted himself to this asylum, the Saint Pol Hospital in Saint Remy, which was a. It was a converted monastery. And he. Bizarrely, it was actually quite empty when it was only half full, apparently. So he got a room to himself, and he had an extra room which he could use as a studio, which is quite useful, and was able to paint using that studio and paint the garden. Initially, obviously, he was under constant care and was not allowed out. But he stayed there for about a year or perhaps a little bit longer. And so gradually he began to. He was allowed to go out into the countryside and pursue new subjects.
- [26:21]
Melvin Bragg
Martin, you've discovered records about the other people are at the Salem at that time. Am I right?
- [26:28]
Martin Baillie
Yes.
- [26:28]
Melvin Bragg
I mean, it sounds. It sounds. It's. It sounds very distressing for everybody concerned, but it must have been. Well, can you talk about it?
- [26:36]
Martin Baillie
Yes. Well, I was researching a book on this period in the asylum called Starry Night, and I discovered that there was an unknown. An unpublished register of the patients which was at the archives at St. Remy. And although it was an administrative document and it wasn't a medical register, it gave the names of the patients. And from that information, I was able to get some idea of what the patients were suffering from. And it was actually horrific. There were only 20 other male patients there. Most of them were even worse conditioned than Van Gogh was. And it must have been so difficult for him living in this terrible environment. And I think, in a way, art was the escape which saved him. It was because he could go out and paint or paint in his studio in the small room. That he was able to forget what was going on around him before we.
- [27:38]
Melvin Bragg
Go to the studio in the small room, which of course takes us to the Star and I, which is very, very sad. The condition of some of the people in that asylum who were his constant companions was dreadful.
- [27:48]
Martin Baillie
Yes. There was one young man who was 20, I think, who was admitted a few weeks after him who couldn't speak. And van Gogh says he threw the furniture around the room. Well, if you can't communicate verbally, you're going to resort to that sort of thing. But imagine the shock of having someone doing that or you go to the canteen for lunch and people throwing plates around. It must been highly disturbing. He doesn't write about it in his letters to Theo either because he didn't want to disturb his brother, or else he just wanted to escape when he was writing to his brother and wanted to imagine the world outside, he is confined.
- [28:28]
Melvin Bragg
He's confined with people who are more distressed than he is and are distressing him even more. But he finds a window and under that window it is probably his greatest exterior, one of the greatest outside paintings he ever did. Starry Night. Do you want to tell us about that, Francis?
- [28:45]
Christopher Riopel
Absolutely. So he. It's actually the view from the window of his room upstairs. Yes. And he actually painted quite a lot of paint pictures of that view. But this one is partly based in reality and what you could see in reality and partly is painted from the imagination. It's quite an extraordinary painting. I'm sure it's very familiar to a lot of listeners, but it shows a view of. It's a night time view, although it's actually early morning because you can see in the sky the morning star, Venus. And then on the right hand side you can see the waxing moon and then this kind of extraordinary firmament. And it looks like sort of the Milky Way or the sky is dotted with stars and then this incredible sense of movement. And then in the foreground there's a cypress tree which is kind of dark silhouetted against the sky and it reaches up into the heavens. And then at the bottom of the painting at the base, you can see in the landscape this village which he wouldn't have been able to see from the window. So that is possibly based on sketches that he'd done of St. Remy from a different angle. But it's the church itself that you can see with the spire is much more typical of a Dutch church. So.
- [29:56]
Melvin Bragg
But memory, the whole painting, that what comes at you is the swirl.
- [30:00]
Christopher Riopel
Yes.
- [30:00]
Melvin Bragg
Of the clouds, the. And the disturbance in it. It's starry night, but it's a different night. It's his own night. Yeah, There's. It's not so much chaos up there. How would you describe it? It is, but it is. It's something else. It's the sky, it's stars, it's night. But there's a. There's. There's something else going on entirely. Chris, what do you think?
- [30:20]
Francis Fowle
Very much so. And I think this is becoming more and more a part of Vincent's life. He observes the motif, and he must observe the motif to begin with, but then he's willing to push it further and further on the canvas, to turn it into something more dramatic, more physical, more exciting even, than the motif itself. And that brings him in the direction of this abstraction we've talked about.
- [30:49]
Melvin Bragg
Martin, do you want to come in on that?
