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Van Gogh Museum Journal 2001 (2001)

Van Gogh Museum Journal 2001

(2001)– [tijdschrift] Van Gogh Museum Journal–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

[Van Gogh studies]



illustratie
fig. 1
Vincent van Gogh, Olive grove (F 707 JH 1857), 1889, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)


A modern Gethsemane: Vincent van Gogh's Olive grove
Joan E. Greer+

In late November 1889 Vincent van Gogh painted The olive grove (fig. 1), one of a series of five paintings he executed that fall.1 He had already depicted olive trees several times in the spring and at least twice the previous year, but it was during the autumn of 1889 that this subject began to occupy him in earnest.2

Van Gogh was then living in the asylum St-Paul-de-Mausole outside St-Rémy, feeling mentally and physically vulnerable, and conscious of the financial burden he was on his brother Theo. He was beginning to gain critical recognition and to see his own nascent image as an artist developing and assuming an heroic, almost Christ-like form. Such mythologising, in which he himself participated - he writes, for example, of ‘Father Millet,’ ‘Puvis the Seer,’ etc. - upset him considerably when it concerned his own person, no doubt in part because he had unwittingly contributed to it through his identification with Christ and his christological understanding of the role of the artist.3

This identification with Christ as a personal guide and model began early in life and was complex in nature. It was informed over the years by a multitude of sources, the most important being the two branches of Protestantism Van Gogh encountered within his own family - the Groningen and Modern Schools of Calvinism. He was also profoundly influenced by his readings of the Bible, of Thomas à Kempis and of Ernest Renan. This christocentrism continued to be a determining factor in his conception of his own role in life, and informed his image of himself as an artist and of the artist in general.

However, references to Christ, and especially to Van Gogh himself as Christ or Christ-like, were seldom explicit. Just as Jesus had chosen the parable as a means of communicating truths, Van Gogh used indirect or metaphoric means when addressing his personal and professional identification with Christ. The figure of the sower with his head enframed by the sun, for example, could function in a number of ways. On the literal level, he represented a worker in the field. However, he could also serve to symbolise the artist and to allude obliquely, through association with the biblical sowing parable, to the relationship between the artist's task and that of Christ.

Religious questions began once again to absorb Van Gogh during the period he spent in St-Rémy, and, as will be seen, these questions suffused his theories concerning the production of art. In relation to the Olive grove, there is no doubt that Van Gogh was enthusiastic about the formal challenges the orchards presented him with, and the way they characterised the countryside surrounding the town. He also felt the motif would do well in the marketplace. The aspect of the subject to which he returned repeatedly



illustratie
fig. 2
Paul Gauguin, Agony in the garden, 1889, West Palm Beach, Florida, Norton Museum of Art, gift of Elizabeth C. Norton


in his correspondence at the end of November, however, was its relevance as a response to two works by Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard depicting Christ in the garden of olives (figs. 2 and 3) - works which distressed him to such a degree that he became preoccupied with them almost to the point of obsession.

In this article I will investigate the extent to which in its understated sobriety of form and colour, its insistent basis in observed reality and its associative qualities - which simultaneously transcend the real - Van Gogh's olive grove painting represents a visual response to Gauguin and Bernard. I will argue that the subject was a means of both coming to terms with ideas concerning Van Gogh's personal role as an artist, and of defining the task of the modern painter in general. Further, I will suggest that, contrary to the widely held notion that Van Gogh rejected the belief system within which he had grown up, his thoughts concerning artistic identity were firmly linked to his early religious ideas.

The olive orchard: formal challenge, regional emblem

The olive orchard is connected to other agrarian themes in Van Gogh's oeuvre, such as scenes of sowing and reaping.4 There are no olive pickers in most of the paintings - simply because none were available for observation. This focus on the landscape, however, soon also reinforced Van Gogh's resolve to make his olive groves quite unlike those of Bernard and Gauguin.

