‘For he makes life difficult not only for others but also himself.’ ‘It’s a pity Vincent is his own worst enemy,’ wrote Theo. There were so many transformative adventures for Vincent, but he was always dependent on his brother Theo for money. And then, of course, he went to impressionist Paris and discovered colour for the first time and subsequently travelled south to Arles, and discovered light for the first time. He taught in England for a while in Ramsgate and Isleworth they were not schools that would pass any Oftsed inspections, and there’s something both tragic and hilarious about his earnest accounts of these times. He always signed his pictures ‘Vincent’ – there was never the family name ‘Van Gogh’. I suspect this change in identity was also about leaving behind his cold formal upbringing in a pastor’s home where he never felt worthy. Can you imagine? But this trait was lost, never to return, when he went to work among the poor of the Borinage, a mining district in Belgium. When working for Goupil, the art dealers, in his early twenties, he was a businessman with a top hat and a shining example of Dutch cleanliness. He definitely ‘dressed down’, going for the peasant image. He was vehement in speech, interminable in explaining and developing his ideas, but not very ready to argue.’Īnother painter, AS Hartrick, recalls him ‘glancing back over his shoulder, and hissing through his teeth’ while ‘pouring out sentences in Dutch, French and English.’ The painter Émile Bernard described his ‘lively gestures, perky step and with his everlasting pipe, canvas, engraving or sketch. He could paint a wheatfield and a sunflower but was not easy socially. I think we can be sure I spent longer on the assignment than she did and have continued with it, in one way or another, for the next however many years. I first became fascinated by the man when my daughter had to do a school project on him. Starry, starry night: A spiritual walk with Vincent Van Gogh I’m leading a retreat on his life in the summer, and if you’d like details you can find them here:
Greetings again as I prepare to draw back the curtain and let the life of Vincent van Gogh flood in.
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