Van Gogh Museum Journal 1996

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fig. 1
Vincent van Gogh's Chinese lacquer box with sixteen balls of wool, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

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Strands interlacing: colour theory, education and play in the work of Vincent van Gogh
Laura Coyle⁺

One of the most curious objects preserved at the Van Gogh Museum is a slightly battered Chinese red lacquer box containing 16 colourful balls of wool and a few loose strands of yarn (fig. 1).¹ Some of the balls are a single colour, a golden yellow, or an intense blue-green, while others combine two or three colours of twisted yarn, such as dark violet and bright yellow, or yellow-orange and light green. It is known for certain that the balls of yarn belonged to Vincent van Gogh because his close friend, the artist Emile Bernard, mentioned them in an elegiac article on Van Gogh written shortly after he died. Bernard noted that during a visit with Van Gogh in Paris he saw on a table, along with some Japanese crépons, a few ‘balls of wool whose interlaced strands played a surprising symphony’ of colours.²

This unusual box of yarns relates to the artist's understanding of colour theory, and derives from a specific educational practice. To explain the significance of this box and how Van Gogh used its contents, I will examine the most important threads that make up his understanding of colour theory. I will also show how these threads weave together to reveal a complex pattern of fundamental social and philosophical questions that revolve around how ideas and practices travel and change, and how notions of childhood, learning, creativity and genius are intertwined. This singular box of yarns provides a valuable key to understanding Van Gogh's formation as an artist, and how his development dovetails with changing ideas about education and art education sweeping across 19th-century Europe.

+ I am grateful to Louis van Tilborgh for showing the box of yarns to me; Fieke Pabst at the Van Gogh Museum for her gracious and unfailing assistance with many questions; Professor Debora Silverman, who first brought this box to my attention in a lecture at Princeton University and encouraged me to pursue my research on it; and Professor Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Vincent DiGirolamo, April Masten, Sally Mills, Amy Ogata and Gennifer Weisenfeld, who gave me extremely useful comments on a draft of this paper.

1 The box is illustrated in colour in Ronald de Leeuw, Van Gogh at the Van Gogh Museum, Zwolle 1994, p. 88. It is too large to be a tea chest. The labels in Chinese pasted inside do not indicate its original contents, but it may have been used to store paper. I would like to thank Dr Fen-Dow Chu for his assistance with the identification of the box and the labels. The 16 balls of yarn consist of the following colours: 1) pink (faded) and blue, 2) yellow and blue (very saturated), 3) yellow, green and red, 4) orange and light blue, 5) yellow, one colour (the colour of corn), 6) yellow, one colour, darker than 5, 7) yellow, two colours (the colours of 5 and 6), 8) dark violet and bright yellow, 9) violet and yellow (the colour of corn), 10) light violet and yellow (the colour of corn), 11) orange and red, 12) yellow (more than one shade the colour of corn) and pink (two shades, one dark and one light, both faded, 13) yellow-orange and light green (very fine wool); 14) blue-green and bright yellow, 15) blue-green, and 16) violet (two shades). There are also a few loose strands of yarn in violet, light pink, and blue. Louis van Tilborgh pointed out to me that because red dyes are fugitive, the red, orange and pink yarns are probably faded. It is also possible that some of the pinks were originally red.

2 Emile Bernard, ‘Vincent van Gogh,’ Les hommes d'aujourd'hui, no. 390 (1891), n.p.: ‘Sur la table, parmi les crépons japonais, des boules de laine dont les fils entrelacés jouaient des symphonies imprévues [...].’

Van Gogh and colour theory

Van Gogh appears to have used this box of yarns not only to experiment with colour, as Bernard described, but also to help define the palette for specific pictures. Some of the balls of yarn can even be matched to particular paintings. A ball of harmonised yellow tones relates closely to Still life with white grapes, apples, pears and lemons (fig. 2),³ and another consisting of yellow, green and red yarns is comparable to Apples (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum). Since paintings with colour schemes like those of the balls of yarn first appear in the period when Van Gogh was in Paris and had had the chance to see impressionist painting, he probably did not assemble the yarns until he arrived there in March 1886. He certainly had them before he left for Arles two years later, since it was in Paris that Bernard met and worked with Van Gogh and later remembered seeing them.

3 This has been noted by De Leeuw, op. cit. (note 1), p. 88.

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fig. 2
Vincent van Gogh, Still life with white grapes, apples, pears and lemons, autumn 1887, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Cornelia Peres was the first to point out that these balls of wool could provide information about Van Gogh's colour theory. Debora Silverman also discussed the box briefly in an intriguing article that explored the impact of the painter's Dutch upbringing on his art.⁴ She argued that the role of religion and the constraints on individuality in 19th-century Holland led Van Gogh to consider his art as a kind of craft labour, and that he self-consciously emulated the Nuenen weavers in his paintings. With regard to the box of yarns, she pointed out that Van Gogh had used the same method as the chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul, ‘operationalizing’ the chemist's discoveries. She claimed that while Van Gogh was in Nuenen, he simultaneously absorbed Chevreul's ideas and observed the weavers at work. In Paris, she wrote, he was exposed to new ways of painting and there ‘amplified the pre-existing lessons of paint as threads and colour as fiber to be worked into the fabric of the picture surface.’⁵ These effects, which initially appear as a ‘woven stroke’ in a few early Nuenen-period still lifes,⁶ and much more frequently in his Paris flower still lifes, are carried over into some of his later and most celebrated paintings, such as the Van Gogh Museum's Sunflowers.

4 See Cornelia Peres, ‘Enkele aspecten van Van Goghs schildertechniek,’ CL-Themadag 15 (1989), p. 56 and Debora Silverman, ‘Weaving paintings: religious and social origins of Vincent van Gogh's pictorial labor,’ in Michael S. Roth (ed.), Rediscovering history: culture, politics, and the psyche, Stanford 1994, pp. 137-73.

5 Silverman, op. cit. (note 4), p. 164.

6 For example on the pot that holds the brushes in Still life with paintbrushes in a pot (present location unknown) and on the double-handled pot in Still life with pottery and two bottles (Pasadena, Norton Simon Foundation).