Late in September Van Gogh had written to Theo with enthusiasm about the olive orchards, emphasising, as noted above, the subject's formal challenges and regional significance [807/608]. About ten days later, before having received word of the works by Gauguin and Bernard, Van Gogh wrote to the latter recommending the subject. In late November Van Gogh would expand to Theo on the regional significance he had identified earlier - stating that together with the cypress, the olive tree was to the St-Rémy area what the willow was to the Netherlands [825/615]. The nostalgia he was feeling for his native land informed his painting, and he wrote that he hoped his work would result in ‘a series of really sympathetic Provençal studies, which will somehow be linked [...] to our distant memories of our youth in Holland’ [830/617].

The style of the Olive grove, similar to the other olive grove paintings done by Van Gogh at about this time,5



illustratie
fig. 3
Emile Bernard, Christ in the garden of olives, 1889, present location unknown


is characterised by the use of short regular brushstrokes which are not uniform throughout the work but rather are varied, creating a patterned effect. The artist was well aware of the expressive qualities assigned to the direction of lines by Charles Blanc and Humbert de Superville, whose theories were popularised by Blanc and well known to Van Gogh and other avant-garde artists in France in this period. De Superville had written, for example, that lines pointing in an upward direction relate to positive sentiments, while those with a downward orientation are associated with sorrow and unhappiness.6 Also pertinent to these notions, and known to Van Gogh through Signac, were the theories of Charles Henry.7

The Olive grove (fig. 1) consists of three main areas. At the bottom the emphasis is on horizontality; in the middle on verticality; and in the sky the brushstrokes move in a diagonal direction. The shape of the foliage in many of the trees ends in flame-like plumes pushing skyward. One tree, rising higher than the others, is distinguished by the double plumes at the top, which, like the wings of a bird, are accentuated against the sky. Considering the painting from the theoretical point of view outlined above we find a combination of directions here. This is consistent with Van Gogh's belief that a painting was able to convey both sorrow and consolation.

The light colours of the sky just above the trees suggest the breaking of dawn or falling of dusk, throwing the dark green band of foliage below into sharp relief. This in turn gives way to the brown, orange and sienna of the earth and tree trunks, interspersed with areas of blue in the shadows. Taking into account the likelihood of some fading having occurred,8 the overall effect remains decidedly sober in comparison to other works Van Gogh executed in Provence. Both in colour and brushwork he here demonstrates a marked restraint, which corresponds to a similar tone found in his writings concerning artistic production at this time.

Christ in the garden of olives

In the third week of November Van Gogh received copies - a drawing and a photograph respectively - of Gauguin's and Bernard's paintings of Christ in the garden of olives (figs. 2 and 3). Both works were idiosyncratic, non-naturalistic interpretations of the subject. Gauguin's work, of which he included a sketch for Van Gogh in a letter,9 was, in fact, a self-portrait.

As noted above, Van Gogh himself identified strongly with the figure of Christ. He had alluded to this earlier in the Still life with open Bible of 1885,10 and much more recently in a painting done in September 1889 after Delacroix's Pietà (fig. 4) in which the redheaded Christ could easily be taken for a self-portrait, and often has been.11 Furthermore, he had explicitly linked the artist's task in a more general sense to that of Christ in his correspondence from the previous year.12 In fact, in the summer of 1888, Bernard, Gauguin and Van Gogh had engaged in a mutually influential discussion concerning Christ, which, echoing current symbolist writings, conflated artistic and divine creativity.

One letter, written to Bernard from Arles at the end of June 1888, elucidates Van Gogh's christological interpretation of art and artistic production. In it Van Gogh expresses his approval of the fact that Bernard had turned to the Bible, and identified Rembrandt, Delacroix and Millet as the only artists to have painted the doctrine of Christ as Van Gogh himself had experienced it: ‘Christ alone [...] lived serenely, as a greater artist than all other artists, despising marble and clay as well as colour, working in living flesh. [...] [Christ's] spoken words [...] are one of the highest summits - the very highest summit - reached by art, which becomes a creative force there, a pure creative power’ [635/B8].13

