1879 · Cuesmes · Knot of Silence

Borinage 1879

In the Borinage his post ended, and the surviving letters fall silent. By October 1880 he had moved to Brussels to study drawing. What happened in between, we cannot fully reconstruct.

No painting at this knot — only a letter.

Letter

1879, the Borinage coal district. The church dismissed him — because he gave away his clothes and food to the miners, slept on the floor, his face smeared with coal dust. They said he showed "excessive zeal." This is not a saint's life, and not a prelude to madness, but a problem of the container of an age: when a person's compassion exceeds the scale an institution can manage, the institution first removes him. Then came nearly a year of silence. Only five letters survive from the entire year. In the longest one, he wrote: "The aim becomes more definite, will stand out slowly and surely — as the rough draft becomes a sketch, and the sketch becomes a painting." In 1880 he walked for a week in the Pas-de-Calais in order to see the peasant-painter Jules Breton at Courrières. He saw the outside of Breton's newly built studio but did not dare to introduce himself and so could not enter; amid the extreme poverty of the journey, he wrote that he had picked up his pencil again and returned to drawing.

Place

Cuesmes, in the Hainaut coal country. Below ground, the mines; above it, the miners' shacks. He lodged with a baker, then a miner; he went down a shaft and saw men working seven hundred metres under. No gallery, no canvas, no paint — and only five letters survive from the whole year. He was twenty-six. He walked in a failed preacher and would walk out, eventually, having decided to draw.

before

From London, through theological study, to a lay preaching post in the Belgian coal district — he kept searching for a form of life in which he could be of use. He lived among miners and their families, slept on the floor, and gave away the things he had brought. His contract was not renewed. Here already appears a question that will return again and again: whether an institution can contain a person's excessive compassion.

now

Afterward, the surviving correspondence falls silent for a whole year. When he wrote Theo from Cuesmes in June 1880, he described a bird in a cage: it senses there is something it could do, yet bangs its head against the bars. For human beings, poverty, misunderstanding, and circumstance can create the prison; one may not know what confines them.

after

What he did throughout that gap we do not fully know. In October 1880 he moved to Brussels to study drawing. The missing year remains partly opaque, but the question of how to be useful did not disappear.

Events

1879-01 The Ferocious Reader · Letter 154
Preaching in the mining district. Gave away his clothes and food to miners, slept on the floor
1879-07 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 155
Dismissed by the church — 'excessive zeal.' Nearly a year of silence begins
1879-08 The Ferocious Reader · Letter 155
In silence, reading Hugo's Les Misérables and Dickens's Hard Times
1879-10 Synaesthetic Precision
Theo visited. Found him living in a miner's shack, gaunt and haggard
1880-07 The Copyist · Letter 155
Began copying Millet's prints. Wrote the famous letter: 'The aim will stand out slowly — as the draft becomes a sketch, the sketch a painting'

From the Letters

Het is een mijnwerkersdorp en ik heb er al heel wat interessants gevonden.

It is a mining village and I have already found a great deal of interest there.

Letter 154

Ik zou willen beginnen met kleine dingen.

I would like to begin with small things.

Letter 155

Maar wat is je doel definitief, zul je zeggen. Dat doel wordt bepaalder, zal zich langzaam en zeker afteekenen, als de schets tot schilderij wordt.

But what is your definite aim, you will say. That aim becomes more definite, will stand out slowly and surely, as the rough draft becomes a sketch, and the sketch becomes a painting.

Letter 155

Letter Sources

Van Gogh letter records referenced on this page, linked to the Van Gogh Letters Project. vangoghletters.org

Borinage 1879 ★

Events

From the Letters

Letter Sources

Borinage 1879