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Van Gogh was already keenly interested in colour theory before arriving in France.⁷ He encountered it primarily in two publications by Charles Blanc, Les artistes de mon temps, in the chapter devoted to Delacroix,⁸ and the Grammaire des arts du dessin, in a special section on the laws of colour.⁹ Van Gogh's commitment to Blanc's ideas remained remarkably consistent, from the time he first mentions them in his letters to the end of his career.¹⁰ However, to understand why Van Gogh did not study colour theory with the help of yarn until he arrived in Paris, it is necessary to review in some detail how he understood that theory before leaving the Netherlands.¹¹

Blanc's colour theory is the same in both publications, and is deeply indebted to Chevreul's De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs (1839), which the chemist had published while he was head of the Gobelins tapestry works. Studying different colour combinations of dyed wool in tapestries, Chevreul had observed that a given colour is always influenced by the one next to it. To explain these effects, he formulated the laws of simultaneous and successive contrast.¹² Although Chevreul intended his work primarily for decorative arts designers, he believed it could be useful to painters. This proved true, and it is not an exaggeration to say that nearly every late-19th century painter in France was familiar with at least some aspect of his work. However, Chevreul's book was long and technical, and most painters seem to have learned of his ideas the way Van Gogh did, through popular interpretations such as Blanc's, written specifically for fine artists.¹³

Silverman argued that it was his daily observance of the weavers in Nuenen that ‘activated’ Van Gogh to imitate thread and fiber with paint.¹⁴However, before arriving in Paris, Van Gogh used the woven stroke only in a few still lifes and in a way that hardly suggests fabric at all. He did not imitate weaving in his painting, use a threadlike stroke or appear to have used yarn to experiment with colour until later. This suggests that Van Gogh's exposure to certain ideas and ways of working then current in Paris were relatively more important than Silverman has implied.

It seems that Van Gogh did not fully understand who Chevreul was until after he moved to the French capital.¹⁵ Not only was the chemist well known in Van Gogh's Parisian circle, but he also turned 100 the year the painter arrived and was celebrated as a national hero.¹⁶ One of the

7 For Van Gogh's colour theory and painting technique during the Nuenen period, see IJsbrand Hummelen and Cornelia Peres, ‘“To paint darkness that is nevertheless colour”: the painting technique of The potato eaters,’ in Louis van Tilborgh et al., The potato eaters by Vincent van Gogh, Zwolle 1993, pp. 49-69. For a thorough discussion of the sources of Van Gogh's colour theory before and during his stay in Paris, see Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, ‘Color theory in Paris,’ Vincent van Gogh: his Paris period, 1886-1888, Utrecht & The Hague 1976, pp. 64-127.

8 Charles Blanc, ‘Eugène Delacroix 1798-1863,’ Les artistes de mon temps, Paris 1876, pp. 23-88.

9 Charles Blanc, Grammaire des arts du dessin, 5th ed., Paris 1883, pp. 548-73.

10 Welsh-Ovcharov, op. cit. (note 7), pp. 67 and 111.

11 The following section is indebted to Welsh-Ovcharov, op. cit. (note 7) and Silverman, op. cit. (note 4).

12 The law of simultaneous contrast dictates that when two colours are seen side by side, each colour will tint the other with its opposite, thereby heightening the contrast. The law of successive contrast states that when we look at one colour for a time and then look elsewhere, the second place we look will be tinged with the pale opposite of the first colour. Although Chevreul confused the way coloured light mixes with how coloured pigments behave when mixed, as was pointed out in a popular book published by Ogden Rood, Modern chromatics, with applications to art and industry, New York 1879, his theory remained very influential on painters.

13 At the end of a long letter [539/428] explaining to Theo how the colour theory he learned from Blanc guided him in painting specific pictures in Nuenen, Van Gogh summarised his understanding of Blanc's writings, which interestingly foreshadows the painter's later use of colour: ‘These things concerning complementary colours, simultaneous contrast, and the neutralizing of complementals, this question of [complementary colours] is the first and principal one; the second is the mutual influence of two kindred colours, for instance carmine on vermillion, a pink-violet on a blue-violet. The third question is a light blue against the same dark blue, a pink against a brown-red, a citron yellow against a chamois yellow, etc. But the first question is the most important.’ See also Georges Roque, ‘Chevreul and Impressionism: a reappraisal,’ The Art Bulletin 78 (March 1996), pp. 26-39.

14 Silverman, op. cit. (note 4), p. 162.

15 The chemist is not mentioned in any of the many letters Van Gogh devoted to the weavers or colour theory. This may be because while Blanc mentions Chevreul's name in both Les artistes and the Grammaire, he is vague about how much he relied on the chemist in both books. Moreover, he does not refer to Chevreul's relationship to the Gobelins tapestry works at all. Instead he associated the colour theory he discussed closely with Delacroix. He wrote that Delacroix first learned the laws of colour intuitively and then set about to master ‘scientifically and thoroughly’ the theories of colour developed by contemporary scientists such as Chevreul; see Blanc, op. cit. (note 8), p. 64 and idem, op. cit. (note 9), p. 564. When Van Gogh mentioned colour theory in his Dutch-period letters, he, like Blanc, emphasised Delacroix's role, at one point claiming that the romantic painter was the first to formulate and bring the laws of colour to light [541/430 (early November 1885)]. On the relationship between Chevreul's theory and Delacroix's painting, see Lee Johnson, Delacroix, London 1963, pp. 7-8, 83-72.

16 On Chevreul and late-19th century painting, see William Innes Homer, Seurat and the science of painting, Cambridge, Mass. 1964; Michael F. Zimmerman, Seurat and the art theory of his time, Antwerp 1991, pp. 42-44; exhib. cat. Georges Seurat 1859-1891, Paris (Grand Palais) & New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) 1991-92, pp. 388-90; and Roque, op. cit. (note 13). On Chevreul's fame, see Geneviève Reynes, ‘Chevreul interviewé par Nadar: premier document audiovisuel (1886),’ Gazette des Beaux-Arts 153 (November 1981), pp. 153-54 and Miriam Levin, Republican art and ideology, Ann Arbor 1986, p. 258.