Van Gogh was corresponding with Gauguin at this time as well, and in August 1888 Bernard joined the latter at Pont-Aven. The three were thus in close touch. This is reflected in Gauguin's religious references in his correspondence of August and September, which echo closely Van Gogh's construction of Christ as artist quoted above: ‘What an artist, this Jesus, who carved [a taillé] in humanity itself!’14

Van Gogh attempted to paint Christ in the garden of olives twice during this period but, significantly, destroyed both works. He was not comfortable with painting religious images from imagination, stating that a subject of such importance could not be done without a model.15

Van Gogh's two aborted ventures do not seem to have prepared him for his colleagues' representations of the subject. In November 1889 Gauguin's work (fig. 2), in which he represented the Christ-artist analogy literally, even going so far as to depict himself as Christ, offended Van Gogh deeply. Gauguin included a small scene of Judas's betrayal in the background. As Ziva Amishai-Maisels has demonstrated, this scene likely refers to the artist's feeling of betrayal by the art world, within which even the support of Theo van Gogh seemed to be growing increasingly uncertain.16

Bernard's painting (fig. 3), described by Van Gogh as ‘that nightmare of a Christ in the garden of olives’ [824/B21], was judged equally repugnant. Theo had seen the picture itself and described it to Van Gogh as ‘a purple Christ with red hair, with a yellow angel’ [821/T20]. In comparison to Gauguin's work, Bernard's figures are even less tied to observable reality, with their attenuated forms and the inclusion of an angel. The painting was not intended as a self-representation but, curiously, contains a portrait of Gauguin between the soldiers on the right. This depiction of Gauguin as Judas may symbolise Bernard's general feeling of mistrust towards his friend, and perhaps his resentment that Gauguin was obtaining more critical recognition than he himself. It is also possible, however, that Bernard here constructs Gauguin as a traitor not in relation to himself but in relation to Van Gogh, following their period together in Arles. In this case the redheaded Christ would function implicitly as a Christ-artist reference to Van Gogh.



illustratie
fig. 4
Vincent van Gogh, Pietà (after Delacroix) (F 630 JH 1775), 1889, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)


The allusion may have been prompted by Bernard having drawn his own conclusions concerning the ear-severing episode. Bernard, like Gauguin and Van Gogh, would most certainly have known of the traditional association of the ear with the biblical tale of the betrayal at Gethsemane. In the scriptural narrative one of Jesus' disciples, attempting to protect him from arrest after Judas's betrayal, cuts off the right ear of the high priest's servant - a mutilation reversed by Christ in a miraculous act of healing (Luke 22:50-52). None of this is referred to explicitly in the correspondence. However, the reading seems credible, and was one that in all likelihood occurred to Van Gogh when he viewed the work, adding to his dismay.

While the precise meaning these images held for Van Gogh may remain obscure, what is clear from the correspondence is that he rejected and was upset by these works,17 and that upon receiving copies of them he turned with renewed energy to his own olive groves. The primary objection to the pictures articulated in Van Gogh's letters was that they were not based on observation of the natural world. The magnitude of his response, however, suggests there was far more to his protest than this.

Van Gogh described Bernard's and Gauguin's pictures as dream-like or nightmarish, stating in a letter to Theo that they caused him an unpleasant feeling of collapse rather than progress: ‘[...] to shake that off, morning and evening [...] I have been knocking about in the orchards, and the result is five size 30 canvases, which along with the three studies of olives that you have, at least constitute an attack on the problem’ [825/615].

