Van Gogh used to literally describe his paintings in detail, abusing the adjectives of the colors, both before painting them and after they were finished.
In a letter to Émile Bernard, sent from Arles on April 19, 1888, Vincent van Gogh wrote “There are many people, especially among our fellow painters, who imagine that words are worthless. Quite the opposite, isn't it? It is as interesting and as difficult to say something well as to paint it. There is the art of lines and colors, but the art of words also exists and will remain. "
Vincent, this man of passions who, according to his own words, was capable of and given to doing more or less senseless things, had received some sonnets from Bernard. After several remarks, with his usual, natural and characteristic frankness, he added, “But, in short, they are not yet as good as your painting. Never mind. That will come and you must certainly continue with the sonnets.”
Van Gogh used to describe his paintings in detail, using adjectives to describe the colors, both before painting them and after they were finished. In a letter from Arles to his brother Theo dated October 16, 1888, he wrote:
“My eyes are still tired, but I finally got a new idea in my head and here is the sketch. Always 30 screen [72 by 90 cm]. This time it is simply my room, only the color should do the trick here and, by giving, through its simplification, a grand style to things, it should be suggestive resting ou of sleep in general. In short, the vision of the painting must rest the head, or rather the imagination. The walls are pale violet. The floor – red tiles. The wood of the bed and chairs are a fresh butter yellow. The sheet and pillows are very light lemon green. The scarlet red blanket. The green window. The orange dressing table, the blue water basin. The lilac doors. And that is all – nothing in this room with closed shutters. The structure of the furniture must now still express an unshakable rest. Pictures on the wall and a mirror and a hand towel and some clothes. The frame – since there is no white in the painting – will be white. This is to avenge myself for the forced rest I was forced to take. I will work on it all day tomorrow, but you see how simple the design is. Shadows and cast shadows are suppressed, it is colored in flat and simple tones like crepe. This will contrast with, for example, the Tarascon stagecoach and the night café. I will not write to you much longer [sic], because tomorrow I will start very early, in the fresh morning light, to finish my canvas.”
The next day, October 17, 1888, after painting the picture, Vincent wrote to Paul Gauguin:
"… I also made for my decoration a 30-inch canvas of my room with the white wooden furniture you know… In flat tones, but roughly brushed in full paste, the walls pale lilac, the floor a broken and faded red, the chairs and bed chrome yellow, the pillows and the sheet very pale lemon green, the blood red blanket, the orange dressing table, the blue water basin, the green window. I wanted to express a absolute rest through all these very diverse shades that you see, and where there is no white except the little note given by the black-framed mirror…”
Vincent, who had an exasperated need to express his ideas and feelings in words and wrote more than two thousand long letters (820 have been found), was also an indefatigable reader. On 22–24 June 1880, in a letter from Belgium to Theo, he wrote:
“…I have a more or less irresistible passion for books and I need to educate myself continually, to study if you will, just as I need to eat my bread… I have studied more or less seriously the books within my reach, such as Bible and French Revolution by Michelet and, last winter, Shakespeare and a bit of Victor Hugo and Dickens and Breecher Stowe and lately Aeschylus and many other less classical ones, several great little masters… the love of books is as sacred as Rembrandt, and I even think that the two complement each other… My God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who is as mysterious as he? His words and his way of speaking are like a brush quivering with fever and emotion. But one must learn to read, as one must learn to see and learn to live.”
Note: In addition to the 1888 original, the sketch and the drawing, there are two more paintings of the Room in Arles painted by van Gogh in 1889, the “repetition” and the “reduction” (56,5 by 74 cm).
*Samuel Kilsztajn is a full professor of political economy at PUC-SP. Author, among other books, of Departure c'est garder son équilibre [https://amzn.to/48lv9G9]
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