Drawing is always central to Van Gogh's oeuvre; he focused almost exclusively on drawing at the beginning of his ten-year career. He acknowledged its importance: 'Drawing is the backbone of painting, the skeleton that supports all the rest'.1 The exhibition encompasses the presentation of more than 100 works in pen and ink, graphite, chalk, charcoal and watercolour, as well as a selection of connected paintings in the last rooms of the exhibition - those produced late in his career, following his time in a mental institution. The Metropolitan borrowed many works from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which reveal the variety of subject matter and the development of the artist's style over the course his career. The exhibition presents many of his earlier drawings and reveals in them a profound sense of comradeship and human compassion at a time in which poverty and hard labour were a quotidian reality in Amsterdam and Paris, and throughout Europe. His subject matter turned later to the landscapes of Provence, where he spent summers painting en plein air with Cézanne:
The fame of his painted oeuvre has long overshadowed his work as a draughtsman. Yet Van Gogh made many more works on paper than on canvas. Indeed, before he even picked up a brush he was determined to master the basics of manipulating pencil, crayon or pen on paper. And his emergence as a draughtsman is every bit as fascinating, and as dramatic, as his parallel development as a painter in oils ... From his first hesitant experiments in hybrid techniques through to the breathtaking power of his later compositions in reed pen and ink, drawing was much more than just a medium in which to study, practise and prepare for his paintings. The energy and vibrancy of his graphic style fed into his paintings. In turn, his drawings were informed by the brilliance and luminosity of his paintings. Many of his drawings were intended as works of art in their own right, and at their best they surely count among his finest creations as an artist.2
Prestel Verlag has produced I, Van Gogh as part of the accessible series of books including Michelangelo, Goya and Raphael that draws heavily on writings by the artists. With an essay by Isabel Kuhl, the book is based on Van Gogh's compulsive letter-writing to his brother Theo, certain close friends and his parents and sister. 'As a result of ten years of obsessive and frantic creative activity, the Dutchman produced more than 2,100 paintings and drawings. His artistic output is complemented by almost 900 letters, some of which are no less artistic in that many of them contain sketches of his work.'3 Given that Van Gogh found the company of others difficult, his letters give considerable insight into his artistic preoccupations, his day to day problems with money and people, his unstable health, the progress of his work and his state of mind: 'For years, Vincent did not trust his own eyes, and viewed his brother as his most important critic; Theo had to read and approve several drafts of Van Gogh's business and personal correspondence before it was sent off.'4
In the context of the drawing exhibition, it is interesting that Van Gogh was rarely happy or satisfied with his work, and referred to his works in oil as 'studies'. Many letters refer to his difficulty in finding equilibrium. Even as a young man, Van Gogh complained about sleeplessness, head and toothaches, an upset stomach, nervousness, emotional turmoil, panic attacks and nightmares.
Without the benefits of a formal art education or any single tutor for guidance and inspiration, Van Gogh relied on textbooks and sheer determination. With hindsight, he observed: 'What made me stop doubting was reading a clear book on perspective, Cassagne's Guide de l’ABC du dessin; and a week later I drew the interior of a kitchen with stove, chair, table and window - in their places and on their legs - whereas before it had seemed to me that getting depth and the right perspective into a drawing was witchcraft or pure chance.'5 Van Gogh also designed a study programme for himself that included copying drawings and graphic works of the masters. Van Heusen notes, 'The systematic way in which Van Gogh approached studying is characteristic of his ten-year career. Generally speaking, he is thought of as a spontaneous artist, who worked intuitively and who was averse to rigid rules and to thorough preparation. The expressive power of his work and the fluent style of his drawn and painted oeuvre support this view, and in his letters, too, he often comes across as a sensitive, impulsive, and sometimes intractable, man. However, as an artist he always worked in an organised way, and never stopped studying seriously, without this in any way affecting his inventiveness and tendency to experiment.'6 When he began drawing from nature, Van Gogh drew the local peasants and aspects of rustic life. He was deeply affected by the work of Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) and Jules Dupré (1811-1889). 'His admiration for painters of this kind verged on idolisation, and Millet in particular was later to become his spiritual and artistic guide. He wanted to follow in their footsteps by becoming a painter of peasant life.'7
Letters indicate that he failed to organise himself with regular meals, that he drank as much as 23 cups of coffee a day and smoked to dull his appetite. Myths surrounding Van Gogh's mental health and biography abounded in the years after his death, usually focusing on his last dramatic paintings, such as 'Crows in a Wheatfield' (July 1890), his last major painting before he committed suicide.
Van Gogh's preoccupation with this failure to support himself from the proceeds of his painting is repeatedly referred to in his letters. His own shyness and lack of confidence with personal dealings made his business ventures fail and, in turn, his health was affected. Painting provided Van Gogh with the emotional outpouring he required and he painted very quickly, often producing three paintings a day. To Theo he defended his productivity: 'I must warn you that everyone will think that I work too fast. Don't you believe a word of it ... I know beforehand that people will criticise them as hasty. You can say that they looked at them too quickly themselves.'8 At the end of 1885, when Van Gogh felt that his pictures of peasants were waning in strength, he went to Paris, 'to become a modern artist'. For two years there he was remarkably productive. In addition to self-portraits he also produced still-life works in which he gradually moved away from his dark palette to bright colours on examination of the work of the Impressionists. In the spring of 1887, Van Gogh and Signac painted together in and around Montmartre. Van Gogh could not afford to pay for models, so resorted to self-portraits, painting himself 20 to 30 times over the next two years (1886-88).
