Gauguin, speaking of his meeting with Van Gogh in Arles, writes as follows:
“Tout d’abord je trouvai en tout et pour tout un désordre qui me choquait. La boîte de couleurs suffisait à peine à contenir tous ces tubes pressés, jamais refermés, et malgré tout ce désordre, tout ce gâchis, un tout rutilait sur la toile.”[2]
Still both Van Gogh and his brother had an indomitable faith in the former’s work—a faith which touches upon the sublime—though neither of them lived to see their highest hopes realized.
“As to the market value of my pictures,” Vincent wrote (pages 8 and 9), “I should be very much surprised if, in time, they did not sell as well as other people’s. Whether this happens directly or later on does not matter to me”[3] (see also page 17, line 20).
The finest words concerning this ideal brotherly relationship, however, have been written by Vincent’s great friend, Emile Bernard.
“Mais ce que je veux dire, avant tout,” says Bernard, “c’est que ces deux frères ne faisaient pour ainsi dire qu’une idée, que l’un s’alimentait et vivait de la vie et de la pensée de l’autre, et que quand ce dernier, le peintre, mourut, l’autre le suivit dans la tombe, seulement de quelques mois, sous l’effet d’un chagrin rare et édifiant.”[4]
Thus Theodor and Vincent died, perhaps hoping, but little believing that Van Gogh’s present triumph would ever be realized. And, indeed, even to the calm and reflecting student of art to-day, there must be something surprising, something not altogether sound and convincing, in this stupendous leap into fame which the work of this poor, enthusiastic, and thoughtful recluse, has made within recent years. If the means or the measure for placing him had been to hand, if all this posthumous success had been based upon a definite art-doctrine which knew what to select and what to leave aside, nothing could have been more imposing than this sudden exaltation of one whom a former generation had spurned. But who would dare to maintain for a moment that Van Gogh’s present position is in itself a proof of his value as an artist?
It is an empty illusion to suppose that history necessarily “places” a man, or even a whole age, and gives to both their proper level. What history has shown and probably will continue to show is, that whereas time very often elevates true geniuses to the dignity which is their due, and confers upon them the rank that they deserve, it also certainly raises vast numbers to the position of classics, who never had a tittle of a right to that honour, and frequently passes over others in silence who ought to have had a lasting claim upon the respect and appreciation of their fellows. Such things have happened so often, and sometimes with such a disastrous effect, that one can but feel surprised at the almost universal support that the doctrine of the infallibility of posterity enjoys.
All posthumous fame, however, should be weighed in relation to the quality of the period that concedes it, and before we concur too heartily with the verdict of an age subsequent to the man it lionises, we ought, at least, to analyze that age and test its health, its virtues, and its values.
The fact that Van Gogh’s pictures are now selling for twice as many sovereigns as he, in his most hopeful and sanguine moments thought that they would realize in francs, is the most deceptive and the most misleading feature about his work. In any case it should neither prepossess us in his favour, nor prejudice us against him. In a world governed largely by the commercial principle which places quantity before quality, at a period in history when journalism with all its insidious power can, like the famous Earl of Warwick, make and unmake kings at will—finally, on a continent in which all canons in respect of right living, religion, art, morality, and politics, have been blasted to the four winds, what does it signify that a work of art which thirty years ago was not thought to be worth 25 francs, now sells for £200 sterling? It signifies simply nothing whatsoever. Would anybody venture to assert that everything which to-day is selling at 200 times the price at which it was selling thirty years ago, is on that account worthy of particular admiration and respect—I mean, of course, from people of taste, not from hawkers, pedlars, and chapmen?