In Our Time - Vincent van Gogh

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Dutch artist famous for starry nights and sunflowers, self portraits and simple chairs. These are images known the world over, and Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) painted them and around 900 others in the last decade of his short, brilliant life and, famously, in that lifetime he made only one recorded sale. Yet within a few decades after his death these extraordinary works, with all their colour and life, became the most desirable of all modern art, propelled in part by the story of Vincent van Gogh's struggle with mental health.With Christopher Riopelle The Neil Westreich Curator of Post 1800 Paintings at the National GalleryMartin Bailey A leading Van Gogh specialist and correspondent for The Art NewspaperAnd Frances Fowle Professor of Nineteenth Century Art at the University of Edinburgh and Senior Curator at National Galleries ScotlandProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list: Martin Bailey, Living with Vincent Van Gogh: The Homes and Landscapes that shared the Artist (White Lion Publishing, 2019)Martin Bailey, Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln, 2021)Martin Bailey, Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln, 2021)Nienke Bakker and Ella Hendriks, Van Gogh and the Sunflowers: A Masterpiece Examined (Van Gogh Museum, 2019)Nienke Bakker, Emmanuel Coquery, Teio Meedendorp and Louis van Tilborgh (eds), Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise: His Final Months (Thames & Hudson, 2023)Frances Fowle, Van Gogh's Twin: The Scottish Art Dealer Alexander Reid, 1854-1928 (National Galleries of Scotland, 2010) Bregje Gerritse, The Potato Eaters: Van Gogh’s First Masterpiece (Van Gogh Museum, 2021)Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Van Gogh: The Life (Random House, 2012)Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker (eds), Vincent van Gogh: The Letters: The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition (Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2009)Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker (eds), Vincent van Gogh, A Life in Letters (Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2020)Hans Luitjen, Jo van Gogh Bonger: The Woman who Made Vincent Famous Bloomsbury, 2022Louis van Tilborgh, Martin Bailey, Karen Serres (ed.), Van Gogh Self-Portraits (Courtauld Institute, 2022)Ingo F. Walther and Rainer Metzger, Van Gogh. The Complete Paintings (Taschen, 2022)

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. This is in our time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this edition, you can find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoyed the programme. Hello, starry nights and sunflowers,

self-portraits and simple chairs. These are images known the world over, and Vincent Van Gogh painted them and around 900 others in the last decade of his short, brilliant life. And famously, by the time he'd killed himself when he was only 37, he sold only one. Yet within a few decades after his death, these extraordinary works with all their colour and life

became the most desirable of all modern art, propelled in part by the story of his artist's struggle with mental health. With me to discuss Vincent Van Gogh, 1853 to 1890, a Christopher Riopel, the Neil Westwright curator of post-1800 paintings at the National Gallery, Martin Bailey, a leading Van Gogh specialist and correspondent for the art newspaper, and Francis Fowell, Professor of 19th century art at the University of Edinburgh and Senior Curator at the National Galleries of Scotland. Francis, what do we know about the early life of Vincent Van Gogh?

Well, we know a certain amount. Most of the knowledge we have of Van Gogh is through the letters. And unfortunately, there are obviously there's not much correspondence from that early period. It's secondary information. So, for example, Yovan Gog Bongo, who was Theo Van Gog's widow, tells us that he was quite a difficult child. And one can assume from that that some of the kind of patterns which emerge in later life were formed in that earlier period. He had a very happy, very secure childhood, and he was living in the south of Holland with his father and mother. His father was a parson.

and he had a post in the Dutch Reform Church, who was a Protestant minister, and they were brought up in this area which was actually predominantly Catholic. And allegedly, Van Gogh's mother, Anna, was quite a, she was actually quite a snobbish woman, I think. She came from an upper-middle class background in the Hague, and she was concerned that her children should be brought up as proper Protestants

and not mixed too much with the kind of local ruffians, the local ruffians in the village. they were a very close family they wrote to each other when he was older particularly with Theo who was his brother the older of the two brothers

that he had he had actually there were six of them in the family he had three sisters two brothers and he actually had another brother who was born exactly a year before him to the very day who was also called Vincent

not something which was uncommon in those days it was quite usual for you to be named after a dead sibling was he attracted to the of being any sort of artist from an early age? He was introduced to drawing by his parents. He was given drawing lessons as well with children. And actually we have, there's an early drawing from about 1864 when he was 11,

which shows him really being, it's quite a competent drawing, in fact, of farmhouse and barn. And then when he went to school, he was actually sent away to school to boarding school. And the second school he went to, he was given drawing lessons there. so he would actually have learned a certain amount, but he doesn't write about this at all at any point. How did it become an art dealer, and how do that help him?