In a letter to Bernard concerning his Christ in the garden of olives and other biblical scenes, Van Gogh was direct and uncompromising in his criticism, and provided concrete suggestions for a more acceptable approach towards religious subject matter based on his own work. He wrote about two paintings - a view of the park surrounding the hospital (F 660 JH 1849) and a wheat field with rising sun (F 737 JH 1862): ‘one can try to give an impression of anguish without aiming straight at the historic Garden of Gethsemane; [...] it is not necessary to portray the characters of the Sermon on the Mount in order to produce a consoling and gentle motif’ [824/B21]. The second painting illustrates Van Gogh's tendency to use the sun to represent Christ.18 Consistent with this is the notion of consolation, which in Van Gogh's ideation was also related closely to Christ.19

Van Gogh turned to the olive grove in order to formulate a visual response to Gauguin's and Bernard's pic-

tures and to find relief from the disquiet they had caused in him. It was now imperative for him to distance himself from the approaches of these two men with whom such a short while before he had hoped to work closely. He considered the olive grove an appropriate subject for modern religious painting and turned to it with the story of Christ in mind. As was the case with Jesus in the biblical story of Gethsemane, the olive grove for Van Gogh was a means of coming to terms with his anguish and it held the possibility of consolation.

As the letters show, at this point in Van Gogh's career he was taking a much less ambitious approach in his art. This meant not painting things he could not see, and leaving the representation of sublime ideals to those capable of expressing them. This tendency was linked to the notion of humility, which was a recurring theme in Van Gogh's writings at this time. He states this clearly in the letter to Bernard cited above, in which he notes that although some modern artists have been able to capture biblical truths in their religious pictures, it is better to have less lofty aims.

Achieving a ‘humble’ manner is indeed one of the underlying goals of the olive grove series, one that is well represented by the work under discussion here, in which Van Gogh addresses the subject of Christ in the garden associatively - without resorting to non-naturalist means - and with stylistic restraint. The olive trees are at once solidly tied to the earth and connected to the heavens, with the glowing light in the sky combined with the wing-like projection and upward reaching shapes of the foliage subtly implying the transcendence and release of the soul from the earthly realm. The emphasis is on understatement and is entirely consistent with Van Gogh's christological conception of his position as an artist. He held a non-supernaturalist view of Christ as the humble servant and consoler of humankind, one who was of and not above the people, and one who suffered and was misunderstood during his lifetime. It was after this image that Van Gogh modelled himself as an artist. Consequently, he was unwilling to embrace a self-image that exalted him or emphasised his superiority, or a style that was not based on a sober rendering of that which he saw around him.

Religious anxiety and the Catholic south

The letter to Bernard marks a departure from what Van Gogh had written regarding biblical subject matter the preceding year. The circumstances surrounding the painting of the Pietà (fig. 4), done only a few months before Van Gogh received copies of Gauguin's and Bernard's works, are instructive in understanding his renewed and somewhat revised preoccupation with religious questions at this time.

The Pietà was executed early in September 1889 and in his correspondence from this period Van Gogh emphasises that religious associations were once again causing him anxiety. St-Paul-de-Mausole, originally an Augustinian monastery, remained a Catholic institution administered by nuns.20 In a letter to Theo, Van Gogh wrote that his attacks threatened to assume ‘an absurd religious turn,’ which he related to having lived in a monastery setting for too long - first in the hospital in Arles (which had also originally been a monastery) and then in St-Rémy, concluding that a return to the North was desirable, if not necessary [802/605].

Van Gogh also wrote, however, that despite the distress caused by his surroundings, religious thought could sometimes bring him great comfort. He told Theo of how, during his last illness, his lithograph of Delacroix's Pietà had fallen into his oil and paint, and been damaged. Saddened by this, he had undertaken to make a copy of the work. He did not comment on the physical resemblance between himself and the figure of Christ, but no doubt saw it as an indirect means of expressing his identification with Jesus and his sufferings. The fact that this was a copy - what Van Gogh sometimes referred to as a ‘translation’ - of another artist's (religious) work and not his own original conception seems to have made both the subject matter and the implied self-representation more acceptable.

