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In Our Time
Vincent van Gogh (Archive Episode)
00:55:59
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Dutch painter of Sunflowers and Starry Nights
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Podcast Announcer
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Host
What do you think makes the perfect snack?
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Snack Enthusiast
Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.
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Host
Could you be more specific?
- [00:13]
Snack Enthusiast
When it's cravinient. Okay, like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter available right down the street at a.m. p.m. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at a.m. pM.
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Host
I'm seeing a pattern here.
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Snack Enthusiast
Well yeah, we're talking about what I.
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Host
Crave, which is anything from AM pm.
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Snack Enthusiast
What more could you want?
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Listener
Oh, what you eating?
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Snack Enthusiast
The new banana split cookie from AM pm. All freshly baked with real butter with banana, chocolate and strawberry flavors.
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Listener
Wow, that sounds amazing.
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Host
Can I have a bite?
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Snack Enthusiast
I'm sorry but no. But you can't split the banana split.
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Listener
Not even a little.
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Snack Enthusiast
Not even a crumb.
- [00:52]
Host
What if.
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Snack Enthusiast
No, please mine.
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- [01:06]
Host
What do you think makes the perfect snack?
- [01:08]
Snack Enthusiast
Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.
- [01:12]
Host
Could you be more specific?
- [01:13]
Snack Enthusiast
When it's cravenient? Okay, like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter available right down the street at a.m. p.m. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at a.m. pM.
- [01:22]
Host
I'm seeing a pattern here.
- [01:24]
Snack Enthusiast
Well yeah, we're talking about what I.
- [01:25]
Host
Crave, which is anything from AM pm.
- [01:27]
Snack Enthusiast
What more could you want?
- [01:28]
Advertiser
Stop by AMPM where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's cravenience. AM PM Too much good steak stuff.
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BBC Announcer
BBC Sounds Music radio podcasts in our.
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Art Historian 1
Times on its annual break and we'll be back on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds on the 18th of September. Until then, each week we're offering an episode chosen from our archive of over a thousand programs which I hope you'll enjoy. Have a good summer. 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. A. Christopher Rio Pell, the Neil Westwright, curator of post 1800 paintings at the National Gallery. Martin Baillie, a leading Van Gogh specialist 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. Frances, what should we know about the early life of Vincent van Gogh?
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Listener
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 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 Bang'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 mix too much with the kind of local ruffians, one could say the local ruffians in the village. They were a very close family. They wrote to each other when he was older, particularly with Theo, who was his brother, the older of the two brothers that he had. He had 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.
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Art Historian 1
Was he attracted to the idea of being any sort of artist?
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Listener
From an early age he was introduced 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 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.
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Art Historian 1
How did he become an art dealer and how did that help him?
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Listener
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.
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Art Historian 1
Why were they wondering if he was a bridegroom?
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Listener
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 Saint. 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 was a man called Tersteg, 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 who 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 is 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.
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Art Historian 1
Martin, thank you very much. Martin Baillie. He turned or returned to religion. What marks that episode in his life?
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Art Historian 2
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, 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 returned. 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 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 was. He began to detest organized religion.
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Art Historian 1
So what age are we talking about now when he leaves that?
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Art Historian 2
It was when he was in his mid-20s that he abandoned religion, organized religion.
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Art Historian 1
We're taking a bit of a jump. But it was then, only then, that he began to learn to paint. Is that true?
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Art Historian 2
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.
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Art Historian 1
He tried two or three times and got flopped. And he flopped every time, didn't he?
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Art Historian 2
He did. He started drawing by himself. He then ended up going to the Art Academy in Brussels, stayed probably just a few weeks. And I think he came bottom of the class, probably. And at that point he abandoned it.
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Art Historian 1
Yes, and he 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?
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Art Historian 2
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.
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Art Historian 1
How was he making a living?
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Art Historian 2
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 artist.
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Art Historian 1
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.
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Art Historian 2
Yes.
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Art Historian 1
And then what?
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Art Historian 2
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.
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Art Historian 1
Yes. Taught himself meant he looked at things and copied them.
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Art Historian 2
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.
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Art Historian 1
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 palace. 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?
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Art Historian 2
Yes. I mean, the portraits you're discussing are those mostly those that he did in the village of Noonan, where his parents were living and he was staying with them to save money, and the local peasants 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 colours are dark and we think of Van Gogh as with these exuberant, often complementary colors. But this was the period when he was beginning to paint in the Netherlands, and they were dark pictures.
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Art Historian 1
Why do you think that was?