So at the age of 16, after he left school, he left school at the age of 15, and their parents were kind of wondering what to do with him. Why were they wondering if he was a bright chap? Well, he was a bright chap, but he was also quite a difficult individual and found it difficult to kind of stick to anything. So he had three uncles who were art dealers,

and one in particular, Uncle Vincent, Uncle Sent. He had set up the Hague Brum, of the Guppiel Gallery, which was a prestigious art dealers based in Paris, which had branches in Brussels and in America and in London. And so at the age of 16, he was sent to the Hague and taken under the wing of the manager there, who was a man called Tershtig, and had quite a happy time. It was a really important period for him

because he was exposed to the art of the Hague School, who were a group of artists who were interested in painting in a very realistic way. and his uncle had a collection of these modern artists. And after about four years, he was moved to the London office, and he sent a list of the artists that he most admired to Theo. And among them, you see not only these Hague school artists, these people like Anton Mavre, who was his cousin, the Maris brothers, but also the Barbazons School, who were the precursors of Impressionism.

So artists like Jean-François-Mille, the painter of the Soa and the Angelouz, who would have a huge impact on him later. on. Martin Bailey, he turned or returned to religion. What marks that episode in his life? Well, his attitude to religion is actually fascinating and slightly surprising, if you like. He was brought up in this rather conventional Protestant society, and as Francis said, his father was the pastor. So he had that sort of religious upbringing. He then came to England, and he was eventually sacked as an art dealer

and he then went into a period of deep depression. And at that point he was taking a job as a teaching assistant in Isleworth in West London and he suddenly became, well I would say obsessed with religion and he wrote long letters to his family and his brother in particular with long quotations from the Bible. And he became very evangelical, extremely. so. That continued for several years after you returned. Several years? Yes, indeed. And when he was in Holland, he then made the decision he wanted

to become a missionary in the Belgium coal mining area of the Borinage, which was a poverty-stricken area. And he eventually spent two years there trying to preach to the miners. The problem was the miners didn't really want to hear what he said. They were really just engaged in the day-to-day struggle of living. He wasn't a very good communicator, and eventually he realized that he wasn't succeeding. So he left Belgium, he left the Borenage, and at that point he suddenly, really, abandoned religion.

And from then onwards, he had a fairly secular attitude towards life. I mean, I think he was a spiritual person, but he began to detest organized religion. So what age were we talking about now when he leaves that? It was when he was in his mid-20s that he abandoned religion, organized religion. We're taking a bit of a jump, but it was then, only then, that he began to learn to paint. Is that true? Yes, he began by drawing rather than painting.

But it was when he abandoned his job as a missionary, he wanted to do something else. And it may come as a surprise, but he suddenly decided he wanted to be an artist. and he began by drawing. He didn't have any organised training at that point. He tried two or three times and got flopped every time, didn't he? He did. He started drawing by himself. He then ended up going to the Art Academy in Brussels,

stayed probably just a few weeks. And I think he came bottom of the class probably, and at that point he abandoned it. Yes, and he went to one or two others. But he taught himself, can you tell us of the early process of him determined to keep on and how he taught himself?

Yes, he taught himself essentially from manuals, and he would copy drawings in drawing manuals. So he did it himself. He was very determined, without that he wouldn't have succeeded. But of course, it was a rather lonely way of learning how to draw. How was he making a living? He wasn't making a living. He was actually surviving.

Well, when he was a missionary, he was surviving on almost nothing, and he was really in abject poverty. As soon as he started becoming an artist, his brother Teo, his younger brother, grandly supported him financially, and that actually continued until the end of his life. And without that support, Vincent could never have been an artist. Can you go into Closur about how he learned to paint? It's fascinating. There he is, 27. He's done this, that and the other. He decides he will be a painter. He will be an artist.

Yes. And then what? Well, he decided to be an artist. and initially he drew and it was only a year or two later when he was in the Hague that he started to use oil paint and it was Anton Move who Francis mentioned

who encouraged him to develop oil painting and once he started again he taught himself essentially that he developed remarkably quickly in the space of just a few years Yes, taught himself and he looked at things and copied them He would look at a landscape or a person, not copy the landscape or person, but that would inspire him. When he really became an artist, he really liked to be in front of the motif.

He didn't use his imagination. He didn't want to rely on his imagination. He looked at a landscape and then interpreted it. He didn't really do a landscape. He did a lot of people, and particularly people were working. He did a lot of people at work or just having finished work. In that palace, they would be called peasants. How does the potato eaters fit in here?

Could you tell the listeners what that is and how it fits in? Yes. I mean, the portraits you're discussing are mostly those that he did in the village of Noonan, where his parents were living and he was staying with them to save money. And the local peasants were willing, or some of them were willing to pose for fairly small sums of money. So he had people to pose for him. He did quite a lot of individual portraits. and then after about a year of that, he had this ambition of putting them together in a scene,

and the scene is the potato eaters, which is a rather dark painting of an interior with a handful of people sitting around the table having their evening meal, they're eating potatoes, no surprise there. And this was quite ambitious to bring all of these individual portraits and individual people together in a scene. And he regarded it at his first important. painting. I mean, it's quite unlike the Vangov that we actually know because the colours are dark and we think of Vangov as with these exuberant, often complementary colours. But this was the period

when he was beginning to paint in the Netherlands and they were dark pictures. Why do you think that was? I think it was partly based on the art of the Netherlands at the time. The Hague school painters were generally working in dark colours, not necessarily quite as dark. Now, I'm wondering from your question whether you think it might have reflected his mood or not. That's very difficult to say. He always found life difficult, and there were lots of difficulties in Noonan. I think he didn't feel bold enough to go into colours. He rarely explored colours later in his life when he moved to Paris,

and he saw the work of the Impressionists, and that was key. We'll come to that. Thank you very much. Chris Herapel. He's moving quickly at this stage, isn't it, for him? He's been to the Hague, he's been to London, where he's fallen in love with the work of Charles Dickens, and we told he read a great deal of Dickens.