- [30:51]
Martin Baillie
It's a magnificent painting. And what's really striking is the stars. And for Vincent, the stars had a real significance. I mean, it's difficult for us living in cities to imagine what. What one would see on a dark night in the country, and there would be virtually no artificial light there, so he would have seen the Milky Way. And it's astonishing to think of him looking out of his window as he must have done many nights, and sort of dreaming of the stars. And at one point, he actually writes in one of his letters that the stars remind him of death. And he said one could go quickly to the stars if one had some disease like cancer or one could take the journey slowly. And the stars had great significance for him. But as you say, it's the movement of the stars, and it's almost a horrifying scene because the stars sort of rush past you, but it gives the painting real life.
- [31:53]
Melvin Bragg
It's almost like the sea, isn't it? A great storm at sea.
- [31:56]
Martin Baillie
Well, yes, and I've made the comparison of the famous Great Wave by the Japanese artist Hokusai.
- [32:05]
Melvin Bragg
That's right, yeah.
- [32:05]
Martin Baillie
And they're both paintings predominantly in sort of dark blues, and both of them have got a great sense of movement. One is the sea and the other is the stars. And Van Gogh was a great admirer of Japanese art, and he almost certainly knew Hokusai's Great Wave. It was quite well known in Paris at the time. So, as quite often in Van Gogh's art, one can see Japanese influences very.
- [32:34]
Melvin Bragg
Much, and they, of course, they take to him, as China does, and on and on he goes. But that's a. I think that's a clearest example That I know, but you know so much more than I do, Chris. The popular idea and Starry Night contributes to this. And one of the attractions for some people is that he paints out of torment and almost the idea enters. You've got to be tormented to be a real artist now. I mean, I'm pushing. I know I'm pushing the. Oh, look. But what do you think of that idea as an idea, and how did you think it operated if it did, in him?
- [33:05]
Francis Fowle
I think that it is partially true, because we know that he was tormented a good deal. But great art comes out of lucidity. He is constantly, when he is in his mental capacity, coming back to these things. He is having to make tens of thousands of consciousness decisions as he creates great paintings like Starry Night. Torment alone cannot possibly explain the whole thing. His sense of himself as an artist, as a professional, as a vanguard figure, also is always figuring in. He's constantly writing back to Theo, plotting an artistic career in which these great paintings will play very specific roles. His great art comes out of consciousness.
- [33:57]
Melvin Bragg
Martin, what do you think of the collision or collusion between torment and great art?
- [34:02]
Martin Baillie
Well, I think we tend to see Van Gogh's art as the art of the tormented. I think that may be one of the myths that we have of him. I mean, he worked fairly methodically and hard, and when he was actually tormented, he probably painted much less or didn't paint. So it is not the art of a madman. It's very well thought out.
- [34:24]
Christopher Riopel
I agree. I mean, he actually wasn't able to paint when he was suffering from some of these crises. So it completely exhausted him and he only really was able to. He always said that he had to be in a fit state to be able to work really successfully.
- [34:40]
Melvin Bragg
Yes. One of the many amazing things is how much of the time he was ill and couldn't do anything. And then in the short time that was available, how much he did.
- [34:50]
Christopher Riopel
Yes, it was incredibly. I mean, he was extraordinary. His output was incredible because he was not just producing paintings, he was producing drawings during all this period as well. And at one point, actually, he decided to send copies of all or not copies. They're sort of. He calls them repetitions, his repetitions of his paintings back to Theon, to Gauguin, Bernard. And he just obviously dashes off all these incredible drawings which are. They're individual objects in their own right. And he. No, his output is phenomenal.
- [35:21]
Melvin Bragg
And one stage. He's doing a painting a day for 70 days, isn't he?
- [35:24]
Christopher Riopel
Yes. When he goes to Auvers.
- [35:26]
Melvin Bragg
That's where he's going now. Francis, will you take us to Auverg?
- [35:30]
Christopher Riopel
Absolutely.
- [35:32]
Melvin Bragg
Where is it and why did it go?
- [35:33]
Christopher Riopel
So Auvers is northwest of Paris. The reason why he went there, he has several reasons, actually, but one, he'd be nearer to Theo or Theo. And the other reason was the presence there of a man called Dr. Paul Gachet, who was a homeopathic doct, who was also an amateur artist and an early collector and supporter of the Impressionists. So he was the ideal person to look out for Van Gogh. And he'd actually done his thesis on melancholia. So he was really interested in mental health.
- [36:05]
Melvin Bragg
Do we have his conclusions, his conclusions from his thesis?
- [36:09]
Christopher Riopel
His conclusion was that Vincent wouldn't suffer any more crises. This was his diagnosis. And that he would actually be fine once he. Once he settled in Auvers. But I think probably that was wrong. Slightly optimistic.