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fig. 3
Vincent van Gogh, Vase with asters and phlox, summer 1886, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

places Chevreul's achievements were noted was in a remarkable and very early essay in photojournalism by Félix Tournachon, better known as Nadar. He interviewed him for Le journal illustré and accompanied the article, which included a discussion of colour theory, with photographs he had made during their conversation.¹⁷ In 1886, therefore, it would have been nearly impossible for Van Gogh not to have learned of the connection between Chevreul and the Gobelins tapestry works, and of the importance of his research for artists. During his Paris period, Van Gogh began to use strokes in his painting that strongly evoke cloth and thread, frequently in the backgrounds of his paintings. Significantly, Chevreul had pointed out that it was this area of a painting that often posed the greatest challenge to the artist and the place where his theories could be most useful.¹⁸

fig. 4
Vincent van Gogh, Vase with asters and phlox (detail of the top right corner)

In Vase with asters and phlox (figs. 3 and 4), for example, the painting is keyed to Chevereul's simultaneous contrast of predominantly red and green flowers in the vase. In the background, brushstrokes of red and green are woven together to create a neutral but harmonious backdrop of what Blanc and Chevreul called tons rompus, an unequal mixture of complementary colours that allows one to dominate. In Vase with gladioli (figs. 5 and 6), Van Gogh draws on two different aspects of Chevreul's colour contrast harmonies described by Blanc. The foreground is again harmonised with a simultaneous contrast of primarily red and green,¹⁹ but the distinctly woven background is made of different shades of blue, creating a monochromatic contrast of analogous hues and tones, a harmony composed of that ‘infinite variety of tone of one same family’ Van Gogh first admired in Nuenen.²⁰ While less common after 1886, the woven stroke does appear in some important later paintings, again usually in the background, and once as the rug, created out of red, green and yellow strokes, below Gauguin's armchair (fig. 7).

17 Nadar, Le journal illustré, 5 Septembre 1886.

18 ‘How many times,’ Chevreul asked Nadar, ‘have you heard [painters] say that nothing is more difficult and yet more absorbing than the value of the background? And yet what is the reason for these difficulties in obtaining harmony, if not the knowledge of colour relationships? [...] Horace Vernet, who often came to seem me at the Gobelins, [...] told me how much trouble the background of his Portrait of Brother Philippe had given him and how many times he had to rework it. I believe I may say that a thorough knowledge of the law of colours would have spared him time and effort’; Nadar, op. cit. (note 17), p. 287, cited and translated in Levin, op. cit. (note 16), p. 145.

19 Welsh-Ovcharov, op. cit. (note 7), p. 76 discussed this effect in Van Gogh's three paintings of gladioli, F 237, F 242, and F 248b, p. 76.

20 As Welsh-Ovcharov notes (ibid, pp. 97-98), the most consistent group of paintings that are monochrome overall are the Paris sous-bois. These monochrome paintings are no less guided by Blanc's colour theory than those of complementary contrast.

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fig. 5
Vincent van Gogh, Vase with gladioli (detail of the lower left corner)

While it is likely, as Silverman suggested, that Van Gogh sought to emulate the weavers in his painting for ideological reasons, these were not the only ones. Nor was he the only painter in Paris to evoke cloth in his work. An examination of Georges Seurat's recreation of the effects of tapestry in his work sheds more light on why making paintings that looked like fabric might have appealed to Van Gogh.

As Jeroen Stumpel has argued, Seurat, who like Van Gogh was greatly interested in colour theory, consciously tried to imitate tapestry in his paintings.²¹ Both detractors and supporters of Neo-impressionism recognised the relationship between this painting style and textiles. Unfriendly critics called it ‘la méthode à petit point,’ and Seurat's work was compared to ‘painted Gobelins, just as unpleasant as the originals.’ On the other hand, in the pamphlet

fig. 6
Vincent van Gogh, Vase with gladioli, summer 1886, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

on the new technique that accompanied the work's exhibition in the spring of 1886, Seurat's influential friend and apologist Félix Fénéon admiringly described Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte (The Art Institute of Chicago) as a ‘patient tapestry.’

For Seurat, imitation of the weaver's craft was a means of ridding his work of naturalism, adapting the highly popular decorative effects of tapestry to paint. As Stumpel noted, Blanc discussed the characteristics of tapestry at length in his Grammaire and how it differed from painting, concluding: ‘In the end it is fortunate that

21 Jeroen Stumpel, ‘The Grand Jatte, that patient tapestry,’ Simiolus 14 (1984), pp. 209-24. On Seurat's interest in colour theory, see Homer, op. cit. (note 16); Zimmerman, op. cit. (note 16); and Seurat, cit. (note 16). The following section is drawn from Stumpel.

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fig. 7
Vincent van Gogh, Gauguin's chair (detail of the lower left corner), November 1888, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

the shortcomings of the art of weaving give it its most beautiful qualities by forcing it to be what it must be: simply decorative.’ Stumpel has proposed that Seurat radically challenged Blanc's conservative separation of painting from the decorative arts and ‘subjected painting to the principles of weaving.’²²

The formal issues of naturalism that troubled Seurat were also ones with which Van Gogh wrestled. Van Gogh, however, consistently tried to find a synthesis between a representation grounded in nature and a decorative effect guided, in part, by colour theory. As a result, he often managed to create the decorative harmonies he sought not by changing the natural colours of objects, as other artists such as Paul Gauguin did, but rather by choosing subjects to paint that easily fit his colour theory.

This helps explain why Van Gogh painted so many still lifes early on during his stay in Paris.²³ In this genre, he had complete control over the subject and its composition. In a letter to the painter Horace Mann Livens in the fall of 1886, he frankly referred to his flowers as ‘a series of colour studies in painting, simply flowers, red poppies, blue corn flowers and myosotys, white and rose roses, yellow chrysanthemums - seeking oppositions of blue with orange, red and green, and yellow and violet seeking les tons rompus et neutres to harmonise brutal extremes. Trying to achieve intense colour and not grey harmony.’²⁴

By carefully choosing his models, Van Gogh could at once create decorative pictures harmonised by the rules of simultaneous and successive colour, and a representation that was essentially true to nature.²⁵ When Van Gogh felt he had begun to master colour in his painting in Paris, he applied the principles of colour theory more widely to other genres, such as landscapes, interiors, and portraits.²⁶