He also taught himself languages, English, French, a bit of German, and read widely, we told while he was in this country, I might say. And the 1886 is in Paris. What did that bring him? Paris was a kind of revelation for him. His brother, Teo was there, was working as an art dealer, was making friends among the avant-garde. So when Vincent arrives in Paris in March of 1886, he already has a milieu into which he can insert himself, and it's a very, very exciting one.

His brother Teo had told him in advance, all the young artists are using color, bright color, so he had a sense of what he was going to see. But he also found himself among struggling artists, to be sure, but of immense, sophisticated. They lived in Paris, after all. But for example, his friend Gogin had been literally everywhere in the world, had grown up in Peru, spoke several languages. His grandmother, Flora Tristan, was a fascinating radical politician. So suddenly he was moving among people who expanded him intellectually and made him, I would say, greatly daring. Color soon enters his

art with great force. Can we take two steps back? When he got to parish, does he meet, we know, we'll talk about Gogh, but who else did he meet? Was he part of the groups which seemed to sprout all over the place in Paris at that time? Exactly, and he was meeting so many people, not only French like Toulouse Lodrek, a great aristocrat, Surah, whom he

admired. He tried to imitate him. and try to imitate at various points. He also meets foreigners, John Russell, the Australian, and they become very close friends. Alex Reed, the Glasgow art dealer, and they become friends. So suddenly his horizons are expanding, both artistically and in terms of friendships.

In his own painting, what does he paint at that time? He continues at first to paint in what I would call the Dutch style, he'd been working in, so the old shoes with laces looks like a Dutch picture, but very quickly he was moving to paint. Rembrandt is one of his heroes. Rembrandt was a hero. Very quickly, though, he comes to paint Paris, particularly the edges of Paris up in Montault, where the city is giving way to the countryside, or the countryside is being turned into city as you watched. And he was fascinated by that point of transition between city and country, and some of his most interesting

works of those two years in Paris are about the city itself. How much self-belief do you think he had at that time? He's just started painting. He's among people who are already establishing reputations. They might be small, but their reputations made by very clever people, and they know they're in that. He's sort of nowhere, so how did he keep his self-belief going? I think that among the lessons he saw when he got to Paris and saw the impressionists, as Martin mentioned, he saw that new young artists had to do it for themselves. They were organizing their own exhibitions. They were contacting dealers.

They were contacting critics. They were in a way that had never really been the case before taking charge of their own careers because they knew no one was going to be helping them in the state or anything else. And I think observing this in certain ways emboldened him to really begin to think big, to emulate ambitious people like Gogin and Sura. But he's still being supported by his brother? Yes.

No, and this is not about, I mean, good for the brother. I'm not being sarcastic about it. It was tremendous. No, his tale was one of the heroes of modern art for supporting him. So, yes, he needed a lot of help, I think. Yes. Francis, Gogh enters the picture. What's his significance to Van Gogh?

I think he was very important. The person that has been kind of left out, though, is Emil Bernard, who is the link, really. I feel he's kind of a crucial link between Van Gogh and Gogh. And he was one of the artists that he met at the Atelier Courmont, when he was a studio, he attended, and it was run by a man called Fernon-Cormand. And Emil Bernard was there too and was similarly unconventional.

and so he found him a soulmate. So there's correspondence between him and Bernard and there's also correspondence between him and Gougain. And actually one of the things that was really impressive about Gagin was that he'd already established himself outside Paris at this artist colony at Pont-Aven in Brittany and he had a whole entourage of acolytes of disciples. So he was a really quite a very confident individual.

But at the same time he was struggling, he was struggling to be recognised. he'd just come back when they met from Martinique, from the Caribbean island of Martinique, and he was very keen to make a connection with Theo Van Gogh because he was an art dealer and he wanted Theo to take him under his wing. So I think he saw really a route to Theo through Vincent.

But at the same time, they also had this, he Bernard and Gagin, Vincent Gagin, Bernard, had this common interest in a way challenging Impressionism and moving beyond Impressionism. and thinking in a much more abstract way. This is the word that Gogan uses. He talks about art as being an abstraction. And so he encourages both Bernard and Vangorch

to think with the mind rather than with the eye. And this is something which actually Vangorch struggles with quite a great deal. But they form this little bank. Why do you think he struggles with it? He struggled with it because he was much happier when he was painting in front of nature and being immersed in the countryside. Martin, he was trading water in Paris

and then he decided to move yet again and he went to Arles in Provence and we have the sun and the sunflowers and so on why did he go there? Well I think he always thought somewhere else would be better than where he was he'd been in Paris for two years and although it had been very exciting

life there was very hectic and I think he found it a bit much in the end he also said he'd been drinking heavily and with all the bars of Montmartre just around the corner that must have been quite tempting for a young man. He also felt that I think he could work better. He loved working outside in the landscape and he was after attracted by Provence in the south of France

where the weather was warmer and whether he could work outside. And he thought life would be cheaper. I'm not sure whether it actually was because, of course, he had to rent somewhere and in Paris he just stayed with his brother. but the day-to-day expenses would have been cheaper there. So he headed off and he settled down and he had a good year. Tell us about the sunflowers.