- [36:25]
Melvin Bragg
We look at the last 10 weeks. Martin, can we concentrate on the last 10 weeks? What happened there? Edover?
- [36:33]
Martin Baillie
Well, he was astonishingly productive, as Francis said. He did 74 paintings in 70 days. What's less well known is that 60 of them were done in the first six weeks. So it was an incredible rate. He then slowed down a bit, partly, I think, because he was doing larger pictures and partly because I think he was getting depressed. But it was a highly productive period. It also must have been exhilarating for him. Remember, he'd come from an asylum where he'd been behind high walls for most of a year. And he suddenly was a free man. And he lodged in an inn just opposite the town hall in Auverg. And it was sort of the center of social life in the village. So he would be, for the first time, after a year, he would go down to the bar and talk to people and have his meals there. And it must mean real freedom. And the countryside was quite different from Provence. Less dramatic, perhaps, but very sort of green. And he felt very inspired and optimistic.
- [37:38]
Melvin Bragg
Chris, do you want to say anything about his experience at Auverg?
- [37:42]
Francis Fowle
It was new themes came into the art. Themes of children, family life. There seemed to be, at the beginning, in particular, to be a great joy to be there, as Martin says, this then leads into depression. And the final works are grim, stunning, but grim.
- [38:04]
Christopher Riopel
Not sure if I'd agree with them being grave.
- [38:09]
Melvin Bragg
And we haven't talked about the self portraits, which we should have done a little bit earlier. But we will disorder ourselves for this, Martin.
- [38:16]
Martin Baillie
Well, Van Gogh really is known for the self portraits. Most of them were done when he was In Paris, the 35 all together and the Van Gogh we know. The face that we know comes from the self portraits because we have no photographs of Van Gogh as an adult. So we know him from the self portraits. It's quite interesting looking at the self portraits together. And there was a wonderful opportunity earlier this year at the Courtauld Gallery when they brought the self portraits together. And it's interesting the different ways that he looks in the self portraits, they're not necessarily similar at all. And in some cases they hardly look like the same person. Now, I think van Gogh was at that point experimenting with self portraits. He was using it as a technique, as a way of trying different techniques. Some of the self portraits are done in a pointillist or dot style. Others are done with long brushstrokes. And he was sort of. He used self portraits as a way of experimenting. And he'd always got his own face and a mirror. So you were not reliant on a model. The self portraits in Paris, I think, were done primarily for experiments, if you like, after he left Paris and went to Provence. In a way, the self portraits become more interesting because I think he reveals more of himself and his character in them. And there are two striking self portraits where he's got a bandaged ear. And that was a very deliberate decision.
- [39:51]
Melvin Bragg
Do you want to take up what you.
- [39:52]
Christopher Riopel
Yes, I was just what you were saying about Paris, Martin, because it's interesting that there's this whole group of eight we know of, anyway, which he did in Paris, which he actually painted on the back of Noonan Painting, so these earlier 1885 pictures. And so he had, like, a still life or a head of a peasant woman, and then turned it over, painted it on the back. And some of them were then covered over. Some of the self portraits were then covered over by someone like Jo Van Gogh Bonge and sent off for exhibition. So they were only discovered when in, like, 1926, there were three in the van Gogh Museum which were. Then they removed the card from the back and discovered the self portraits on the back. So they'd actually been sort of hidden for all that time.
- [40:34]
Francis Fowle
The one self portrait I'd like to mention is his self portrait as Bons, that is Self Portrait as a Japanese Priest, A Work of Provence, in which he says he has a shaven head in it. But he also says in a letter, I have altered my features to look more Asian. And this goes to this issue of observation and the dialectic with invention and the way in which increasingly in the later years, the two of them intersect.
- [41:08]
Melvin Bragg
Is there more inventions creeping in, is that what you're saying?
- [41:11]
Francis Fowle
Yes.
- [41:12]
Melvin Bragg
Back to about. We're talking about enormous productivity in these 70. What was the quality of these paintings?