Van Gogh reiterated his uneasiness with his religious surroundings in another letter, writing to Theo that his desire to leave the south was caused by the ‘confused

and horrible religious thoughts’ that arose in him there: ‘I am surprised that I, with the modern ideas I have, I, who am such an ardent admirer of Zola and De Goncourt [...], have attacks such as a superstitious person and that confused and horrible religious thoughts arise in me which I never have had in the north’ [806/607].21

Van Gogh may very well have related the non-realist styles of Gauguin and Bernard - both of whom had been brought up as devout Catholics22 - with Catholicism, although he would have recognised that their works were in no way typical of traditional religious images. His rejection of ‘superstition’ and reiteration of his admiration for Zola and the Goncourts arise from the same naturalist attitude that led him to express fury with Gauguin's and Bernard's representations of Christ in the garden of olives, which ‘contain nothing that has been observed’ [825/615]. In both cases, he reaffirms his commitment to the non-supernaturalist approach to interpretations of Christ that he had adopted years earlier. This approach had a firm basis in the ideas of the Groningen School of Calvinism within which he had been brought up, and even more strikingly, as I have discussed elsewhere,23 in the Modern School, which had affected him strongly during his period of theological studies in Amsterdam with his uncle, J.S. Stricker.

Gauguin and early legend-making surrounding Van Gogh

As suggested at the outset, Van Gogh was unhappy with how his image as an artist was beginning to be defined. He was uncomfortable with the fact that his persona was assuming a religious and, more specifically, christological dimension. In Gauguin's and Bernard's paintings, Van Gogh found himself confronted with a literal conflation of an artistic and religious figure. Although the reference is not openly about Van Gogh, he likely felt - and as has been seen, not without reason - that he was implicated in this tendency in their art. Viewing these works, Van Gogh may have thought he had been misunderstood, taken too literally in his earlier utterances concerning the Christ-artist analogy.

Gauguin appears to have been the first to construct Van Gogh in openly christological terms. He identified both himself - as clearly articulated in his self-portraiture - and Van Gogh with the figure of Christ.24 That he constructed Van Gogh christologically and, perhaps more importantly, as someone who himself identified with Christ, is evident in his narrative describing the now-legendary period the two artists spent together in Arles at the end of 1888. Equally apparent is that Gauguin conflated an image of elevated religiosity with one of insanity.

Stressing Van Gogh's religious fervour and Christ-like dedication, Gauguin relates how, long before their time together in Arles, his friend had ministered selflessly and Christ-like to the poor miners in the Belgian Borinage. Gauguin describes an occasion on which Van Gogh had taken in a victim of a pit-gas fire, declared by the doctor to be a hopeless case: ‘But Vincent believed in miracles, in maternity. [...] He spoke the words of a consoling priest (decidedly he was mad). This work of a madman succeeded in reviving a Christian from the dead.’25 Once the miraculous healing had taken place, Gauguin continues, Van Gogh had seen a vision of the martyred Christ on the miner's forehead. Gauguin then links this verbal description of the artist to a painting he - Gauguin - had been working on in Arles, Vincent van Gogh painting sunflowers, now in the Van Gogh Museum.26

Gauguin writes that while the two men were painting together, Van Gogh himself alluded to his mental stability (or lack thereof) on the one hand, and religious fervour and identification with the Holy Spirit on the other: ‘He [Van Gogh] would trace with his brush the purest yellow on the wall, which was suddenly violet: I am sound in spirit / I am the Holy Spirit.’27

Gauguin's accounts are not necessarily reliable. What does seem clear, however, is that in addition to the christological constructions of the artist and of artistic production noted earlier, Van Gogh must also have discussed with Gauguin his personal ideas concerning religious vocation and his ongoing dedication to seeing Christ as his own model.

That the figure of Christ held a special place in his relationship with Gauguin is indicated by the ear-severing incident of December 1888, which, as pointed out, has christological overtones. Furthermore, a small drawing of



illustratie
fig. 5
Vincent van Gogh, sketch in letter 743/GAC VG/PG, c. 22 January 1889, Arles, Museé Réattu


the symbol of Christ - a fish with the word Ictus [sic] within it - appears at the end of a letter he wrote to Gauguin in January 1889 [743/GAC VG/PG] (fig. 5). Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov has suggested that Gauguin, in relating the stories of the injured miner and mutilated ear, attributed to Van Gogh the same kind of overt identification with Christ that is evident in Gauguin's own works.28