22 See Charles Blanc, Grammaire des arts décoratifs, Paris 1882, p. 95: ‘Il est heureux enfin que les défauts de la tapisserie soient, encore une fois, la source de ses plus belles qualités en lui créant la néessité d'être ce qu'il faut qu'elle soit: simplement décorative’; quoted in Stumpel, op. cit. (note 21), p. 213; see also ibid., p. 214. In 1887, when Van Gogh was most attracted to divisionism, his painting reveals a pronounced stippling which is related to, but less uniform than, the more dotlike stroke of neo-impressionist painting. In certain paintings, such as Fritillaries (Paris, Musée d'Orsay), which is built upon a strong blue-orange contrast, the woven background of many earlier Paris flower still lifes is replaced by an array of small blue, green, yellow and white strokes that bear comparison to Seurat's petit point. Van Gogh did not, however, attempt or desire to achieve the gray tonality produced by optical mixture that seems to have been one of Seurat's goals. Perhaps in Fritillaries, and in other paintings where he capitalised on a divisionist stroke. Van Gogh consciously mimicked fabric in his painting in a way analogous to Seurat's, but without sacrificing the control of the harmonies or vibrancy of colour. See Welsh-Ovcharov, op. cit. (note 7), pp. 99-105 on the impact of divisionism on Van Gogh's stroke and his rejection of optical mixture (p. 101). See Stumpel, op. cit. (note 21), p. 223 on intentional graying in Seurat's work. See Silverman, op. cit. (note 4), p. 164, for the relationship this stroke bears to cloth.

23 In my dissertation in progress, The still life paintings of Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, I am exploring the reasons why late-19th century artists painted still lifes.

24 572/459a. Other letters describing the flowers as colour studies are 571/460 and 576/W1.

25 Welsh-Ovcharov has also noted that in Paris Van Gogh tended to choose subjects, especially flowers, that complemented his colour theory; Welsh-Ovcharov, op. cit. (note 7), pp. 80-81.

26 Ibid., pp. 80-92. She further noted that Van Gogh also invented a decorative scheme in which two primary colours dominate. While paintings in blue and yellow, for example, suitably express the blue-skied, golden-grained landscapes of Arles, Van Gogh actually introduced this idea in Paris; see ibid., pp. 110-12. These colour combinations cannot be accounted for in the writings of Blanc or Chevreul, but they do appear in Van Gogh's box of yarns.

Froebel's ‘gifts’

But what exactly prompted Van Gogh to roll balls of wool to explore colour theory? The answer springs from a surprising quarter: the kindergarten. The idea of learning about colour with balls of wool does not originate with Van Gogh, or even Chevreul. Rather, it can be traced to the German philosopher of education, teacher and creator of kindergarten, Frederick Froebel (1782-1852). Froebel was inspired by, yet critical of, the teaching practices of the Swiss educational reformer, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827). Inventor of the ‘object lesson,’ Pestalozzi encouraged children to learn by doing rather than by copying.²⁷ Froebel, however, believed that Pestalozzi's methods seriously neglected spiritual development, and his own Christian and mystical philosophy of education inspired him to develop revolutionary methods of teaching.²⁸ Certain that early education had been woefully ignored, he began work on a new

27 On Pestalozzi's pedagogy, see Robert Downs, Heinrich Pestalozzi: father of modern pedagogy, Boston 1975 and G.H. Bantock, Studies in the history of educational theory, 2 vols., London 1984, vol. 2, pp. 64-90.

28 Frederick Froebel, The education of man, trans. W.N. Hailmann, New York 1887 (first published in German in 1826), cited in J.J. Chambliss(ed.), Enlightenment and social progress: education in the nineteenth century, Minneapolis 1971, p. 107.

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institution in the 1830s in Germany, one that would educate groups of children as young as three or four outside the home. He called this new establishment ‘kindergarten.’²⁹

Froebel's theories and practices were grounded on the Lockean premise that ‘all intellectual development take[s] place through the senses.’³⁰ Between 1835 and 1850, he developed didactic materials to help very young children learn. Later called ‘gifts and occupations,’ these learning tools were to be introduced to the children serially and formed an essential part of Froebel's method. Many made use of drawing, painting, building, modelling and weaving, and all the gifts and occupations were designed to encourage the children to learn through play.³¹ Probably the best known are the building blocks Froebel invented (fig. 8). Frank Lloyd Wright, for example, claimed in his autobiography that playing with a set of these ‘smooth shapely maple blocks’ helped inspire him to become an architect.³²

The first ‘gift,’ described by Hermann Goldammer in the most important kindergarten manual, bears a striking resemblence to Van Gogh's lacquer chest: a ‘box containing six worsted balls crewelled over in different colours, three showing the primary colours - red, yellow, and blue - and three the secondary colours - green, violet, and orange’ (fig. 9).³³ Intended to be introduced to infants well before they reached kindergarten, this gift was to be a lasting one.

fig. 8
‘Sixth gift,’ from Edward Weibé, The paradise of childhood: a manual for self-instruction in Friedrich Froebel's educational principles and practical guide to kindergartners, Springfield, Mass. 1869

29 Froebel to his cousin in 1840; Frederick Froebel, Froebel's letters on the kindergarten, ed. Emilie Michaelis and H. Keatley Moore, London 1891, p. 63.

30 Hermann Goldammer, The kindergarten: a guide to Froebel's method of education, gifts and occupations, with an introduction and conclusion by Baroness Berthe von Marenholtz-Buelow, trans. from the third German edition, and compared with the second French edition by William Wright, 2 vols., Berlin, London & New York 1882, vol. 1, p. 2.

31 Froebel in a letter to Miss Howe in 1847, cited in H. Courthope Bowen, Froebel and education by self-activity, New York 1893, p. 124. The gifts and occupations were further elaborated upon in Froebel's letters, cit. (note 29). See also Goldammer, op. cit. (note 30), vol. 1, p.1.

32 Frank Lloyd Wright, ‘An autobiography (1932),’ in Frank Lloyd Wright: collected writings, ed. Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, 5 vols., New York 1992, vol. 2 (1930-32), p. 111.