Van Gogh had painted some cut sunflowers when he was in Paris for still lives. But the sunflowers that we know and love are the still lifes which he painted in Arles in the summer in August 1888. and he painted them partly because he wanted to decorate Gagin's bedroom. He was hoping that Gagin would come, and Gagin kept delaying coming from Brittany to stay with him in the yellow house. And sunflowers, exuberant flowers, August is the time to pick them and to paint them. And he was obviously excited. He loved taking advantage of the different seasons,

and sunflowers symbolized the summer. and for him the sun had great symbolic importance. And they are astonishing works. He did four different versions of the sunflowers. We all tend to think that the one we know is the only one, but there were four. And the most important is the one that's in the National Gallery in London, which is the yellow sunflowers on the yellow background.

And that has become an icon. Do you want to comment on the sunflowers? Well, I think Chris should comment on the one in the National Gallery, but I was going to say that as well as these four, he actually painted the subject numerous times because it became almost something which one associates with him. And actually, when he first met Gogh, he gave him two of his sunflower paintings,

which would just cut sunflowers, doing one or two flowers just lying on a surface, as if that was also something which represented him. So I think it was something very personal to him, and something which he associated with Provence as well. And yes, Gagin very much admired the sunflowers he had seen in Paris, but when he gets to Oral and sees the National Gallery

sunflowers hanging on his wall in his bedroom in the yellow house, he is startled because he sees how far Van Gogh has jumped ahead in his art. Van Gogh has said to him, when you come to Provance, you will be the leader, I will be the follower. I will be the follower. but what Gugan realizes so quickly is that in certain ways, Van Gogh has jumped ahead of him. Yes. The relationship with them didn't last all that long, did it?

They worked together throughout the autumn of 88, but by Christmas, I think the differences in their personalities, but also their aesthetic differences, what they thought was important in modern painting had diverged so much. and Martin alluded to it the difference between observing nature and painting from it and free form creating that Gogh favored had driven them apart.

He sounds very difficult. Pizarro said, called it here, this man will either go mad or leave us way behind. He did both. They were both difficult. Both Van Gogh and Goga in their different ways were difficult

and that's why it didn't work their collaboration in the yellow life? Yes, it seems odd looking at the paintings, you think, how could it possibly ever have worked and thinking about the lives they were leading? Yes. Gungan left him. And it's about that time that we have the infamous cutting off of the ear.

It seems to have followed very closely upon this breakup that we imagine happened in the street right at Christmas time. He was, Vincent was discombobulated by it and Gogain stomps back off north, and he's left alone, which must have been a kind of psychic shock for him. Well, can I just, it's a bit gory,

but everybody knows about it. It's one of the big things I know about Van Gogh. So he was obviously got very depressed. You tell the story. Well, after they had met in the street and had this falling out, he goes home, I'm not quite sure of the time frame, but chops away at the lobe of his ear, I think it was, most,

which anyone who's ever had a cut on the ear knows there's an awful lot of blood right there at the surface. So it must have looked quite horrific. He goes to the doctor. He's bandaged up. He paints himself with these bandages around him. He remains focused enough, as it were, to report on what has happened in quite astonishing pictures.

Yes. but that is the first visible sign to everybody else that all things are not well. Yes, and a sign to himself because he then goes to the asylum, first of all, in Arles itself and is under doctor's care there. Can you take us through the asylum process?

Yes, so first of all, he goes to the hospital in Arles and then he transfers, he's under a doctor called Felix Reyes, who diagnoses epilepsy, which is, which is questionable, but he obviously, there's no real conclusion about what he did suffer from, although there are various theories. So he then admitted himself to this asylum, the Saint-Poul Hospital in Saint-Rémy, which was a, it was a converted monastery. And he, bizarrely, it was actually quite empty when it was only half full, apparently. So he got a room to himself, and he had an extra room which he could use as a studio, which is quite useful, and was able to paint,

using that studio and paint the garden. Initially, obviously he was under constant care and was not allowed out, but he stayed there for about a year or perhaps a little bit longer. And so gradually he began to, he was allowed to go out into the countryside and pursue new subjects.

Martin, you've discovered records about the other people who were at the asylum at that time. Am I right? Yes, I mean... And it sounds... It sounds very distressing for everybody concerned, but it must have been, well, can you talk about it? Yes. Well, I was researching a book on this period in the asylum called Starry Night,

and I discovered that there was an unknown and unpublished register of the patients, which was at the archives at Saint-R-R-Me. And although it was an administrative document and it wasn't a medical register, it gave the names of the patients. And from that information, I was able to get some idea of what the patients were suffering from. And it was actually horrific. There were only 20 other male patients there. Most of them were even worse condition than Van Gogh was.