With the possible exception of the Pietà, however, which was likely never intended to be viewed publicly and was in any case a generalised rather than explicit, recognisable self-portrait, Van Gogh never went so far as to represent himself as Christ. In the tradition of imitatio Christi, he identified closely with him, but he did not see himself as Christ. For Van Gogh this difference was essential. Undoubtedly, Gauguin's suggestion to the contrary - that Van Gogh in his madness viewed himself as ‘the Holy Spirit’ - would have disturbed him deeply. Identifying with and modelling one's life after Christ was one thing, explicitly deifying oneself was quite another. The former was consistent with the Dutch religious ideation Van Gogh had developed in his formative years,29 while the latter reflected symbolist writings such as those of Charles Morice, which set forth the notion of the artist as an ‘emanation of God.’30

It is not known if Gauguin's narrative ever got back to Van Gogh, but it seems likely that in some form it did. It was not published until 1894,31 but Gauguin, upon arriving back in Paris at the end of 1888, told the story to Bernard, who in turn related it to Albert Aurier in a letter of 1 January 1889.32 Gauguin undoubtedly also recounted it to Theo, with whom he had travelled from Arles back to Paris on 25 December, and to whom he eight days later gave Vincent van Gogh painting sunflowers as a present.33 Gauguin's tale, then, had taken on a life of its own by the beginning of 1889, and is arguably the starting point of the legend that was beginning to form around the person and art of Van Gogh.

At just this time, Theo, too, began to associate his brother with images of religious martyrdom. In a letter to his fiancée Jo Bonger, written early in February 1889, he compared Vincent's ‘tormented expression’ with Rodin's head of John the Baptist, then on display at his gallery on the Boulevard Montmartre. In this letter, Theo brought together ideas of religious martyrdom, modern artistic production and social reform; he attributed his brother's anguish to his artistic struggle to address the social problems he saw around him.34 This was to become another focal aspect of the Van Gogh legend beginning to take shape. The letter, admittedly, was private in nature. But private utterances concerning Van Gogh were also entering the public domain. As both Vincent's brother and art dealer, Theo was in a position to communicate these ideas to the growing number of people becoming interested in Van Gogh's art and persona.35 There seems little doubt that he did just that, in his professional capacity as well as in his more private musings.

Vincent van Gogh, however, repudiated this connection between his own sufferings and religious martyrdom. In a letter to his sister Wil, written in April 1889, he clearly stated that he rejected the life of a martyr and that he had never striven to be a hero - something he admired in others, but did not perceive as either his duty or his ideal. It is significant that the very next sentence deals with Ernst Renan, whose non-supernaturalist and contentious Vie de Jésus Van Gogh knew and admired. He praised the religious theorist for having written in a French that was understandable to all. Of relevance here is that Van Gogh also refers to the olive grove in this passage, stating that it, along with other ‘characteristic plants’ and the blue sky of the south, often made him reflect on Renan's writings [768/W11].

By the autumn of 1889 Van Gogh was feeling discouraged that his works were not even bringing in enough money to pay for painting costs, and he was becoming increasingly

aware of the growing posthumous success on the art market of artists like Millet. He felt society was often to blame for the living artist's difficulties. This bleak outlook was likely compounded by the fact that he felt a sense of inevitability when it came to his mental instability and illness. He was well aware of the archetypal image of the melancholic or indeed mad artist, and had written how sad it was that the lives of many painters - ‘Troyon, Marchal, Méryon, Jundt, M. Maris, Monticelli, and numerous others’ - had ended in madness [778/592]. Ironically, it was at this point that he began gaining recognition, and that he became cognizant of the first significant critical references to himself and his art. Critical attention, however, caused Van Gogh anxiety of a new kind.

Critical reception

At the end of October Van Gogh received an article that had been published on 17 August 1889 in De Portefeuille. In it, the Dutch painter and critic J.J. Isaäcson referred to him as an artist who provided an answer to all that was wanting in modern art. In a note Isaäcson added that he hoped in the future to say more about ‘this remarkable hero,’36 an intention that Van Gogh himself saw to was never realised.