- [41:18]
Christopher Riopel
So some of the. I think the most striking series that he produced, if you can call it a series, is the double, double square format landscapes, which include very famous works like the Wheat Field with Crows. And they, they are absolutely extraordinary, incredibly intense works which were inspired. One of the people haven't mentioned in relation to Auvers was Charles Francois d', Aubigny, who was an earlier French artist who had lived in the village and has a studio there. You can still go and visit it today if you want a house and a studio. And one of the first things that Van Gogh did when he went to Auvers was to go and visit the house, the second house of Daubigny and Daubigny's widow, because he'd actually died by then, and paint in the garden and paint this house. And he produced a. These double square formats in almost as a sort of an acknowledgement of this, of this format, that which was invented by this artist. But they really are the wheat fields and the root paintings. The last picture that he's supposed to have ever painted is of tree roots. And it's such a kind of extraordinary, modern looking painting. There's no sky anywhere. It's just literally these tangled roots. And when you look at it closely, it almost looks like these kind of stuff, skull like shapes. And people always want to read too much into Van Gogh, but it's. They are, they're incredibly surprising. And it's such a. It's such a tragedy that he died so young. He had so much to offer.
- [42:42]
Melvin Bragg
It's about this time that he takes his own life. Do you want to describe that?
- [42:47]
Christopher Riopel
Yes. Well, again, again, there are various theories about how this happened, but he. He went out into the wheat fields and shot himself with a revolver, shot himself in the chest, but didn't die immediately and managed to get back to his room in the Auberge Ravou. And he insisted that no one would tell Theo that night because he didn't want to upset him. So they all waited till the next day. He was still alive the next morning. And Theo came, rushed to his side and it took him basically a day and a half to die. But he died in Theo's arms, which, which is wonderful. And when Theo arrived, he found him smoking a pipe, apparently, which is kind of incredible, but he was mortally wounded.
- [43:34]
Melvin Bragg
Is it impossible to imagine why? He did this at that time?
- [43:38]
Christopher Riopel
Well, yes, well, I think one of the reasons was, well, partly his illness, I imagine, and the depression coming on, but it was, it was kind of brought on by the fact that he was beginning to feel that he was a burden to the. Theo. Theo had just had. They just had a, a baby. He and yo had had a baby boy called, also called Vincent. And Theo was also having problems at work and, and he just felt that, gosh, I'm like the last straw for my brother. And so that, so that's one of the reasons why it's been suggested that he decided to, to end it all.
- [44:09]
Melvin Bragg
And the works which he'd sent to Theo, all his painting lifetime, went to Theo's widow.
- [44:16]
Christopher Riopel
Yes.
- [44:17]
Francis Fowle
Yeah, yes. To cometh the hour, cometh the woman. This young woman, after the death of her husband, six, six months after Vincent died suddenly, is the custodian of hundreds and hundreds of paintings and works on paper. And it is, we now understand more clearly, she who brilliantly engineered the rise of, of the fame of this almost unknown artist.
- [44:43]
Melvin Bragg
How'd she do that?
- [44:45]
Francis Fowle
By making good friends with artists who would promote him by showing them, by allowing the works to travel wisely and just by protecting the interest of this very complicated brother in law. She hardly, hardly knew it was her own work of genius in doing that over the next 30 years.
- [45:06]
Melvin Bragg
Do you think he would have made the fame he made without her?
- [45:10]
Francis Fowle
No, I think, I think. Well, there were many factors came into play, but that there was such a dedicated and intelligent custodian overseeing the process in yo Bonner was amazing.
- [45:24]
Melvin Bragg
Francis. There were a lot of forgeries early on.
- [45:28]
Christopher Riopel
Well, yes, I mean, it was incredible actually how quickly it's thanks to yo really that the market forgery Van Gogh developed. And one of the kind of important events that took place was in 1905, she organised a large exhibition of Van Gogh's work. So that was the first time that people had really had an opportunity to see it. But she also was very careful about how she distributed the work. So she sent quite a number to the dealer Paul Cassira in Berlin. And he was, I think, responsible for the early popularity of Van Gogh among German collectors. Gradually the market picked up across Europe. I mean, particularly in London, Paris and in the Netherlands as well as in Germany. But it was in Germany where you see these, these fakes emerging. And there's a famous case of the Otto Wacker forgeries which were produced by this, this Berlin art dealer called Wacker, who had previously been a dancer, but decided to go into dealing with when he was in 1925. And he must have been an absolutely brilliant individual because he ingratiated himself with all the other Berlin dealers. He established a market for Van Gogh's work very early on and by this time the prices for his work were rising and he succeeded in selling 33 works which turned out in the end to be to be forgeries.
- [46:49]
Melvin Bragg
Who did the forgeries?