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Art Historian 2
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 colors. 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.
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Art Historian 1
We'll come to that. Thank you very much, Chris. 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 a lot of languages, English, French, a bit of German, and read widely, we told, while he was in this country, I might say, and the 1886 is in Paris, what did that bring him?
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Art Historian 3
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 art with great force.
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Art Historian 1
Can we take two steps back? When he gets 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?
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Art Historian 3
Exactly. And he was meeting so many people, not only French, like Toulouse Lautrec, a great aristocrat, Seurat, whom he admired.
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Art Historian 1
They tried to imitate him, didn't he?
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Art Historian 3
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.
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Art Historian 1
What does he paint at that time?
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Art Historian 3
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 to.
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Art Historian 1
Rembrandt is one of his heroes.
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Art Historian 3
Rembrandt was a hero. Very quickly, though, he comes to paint Paris, particularly the edges of Paris, up in Montmarle, where the city is giving way to the Countryside, or the countryside is being turned into city as you. 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.
- [16:29]
Art Historian 1
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 they're. 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?
- [16:47]
Art Historian 3
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 think big, to emulate ambitious people like Gauguin and Seurat.
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Art Historian 1
But he's still being supported by his brother. Yes, and this is not, I mean, good for the brother. I'm not being sarcastic about it. It was tremendous.
- [17:36]
Art Historian 3
No, Theo is one of the heroes of modern art for supporting him. Yes, he needed a lot of help, I think.
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Art Historian 1
Yes. Francis Gauguin enters the picture. What's his significance to Van Gogh?
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Listener
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 a 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 founded him a soulmate. So there's a lot. There's correspondence between him and Bernard and there's 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 Theo 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 Bangkok struggles with quite a great deal, but they form this little why do you.
- [19:33]
Art Historian 1
Think he struggles with it?
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Listener
He struggled with it because he was much happier when he was painting in front of nature and being immersed in the countryside.
- [19:43]
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- [20:12]
BBC Announcer
This is History's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.
- [20:25]
Host
You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you.
- [20:32]
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- [20:44]
Art Historian 1
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 so on. Why did he go there?
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Art Historian 2
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 terrible, 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.
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Art Historian 1
Yes. Tell us about the sunflowers.
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Art Historian 2
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.
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Art Historian 1
Do you want to comment on the sunflowers?
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Listener
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, he actually painted the subject numerous times because 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, 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.
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Art Historian 3
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.
- [24:15]
Art Historian 1
Yes. The relationship with them didn't last all that long, did it?
- [24:19]
Art Historian 3
They worked together throughout the. The autumn of 88. But by Christmas, I think the differences in their. 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 free form, creating that Gauguin favored had driven them apart.
- [24:49]
Art Historian 1
He sounds very difficult. Pizarro said, got it here. This man will either go mad or leave us way behind.
- [24:57]
Art Historian 3
He did both.
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Art Historian 2
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 in the end, because it seems.
- [25:08]
Art Historian 1
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.
- [25:23]
Art Historian 3
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.
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Art Historian 1
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.
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Art Historian 3
Well, after they had met in the street and had this falling. Falling out, he goes home. I'm not quite sure of the timefra, 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. 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.
- [26:32]
Art Historian 1
Yes. But that is the first visible sign to everybody else that all things are not well.
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Art Historian 3
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.
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Art Historian 1
Can you take us through the asylum process?
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Listener
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 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 converted monastery. And 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.
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Art Historian 1
Martin, you've discovered records about the other people who are at the Salem at that time. Am I right?
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Art Historian 2
Yes.
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Art Historian 1
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?
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Art Historian 2
Yes. Well, I was researching a book on his 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.
- [29:08]
Art Historian 1
Before we go to the studio in the small room, which of course takes us to the Starry Night, which is very, very sad. The condition of some of the people in that asylum who were his constant companions was dreadful.
- [29:19]
Art Historian 2
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.
- [29:57]
Art Historian 1
He is confined. 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?
- [30:15]
Listener
Absolutely. So he. It's actually the view from the window of his room upstairs.
- [30:19]
Art Historian 1
Yes.
- [30:20]
Listener
And he actually painted quite a lot of 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 the church itself that you can see with the spire is much more typical of a Dutch church.
- [31:26]
Art Historian 1
So the whole painting, that what comes at you is the swirl.
- [31:30]
Listener
Yes.
- [31:31]
Art Historian 1
Of the clouds and the disturbance in it. It's starry night, but it's a different night. It's his own night. 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 something else going on entirely. Chris, what do you think?
