“No, no, of course not,” cried Vincent. “We all get as much material as we need, no more and no less. Just like food.”
“Yes, but what happens to the surplus money? After we begin selling our pictures? Who gets the profits?”
“Nobody gets the profits,” said Vincent. “As soon as we have a little money over, we’ll open a house in Brittany. Then we’ll open another in Provence. Soon we’ll have houses all over the country, and we’ll be travelling from one place to another.”
“What about the railroad fare? Do we get that out of the profits?”
“Yes, and how much can we travel? Who’s to decide that?”
“Suppose there are too many painters for one house during the best season? Who gets left out in the cold, will you tell me?”
“Theo, Theo, you’re the manager of this business. Tell us all about it. Can anyone join? Is there a limit to the membership? Will we have to paint according to any system? Will we have models out there at the house?”
At dawn the meeting broke up. The people downstairs had exhausted themselves rapping on the ceiling with broomsticks. Theo went to bed about four, but Vincent, Pére Tanguy, and some of the more enthusiastic ones surrounded his bed and urged him to give Goupils notice on the first of the month.
The excitement grew in intensity with the passing of the weeks. The art world of Paris was divided into two camps. The established painters spoke of those crazy men, the Van Gogh brothers. All the others spoke endlessly about the new experiment.
Vincent talked and worked like mad all night and day. There were so many thousands of details to be settled; how they were to get the money, where the shop was to be located, how prices were to be charged, what men could belong, who would manage the house in the country and how. Theo, almost against his will, was drawn into the febrile excitement. The apartment on the Rue Lepic was crowded every night of the week. Newspaper men came to get stories. Art critics came to discuss the new movement. Painters from all over France returned to Paris to get into the organization.
If Theo was king, Vincent was the royal organizer. He drew up countless plans, constitutions, budgets, pleas for money, codes of rules and regulations, manifestos for the papers, pamphlets to acquaint Europe with the purpose of the Communist Art Colony.
He was so busy he forgot to paint.
Almost three thousand francs rolled into the coffers of the organization. The painters contributed every last franc they could spare. A street fair was held on the Boulevard Clichy, and each man hawked his own canvases. Letters came in from all over Europe, sometimes containing soiled and crumpled franc notes. Art loving Paris came to the apartment, caught the enthusiasm of the new movement, and threw a bill into the open box before they left. Vincent was secretary and treasurer.
Theo insisted that they must have five thousand francs before they could begin. He had located a shop on the Rue Tronchet which he thought well situated, and Vincent had discovered a superb old mansion in the forest of St. Germain-en-Laye that could be had for almost nothing. The canvases of the painters who wanted to join kept pouring into the Rue Lepic apartment, until there was no space left to move about. Hundreds and hundreds of people went in and out of the little apartment. They argued, fought, cursed, ate, drank, and gesticulated wildly. Theo was given notice to move.
At the end of the month the Louis Philippe furniture was in shreds.
Vincent had no time even to think about his palette now. There were letters to be written, people to be interviewed, houses to be looked at, enthusiasm to be kindled in every new painter and amateur he met. He talked until he went hoarse. A feverish energy came into his eyes. He took his food fitfully, and almost never found a chance to sleep. He was forever going, going, going.
By the beginning of spring, the five thousand francs were collected. Theo was giving notice to Goupils on the first of the month. He had decided to take the shop on the Rue Tronchet. Vincent put down a small deposit on the house in St. Germain. The list of members with which the colony would be opened was drawn up by Theo, Vincent, Pére Tanguy, Gauguin and Lautrec. From the piles of canvases amassed at the apartment, Theo picked those he was going to show in his first exhibit. Rousseau and Anquetin had a bitter quarrel as to who was going to decorate the inside of the shop, and who the outside. Theo no longer minded being kept awake. He was now as enthusiastic as Vincent had been in the beginning. He worked feverishly to get everything organized so that the colony might open by summer. He debated endlessly with Vincent whether the second house should be located on the Atlantic or the Mediterranean.
One morning Vincent went to sleep about four o’clock, utterly exhausted. Theo did not awaken him. He slept until noon, and awoke refreshed. He wandered into his studio. The canvas on the easel was many weeks old. The paint on the palette was dry, cracked, and covered with dust. The tubes of pigment had been kicked into the corners. His brushes lay about, caked solid with old paint.
A voice within him asked, softly, “One moment, Vincent. Are you a painter? Or are you a communist organizer?”
He took the stacks of ill-assorted canvases into Theo’s room and piled them on the bed. In the studio he left only his own pictures. He stood them on the easel, one by one, gnawing his hangnails as he gazed at them.
Yes, he had made progress. Slowly, slowly, his colour had lightened, struggled toward a crystal luminosity. No longer were they imitative. No longer could the traces of his friends be detected on the canvas. He realized for the first time that he had been developing a very individual sort of technique. It was like nothing else he had ever seen. He did not even know how it had got there.
He had strained Impressionism through his own nature, and had been on the verge of achieving a very curious means of expression. Then, suddenly, he had stopped.
He put his more recent canvases on the easel. Once he nearly cried out. He had almost, almost caught something! His pictures were beginning to show a definite method, a new attack with the weapons he had forged through the winter.
His many weeks of rest had given him a clear perspective on his work. He saw that he was developing an Impressionist technique all his own.
He took a careful look at himself in the mirror. His beard needed trimming, his hair needed cutting, his shirt was soiled, and his trousers hung like a limp rag. He pressed his suit with a hot iron, put on one of Theo’s shirts, took a five franc note out of the treasury box, and went to the barber. When he was all cleaned up, he walked meditatively to Goupils on the Boulevard Montmartre.
“Theo,” he said, “can you come out with me for a short time?”
“What’s up?”
“Get your hat. Is there a café about where no one could possibly find us?”
Seated at the very rear of a café, in a secluded corner, Theo said, “You know, Vincent, this is the first time I’ve had a word alone with you for a month?”
“I know, Theo. I’m afraid I’ve been something of a fool.”
“How so?”
“Theo, tell me frankly, am I a painter? Or am I a communist organizer?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been so busy organizing this colony, I’ve had no time to paint. And once the house is started, I’ll never catch a moment.”
“I see.”
“Theo, I want to paint. I haven’t put in this seven years of labour just to be a house manager for other painters. I tell you, I’m hungry for my brushes, Theo, so hungry I could almost run away from Paris on the next train.”
“But, Vincent, now, after all we’ve . . .”
“I told you I’d been a fool. Theo, can you stand to hear a confession?”