VINCENT VAN GOGH.* ON the work of Van Gogh there
have been during the last twenty years two sharp changes of intelligent opinion : "of intelligent opinion" I say advisedly, the fools having merely looped the familiar hemicycle from vulgar abuse to senseless adulation. Somewhere about the turn of the century Van Gogh was discovered by the young men in Paris ; and quite inevitably, given his ideas and the subjects he chose, came to be associated with the sentimental philanthropic movement of the early nineteen hundreds—with Charles Louis Philippe, that is to say, and Pierre Hamp and the young socialistic Peguy e tutti quanti. By the writers and reformers an exag, gerated emphasis was laid on the literary and pathetic aspects of his work ; and this soon led the painters to notice hosy often, indeed, his ideas and sentiments did outrun his art, dragging him into vulgarity and didacticism and sometimes into downright bad painting. There was a slump in Vali Gogh. And only now are we beginning to realize that, like the little girl in the rhyme, "when he was good he was very', very good," and that when he was " horrid " the horror is so crudely, so naively horrible that it can be separated% easily from the genuine painting ; while the genuine painting is of the purest and most vigorous that the nineteenth century produced. What we go to Van Gogh for now are his pro- digiously nervous drawing and his gloriously unexpected harmonies. The literary irrelevances, which he expressed rather by a childish ideography—amounting to little more than explanatory labels—than by a pictorial rhetoric deep- rooted in his art, we notice no longer. Whence comes the paradox that it is easier perhaps to eliminate the overtones from the pictures of this ex-street-preacher than from those of any of his great contemporaries (save Seurat and Cezanne), S Vincent Van Gogh: a Biographical Study. - By Saline Meler-Orsefe. Trona. latest by John liolroyd Reece. 2 vols. Illustrated. London: The Medici Society, 1.C3 Ss.1
all scientific and anti-literary though they believed themselves t.0 be.
Herr Meier-Graefe's book is the story of an extraordinary -character, which develops gradually from something hot and strong and ineffective to something not less strong but much less hot and therefore much more effective. We watch the character gradually changing and improving, not as a flower grows and changes, but as a picture. That is the beauty of the book. The art of Van Gogh changed profoundly and was profoundly influenced ; it was influenced by Rembrandt and Millet, by Pissarro, Monticelli and Delacroix, by Seurat for a moment, and by Japanese prints. And, while Rem- brandt and Delacroix stood by him to the last, because he was a genuine artist he gradually saw through and began to shake off the cheap sentiment of Millet and never assimilated the cheaper prettiness of Monticelli. It is to be regretted that he did not see more of that great artist and character Seurat, whose influence might well have saved him from much tribulation and many absurdities, from Gauguin and from an untimely grave.
It is when Herr Meier-Graefc is burrowing into the painter that was Van Gogh, when lie is laying bare and demon- strating the functions of those threads and strands in the man's temperament which drove him into picture-making, that he is at his best. Since painting is but little understood it is not surprising that those queer impulses and sensibilities which cause and condition it should be understood hardly at all. Assuredly Herr Meier-Graefe has not grasped the whole complexity—no one has yet done that; but what nonsense his imaginative attempt to tell the truth and nothing but the truth makes of the Elie Faures and their Fauresque vapourings. Unless it be Mr. Roger Fry, no living writer, nor dead for that matter, has come so near as in this book Herr Meier-Graefe has come to establishing a real and per- ceptible connexion between the mind and emotions of a man and the tip of a paint brush.
Unfortunately, the work being a biography, it is not exclu- sively with a painter that the author has to deal : there was Van Gogh the street-preacher. And, presumably, it is from keeping company with this detestable person that the book has caught its one serious fault. The note is pitched too high ; the voice is raised ; at moments it breaks almost. !For instance, of the Maine a Anvers "it expresses the un- sullied joy of a manly heart at the festivities of the people." Perhaps it does, but it is better not to say so.
Nevertheless, the story of Van Gogh, the man—the humour- less Protestant with a genius for painting—is extremely well told. Here again it is a tale of development, improvement and influences. Of these last the most important were the brother Theo, Gauguin, and le docteur Cachet. On both the art and life of his brother the influence of Theo was con- sistently good. Theo was a fine fellow, and Herr Meier- Graefe makes us feel it. Abcut Gauguin he is pleased to be sarcastic and ironical, and, in my opinion, unfair. At any rate, given another half column, I think I could make out a case for the other side ; after all, there is something to be said for running away from a lunatic who has got hold of a knife. As for le docteur Gachet, he was what Mr. Jorrocks called "the praeter-pluperfect in the way of an ass." A few weeks of him drove poor, crazy Van Gogh to suicide ; a saner man might have shot himself after as many days.
Not knowing German, I cannot tell whether Mr. Holroyd Reece has made an exact translation, but I know he has produced an extraordinarily appetizing book. A reader, out of the secret, could never guess that what he was reading was not original ; nor, so far enlightened, could lie guess how the miracle was accomplished. Here is a lesson for trans- lators in general ; a lesson, I fear, by which most of them are too slovenly to profit. A few unfortunate blemishes there are, e.g., "surrounding circumstances," page 11, Vol. I.; Mr. Reece has got his dates wrong on page 79, and his grammar
on page 127, both in the same volume. These little faults will perhaps be corrected in the new and cheap edition which I assume to be already in preparation ; for it is unthinkable that a book of such high quality and importance should be confined to that not particularly deserving class which is
willing to pay three guineas for two hundred pages. The reproductions, which account for the price, are copious and, .0.-n the whole, satisfactory.
Ciava Bum.
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