And it must have been so difficult for him living in this terrible environment. And I think in a way, art was the escape which saved him. it was because he could go out and paint or paint in his studio in the small room that he was able to forget what was going on around him. Before we go to the studio in the small room, which of course takes us to the Starry night, which is very, very sad. The condition of some of the people in that asylum who were his constant companions was dreadful. Yes, there was one young man who was 20, I think,

who was admitted a few weeks after him, who couldn't speak. And Vangos says he threw the furniture around. around the room. Well, if you can't communicate verbally, you're going to resort to that sort of thing. But imagine the shock of having someone doing that, or you go to the canteen for lunch and people throwing plates around. It must be highly disturbing. He doesn't write about it in his letters to Theo, either because he didn't want to disturb his brother or else he just wanted to escape when he was writing to his brother and wanted to imagine the world outside. He is confined with people who are more distressing here

and are distressing him even more. But he finds a window. I know that window, it is probably his greatest exterior, one of the greatest outside paintings he ever did, Starry Night. Do you want to tell us about that, Francis? Absolutely. So it's actually the view from the window of his room upstairs.

Yes. And he actually painted quite a lot of pictures of that view. but this one is partly based in reality and what you could see in reality and partly is painted from the imagination. It's quite an extraordinary painting. I'm not sure it's very familiar to a lot of listeners, but it shows a view of...

It's a nighttime view, although it's actually early morning because you can see in the sky the morning star, Venus, and then on the right-hand side you can see the waxing moon. And then this kind of extraordinary firmament and it looks like sort of the Milky Way

or the sky is dotted with stars and then this incredible sense of movement and then in the foreground there's a cypress tree which is kind of dark silhouetted against the sky and it reaches up into the heavens and then at the bottom of the painting at the base you can see in the landscape

this village which he wouldn't have been able to see from the window so that is possibly based on sketches that he'd done of a verre from Saint-Rémy from a different angle but the church itself that you can see the spire is much more typical of a Dutch church, so it's like a memory. The whole painting,

what comes at you, is the swirl of the clowns, and the disturbance in it. It's starry nights, but it's a different night. It's his own night. It's not so much chaos up there. How would you describe it?

But it is, it's something else. It's the sky, it's stars, it's nights. But there's something else going on entirely, Chris. What do you think? Very much so. And I think this is becoming more and more a part of Vincent's life, he observes the motif,

and he must observe the motif to begin with, but then he's willing to push it further and further on the canvas, to turn it into something more dramatic, more physical, more exciting, even than the motif itself. And that brings him in the direction of this abstraction we've talked about. Martin, do you want to come in on that? It's a magnificent painting. And what's really striking is the stars.

And for Vincent, the stars had a real significance. I mean, it's difficult for us living in cities to imagine what one would see on a dark night in the country. And there would have been virtually no artificial light there. So he would have seen the Milky Way. And it's astonishing to think of him looking out of his window as he must have done many nights and sort of dreaming of the stars. And at one point, he actually writes in one, of his letters that the stars remind him of death.

And he said one could go quickly to the stars if one had some disease like cancer or one could take the journey slowly. And the stars had great significance for him. But as you say, it's the movement of the stars. And it's almost a horrifying scene because the stars sort of rushed past you. But it gives the painting real life. It's almost like the sea, isn't it? The great storm at sea.

Well, yes. And I've made the comparison of the famous great wave by the Japanese artist Hokuskissai. That's right, yeah. And they're both paintings predominantly in sort of dark blues. And both of them have got a great sense of movement. One is the sea and the other is the stars. And Vangoff was a great admirer of Japanese art. And he almost certainly knew Hokersai.

Great Wave. It was quite well known in Paris at the time. So, as quite often in Vangov's art, one can see Japanese influences. Very much, and they, of course, they take to him, as China does,

and on and on it goes, but I think that's the clearest example that I know, but you know so much more than I do. Chris, the popular idea, and Starry Knight contributes to this, and one of the attractions for some people, is that he paints out of torment,

and almost the idea enters, you've got to be tormented to be a real artist. Now I'm pushing. I know I'm pushing. But what do you think of that idea as an idea, and how did you think it operated if it did in him? I think that it is partially true because we know that he was tormented a good deal, but great art comes out of lucidity.

He is constantly, when he is, in his mental capacity, coming back to these things, he is having to make tens of thousands of conscious decisions as he creates great paintings like Starry Night. Torment alone cannot possibly explain the whole thing. His sense of himself as an artist, as a professional, as a vanguard figure also is always figuring in. He's constantly writing back to Teo, plotting an artistic career in which these great paintings will play very specific roles. His great art comes out of consciousness. Martin, what do you think of the collision or collusion between torment and great art?

Well, I think we tend to see Vangos' art as the art of the tormented. I think that may be one of the myths that we have of him. I mean, he worked fairly methodically and hard. And when he was actually tormented, he probably painted much less or didn't paint. So it is not the art a madman. It's very well thought out. I agree. I mean, he actually wasn't able to paint when he was suffering from some of these crises, so it completely exhausted him. And he only really was able to, he always said that he had to be in a fit state to be able to work really successfully. Yes, one of the many, really amazing things is how much of the time he was ill and couldn't do anything. And then in the short time that was available, how much he did.