- [31:51]
Art Historian 3
Very much so. And I think this is becoming more and more a 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. The motif itself. And that brings him in the direction of this abstraction we've talked about.
- [32:20]
Art Historian 1
Martin, do you want to come in on that?
- [32:21]
Art Historian 2
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 almost a horrifying scene because the stars sort of rush past you, but it gives the painting real life.
- [33:23]
Art Historian 1
It's almost like the sea, isn't it? A great storm at sea?
- [33:27]
Art Historian 2
Well, yes. And I've made the comparison of the famous Great Wave by the Japanese artist Hokusai.
- [33:35]
Art Historian 1
That's right, yeah.
- [33:36]
Art Historian 2
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 much.
- [34:05]
Art Historian 1
And they, of course, they take to him as China does, and on and on he goes. But I think that's the 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'm pushing. I know I'm pushing the envelope, but what do you think of the. Of that idea as an idea, and how did you think it operated if it did, in him?
- [34:36]
Art Historian 3
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 conscious 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.
- [35:27]
Art Historian 1
Martin, what do you think of the Collision or collusion between torment and great art.
- [35:33]
Art Historian 2
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.
- [35:54]
Listener
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, you know, he would. He always said that he had to be in a fit state to be able to work really successfully.
- [36:10]
Art Historian 1
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.
- [36:21]
Listener
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 Theo and 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.
- [36:51]
Art Historian 1
And one says he's doing a painting a day for 70 days, isn't he?
- [36:55]
Listener
Yes. When he goes to Auvers, that's where he's going now.
- [36:58]
Art Historian 1
Francis, will you take us over?
- [37:00]
Listener
Absolutely.
- [37:02]
Art Historian 1
Where is it and why did it go?
- [37:04]
Listener
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 Teo. And the other reason was the presence there of a man called Dr. Paul Gachet, who was a homeopathic doctor, 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 actually done his thesis on melancholia. So he was really interested in mental health.
- [37:35]
Art Historian 1
Do we have his conclusions, his conclusions from his thesis?
- [37:40]
Listener
His conclusion was that that Vincent wouldn't suffer any more crises. This was his diagnosis, and that he would actually be fine once he settled in Auvers. But I think probably that was slightly optimistic.
- [37:56]
Art Historian 1
We look at the last 10 weeks. Martin, can we concentrate on the last 10 weeks? What happened there, Ed Auvers?
- [38:03]
Art Historian 2
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 Auver. 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.
- [39:08]
Art Historian 1
Chris, do you want to say anything about his experience at Auber?
- [39:12]
Art Historian 3
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.
- [39:34]
Listener
Not sure I'd agree with them being grim.
- [39:39]
Art Historian 1
Before. 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.
- [39:46]
Art Historian 2
Well, van Gogh really is known for the self portraits. Most of them were done when he was in Paris, the 35 altogether. 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. So some of the self portraits are done in a pointillist or dot style. Others are done with long brush strokes. 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're 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.
- [41:21]
Art Historian 1
Do you want to take up a jury?
- [41:23]
Listener
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 Bonga, 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 that time.
- [42:05]
Art Historian 3
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.
- [42:39]
Art Historian 1
Is there more inventions creeping in? Is that what you're saying?
- [42:41]
Art Historian 3
Yes.
- [42:42]
Art Historian 1
Back to about. We're talking about enormous productivity in these 70. What was the quality of these paintings?
- [42:49]
Listener
So some of the. I think the most striking series that he produced, if you can call it a series, is the 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 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 you produced 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, almost looks like these kind of skull like shapes. And people always want to read too much into Van Gogh, but they're incredibly surprising. And it's such a tragedy that he died so young. He had so much to offer.
- [44:13]
Art Historian 1
It's about this time that he takes his own life. Do you want to describe that?
- [44:18]
Listener
Yes. Well, again, there are various theories about how this happened, but 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 is wonderful. And when Theo arrived, he found him smoking a pipe, apparently, which is kind of incredible, but he was mortally wounded.
- [45:04]
Art Historian 1
Is it impossible to imagine why he did this at that time?
- [45:08]
Listener
Yes, well, I think one of the reasons was, well, partly his illness, I imagine, and the depression coming on. But it was kind of brought on by the fact that he was beginning to feel that he was a burden to Theo. Theo had just had. They just had a baby. He and yo had had a baby boy called. Also called Vincent. And Theo was also having problems at work. And he just felt that, gosh, I'm like the last straw for my brother. And so that's one of the reasons why it's been suggested that he decided to end it all.