The article accompanied a letter from Theo, written on 22 October, which further underlined the fact that Van Gogh's works were beginning to gain exposure - albeit still largely in the select circles of Theo's friends and acquaintances. Theo wrote that the Dutch artists Isaac Israëls and Jan Veth, the latter also a critic for De Nieuwe Gids, and the Belgian artist and member of Les XX, Théodore van Rijsselberghe, had viewed Van Gogh's pictures [815/T19]. The following month, Van Gogh, who in September had already had two of his paintings exhibited in Paris at the Société des Artistes Indépendants, received an official invitation from Octave Maus to exhibit with Les XX in Brussels.37

The extent of the confusion triggered by Isaäcson's attention in particular became apparent in mid-November when, having received a letter from the critic, Van Gogh wrote to Theo: ‘Isaäcson's letter gave me much pleasure; enclosed my reply, which you must read - my thoughts begin to link up a little more calmly, but as you will see from it, I do not know if I must continue to paint or let painting alone’ [822/614]. Van Gogh was unable, or unwilling, to accept the prominent leadership position in modern art that Isaäcson was suggesting for him. In fact he was uncomfortable with the notion of success in general, even though, as we have seen, he was extremely concerned about his financial position and ostensibly rejected the life of a martyr. Thus, while he desired success on the one hand he also feared it. He articulated this anxiety to his mother half a year later, writing that success was about the worst thing that could happen in a painter's life [865/629a].38 This attitude no doubt had its basis both in Van Gogh's knowledge of the vicissitudes of the art market and his christological approach to his role as an artist. In neither case did recognition within one's lifetime conform to the ideal model.

Carol Zemel, whose 1977 study of the first four decades of Van Gogh criticism remains the most comprehensive work on the subject, correctly identifies Van Gogh's uneasiness with Isaäcson's critical attention. According to Zemel, his response in general was ‘a mixture of gratitude,

humility, anxiety and argument’; his ‘repudiation of Isaäcson's praise’ was a ‘telling summary of his aesthetic ideals and personal fears.’39 Pursuing this further, it may be added that Van Gogh's ‘aesthetic ideals and personal fears’ were largely founded on his religious ideation, in which the rejection of pride and of lust for material wealth and earthly glory played an important role.

Far from having lost interest in religious questions during this period, Van Gogh was very much concerned with and troubled by these issues. He had earlier turned his back on the institution of religion in general, including his own Calvinist upbringing. This is not to say, however, that he had lost his interest in the fundamental religious questions that had first arisen in an earlier, Protestant context. Nor, contrary to what might be expected, was the Reformed Church entirely absent in his life while he was living in the south of France.

Interventions from a Protestant minister

One aspect of Van Gogh's life in Arles and St-Rémy that seems to have gone largely unnoticed is the position held in it by Frédéric Salles (fig. 6). Salles (1841-1897) was the minister of the Reformed Church in Arles between 1874 and 1897.40 His involvement with Van Gogh and his family was extensive. He visited Van Gogh when he was in the hospital in Arles in February 1889. He saw to it that his needs were being met and he mediated on Van Gogh's behalf in order to prevent a long-term legal confinement.41 Between February and May, Salles kept in touch with Theo, reporting on Vincent's health, and it was to Salles he entrusted legal power to act on the family's account should it be necessary.42 When Van Gogh was able to leave the hospital in Arles, Salles assisted him in looking for accommodation and, when the idea of living alone proved too much, he found and accompanied him to the asylum of St-Paul-de-Mausole. Furthermore, when Van Gogh took a two-day excursion from St-Rémy to Arles in November 1889 the clergyman was one of the few people he saw. His contact with Salles at this very difficult period in his life, then, was extensive, particularly considering the degree of his social isolation.