He was incredibly, I mean, he was extraordinary. His output was incredible, because he was not just producing paintings, he was producing drawings during all this period as well. And at one point, actually, he decided to send copies of, or not copies, they're sort of, they're, he caused them a repetition, his repetitions of his paintings, back to Theo and to Gugan Bernard. And he just obviously dashes off all these incredible drawings, which are, they're individual objects in their own right.

And he, no, his output is phenomenal. And one stage he's doing a painting a day for 70 days, isn't he? Yes, when he goes to Overt. That's where he's going now, Frances. So you take us to Overe? Absolutely. Where is it and why did he go? So Overe is northwest of Paris.

The reason why he went there, he has several reasons, actually, but one, he'd be nearer to Theo or Theo, and the other reason was the presence there of a man called Dr. Paul Gache, who was a homeopathic doctor, who was also an amateur artist and an early collector and supporter of the impressionist so he was the ideal person to look out for Van Gogh and he actually done his thesis on melancholia

so he was really interested in mental health do we have his conclusions? His conclusions from his thesis his conclusion was that Vincent wouldn't suffer any more crises this was his diagnosis and that he would actually be fine once he settled in a

But I think probably that was slightly optimistic. Yes. We look at the last 10 weeks, Martin, can we concentrate on the last 10 weeks? What happened at Overt? Well, he was astonishingly productive, as Francis said. He did 74 paintings in 70 days.

What's less well known is that 60 of them were done in the first six weeks. So it was an incredible rate. He then slowed down a bit. partly I think because he was doing larger pictures and partly because I think he was getting depressed. But it was a highly productive period. It also must have been exhilarating for him.

Remember, he'd come from an asylum where he'd been behind high walls for most of a year and he suddenly was a free man and he lodged in an inn just opposite the town hall in Overe and it was sort of the centre of social life in the village. So he would be, for the first time after a year, he would go down to the bar and talk to people and have his meals there. And it must be real freedom. And the countryside was quite different from Provence, less dramatic perhaps, but very sort of green.

And he felt very inspired and optimistic. Christian, to say anything about his experience at Oberr? It was new themes came into the art, themes of children, family life. There seemed to be at the beginning, in particular, to be a great joy to be there. As Martin says, this then leads into depression, and the final works are grim, stunning, but grim. I've got sure if I agree with them being grim. And we haven't talked about the self-portraits, which we should have done a little bit earlier, but we'll disorder ourselves for this.

Martin? Well, Van Gogh rarely is known for the self-portraits. Most of them were done when he was in Paris, the 35 altogether. And the Vangov, we know, the face that we know comes from the self-portraits because we have no photographs of Vangov as an adult. So we know him from the self-portraits. It's quite interesting looking at the self-portraits together, and there was a wonderful opportunity earlier this year at the Courtauldw Gallery

when they brought the self-portraits together. And it's interesting the different ways that he looks in the self-portraits, they're not necessarily similar at all. And in some cases, they hardly look like the same person. Now, I think Van Gogh was at that point experimenting with self-portraits. He was using it as a technique, as a way of trying different techniques. So some of the self-portraits are done in a pointillist or dot style. others are done with long brushstrokes

and he used self-portraits as a way of experimenting and he'd always got his own face and a mirror so you were not reliant on a model the self-portraits in Paris I think were done primarily for experiments if you like after he left Paris and went to

Provence in a way the self-portraits become more interesting because I think he reveals more of himself and his character in them And there are two striking self-portraits where he's got a bandaged ear, and that was a very deliberate decision. Do you want to take up what you were to say about? Yes, I was just what you were saying about Paris, Martin,

because it's interesting that there's a whole group of eight we know of anyway, which he did in Paris, which he actually painted on the back of Noonan painting, so these earlier 1885 pictures. And so he had like a still life or a head of a peasant woman and then turned it over, painted it on the back. And some of them were then covered over. Some of the self-portraits were then covered over by someone like Your Van Gogh Bunger

and sent off for exhibition. So they were only discovered when, like 1926, there were three in the Van Gogh Museum, which were then, they removed the card from the back and discovered the self-portraits on the back. So they'd actually been sort of hidden for all that time. The one self-portrait I'd like to mention is his self-portrait as bonds.

that is self-portrait as a Japanese priest, a work of Provence, in which he says, he has a shaven head in it, but he also says in the letter, I have altered my features to look more Asian. And this goes to this issue of observation and the dialectic with invention, and the way in which increasingly in the later years, the two of them intersect. Is there more inventions creeping in?

Is that what you're saying? Yes. Back to about we're talking about enormous productivity in these 70. What was the quality of these paintings? So some of the, I think the most striking series that he produced, if you can call it a series, is the double square format landscapes, which include very famous works like the Wheatfield with crows.