- [46:50]
Christopher Riopel
Well, they were concocted in a back room by his father and his brother Leonhart. And it was only when he decided to organize, I mean, he got very above himself, I feel. He decided to lend four of these works to an exhibition which he was co organising with the Casira Gallery. And when these four works were slotted into place among the genuine Van Goghs, everyone smelt a rat. And then all these other Berlin dealers discovered that they'd been conned because. So there is the Matissen Gallery in Berlin that actually sued him, took him to court. And what was really interesting was that a lot of these works had been authenticated by, for example, Julius Meyer Greifer, who was the great art historian of the period. He'd apparently authenticated 24 of these 33 works.
- [47:40]
Melvin Bragg
Oh, dear.
- [47:41]
Christopher Riopel
And then also the other person who'd just. The catalogue raisonne had just been published in 1928, which was the year of the exhibition by Jacob de Lafaye, and he had included all these works in his catalogue. So he then published a pamphlet called Les Faux Van Gogh, the Fake Van Goghs. And then they appeared and gave evidence at the trial and of course, Pour My Greifer couldn't possibly admit that he'd been wrong, so he stood his ground and he maintained that these were all genuine Van Goghs. But in the end they used pigment analysis. It was the very early days of this, of technical analysis. And so they managed to prove through pigment analysis and through various other technical kind of procedures that they were genuinely fakes.
- [48:30]
Melvin Bragg
But fakery is a sort of fame, isn't it? In its own way, of course, yes. But actually he took off. We have to move quickly now, again towards the end of the program. But his prices and his value took off. It rocketed off, didn't it? In America especially, but in the east, in Japan, yes, Korea and so on. Are we talking about massive prices, aren't we?
- [48:50]
Christopher Riopel
Millions and hundreds of millions now and world records being set, particularly in that period in the 80s when the Japanese market took off. Yeah, so. And still today. It's quite extraordinary actually, how the. The market for Van Gogh and goga has not collapsed. And I still wonder when it's. Whether it ever is going to. But, you know, there's just. Quite recently there was a painting which sold for well over a hundred thousand, over 100 million, rather. The Sky's the Limit.
- [49:18]
Melvin Bragg
I think we're coming to the end now. Can you. Can I ask you all. Starting with you, Martin. What influence do you think he's had, and what influence do you think, if any, he will continue to have?
- [49:32]
Martin Baillie
Well, he's obviously possibly the most popular artist in the world. And what's really striking is the way that it's truly international now. I mean, to begin with, he was recognized in Western Europe, and then it expanded and his painting sold in America, then to Japan, and now to China and the Far East. So he's really international, and his work is universally recognized. You know, everyone recognizes the Sunflower pictures. And I think people are equally interested in his art and his life because it is an astonishing story that we've touched upon. And the two things together make him a megastar.
- [50:13]
Melvin Bragg
Yes, I think that's true. Do you both agree that it's a combination of those two?
- [50:17]
Francis Fowle
Very, very much so. The.
- [50:19]
Martin Baillie
The.
- [50:19]
Francis Fowle
The biography is so compelling. There are so many aspects of it that invite our sympathy, and then these images that are so strong, and when the two of them are an extraordinary combination, I think it's right.
- [50:35]
Christopher Riopel
I think correspondence is a lot to do with it because we've got such, you know, direct access to his inner thoughts and the kind of whole creative process. And there's not. There's not really any other artist that you can say that about. I mean, Monet to a certain extent, but he was always moaning about his. About being poor. But no, it really is. I think that's partly to do with it. One can feel that. You feel that you can really get inside his psyche and his way of thinking.
- [51:02]
Melvin Bragg
Do you think that he's a phenomenon that's going to come and then peak and then go, or do you think he's there? You don't know. You're shrugging. What about you, Chris?
- [51:11]
Francis Fowle
I think he is one of the ones who will last on the level of Michelangelo or Raphael.
- [51:17]
Melvin Bragg
Nothing.
- [51:18]
Martin Baillie
Yeah, I agree. I think his influence will become increasingly strong, and there's never been a year when this hasn't happened. As the decades go by, he becomes more and more famous, more and more well known, and the prices of the works rocket.
- [51:34]
Christopher Riopel
And any exhibition which has the word Van Gogh in the title is guaranteed to be a success.
- [51:41]
Melvin Bragg
Well, thank you all very Much. Christopher Riopel, Francis Fowle and Martin Bailey, and our studio engineer, Sue Mayo. Next week, if music be the food of love, play on. It's Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. Thanks for listening.
- [51:54]
Christopher Riopel
And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.
- [52:02]
Melvin Bragg
What would you like to have said that you didn't have time to say, Francis?