Van Gogh believed that an anti-academic approach to painting was more truthful and sincere. 'Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes I use colour arbitrarily to express myself forcibly.'
'Self-Portrait with Felt Hat' (1887-88) occupies a central position in the present exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London: 'Self-Portrait: Renaissance to Contemporary'. It is one of the last he produced in Paris where he had met Camille Pissarro, Émile Bernard, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Louis Anquetin and Charles Laval:
Van Gogh's Parisian self-portraits show the artist in many moods and guises. In many of his portraits, clothing exerts a special power: certain hats, jackets, even old pairs of shoes compel his images. The vibrant 'halo' of energy pulsing around him betokens his persistent faith in the exceptional destiny of artists and his conviction that a portrait can penetrate the soul, where the camera cannot reach. He said he wanted to give his portraits 'that something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolise.9
In February 1888, Van Gogh left Paris for Arles in poor health due, in large part, to alcohol abuse. He stayed there for 15 months, in which time he produced around 200 oil paintings, and mostly pen drawings and watercolours. From October, for three months, Van Gogh shared his studio with Gauguin, whose trip there was paid for by Theo. Vincent had long wanted an artists' association and shared studio; the reality, however, was more difficult. An argument with Gauguin pushed Van Gogh to a point of frenzied despair, causing him to cut off a piece of his ear lobe and present it to a prostitute.
The exhibition tracks the preoccupations of Van Gogh and the movements of his perception as he travelled through Europe, and expanded his mind to the point of crisis. His drawings of people working - portraits of ordinary yet graceful people - are touching; their tone subtle, their technique careful and yet implicitly expressive - a precedent to his magnificent paintings of later years. A self-taught artist, Van Gogh's drawings are especially interesting as a secluded and personal exploration of drawing, and of a man whose inspiration was derived entirely from an improvised life as an inveterate wanderer with artistic and social curiosity. 'I have had no "guidance" or "teaching" from others to speak of, but have taught myself; no wonder my technique, considered superficially, differs from that of others.'10 Van Gogh suffered a relapse after his episode with Gauguin and returned to hospital briefly. Finally, he admitted himself to an asylum where he tried several times to take his life.
The drawing exhibition climaxes with the presentation of the famous paintings finished as Van Gogh retreated in the mental asylum - beginning with rich interiors charged with tension and ending with landscapes alive with colour and expression, when the artist was allowed to spend time outside, where most of his drawings and paintings throughout his career were concentrated. This short, intense period of activity culminates with a frenzy of expression and a decade of work - beginning with socially conscientious portraits of workers, travelling through various landscapes, freeing expression, towards the blues of delirium and the exceptional colour of emancipation. The exhibition at the Metropolitan tracks the movement of a mind continuously emancipated from its own restrictions in the direction of a magnificent awakening of a full creative consciousness. To reach the end of the exhibition, in its colorful, rigorous candour, and then to read of his death, and face black walls and lines of postcards and mere reproductions, provokes sudden and entire regret that movement must end.
In January 1890, the first article on Van Gogh's work was written, appraising it enthusiastically. In March, ten paintings were exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. In May 1890, Van Gogh left the asylum in Saint-Rémy. He visited Theo in Paris and travelled to Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris, where he produced some 100 landscapes and portraits in nine weeks. On 27 July 1890, while out walking, Van Gogh shot himself, and died two days later. Theo died six months later on 25 January 1891. The figure of the sower, inspired by the work of Jean-François Millet had been replaced by the figure of the reaper in Van Gogh's late work, of which he wrote:
For I see in this reaper - a vague figure fighting like a devil in the midst of the heat to get to the end of his task - I see him in the image of death ... so it is - if you like - the opposite to that sower I tried to do before. But there's nothing sad in this death, it goes its way in broad daylight with a sun flooding everything with a light of pure gold.11
Christiana Spens
References
1. Kuhl I. I, Van Gogh. Munich, Berlin, London, New York: Prestel Verlag, 2005: 84.
2. Leighton J. Foreword. In: van Heugten S. Vincent Van Gogh: The Master Draughtsman. Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, Thames and Hudson: New York, 2005.
3. Kuhl I. Op cit: 37.
4. Ibid: 62.
5. Van Heugten. Op cit: 11.
6. Ibid: 14.
7. Ibid: 15.
8. Kuhl I. Op cit: 91.
9. Prunter U. Vincent Van Gogh. In: Self-Portrait: Renaissance to Contemporary, London: National Portrait Gallery, 2005: 152.
10. Kuhl I. Op cit: 87.
11. Ibid: 112.