And they are absolutely extraordinary, incredibly intense works, which were inspired. One of the people who haven't mentioned, relation to Overt was Charles Francois D'Aubigny, who was an earlier French artist, who lived in the village and had a studio that you can still go and visit it today, if you want, a house in a studio. And one of the first things that Van Gogh did

when he went to Overe was to go and visit the house, the second house of D'ubigny and D'Obinni's widow, because he'd actually died by then, and paint in the garden and paint this house. And he produced these double square formats in almost as a sort of an acknowledgement of this format which was invented by this artist. But they really are, the wheat fields

and the root paintings. The last picture that he's supposed to have ever painted is of tree roots. And it's such a kind of extraordinary, modern-looking painting. There's no sky anywhere. It's just literally these tangled roots. And when you look at it closely,

it almost looks like these kind of skull-like shapes. I mean, people always want to read too much into Van Gogh. But they're incredibly surprising and it's such a tragedy that he died so young. He had so much to offer. It's about this time that he takes his own life. Do you want to describe that? Yes, well, again, there are various theories about how this happened,

but he went out into the wheatfields and shot himself with a revolver, shot himself in the chest, but didn't die immediately, and managed to get back to his room in the Oberge Gravoux, and he insisted that no one would tell Theo that night because he didn't want to upset him. So they all waited to the next day. He was still alive the next morning, and Theo came rushed to his side.

And it took him basically a day and a half to die, but he died in Theo's arms, which is wonderful. When Theo arrived, he found him smoking a pipe, apparently. Which is kind of incredible, but he was mortally wounded. Is it impossible to imagine why he's... did this at that time. Yes, well, I think one of the reasons was, well, partly his illness, I imagine, and the depression coming on, but it was kind of brought on by the fact that he was beginning

to feel that he was a burden to Theo. Theo had just had, they just had a baby. He and Yo had a baby boy, also called Vincent. And Theo was also having problems at work. And he just felt that, gosh, I'm like the last straw for my brother. And so that's one of the reasons why it's been suggested that he decided to end it all. And the works, which he sent to Theo all his painting lifetime, went

to Theo's widow. Yes. Yes, to cometh the hour, cometh the woman. This young woman after the death of her husband, six months after Vincent died, suddenly is the custodian of hundreds and hundreds of paintings

and works on paper, and it is, we now understand, more clearly she who brilliantly engineered the rise of the fame of this almost unknown artist. How'd you do that? By making good friends with artists who would promote him, by showing them, by allowing the works to travel wisely, and just by protecting the interest of this very complicated brother-in-law, she hardly knew. It was her own work of genius in doing that over the next 30 years. Do you think you would have made the fame he made without her?

No, I think, I think, well, there were many factors came into play, but that there was such a dedicated and intelligent custodian overseeing the process in Yo Bonner was amazing. Frances, there were a lot of forgeries early on. Well, yes, I mean, it was incredible actually how quickly, it was thanks to Yo, really, that the market for Van Gogh developed. One of the kind of important events that took place was in 1905, she organised a large exhibition of Van Gog's work.

So that was the first time that people had really had an opportunity to see it. But she also was very careful about how she distributed the work. So she sent quite a number to the dealer Paul Casera in Berlin. And he was, I think, responsible for the early popularity of Van Gogh among German collectors. gradually the market picked up across Europe particularly in London, Paris and in the Netherlands as well as in Germany but it was in Germany where you see these fakes emerging

and there's a famous case of the Otto Vacker forgeries which were produced by this Berlin art dealer called Vaca who had previously been a dancer which decided to go into dealing when he was in 1925 and he must have been an absolutely brilliant individual because he ingratiated himself with all the other Berlin dealers. He established a market for Van Gogh's work very early on. And by this time, the prices for his work were rising.

And he succeeded in selling 33 works, which turned out in the end to be forgeries. Who did the forgeries? Well, they were concocted in a back room by his father and his brother, Leonard. And it was only when he decided to organise, I mean, he got very above himself, I feel. He decided to lend four of these works to an exhibition,

which he was co-organising with the Casilla Cossera Gallery. And when these four works were slotted into place, among the genuine Van Goghs, everyone smelled a rat. And then all these other Berlin dealers discovered that they'd been conned. So it was the Metisant Gallery in Berlin that actually sued him, took him to court. And what was really interesting was that a lot of these works had been authenticated by, for example, Julius Meyer Grefer, who was the great art historian of the period. He's apparently authenticated 24 of these 33 works. And then also the other person who'd just, the catalogue Resigneur had just been published in 1928, which was the year of the exhibition by Jacob de la Faye.

And he had included all these works in his catalogue. So he then published a pamphlet called Le Foul. Van Gogh, the fake Van Goghs, and then they appeared and gave evidence at the trial. And of course, Paul Maagrefer couldn't possibly admit that he'd been wrong. So he stood his ground and he maintained that these were all genuine van Goghs. But in the end, they used pigment analysis. It was the very early days of technical analysis. And so they managed to prove through pigment analysis

and through various other technical kind of procedures that they were genuinely. fakes. But faker is a sort of fame, isn't it, in its own way? Of course, yes. But actually, he took off, we have to move quickly now, again towards the end of the program. But his prices and his value took off, it rocketed off, didn't it?

In America, especially in the east, in Japan, and in 70s. And in Korea and so on. And we're talking about massive prices, aren't we? Millions and hundreds of millions now. And world records being set, particularly in that period in the 80s, when the Japanese

market took off. Yes. So, and still today, it's quite extraordinary, actually, how the market for Van Gogh and Goga has not collapsed. And I still wonder whether it ever is going to. But, you know, just quite recently there was a painting which sold for, well, over 100,000, over 100 million, rather. The sky's the limit, I think.