33 Goldammer, op. cit. (note 30), vol. 1, p. 1. The first edition of Goldammer's book was published in Berlin in 1869. It first appeared in Polish in 1872, in French in 1877, in English in 1885, and in Italian in 1893; see Helmut Heiland, Beiträge zur Fröbelforschung: Bibliographie Friedrich Fröbel, Primär- und Sekundärliteratur 1820-1990, Hildesheim 1990. Goldammer's book formed the basis for other shorter guides, such as Edward Weibé, The paradise of childhood: a manual for self-instruction in Friedrich Froebel's educational principles and practical guide to kinder-gartners, Springfield, Mass. 1869, which reprinted most of Goldammer's plates. Weibé's manual was extremely popular in the United States, where it was available on a regular basis for nearly sixty years; see Arthur D. Elfand, A history of art education: intellectual and social currents in teaching the visual arts, New York & London 1990, p. 124.

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fig. 9
‘Kindergarten material,’ from Henry Barnard (ed), Kindergarten and child culture papers: papers on Froebel's kindergarten, Hartford 1884

Goldammer devoted his first chapter - 27 pages and 30 illustrations - to these balls of yarn (fig. 10), describing games that children could play with them from the age of three months through the kindergarten years and beyond. By the time the children came to kindergarten, they would have already learned their colours, in part by playing with the balls. As every gift and occupation was designed to express the essential harmony and unity of nature, Froebel and his followers believed that it was important not only that children be able to identify colours, but also that they understand the relationships among them. Writing in this instance about a game with coloured building blocks rather than balls, Froebel explained: ‘There still

fig. 10
‘First gift,’ from Hermann Goldammer, The kindergarten: a guide to Froebel's method of education, gifts and occupations, Berlin, London & New York 1882

remains the change of colours. The colours must make amongst themselves a complete colour-harmony. For instance, red and green (green being made up of the other two primaries, blue and yellow); yellow and violet (violet being composed of blue and red); blue and gold or orange (orange being composed of red and yellow). [...] You see that the two harmonising colours in each varying combination and between them all the three primary colours. Now the colours may be grouped in all kinds of ways upon the same ground form, wherein we get true colour-games [...]. The essence of the game lies in each successive alteration of form or arrangement of colours [...] evolved [...] from the previously existing [...] form or colour.’³⁴

34 Froebel to Mme Schmidt, 9 December 1842; Froebel's letters, cit. (note 29), p. 125.

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The coloured balls could also be used in complex ways. Goldammer described exercises designed to introduce the children to sophisticated understandings of colour and colour harmonies. For, as Goldammer wrote, by the time a child is three or four, he ‘is no longer merely to receive a certain sum of impressions as formerly, but must be induced to make personal efforts, to observe, and to give expression to what he observes.’³⁵

Songs associating colours with objects were to be followed by questions asking the children to come up with the names of other things that matched the colours of different balls.³⁶ The spectrum could be demonstrated with two balls crewelled in different ways, with the bands of colours wrapping either longitudinally, meeting at the poles, or latitudinally, running parallel. Rotating the balls would give different effects: ‘The latter when made to revolve at the end of a string will show the image of a rainbow, the more distinct the quicker it revolves. In the former on the contrary the colours will become more and more indistinct as the speed increases, and will at length subside into a dirty black.’³⁷ The concept of secondary colours, even of optical mixture, could also be demonstrated by spinning balls half covered with one primary colour, half in another.³⁸

Although Van Gogh used his balls of yarn specifically in relation to his painting, which extended standard kindergarten practice, both he and the kindergartners who presented the ‘gifts’ believed that they were a simple yet useful and direct way to learn about the laws of harmony and contrast of colour. Significantly, the idea that underlies both Van Gogh's practice and Froebel's method is the same: that sensory experience and free experimentation - play, in other words - is the best way to learn.

Van Gogh probably used his balls of wool in a number of ways. By imitating the colour combinations described by Blanc and others, the painter could see for himself the effects of the different colour medleys often described with few or no illustrations in texts on colour theory. With a particular subject in mind, he could also have tried out various colour combinations with yarn, as an inexpensive alternative to paint. Van Gogh never had enough money for all the paints he wished to buy. One can imagine him selecting, combining and recombining different coloured strands of yarn to help him decide which colours to invest in. It is notable that it was in Tanguy's shop, where Van Gogh bought most of his materials while he lived in Paris, that Bernard remembered seeing Van Gogh's box. Finally, keeping the box of yarns would have been a tidy and convenient way to save colour ‘symphonies’ he found particularly striking in order to study them again later.

35 Goldammer, op. cit. (note 30), vol. 1, p. 20.

36 Ibid., p. 21.

37 Ibid., p. 22.

38 Ibid., p. 22.

Van Gogh and Froebel

But did Van Gogh know about Froebel's first gift when he wound his own balls of yarn? Since he does not actually mention Froebel in his letters, one can only speculate. Considering how widespread the kindergarten idea was by 1886, however, a good case for his familiarity with the German pedagogue can be made.

During the last half of the 19th century, hundreds of kindergartens based on Froebel's method were established across Europe, in the United States, even as far away as Australia, India and Japan.³⁹ By the time Van Gogh reached Paris, over two thousand books and articles specifically on Froebel, mostly in German but also in French, English and Dutch, had appeared.⁴⁰

In 1857, the Barnoness Berthe von Marenholtz-Buelow, Froebel's well-connected, articulate and extremely effective disciple, introduced the idea of kindergarten to the Netherlands. There, Froebel's ideas received support in influential places.⁴¹ A friend of the barnoness, Elise van Calcar, translated Froebel into Dutch and promoted ‘the Cause’ in Holland for 35 years. The kindergarten, or as it is still known, Fröbelschool, thrived.⁴²

39 On the early of the kindergarten movement, see P. Woodham-Smith, ‘The origin of kindergarten,’ in Evelyn Phyllis Woodham (ed.), Freidrich Froebel and English education, London 1969, pp. 15-33 and Michael Steven Shapiro, ‘German hopes (1848-1852),’ Child's garden: the kindergarten movement from Froebel to Dewey, University Park, Penn. & London 1983, pp. 29-44. For a comparative study of 19th-century kindergartens, see Henry Barnard (ed.), Kindergarten and child culture papers: papers on Froebel's kindergarten with suggestions on principles and methods of child culture in different countries, rev. ed., Hartford 1884 (reprinted from The American Journal of Education).