- [52:05]
Christopher Riopel
Well, I was thinking about the way in which Van Gogh's work has. The colour balance has changed over the years, so that when we look at his work today, very often we're not seeing it as it was. I mean, that's obviously the case with quite a lot of artists, but it's particularly obvious in Van Gogh's work because he used these problematic pigments. For example, it's called lake red, which disappears over time. And so you look at something like the Church of d' auvere and it has a path in the foreground and it's just lost all the red colour, all the red tone or some pictures.
- [52:42]
Melvin Bragg
Can you get a forger to sort of sort you out?
- [52:44]
Christopher Riopel
Well, I mean, so actually, one of the things that has happened, and this is another thing which is interesting, is people have tried to reconstruct, with the Olive Tree series, for example, they've tried to reconstruct what it. What it would have looked like originally to propel us back into Van Gogh's time.
- [52:59]
Francis Fowle
Yes, Chris, I'd like to point out that the rise to fame of Van Gogh after his death in many ways marks the beginning of the end of the hegemony of Paris as the center of the art world. Because the discovery with his death, or the death of Theo, all the pictures leave. Almost all the pictures leave France. He is discovered in Germany, discovered in Holland, discovered in more Eastern Europe and in America. Paris doesn't count all that much in this extraordinary story we've been telling. And that, of course, would carry on into our own time.
- [53:41]
Melvin Bragg
Martin, what do you have to add to this as an influence and so on?
- [53:44]
Martin Baillie
Well, I think the very fact that he's become so famous, one of the negative sides of that is that there are lots of myths that have grown up about him that we all assume, and it's often assumed that he was uneducated. Well, in fact, he spoke four languages. That's not bad. That he was an outsider in the art world. Well, he may have been essentially an outsider, but he knew the avant garde artists and he knew many of the Impressionists. You know, it's said that he was a loner, but he Actually, he had real friends and many of them were loyal to him. You know, it said he painted in a frenzy. Well, he actually thought his work very carefully. And then, of course, the fact that he went mad. Well, he had some sort of mental affliction. We don't know what it was, but for a good part of the time, he was very, very sane. And most disturbingly of all, the most recent myth which has come about is that he did not. He ended his life not with suicide, but he was murdered. And that was published in a biography in America a decade ago. But a lot of people still believe that it's true. I mean, until then, the question that I always used to get asked was, why did he cut off his ear? But the question now is, was it murder or suicide? And I'm convinced that it was suicide. And the main reason for that, I won't go into all the arguments, but the main reason that everyone around him thought that he'd shot himself. Theo, his brother, Dr. Paul Gachet, who was looking after him and spoke with him, the innkeeper where he was staying, his artist friends. If there'd been any suspicion that someone had murdered him or he'd been shot by accident, they would have raised it. He had decided to end his own life at 37.
- [55:42]
Melvin Bragg
Dear me. Anything else, any of you?
- [55:46]
Francis Fowle
I would just point out that in 1924, the National Gallery purchases the Sunflower. That is the year of our centenary. We're founded in 1824, and in honor of that, next year is our bicentenary and we are mounting a major Van Gogh exhibition around our Sunflowers, dealing with this period we've spent so much time talking about in Arles and Sour Me. So there is much to look forward to.
- [56:14]
Melvin Bragg
Well, thank you all very much indeed.
- [56:16]
Martin Baillie
Do you want a cup of tea or coffee?
- [56:18]
Melvin Bragg
Tea, please.
- [56:22]
Martin Baillie
In Our Time with Melvin Bragg is.
- [56:24]
Melvin Bragg
Produced by Simon Tillotson and it's a.
- [56:26]
Greg Jenner
BBC Studios audio production.
- [56:28]
Matthew Side
When you look at what's going on around the world, it's easy to think that we humans are incapable of living peacefully. But there are out there people who disagree.
- [56:41]
Greg Jenner
I keep going because someone has to hold the line between grief and revenge.
- [56:48]
Matthew Side
I'm Matthew side and in my sideways miniseries chasing Peace from BBC Radio 4, I'm meeting people who have radical ideas about how we can stop what feels like an inevitable slide into conflict. Listen first on BBC Sounds.
- [57:14]
Greg Jenner
Hello, I'm Greg Jenner, host of youf're Dead To Me, the comedy podcast from the BBC that takes history seriously. Each week I'm joined by a comedian and an expert historian to learn and laugh about the past. In our all new season. We cover unique areas of history that your school lessons may have missed, from getting ready in the Renaissance era to the Kellogg Brothers. Listen to youo're Dead to Me Now. Wherever you get your podcasts.