We're coming to the end now. Can I ask you all, starting with you, Martin, what influence do you think he's had and what? influenced, do you think, if any, he will continue to have? Well, he's obviously possibly the most popular artist in the world. And what's really striking is the way that it's truly international now. I mean, to begin with, he was recognised in Western Europe, and then it expanded and his painting sold in America, then to Japan,

and now to China and the Far East. So he's really international. And his work is universally recognized. You know, everyone recognizes a sense. sunflower pictures. And I think people are equally interested in his art and his life, because it is an astonishing story that we've touched upon, and the two things together make him a megastar. Yes, I think that's, you've both agreed that it's a combination of those two. Very much. So the biography is so compelling. There are so many aspects of it that invite

our sympathy, and then these images that are so social. strong. And when the two of them are an extraordinary combination. Francis. I think it's right. I think the correspondence has got a lot to do with it because we've got such direct access to his inner thoughts and the kind of whole creative process. And there's not really any other artists

that you can say that about. I mean Monnet to a certain extent but he was always moaning about his about being poor. But no, it really is, I think that's partly to that one can feel that you feel that you can really get inside his psyche in the way of thinking.

Do you think that his phenomenon that's going to come and then peak and then go, or do you think he's there? You don't know, you're shrugging. What about you? No, I think he is one of the ones who will last on the level of Michelangelo or Raphael. That big. Yeah.

I agree. I think his influence will become increasingly strong. There's never been a year when this hasn't happened, As the decades go by, he becomes more and more famous, more and more well-known, and the prices of the works rocket. And any exhibition which has the word Van Gogh in the title is guaranteed to be a success. Well, thank you all very much, Christopher Riopel, Francis Fowl and Martin Bailey, and our studio engineer Sue Mayo.

Next week, if music be the food of love, play on. It's Shakespeare, 12th night. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time. time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. What would you like have said that you didn't have time to say, Francis? Well, I was thinking about the way in which Van Gogh's work has, the colour balance has changed over the years.

So that when we look at his work today, very often we're not seeing it as it was. I mean, that's obviously the case with quite a lot of artists, but it's particularly obvious in Van Gogh's work because he used these problematic pigments. for example, it's called Lake Red, which disappears over time. And so you look at something like the Church of Dauver, and it has a path in the foreground, and it's just lost all the red color, it's all the red tone. Or some pictures like...

Can you get afford you to sort of sort you out there? Well, I mean, so actually one thing that has happened, and this is another thing, which is interesting, is people have tried to reconstruct with the olive tree series, for example. They've tried to reconstruct what it would have looked like originally, to propel us back into Van Gogh's time. Yes. Chris? I'd like to point out that the rise to fame of Van Gogh after his death in many ways marks the beginning of the end of the hegemony of Paris

as the center of the art world. Because the discovery with his death or the death of tale, all the pictures leave. Almost all the pictures leave France. He is discovered in Germany, discovered in Holland, discovered in more eastern Europe and in America. Paris doesn't count all that much in this extraordinary story we've been telling. And that, of course, would carry on into our own time.

Martin, would you have to add to this as his influence and so on? Well, I think the very fact that he's become so famous, there's one of the negative sides of that is that there are lots of myths that have grown up about him that we all assume. And it's often assumed that he was uneducated. Well, in fact, he spoke for all languages. That's not bad. That he was an outsider in the art world.

Well, he may have been essentially an outsider, but he knew the avant-garde artists and he knew many of the Impressionists. You know, it said that he was a loner, but he actually had real friends, and many of them were loyal to him. You know, it said he painted in a frenzy. Well, he actually thought his work,

very carefully. And then, of course, the fact that he went mad. Well, he had some sort of mental affliction. We don't know what it was. But for a good part of the time, he was very, very sane. And most disturbingly of all, the most recent myth which has come about is that he did not, he ended his life not with suicide, but he was murdered. And that was published in a biography in America a decade ago, but a lot of people still believe that it's true. I mean, until then, the question that I always used to get asked was why did he cut off his ear?

But the question now is, was it murder or suicide? And I'm convinced that it was suicide. And the main reason for that, I won't go into all the arguments, but the main reason that everyone around him thought that he'd shot himself, Teo, his brother, Dr. Purs, poor Gashay who was looking after him

and spoke with him, the innkeeper where he was staying, his artist's friends, if there had been any suspicion that someone had murdered him or he'd been shot by accident, they would have raised it. He had decided to end his own life.

At 37. Dear me. Anything else, why any of you? I would just point out that in 1924, the National Gallery purchases the Sunflower That is the year of our centenary.

We're founded in 1824. And in honour of that, next year is our bicentenary. And we are mounting a major Vangov exhibition around our sunflowers dealing with this period. We've spent so much time talking about in Arles and Saint-Ramee. So there is much to look forward to. Well, thank you all very much indeed. Do you want a cup of tea or coffee?

Tea, please. Tea, Melvin. Tea. Tea. A cup of tea, please. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. I found her. Jee, that's a name. I certainly hoped never to hear again.

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