Van Gogh's letters tell us little about his relationship with Salles. This was likely because he did not want to draw attention to the trouble he was causing his brother, Salles and others at this time - a concern both the preacher and Van Gogh address in their correspondence with Theo.43 In April 1889, for example, Salles wrote: ‘You would hardly believe how much your brother is preoccupied and worried by the thought that he is causing you inconvenience.’44 A few days later Van Gogh expressed the same worry directly to his brother, telling him he was sorry to have caused Salles, Rey (his doctor in Arles) and Theo so much difficulty [763/628].

Although Van Gogh's references to Salles were generally brief they were also numerous - appearing in no less than 18 letters written in the 12-month period between February 1889 and February 1890.45 Whether the two discussed their mutual interest in religious matters or the figure of Christ in particular remains unknown. Most of the references pertain to practical matters, but they make it clear that Van Gogh trusted, respected and admired Salles, turning to him as a personal confidante and advisor.

Van Gogh was grateful and keen to express his gratitude. In one letter, written in March 1889 [757/582], he told his brother that he had given Salles Germinie Lacerteux, a book whose protagonist he compared to the Mater Dolorosa in Delacroix's Pietà [805/W14]. Several months later he suggested to Theo that a print of Rembrandt's Christ at Emmaus would make an appropriate gift to thank Salles for all his efforts. Finally, in January 1890, Van Gogh, overcome by the clergyman's thoughtfulness after Salles had paid him a surprise visit in St-Rémy, sent him a small painting of his own: pink and red geraniums ‘on a completely black background’ [838/622].46

What emerges from a close reading of the relevant correspondence between the three men, then, is that Salles provided Van Gogh with something like what the painter himself would have referred to as consolation, a concept closely linked in his writings with assistance, comfort and companionship. As noted earlier, Van Gogh's notion of consolation was also closely intertwined with the image of Christ. Indeed, Rembrandt's Christ at Emmaus, like Ary Scheffer's Christus Consolator (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum), embodied his christological understanding of the term.47 It would have been an appropriate gift for Salles for this very reason. What also emerges is that Van Gogh felt only gratitude towards Salles. There is no longer even a hint of the animosity he had earlier expressed toward representatives of the Protestant Reformed Church or, for that matter, towards organised religion in general. This may be seen in the con-

text of Van Gogh's dependency on Salles and his brother, which would have made any overt criticism of the former's interventions on his behalf seem ungrateful. Still, taken as a whole, it is not simply the absence of negative sentiment but the presence of warmth that suggests that Salles was a welcome person in Van Gogh's life.

Most important with regard to Van Gogh's manner of representing christological ideas in his paintings is the simple fact that here, late in his life and at a time when his Catholic surroundings were causing him anxiety, a Protestant clergyman played a decisive role. The belief system of his upbringing was thus neither forgotten nor entirely absent from his life at this point in time, and it informed his imagery with renewed vigour. Salles's presence in Van Gogh's life cannot be said to have led to this tendency, but neither can it be denied that it likely helped reinforce it.

Conclusion

In the autumn of 1889 Van Gogh conceived of his work as an artist in terms that derived from his religious background. In his eyes, the artist's Christ-like mission was to serve humankind. Art should offer spiritual consolation and hope in a guise understandable and relevant to the modern viewer. This meant choosing subjects with a firm basis in visible reality, which, at the same time, also suggested a meaning beyond themselves. The olive orchard, as seen in the painting Olive grove (fig. 1), through its very tangible presence in the St-Rémy area and its evocation of the age-old cycles of rural labour on the one hand, and the biblical theme of Gethsemane on the other, was just such a subject. It allowed Van Gogh to offer an alternative to Gauguin's and Bernard's paintings while maintaining his own christological

illustratie
fig. 6
Photograph of Frédéric Salles, n.d., Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum


role as a painter of modern religious themes. Moreover, it did so in a way that neither offended his non-supernaturalist religious sensibilities, nor his related desire for humility and self-effacement. Self-effacement, however, was not compatible with the glorification of the artist, so much part of artistic discourse at this time and an essential component of successful art marketing. And from this arose one of Van Gogh's chief and, ultimately, unresolved dilemmas.

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