40 In 1881, Louis Walter published a pamphlet of 197 pages devoted to the publications explaining, attacking or defending Froebel's work since 1838: Louis Walter, Die Fröbelliteratur, Dresden 1881, cited in Bowen, op. cit. (note 31), p. 200. In a recent bibligraphy of the Froebel literature, Helmut Heiland identified 2,244 publications by or about Froebel between 1820 and 1887; see Heiland, op. cit. (note 33). Many of the publications in Heiland are intended for a scholars, but numerous articles not listed there, which appeared in magazines intended for a popular audience, are listed under ‘Froebel’ and ‘Kindergarten’ in William Frederick Poole (ed.), Poole's index to periodical literature, rev. ed., 5 vols., Gloucester, Mass. 1963 and Helen Grant Cushing and Adah V. Morris (eds.), Nineteenth century reader's guide, 1890-1899, 2 vols., New York, 1944.

41 Woodham-Smith, op. cit. (note 39), pp. 26-27. Amélie, the daughter of the Duchess Ida von Weimar, who had known Froebel and who had helped to establish kindergartens in Weimar, married Prince Heinrich of the Netherlands; see ibid., p. 28.

42 Ibid. Heiland, op. cit. (note 33) lists several books in Dutch on Froebel by Elise van Calcar that appeared between 1858 and 1910. In Frederick Fröbel: hoe hij opvoeder werd en wat de kinderwereld hem openbaarde, The Hague 1879, Van Calcar discussed the gifts in chapter 12, ‘De kinderen Fröbels leermeesters,’ pp. 92-111 and listed at the back of the book(p. 218), where the ‘Fröbel-Artikelen’ could be purchased by mail and their prices. A complete set of gifts sold for 16.50 guilders; the ‘1ste Gave: doos met zes gekleurde ballen’ for 1.20 guilders.

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Although Van Gogh would have been at just the right age for the gifts and occupations when kindergarten was brought to his native country, these progressive forms of teaching were probably not practiced so early in the small town of Groot-Zundert where he briefly attended the village school, nor would they have been known by his governess. As Van Gogh grew up, however, and the international kindergarten movement spread, he likely learned of Froebel's idea by word-of-mouth and through the press.

One of Van Gogh's favorite writers, Jules Michelet, for example, wrote warmly of Froebel in his book on education, Nos fils.⁴³ In his examination - which he based on readings by and about the pedagogue, a lively discussion with the Baroness von Marenholtz-Buelow, and on visits to a kindergarten - Michelet emphasised how Froebel's method fostered creativity.⁴⁴ In an early article intended for a more general audience, an English writer, full of admiration for ‘a very interesting method of infant training,’ described a visit to a London kindergarten.⁴⁵ Each of the teaching materials, including the coloured balls, is described in some detail.⁴⁶ The author, the father of a ‘fine spirited two-year old baby,’ was particularly impressed with the indestructible, as well as educational nature of gifts. Another early piece in a popular magazine appeared in the weekly All the Year Round⁴⁷ in which Charles Dickens published his serialised novels. Van Gogh read very widely in Dutch, English and French, and still other articles on the kindergarten appeared in publications he is known to have enjoyed.⁴⁸

Few now remember the gifts and occupations that formed such a central part of Froebel's kindergarten. This, however, would not have been the case 100 years ago. Froebel's early disciples encouraged orthodoxy, not only in theory but also in practice. An article in Lippincott's Magazine recounted the extensive training of a young ‘kindergartner’ and followed her through her teaching session.⁴⁹ ‘To all “improved” suggestions,’ the author wrote, ‘she gave a peremptory negative. Mrs. K-'s Froebelian models, pure and simple, were the only ones she would tolerate.’⁵⁰ Describing the key role colour played in Froebel's teaching, the teacher explained: ‘We use color continually in combinations that are always governed by laws of harmony. One of the prettiest of our gifts is the colored geometrical tablets or plane figures. The children are

43 Jules Michelet, Nos fils (1869) in Oeuvres complètes de Michelet, ed. Paul Viallaneix, 21 vols, (to date), Paris 1971-87, vol. 20, pp. 451-57.

44 Michelet wrote, describing Froebel's method (ibid., p. 454): ‘Créer, produire! quel bonheur pour l'enfant. Si c'est son bonheur, c'est aussi sa mission. Créer, c'est l'éducation.’

45 Anonymous, ‘The kinder garten,’ The Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation 204 (22November 1855), p. 743.

46 Ibid., pp. 743-45: ‘The first thing that occured to us on entering the school was, that toys were substituted for books, and that instead of having finished materials, such as dolls and animals, the most simple and inexpensive things were used, and that the children made their own lessons. It is, in a word, play organised in a system of labour for the child, so that, whilst he is amused and delighted, every faculty of body and mind is properly educed. [...] The first thing shown to us was a number of balls, of all the colours of the rainbow. This, which is called the first gift, is intended for very young children, and belongs to the nursery rather than the school. It teaches motion and colour. The ball is used also in the movement games and gymnastic exercises.’

47 Anonymous, ‘At home and at school,’ All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal Conducted by Charles Dickens with which is Incorporated Household Words 24 (8 October 1859), pp. 571-73.

48 Articles on the kindergarten appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Harper's Weekly, Century, and Scribner's, popular magazines Van Gogh mentioned reading in his letters. For a discussion of his taste in literature with a detailed index to the publications he mentioned or alluded to in his letters, see Fieke Pabst and Evert van Uitert, ‘A literary life, with a list of books and periodicals read by Van Gogh,’ in Evert van Uitert and Michael Hoyle (eds.), The Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam 1987, pp. 68-84.

49 Anonymous, ‘Our young kindergartner,’ Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science 25 (June 1880), pp. 727-40.

50 Ibid., p. 728. When asked what she needed for a kindergarten, she began with the first gift: ‘First, I want the six worsted balls and six strings in colors, the three primary and the three secondary. When asked what the varied colours were for, she replied: “the child is to gain a familiar but systematic acquaintance with them - in their powers and relations as well as their names. [...] Red, blue and yellow are one, two three, found by him, and so fixed for him, one after the other in their proper order and in the most easy and infantile way”’; ibid., p. 730.

