This article is taken from Figaro Hors-série Van Gogh, la Symphonie de l’Adieu, a special issue published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay Van Gogh, Les Derniers Jours, which retraces the life and work of the artist, from his Dutch youth to his tragic end in Auvers sur Oise.
Theo paces back and forth in the Salon Carré of the Louvre. On February 28, 1886, he received a letter from Vincent who arranged to meet him here, around noon, among the Vinci, Titian, Raphael, Rembrandt, and Velázquez. Suddenly, he smiles: here is Vincent, head tilted, back hunched. A hat pulled over his short-cut red hair hides a forehead marred with wrinkles. His appearance is awkward, unsightly. And yet, yes, he seems in good health. He too smiles. The two brothers have just found each other. Vincent arrives from Antwerp where he discovered Rubens and color, Japanese crepons, light, movement. After a short stint at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts, he abruptly decided that it was in Paris that he should perfect his art. Paris became the center of the avant-garde when a handful of artists, the Impressionists, exhibited their first paintings in 1874. Never since the Renaissance has the history of art experienced such a revolution. But in art, there are also fashions. New ideas are first adopted by a small group of precursors, then spread to finally become the ready-to-think, the dominant current, the place of commonplaces. When Van Gogh arrived in Paris with his most significant work, The Potato Eaters, Impressionism was called into question by a new wave in which a young painter, Georges Seurat, established himself. This year, 1886, he exhibited his divisionist masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte, at the eighth and final impressionist exhibition.
Vincent returns to school again. He entered the Cormon workshop, an academic painter, specialist in biblical and prehistoric subjects. Vincent meets Emile Bernard, from Toulouse-Lautrec. But after three months, he gave up following Cormon’s teaching. Freedom is his. Without a map or compass, the Parisian universe moves under his feet. He likes Montmartre. He paints its rising, winding streets, its taverns, its mills and its still bucolic landscape. He studies Delacroix and Monticelli, Japanese artists. He became friends with a dealer in colors for artists and a painting dealer in his spare time, an anarchist, Father Tanguy, of whom he painted several portraits. At home, he met the painter Louis Anquetin. Emile Bernard also introduced him to Gauguin, Guillaumin, and Pissarro, the one who first detected Cézanne’s talent. Van Gogh asks him for advice. And for long hours, Pissarro, who is fifty-six years old, speaks, explains. Nothing educational about Pissarro. This is not a guide. It forces young artists to capture stray images in their shock zones. He pushes everyone in their own way. Not towards his. For Vincent, it’s a revelation. His painting becomes brighter. Color begins to triumph on his canvases. Brush in hand, on the banks of the Seine, he indulges in new pictorial experiences, trying the pointillism of Seurat and Signac. He runs through the suburbs, wanting to beat the falling night. In the evening, he haunts a cabaret, Le Tambourin, run by Agostina Segatori, a former model. In love, Vincent paints her portrait and gives her still lifes of flowers rather than real bouquets, as a sign of his admiration. When he cannot find a model, Vincent questions his own face. He painted more than twenty self-portraits. For two years, until February 1888, Vincent, under impressionist and pointillist influence, produced an enormous body of work: more than two hundred canvases, including nearly fifty bouquets of flowers, around fifty views of Montmartre or the suburbs, four twenty-five still lifes and Japanese studies. Paris has exhausted its charm. Vincent dreams of sunshine, of going to Japan, that is to say, to the South. He dreams of Arles and Arlésiennes that Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas praised to him. Before leaving again, Vincent accompanies Theo to Seurat. For the first time. And for the last time.
“Van Gogh, the Farewell Symphony”, 164 pages, €13.90, available on newsstands and on the Figaro Store.
