Language Talents

These 17 nodes trace Van Gogh’s reading, prints and the exchange between words and images from 1875 to January 1890. At Saint-Rémy he explicitly described painting after Millet’s drawings as translation into another language; later he identified that language as colour.

17 · 1875–1890.01

1875-06–1875-10 · Paris · Knot of Motif

The Goupil Gallery Years in Paris

In Paris he compared painted landscapes with one described in a novel and sent Theo a portrait photograph with a passage about it. Months later he urged his brother to put such books aside.

The Ferocious Reader
The Translator

1881-11 · Etten · Knot of Silence

The Michelet Moment in Etten

He borrowed Michelet’s sentences to find words for his heartbreak and his longing for a family.

The Ferocious Reader
Synaesthetic Precision

Vincent van Gogh, Sorrow, 1882, The Hague

1882-04–1882-05 · The Hague · Knot of Intention

The Line Beneath Sorrow

This version of Sorrow has a line adapted from Michelet beneath the image.

The Ferocious Reader
The Translator

Vincent van Gogh, Sien with Cigar Sitting on the Floor near Stove, 1882, The Hague

1882-07 · The Hague · Knot of Motif

The Zola Year in The Hague

Reading Zola, he saw paintings in the novel’s townscapes.

The Ferocious Reader
Synaesthetic Precision

Vincent van Gogh, At Eternity's Gate (lithograph), 1882, The Hague

1882-11 · The Hague · Knot of Motif

The Dickens Winter in The Hague

He read the life of Dickens, collected the wood engravings of English magazines, and drew one bowed old man again and again.

The Ferocious Reader
The Translator

1882-11–1883-02 · The Hague · Knot of Motif

The Print Collection in The Hague

He kept prints in his studio and returned to them: an image could become a possession, then a working reference at hand.

The Translator
The Ferocious Reader

1883-02 · The Hague · Knot of Motif

The Eliot Moment in The Hague

In The Hague in early 1883 he read George Eliot, and looked at the poor and the painters around him with something of her eye.

The Ferocious Reader
The Translator

1883-06 · The Hague · Knot of Motif

The Zola Summer in The Hague

He read Zola’s Mes haines without agreeing with all of it; when he later quoted Zola on art, he changed ‘a corner of creation’ to ‘a corner of nature’.

The Ferocious Reader
The Translator

Vincent van Gogh, Four Potato Diggers, 1883, The Hague

1883-07 · The Hague · Knot of Motif

The Carlyle Moment in The Hague

He read Carlyle and called Sartor resartus ‘beautiful — and honest — and humane’; in a letter about his own work that year, he also quoted Carlyle’s ‘the result of an idea must be an action’.

The Ferocious Reader
The Translator

1884-03–1885-11 · Nuenen · Knot of Motif

Reading Millet in Nuenen

Sensier’s biography of Millet stayed with him from The Hague to Nuenen. Through it he asked how a painter lived with a family and sustained the work of painting.

The Ferocious Reader

1885-11–1886-01 · Antwerp · Knot of Motif

Japonaiserie and Rubens in Antwerp

In Antwerp he used a phrase from the Goncourts to see the docks, then repeatedly looked at Rubens in the museum and cathedral. Both encounters took precise shape in his letters.

The Ferocious Reader
The Translator

Vincent van Gogh, The White Orchard, 1888, Arles

1888-03–1888-06 · Arles · Knot of Motif

A Japanese Eye in Arles

The light and colour of Arles reminded him of Japanese painting.

The Translator
The Ferocious Reader

Vincent van Gogh, Harvest at La Crau, 1888, Arles

1888-06–1888-08 · Arles · Knot of Motif

The Zola Summer in Arles

In Arles he held the people around him against the novels he had read. The inhabitants recalled Zola’s characters; Daudet’s cheerful south was harder to find.

The Ferocious Reader

Vincent van Gogh, La Mousmé, 1888, Arles

1888-07 · Arles · Knot of Motif

The Loti Month in Arles

In the summer of 1888, the bare Japanese rooms in Loti’s novel made him reconsider where a drawing should be seen.

The Ferocious Reader
The Translator

Vincent van Gogh, The Sower, 1888, Arles

1888-09 · Arles · Knot of Motif

The Tolstoy Moment in Arles

In one letter he thought about Tolstoy and a single blade of grass.

The Ferocious Reader
The Translator

Vincent van Gogh, Memory of the Garden at Etten, 1888, Arles

1888-11–1888-12 · Arles · Knot of Intention

The Winter of Imagination in Arles

While Gauguin lived in the Yellow House, Vincent began composing from memory. Memory of the Garden at Etten brought a scene from years earlier onto canvas.

The Ferocious Reader
The Colour Experimenter

Vincent van Gogh, Sower (after Millet), 1890, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence

1889-11–1890-01 · Saint-Rémy-de-Provence · Knot of Motif

The Copyist Manifesto of Saint-Rémy

He set Millet’s black-and-white drawings before him and asked what another language could do in oil paint.

The Copyist
The Translator