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led to arrange them in numberless forms of beauty, forms of knowledge and forms of life (so Froebel classifies them); and in this kind of play, guided by the system the kindergartner has learned, they unconsciously become as familiar with the shapes, the relations and the composition of all geometrical figures as they are with their dolls and marbles. But every combination made with different colors must be laid down with harmony. The habit of doing this develops a sensitiveness to harmonious or discordant effects like that produced in an ear thoroughly accustomed to harmony and guarded from discord in music.’⁵¹

Descriptions of the gifts and occupations published in many languages, such as Goldammer's Guide and Barnard's Kindergarten papers,⁵² made certain that Froebel's methods were not only widely disseminated, but could also be closely imitated. Froebel's gift of weaving, for example, described and illustrated in popular kindergarten manuals, is featured in Harper's Magazine (fig. 11). Many teachers adopted these methods in their classrooms but it appears Van Gogh was the only artist to adapt Froebel's widely-known first gift for his use as a painter.

51 Ibid., p. 729.

52 See notes 30 and 39.

Van Gogh and art education reform

However exceptional Van Gogh's box may be, it should be noted that certain progressive methods of general education, which emphasised individuality, creativity, and the arts (usually in the form of drawing and design) were clearly relevant to the waves of reform in fine-art education that swept Europe in the second half of the 19th century.⁵³ While the system of academic training for a fine artist was not dismantled overnight, and it took a very long time before the idea of self-education for an artist was widely accepted as an alternative - or even a complement - to regular training,

fig. 11
‘Weaving,’ from ‘A free kindergarten,’ Harper's New Monthly Magazine 57 (November 1878)

ultimately the time-honoured system collapsed. The reasons for its persistence, then eventual demise, are complex, but it can be argued that progressive general education practices, which date from about the 1830s and culminated in universal, free and compulsory education across Europe by the end of the century, played a role in the steady erosion of traditional art education. Changes in art education cannot be considered apart from these broader changes.

Methods such as Froebel's, which made extensive use of art and craft materials to foster expression and creativity in very young children, in an environment where children make instead of copy, find a complement in the new ways of teaching drawing not only to future artists, artisans, designers or engineers, but also to all school-age children as part of their general education. Proponents of these methods

53 For a historical survey of academies, see Nicholas Pevsner, Academies of art: past and present, Cambridge 1940. On the academic system in France, see Albert Boime, The academy and French painting in the nineteenth century, London 1971. On academicism in the Netherlands, see John Sillevis, ‘Romanticism and Realism,’ in Ronald de Leeuw et al., exhib. cat. The Hague School: Dutch masters of the 19th century, Paris (Grand Palais), London (Royal Academy of Arts) & The Hague (Haags Geemente Museum) 1983, 37-50; J. Reynaerts, ‘De jaren aan de Rijksacademie: Allebé als hoogleraar en directeur (1870-1906),’ in exhib. cat. Waarde Heer Allebé: Leven en werk van August Allebé, Haarlem (Teylers Museum), Dordrecht (Dordrechts Museum) & Assen (Provinciaal Museum van Drenthe) 1988, pp. 53-71; and idem ‘Van atelier naar academie: Schilders in opleiding 1850-1900,’ in exhib. cat. De schilders van Tachtig: Nederlandse schilderkunst 1880-1895, Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh) 1991, pp. 88-107. One of the best studies of the relationships among progressive educational theory and practice, art education, and government policy may be found in Levin, op. cit. (note 16), passim. For a survey of French educational policy, see Theodore Zeldin, France 1848-1945, 2 vols., Oxford 1977, vol. 2, pp. 139-204. On art education as a part of general education, see idem, pp. 447-450; Levin, op. cit. (note 16), pp. 77-113; and Patricia Mainardi, The end of the Salon: art and the state in the early Third Republic, Cambridge 1993, especially pp. 62-89. By decree of the minister of public instruction, drawing was made part of the official curriculum in France in 1878; see ‘Enseignement du dessin,’ La Chronique des Arts 21 (25 mai 1878), pp. 161-62. This made formal what was already common in schools all over Europe. Van Gogh himself took drawing in school: see H.F.J.M. van den Eerenbeent, ‘Van Gogh in Tilburg,’ Brabantia 20 (November 1971), pp. 219-21. As Zeldin reminds us, specific educational policies and practices varied both over time and from district to district with the two often diverging. However, the broadest tenets of progressive philosophies of education were widespread and shared across Europe and America. The relationship between progressive theories and practices of education and art education is explored in my dissertation in progress.

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attacked the dessin copié, the traditional foundation of an artist's education, and instead suggested means that consisted of one or more of three components: descriptive geometry, drawing after nature, or drawing from memory.⁵⁴

These new approaches gained the attention and even support of some fine-art academicians, those who had the greatest stake in preserving the customary system. To cite but one interesting example, the Belgian Louis de Taeye, professor of art at the academy at Louvain, insisted that drawing instruction - not only for would-be artists but for every school child - be based on a program that first introduced students to the principles of geometric drawing and then to drawing after nature. He argued this point in his influential book on the state of drawing instruction in Belgium, which also included a history of drawing instruction stretching back to Antiquity.⁵⁵ To justify his own position, De Taeye put himself and his method in line with the theorists and practioners of modern progressive education, mentioning among others Coménius, Rousseau, Helvétius, Pestalozzi and Froebel.

