Relationships Between Artists
Recently I found a book in the gift store of the Seattle Art Museum that just called out to me and I HAD to buy it.
It’s not a large book but the hot pink cover and the title intrigued me. The title is Artists’ Letters, Leonardo da Vinci to David Hockney, by Michael Bird.
Image of the cover of the book “Artists’ Letters”
The back cover describes the book as "a treasure trove of carefully selected musings and missives written by great artists. Arranged thematically, it includes notes and messages on love, work, daily life, money, travel, and the creative process. The letters themselves are reproduced alongside transcripts with engaging background information offering context and insight.”
Now who wouldn’t want to sit down immediately and read this book cover to cover? I certainly did!
Not only does it give you a photo of the actual letter written in the artist's actual handwriting but some have small drawings on the letters themselves. Simply gorgeous.
AND you get to read the short backstory of the artist's relationship with the person they’re sending the letter to.
I’ve always been fascinated by learning bits of stories of artists' lives and I thought you may be, too. So what I’m going to share with you today is one page of this book. This is a letter from Vincent Van Gogh to Paul Gauguin written October 17, 1888.
FIRST, here’s the brief explanation of the backstory:
“Enthralled by the Japanese woodblock prints he’d seen in Paris but unable to afford the fare to Japan, Van Gogh set off for the south of France in February 1888, hoping to find a Japanese-style landscape closer to home. He rented the ‘Yellow House’ in Arles and encouraged Paul Gauguin…to join him. Van Gogh believed that a painter could orchestrate colour to evoke very specific emotions – in the case of The Bedroom (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam), a feeling of ‘utter repose.’ When Gauguin did arrive, however, life in the Yellow House was anything but peaceful. After an optimistic start, relations between the two artists broke down. One particularly bitter dispute resulted in the mutilation of Van Gogh’s ear.” From Artists’ Letters, Leonardo da Vinci to David Hockney, by Michael Bird.
"I believe that once here, like me,
you’ll be seized
with a fury to paint the autumn effects..."
Page from the book “Artists’ Letters”
“My dear Gauguin,
“Thanks for your letter, and thanks most of all for your promise to come as early as the twentieth…
“I still have in my memory the feelings that the journey from Paris to Arles gave me this past winter. How I watched out to see ‘if it was like Japan yet’! Childish, isn’t it? Look here, I wrote to you the other day that my vision was strangely tired. Well, I rested for two and a half days, and then I got back to work. But not yet daring to go outside, I did, for my decoration once again, a no. 30 canvas of my bedroom with the whitewood furniture that you know. Ah, well, it amused me enormously doing this bare interior. With a simplicity à la Seurat. In flat tints, but coarsely brushed in full impasto, the walls pale lilac, the floor in a broken and feded red, the chairs and the bed chrome yellow, the pillows and the sheet very pale lemon green, the bedspread blood red, the dressing table orange, the washbasin blue, the window green. I had wished to express utter repose with all these very different tones, you see, among which the only white is the little note given by the mirror with a black frame (to cram in the fourth pair of complementaries as well)…
“You won’t find the house as comfortable yet as we’ll gradually try to make it. There are so many expenses, and it can’t be done in one go. Anyway, I believe that once here, like me, you’ll be seized with a fury to paint the autumn effects, in between spells of the mistral. And that you will understand that I’ve insisted that you come now that there are some very beautiful days. Au revoir, then.
“Ever yours, Vincent.”
Self portrait of Vincent Van Gogh
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little bit of history and perhaps a glimpse into the relationship between these two famous artists.
