The Zola Summer in Arles
Zola, Daudet, Loti — all of them speak to me about the nature of the south.
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F412 Harvest at La Crau 1888 -
F422 The Sower 1888
Painting
Harvest at La Crau — golden wheat fields, level rows, blue mountains in the distance. He was painting Provençal peasants and fields under the burning sun this period. These paintings and the French literature he was reading were the same world — Zola's La terre wrote about French peasants, he painted French peasants; Daudet's Tartarin de Tarascon wrote about Provençal people, he painted Provençal people.
Letter
June 1888, Arles. He wrote: "I am reading Zola's La terre — it is very beautiful and very sad." Another letter: "Zola, Daudet, Loti — all of them speak to me about the nature of the south." This was his most intensive reading month in Arles — four French writers on the desk at once, each offering a way to see Provence.
Place
Arles, the Yellow House. Provençal June — 14 hours of daylight, temperatures often above 35°C. He went to the fields to paint by day, came back to read Zola at night. Zola's La terre wrote about peasants in the Beauce region, but the sentences he read in Arles and the peasants in front of him formed the same image. Literature and geography merged in his mind.
Events
- The Ferocious Reader · Letter 622
Began reading Zola's La terre. 'It is very beautiful and very sad.'
- The Ferocious Reader · Letter 625
'Zola, Daudet, Loti — all of them speak to me about the nature of the south.' Four writers in the same month
- The Translator · Letter 629
Completed Harvest at La Crau — translating the imagery of Zola's La terre into a Provençal wheat field
- The Ferocious Reader · Letter 624
Also reading Loti's Madame Chrysanthème — a Japanese novel and southern French novels on the same desk
From the Letters
Je lis La terre de Zola — c'est très beau et très triste. I am reading Zola's La terre — it is very beautiful and very sad.
Zola, Daudet, Loti — tous me parlent de la nature du midi. Zola, Daudet, Loti — all of them speak to me about the nature of the south.
Zola peint avec des mots comme nous peignons avec des couleurs — il voit la terre. Zola paints with words as we paint with colours — he sees the earth.
En lisant Bel-ami de Maupassant, je pense à la vie parisienne — mais ici c'est autre chose, c'est la moisson. Reading Maupassant's Bel-ami, I think of Parisian life — but here it is something else, it is the harvest.
Je lis beaucoup — le soir après le travail. Les livres et la peinture, c'est la même nourriture. I read a lot — in the evening after work. Books and painting, it is the same nourishment.
Daudet décrit ce pays mieux que personne — en le lisant je comprends ce que je vois. Daudet describes this country better than anyone — reading him I understand what I see.
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.