“Do you mean to tell me, Vincent,” asked Theodorus, who was distrustful of everything that came from Paris, “that you can learn to draw correctly by reading ideas about art in books?”
“Yes.”
“How very odd.”
“That is to say, if I put into practice the theory they contain. However, practice is a thing one cannot buy at the same time with the books. If that were so there would be a larger sale of them.”
The days passed busily and happily into summer, and now it was the heat that kept him off the heath, and not the rain. He sketched his sister Willemien in front of the sewing machine, copied for a third time the exercises after Bargue, drew five times over a man with a spade, Un Bécheur, in different positions, twice a sower, twice a girl with a broom. Then a woman with a white cap who was peeling potatoes, a shepherd leaning on his staff, and finally an old, sick farmer sitting on a chair near the hearth, with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees. Diggers, sowers, ploughers, male and female, that was what he felt he must draw continually; he must observe and put down everything that belonged to country life. He did not stand altogether helpless before nature any longer; that gave him an exaltation unlike any he had ever known before.
The townspeople still thought him queer and kept him at arm’s length. Although his mother and Willemien—and even his father in his own way—heaped kindness and affection upon him, in those innermost recesses to which no one in Etten or the parsonage could ever possibly penetrate, he was frightfully alone.
In time the peasants grew to like and trust him. He found in their simplicity something akin to the soil in which they were hoeing or digging. He tried to put that into his sketches. Often his family could not tell where the peasant ended and the earth began. Vincent did not know how his drawings came out that way but he felt they were right, just so.
“There should be no strict line between,” he said to his mother who asked about this one evening. “They are really two kinds of earth, pouring into each other, belonging to each other; two forms of the same matter, indistinguishable in essence.”
His mother decided that since he had no wife, she had better take him in hand and help him become successful.
“Vincent,” she said one morning, “I want you to be back in the house by two o’clock. Will you do that for me?”
“Yes, Mother. What is it you wish?”
“I want you to come with me to a tea party.”
Vincent was aghast. “But Mother, I can’t be wasting my time that way!”
“Why will it be wasting your time, son?”
“Because there’s nothing to paint at a tea party.”
“That’s just where you’re wrong. All the important women of Etten will be there.”
Vincent’s eyes went to the kitchen door. He almost made a bolt for it. After an effort he controlled himself and tried to explain; the words came slowly and painfully.
“What I mean, Mother,” he said, “is that the women at a tea party have no character.”
“Nonsense! They all have splendid characters. Never a word has been breathed against one of them.”
“No, dear,” he said, “of course not. What I mean is, they all look alike. The pattern of their lives has fitted them to a specific mould.”
“Well, I’m sure I can tell one from the other without any difficulty.”
“Yes, sweetheart, but you see, they’ve all had such easy lives that they haven’t anything interesting carved into their faces.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, son. You draw every labourer and peasant you see in the fields.”
“Ah, yes.”
“But what good will that ever do you? They’re all poor, and they can’t buy anything. The women of the town can pay to have their portraits painted.”
Vincent put his arms about her and cupped her chin in his hand. The blue eyes were so clear, so deep, so kind and loving. Why did they not understand?
“Dear,” he said quietly, “I beg you to have a little faith in me. I know how this job has to be done, and if you will only give me time I will succeed. If I keep working hard on the things that look useless to you now, eventually I will be able to sell my drawings and make a good living.”
Anna Cornelia wanted to understand just as desperately as Vincent wished to be understood. She brushed her lips against her boy’s rough, red beard and in her mind travelled back to that day of apprehension and fear when this strong, hard man body she held in her arms had been torn from her in the Zundert parsonage. Her first baby had been still-born, and when Vincent announced himself by yelling lustily and long, her thankfulness and joy knew no bounds. In her love for him there was always mingled a touch of sorrow for the first child that had never opened its eyes, and of gratitude for all the others that had followed.
“You’re a good boy, Vincent,” she said. “Go your own way. You know what is best. I only wanted to help you.”
Instead of working in the fields that day, Vincent asked Piet Kaufman, the gardener, to pose for him. It took a little persuasion, but Piet finally consented.
“After dinner,” he agreed. “In the garden.”
When Vincent went out later he found Piet carefully dressed in his stiff Sunday suit, hands and face scrubbed. “One moment,” he cried excitedly, “until I get a stool. Then I’ll be ready.”
He placed a little stool beneath him and sat down, rigid as a pole, all set to have his daguerreotype taken. Vincent had to laugh in spite of himself.
“But, Piet,” he said, “I can’t draw you in those clothes.”
Piet looked down at his suit in astonishment. “What’s the matter with them?” he demanded. “They’re new. I only wore them a few Sunday mornings to meeting.”
“I know,” said Vincent. “That’s why. I want to sketch you in your old working clothes, bending over a rake. That’s the way your lines come through. I want to see your elbows and knees and omoplate. I can’t see anything now except your suit.”
It was the word omoplate that decided Piet.
“My old clothes are dirty and patched. If you want me to pose, you’ll have to do me as I am.”
And so Vincent went back to the fields and did the diggers bending over the soil. The summer passed and he realized that for the moment at least he had exhausted the possibilities of his own instruction. Once again he had the keen desire to enter into relation with some artist and continue his study in a good studio. He began to feel it absolutely necessary to have access to things well done, to see artists at work, for then he could tell what he lacked, and learn how to do better.
Theo wrote, inviting him to come to Paris, but Vincent understood that he was not yet ripe for that great venture. His work was still too raw, too clumsy, too amateurish. The Hague was only a few hours away, and there he could get help from his friend, Mijnheer Tersteeg, manager of Goupil and Company, and from his cousin, Anton Mauve. Perhaps it would be better for him to settle in The Hague during the next stage of his slow apprenticeship. He wrote, asking Theo’s advice, and his brother replied with the railroad fare.
Before moving permanently, Vincent wished to find out whether Tersteeg and Mauve would be friendly and help him; if not, he would have to go elsewhere. He carefully wrapped up all his sketches—with a change of linen this time—and set out for the capital of his country in the true tradition of all young provincial artists.
4
MIJNHEER HERMAN GIJSBERT TERSTEEG was the founder of The Hague school of painting, and the most important art dealer in Holland. People from all over the country came to him for advice on what pictures they should buy; if Mijnheer Tersteeg said a canvas was good, his opinion was considered as definitive.