Although De Taeye believed some of Froebel's methods were too sophisticated for very young children, he clearly recognised the importance of his concept of art education, devoting a chapter of his book to ‘Les écoles Froebel.’⁵⁶ Summarizing the reformer's contribution, De Taeye wrote: ‘In his Education of man, the creator of kindergarten analyses at length the importance of artistic study. He demonstrates the usefulness of art, presents a method of drawing for the youngest children, initiates the young student to the knowledge of colours and has them resort to [...] generalization. [...] It is necessary to lovingly study works of art, says Froebel, and it is necessary to initiate all students to an intuition of form.’⁵⁷

Progressive theory dictated that the creative, expressive aspects of a child's nature had to be taken into account. This would have held great appeal for someone like Van Gogh, who was interested in primitivism; perhaps by imitating the creative play of children and methods of the kindergarten,

fig. 12
Drawing from Camille Bellanger, Traité de peinture à l'usage de toute le monde, Paris [1888]

he believed he could tap into the spontaneous, naive, creative expressiveness associated with children. Progressive pedagogues also hoped to create a school environment where children essentially educated themselves. While theory often diverged from practice, the implications of this idea can be related to the option increasingly open to students of art in 19th-century Europe, that of acquiring some of their training independently. This was especially true of drawing, which could be self-taught with any one of a great range of manuals.⁵⁸ As is well known, Van Gogh himself followed independently and painstakingly two of Charles Bargue's courses in order to master drawing.⁵⁹

It took longer for painting instruction to emerge from the almost sacred confines of the studio system, but by the end of the century strong evidence of change emerges, and not only among the avant-garde. The traditionally-trained history and genre painter Camille Bellanger, for example, published a manual in 1898 for art students that provided a complete course of self-instruction in drawing and painting.⁶⁰ This program entailed a wholesale rejection of copying and emphasised learning by trial and error. Notably, begin-

54 An influential example that encouraged working from nature instead of copying as the basis of drawing training is Alexandre Dupuis, De l'enseignement du dessin sous le point de vue industriel, Paris 1836. The most important source for drawing from memory is Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, Education de la mémoire pittoresque, Paris 1848.

55 Louis De Taeye, Etudes sur les arts plastiques en Belgique: traité général de l'enseignement des arts du dessin, Brussels 1891, section 5, chapter 3, part 3.

56 Ibid., pp. 204-25. De Taeye wrote that in 1884 almost all 866 écoles gardiennes in Belgium, serving 81,959 children, were modelled on the Froebel system (pp. 210-11).

57 Ibid., p. 177: ‘Dans son Education de l'homme, le créateur des Jardins d'enfants analyse longuement l'importance des études artistiques. Il expose l'utilité de l'art, présente une méthode de dessin applicable à la première enfance, initie le jeune élève à la connaissance des couleurs et fait ressortir la nécessité de généraliser toujours, autant que possible, la connaissance du langage de la forme. Il faut s'attacher avec amour à l'étude des oeuvres d'art, dit Froebel, et il faut initier tous les enfants à l'intuition de la forme.’

58 An extensive list of drawing manuals may be found in Albert Boime, ‘The teaching reforms of 1863 and the origin of modernism in France,’ Art Quarterly 1 (autumn 1977-78), especially note 34.

59 These were Exercices au fusain and Cours de dessin. On Van Gogh's use of Bargue, see Anne S. Wylie, ‘An investigation of the vocabulary of line in Vincent van Gogh's exploration of space,’ Oud Holland 85 (1970), pp. 210-35 and Albert Boime, ‘The teaching of fine arts and the avant-garde in France during the second half of the nineteenth century,’ Arts Magazine 14 (December 1991), pp. 53-54. See also, most recently, Sjraar van Heugten, exhib. cat. Vincent van Gogh, drawings: the early years, 1880-1883, Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum) 1996.

60 Camille Bellanger, Traité de peinture à l'usage de toute le monde, Paris n.d. [1898].

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ning students of painting were strongly encouraged to begin as Van Gogh had in Etten, and later as he taught in Nuenen, that is with simple, original compositions in still life (fig. 12).

Many of the ideas specifically associated with an artist's traditional training in the late 19th century, such as a familiarity with the rudiments of colour theory, experience with different kinds of materials, and an initiation to the ‘intuition of form’ were increasingly becoming an integral part of even a very young child's education. Furthermore, progressive theories like Froebel's challenged the widely-held notion of the artist-genius. Proponents assumed that every child had the potential, even the need, to be creative and expressive, and that these ‘artistic’ qualities were essential to the learning process. But these pedagogues also recognised that these impulses in children needed to be encouraged and that techniques to channel expression had to be taught.

This had both negative and positive implications for artists. It irrevocably undermined their special status as chosen recipients of the gift of creative vision and expression, but it also granted them a certain power over the cultivation of their talents. Still, the notion of genius remained extremely potent, and even today the conflict between competing ideas of art making as a process and a product of education on the one hand, and art making as the result of divinelike inspiration on the other, remains unresolved. While the impact of both conceptions often can be found in Van Gogh's way of teaching himself, working process and writing, the tension between them is nowhere more apparent than in his equivocal statement on genius: ‘The laws of colour are unutterably beautiful, just because they are not accidental. In the same way that people nowadays no longer believe in fantastic miracles, no longer believe in a God who capriciously and despotically flies from one thing to another, but begin to feel more respect and admiration for and faith in nature - in the same way, and for the same reasons, I think that in art, the old-fashioned idea of innate genius, inspiration, etc., I do not say must be put aside, but thoroughly reconsidered, verified - and greatly modified. However, I do not deny the existence of genius, or even its being innate. But I certainly do deny the inference that theory and instruction should, as a matter of course, always be useless.’⁶¹

This statement came at a time when Van Gogh had been working hard to teach himself to paint and to master the basics of colour theory on his own. One way to explain his reservations about genius and his determined course of self-instruction is the influence of contemporary ideas about the creative process of learning, the expressive nature of the child and progressive methods of education.

In this essay, I have discussed three ways in which the origin of Van Gogh's box of coloured balls of yarns, and the way the artist experimented with the balls of wool, can be associated with contemporary theories and practices of education. First, he used the yarns to help master colour theory, which he believed would improve his painting. As I have shown, this should be related to one of the broadest tenets of progressive pedagogy which held that everyone can be creative and expressive, but that even those blessed with great talent needed to master tools and learn techniques to express themselves effectively.

Second, Van Gogh's experimentation with coloured yarns should be seen as a noteworthy component of his largely autodidactic art training. Van Gogh's course of art education was still unusual for his time. But by the end of the century, general education theory, which held that even within schools students should learn as much as possible on their own, appears to have encouraged many art students to pursue some or all of their art education independently.

Finally, Van Gogh's idea of using multicoloured balls of yarns to experiment with colour probably had its origins in Froebel's kindergarten method. While many artists, including Van Gogh, struggled to master colour theory from texts, young children were exposed to the same ideas through their games with rainbow-coloured balls. It appears that like Froebel, Van Gogh also discovered learning about colour, contrast and harmony could be as easy, stimulating and rewarding as child's play.

61 453/371.