- [45:39]
Art Historian 1
And the works which he'd sent to Theo, all his painting lifetime, went to Theo's widow.
- [45:47]
Listener
Yes. Yeah.
- [45:48]
Art Historian 3
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.
- [46:13]
Art Historian 1
How'd she do that?
- [46:16]
Art Historian 3
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.
- [46:37]
Art Historian 1
Do you think he would have made the fame he made without her?
- [46:41]
Art Historian 3
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, Francis.
- [46:56]
Art Historian 1
There were a lot of forgeries early on.
- [46:59]
Listener
Well, yes, I mean, it was incredible actually how quickly it was thanks to Yeo really, that the market for Van Gogh developed. And one of the kind of important events that took place was in 1905 she organized 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, 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.
- [48:20]
Art Historian 1
Who did the forgeries?
- [48:20]
Listener
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 Cassira Gallery. And when these four works were slotted into place among the genuine Van Goghs, everyone smelt a rat. And then it all these other Berlin dealers discovered that they'd been conned. 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 Krafer, who was the great art historian of the period. He'd apparently authenticated 24 of these 33 works.
- [49:11]
Art Historian 1
Oh dear.
- [49:11]
Listener
And then also the other person who'd just the Catalogue resume had just been published in 1928, which was the year of the exhibition by Jacob de Lafayle. And he had included all these works in his catalogue. So he then published a pamphlet called Les Faut Van Gogh, the Fake Van Gogh. 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 it. That they were genuinely fakes.
- [50:01]
Art Historian 1
But fakery is a sort of fame, isn't it? In its own way, of course, yeah. 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, Korea and so on, we talked about massive prices.
- [50:19]
Listener
Aren't we millions and hundreds of millions now, and world records being set, particularly in that period in the 80s when the Japanese market took off and still today. It's quite extraordinary actually, how the market for Van Gogh and Gauguin has not collapsed. And I still wonder when it's. Whether it 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.
- [50:48]
Art Historian 1
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. And he will continue to have?
- [51:02]
Art Historian 2
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 paintings 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.
- [51:44]
Art Historian 1
Yes, I think that's true. Do you both agree that it's a combination of those two?
- [51:48]
Art Historian 3
Very, very much so. The, the. The biography is so compelling. There are so many aspects of, of it that invite our sympathy. And then these images that are so strong and when the two of them are an extraordinary combination.
- [52:04]
Art Historian 1
Francis.
- [52:05]
Listener
Right. I think the correspondence has got 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 artists 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.
- [52:33]
Art Historian 1
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?
- [52:41]
Art Historian 3
I think he is one of the ones who will last on the level of Michelangelo or Raphael.
- [52:48]
Art Historian 1
Not big.
- [52:49]
Art Historian 2
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.
- [53:05]
Listener
And any exhibition which has the word Van Gogh in the title is guaranteed to be a success.
- [53:11]
Art Historian 1
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.
- [53:25]
Listener
And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few.
- [53:29]
BBC Announcer
Minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.
- [53:32]
Art Historian 1
What would you like if said that you didn't have time to say, Francis?
- [53:35]
Listener
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. It's all red tone or some pictures.
- [54:12]
Art Historian 1
Can't you get a forger to sort of sort you out?
- [54:14]
Listener
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 in to Van Gogh's time.
- [54:30]
Art Historian 3
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. Would carry on into our. Our own time.
- [55:11]
Art Historian 1
Martin, what do you have to add to this as his influence and so on?
- [55:15]
Art Historian 2
Well, I think the very fact that he's become so famous, there's. 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. Teo, 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.
- [57:12]
Art Historian 1
Dear me. Anything else for any of you?
- [57:16]
Art Historian 3
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 Saint Remi. So there is much to look forward to.
- [57:45]
Art Historian 1
Well, thank you all very much indeed.
- [57:46]
Art Historian 2
Do you want a cup of tea or coffee?
- [57:48]
Art Historian 1
Tea, please.
- [57:52]
Art Historian 2
In Our Time with Melvin Bragg is.
- [57:54]
Art Historian 1
Produced by Simon Tillotson and it's a.
- [57:56]
Snack Enthusiast
BBC Studios audio production.
- [57:59]
Podcast Announcer
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.
- [58:11]
Art Historian 1
I keep going because someone has to.
- [58:14]
Listener
Hold the line between grief and revenge.
- [58:19]
Podcast Announcer
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.
- [58:43]
BBC Announcer
This is history's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.
- [58:56]
Host
You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you.
- [59:03]
BBC Announcer
Join me, Alex von Tanzelman for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcast.