1889-09 · Saint-Rémy-de-Provence · Knot of Intention

The Saint-Rémy Copies

Within his confinement, by copying others, he discovered who he now was.

F689 Sheaf-Binder (after Millet) 1889
F686 Noon — Rest (after Millet) 1890
F668 First Steps (after Millet) 1890
F687 Reaper with Sickle (after Millet) 1889
F688 Wood-Cutter (after Millet) 1890
F690 Sower at Sunset (after Millet) 1889
F692 Thresher (after Millet) 1889
F693 Shepherd with a Flock of Sheep (after Millet) 1889
F630 Pietà (after Delacroix) 1889
F757 The Good Samaritan (after Delacroix) 1890
F669 Prisoners Exercising (after Doré) 1890

The Copyist

This is the archival core of the copyist talent. Thirty paintings prove one thing: Vincent's copying was not study, it was translation. Millet's black-and-white sower became a figure under a lemon-yellow sun on violet earth. Delacroix's Pietà became blue-green grief. Each one is "breathing another person's image back to life through his own body." And copying was never an expedient of the sickroom — it was a discipline set on day one and never laid down: in 1880–81, starting out, he worked through Bargue's drawing course three times from cover to cover; in 1890 in Auvers, weeks from the end of his life, he wrote asking Theo to send the volumes once more. Earlier still, in Paris in 1875, he had seen the Millet drawings exhibited before their sale and called the place, in a letter, "Holy Ground." From holy ground to sickroom, copying ran the whole length of his life.

The Translator

This is the translator talent in its purest form — not translation between languages, but between media. Black-and-white to colour. Engraving to oil. Mid-nineteenth century to 1889. Another's hand to his own. He used the word "translate" in his letter — not as metaphor, but as precise self-description.

The Colour Experimenter

Copying gave him a laboratory: the originals had no colour, so every colour was his decision. What blue did he use for Millet's Noon Rest? What yellow? Each choice was a test of his colour system. With no "correct answer" to match, he built his own chromatic logic from scratch.

Painting

Over thirty copies, all made inside the Saint-Paul asylum. Millet's Sower, Reaper, Noon Rest, First Steps. Delacroix's Pietà. Doré's Prisoners Exercising. The originals were black-and-white engravings or lithographs; he translated every one into oil paint — not reproduction, but reinterpretation through his own colour system.

Letter

September 1889, Saint-Rémy. He explained in a letter why he was copying: "It is rather translating into another language — that of colours — the impressions of chiaroscuro in black and white." He said this was not plagiarism but "like a musician playing Beethoven" — the score belongs to someone else, the performance is his own. He began copying because after an attack he did not dare go outside to paint from nature.

Place

Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, his room and the empty one beside it. Outside the window: a wall. After the winter attack he did not trust himself outdoors, so the prints Theo mailed became the only landscape he could enter. He made thirty of these in roughly ten months — the most concentrated copying of his life, done in the smallest space he ever worked in.

The Copyist

The Translator

The Colour Experimenter

before

The attacks at Saint-Rémy kept him from going out to paint, and sometimes made his judgment of colour fail. He needed work he could do indoors.

now

He had Theo send black-and-white print reproductions of Millet, Delacroix, Daumier, and then translated them into oil. In his letters he likened it to performance: like a musician interpreting a piece someone else had written — not copying, but playing it anew in his own way.

after

These copies kept his working rhythm, and also let him discover that his brushwork had already become unlike the originals he was translating.

Events

1889-07 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 805
Recovering from a severe attack. Did not dare go outside to paint, could only work indoors
1889-09-01 The Copyist · Letter 805
Began copying Millet's Labours of the Fields series — 'translating black-and-white into the language of colour'
1889-09-05 The Translator · Letter 805
Explained the nature of copying in a letter: 'like a musician playing Beethoven — the score is someone else's, the performance is his own'
1889-09-10 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 806
Copied Millet's Reaper — original in black-and-white, he reinterpreted it in lemon yellow and violet
1889-09-20 The Copyist · Letter 807
Copied Delacroix's Pietà — turned a religious painting into blue-green grief
1889-10 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 808
Copied Millet's Noon Rest — rebuilt an afternoon he never saw in cobalt blue and gold
1890-01 The Translator · Letter 813
Copied Doré's Prisoners Exercising — translated the engraving's lines into oil paint's swirling brushstrokes

From the Letters

Copier les Travaux des champs de Millet, c'est plutôt traduire dans une autre langue — celle des couleurs — les impressions de clair-obscur en blanc et noir.

Copying Millet's Labours of the Fields is rather translating into another language — that of colours — the impressions of chiaroscuro in black and white.

Letter 805

C'est comme si les noirs et blancs de Millet ou de Delacroix étaient une partition de musique et que je les interprétais.

It is as if the blacks and whites of Millet or Delacroix were a musical score and I were interpreting them.

Letter 805

Je m'y suis mis parce que j'étais malade et que je n'osais pas encore sortir pour peindre dehors.

I started on them because I was ill and didn't yet dare go outside to paint from nature.

Letter 806

Letter Sources

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

Technique Evidence

This work appears as evidence in this site’s technique-evolution axis.

The Shattering Stroke 1888.02 – 1889.05 Open period F422 / JH1470 The Sower Brushstroke Representative of directional brushwork