The present painting is one of six extant portraits by VanGogh of Madame Ginoux, the proprietor of a café in the town ofArles, where the artist lived from February 1888 until May 1889.Two of the Arlisienne portraits, now housed in the Musée d'Orsayand the Metropolitan Museum of Art, were executed during Van Gogh'sstay at Arles, a period that has been described as "the zenith, theclimax, the greatest flowering of Van Gogh's decade of artisticactivity." (1) The remaining examples, of which the present canvasis the only one remaining in private hands, were painted inFebruary 1890, several months after Van Gogh's departure from Arlesand while in voluntary confinement in a hospital at neighboringSaint-Rémy. They were based on a portrait drawing of Madame Ginouxthat Gauguin had made at Arles, during a brief period of intenseaesthetic exploration in which the two artists lived and workedside-by-side. Both an homage to Gauguin and a meditation upon VanGogh's own anguished mental state, the 1890 Arlésiennes are amongthe most powerful and moving documents of the painter's final twoyears. As Douglas Druick has written, "Vincent intended theArlésiennes as a symbolic summation of what he believed he andGauguin had worked for together: a distilled humanist image,expres*sive of the enlightened, modern consciousness he nowreferred to as 'grief nearly smiling.'" (2)
Van Gogh left Paris for Arles in February 1888. In a letter tohis brother Theo the following year, he recalled the impetus forhis move: "My dear brother, you know that I came to the South andthrew myself into my work for a thousand reasons. Wishing to see adifferent light, this stronger sun, because one feels that thecolors of the prism are veiled in the mist of the North." (3) AtArles, Van Gogh was immediately struck by the women of the town,who were celebrated both in travel guides and contemporaryliterature for their traditional costume and classical beauty.Gustave Flaubert, for instance, extolled "the women of Arles! Withtheir skirts, their comportment, their robust and svelte stature,they resemble the antique Muse." (4) When Gauguin arrived at Arlesin October 1888, Van Gogh insisted that they spend his first daythere "walking about so that I might admire the beauty of Arles andof the Arlésiennes." (5) Gauguin apparently agreed with Van Gogh'sassessment. The latter painter reported that his companion was"above all things intrigued by the Arlésiennes." (6) Gauguin,likewise, wrote to Emile Bernard that the local women, with theirelegant hairstyles and ample shawls, reminded him of figures seenin procession on ancient sculpture and vases--proof, he believed,that his new surroundings would enable him to pioneer what hedescribed as a "beautiful modern style." (7)
Although Van Gogh had met with difficulty in persuading thewomen of Arles to pose for him, Gauguin had "already all but foundhis Arlésienne" within a week of his arrival in the town. (8) Themodel in question was Marie Ginoux. She and her husband Joseph werethe proprietors of the Café de la Gare, located at 30 placeLamartine in Arles. Van Gogh had lodged the Ginouxs from May untilhis move four months later to the so-called Yellow House, just ablock away. In early September, Van Gogh immortalized theestablishment owned by the Ginoux in Un café de nuit (de la Failleno. 463; Yale University Art Gallery New Haven, Connecticut),explaining to Theo, "It's what they call a 'night café' aroundhere. They're quite common, they stay open all night. So 'nightprowlers' can find refuge when they don't have enough for a room orare too drunk to be given one." (9) To Bernard, he wrote that thecafé also "lets its rooms by the hour and from time to time you seea tart sitting there with her bloke," but it was not, he hastenedto add, a brothel. (10) Following Gauguin's arrival at Arles, thetwo artists continued to frequent the Cafi de la Gare, takingnearly all their meals there.
Madame Ginoux posed for Van Gogh and Gauguin some time duringthe first week of November. Dressed in full Arlésienne regalia, shesat in the front room of the Yellow House, which served as theartists' studio. During this single session, Gauguin produced alarge charcoal drawing of the forty-year-old Madame Ginoux, herhand resting on her cheek (fig. 1). Van Gogh, in turn, portrayedthe model in vivid color, seated in an upright wooden armchair withher gloves and parasol resting on the table before her (fig. 2). Ina letter to Theo dated November 5th or 6th, Van Gogh described thispainting: "I have an Arlésienne at last, a figure (size 30 canvas)slashed on in one hour, background pale citron, the face gray, theclothes black, black, black, with very harsh Prussian blue. She isleaning on a green table and seated in an armchair of orange wood."(11) Gauguin used his portrait drawing as the basis for a paintingof the Café de la Gare, completed during the second week ofNovember (Wildenstein no. 305; Pushkin Museum, Moscow). Probablyduring November as well (though possibly later in his stay atArles), Van Gogh made a second version of his Arlésienne, which mayhave been a gift to Madame Ginoux to repay her for posing (fig. 3).The later painting is characterized by bolder color contrasts andmore emphatic contours than the first, and the parasol and gloveshave been replaced by a stack of books.
Gauguin's nine-week stay at Arles came to an abrupt end inlate December 1888, when Van Gogh suffered an attack of mentalillness (the well-known episode in which he severed part of his ownear). Gauguin returned to Paris; Van Gogh remained at Arles untilMay of the following year, when he moved voluntarily to an asylumat nearby Saint-Rémy. In February 1890, Van Gogh returned to themotif of the Arlésienne, making five oil paintings based onGauguin's 1888 portrait drawing of Madame Ginoux, which the latterartist had left behind at Arles. One of these paintings has beenlost, and one is the present canvas. The remaining three are allhoused in prominent museum collections: the Galleria Nazionaled'Arte Moderna in Rome (F. 540), the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller inOtterlo (F. 541), and the Museu de Arte de São o Paulo (fig.4).
The impetus for Van Gogh's second Arlésienne series was aconfluence of significant events in early 1890. In mid-January, VanGogh made his first visit to Arles in several months, where hefound Madame Ginoux "much changed" by a difficult menopause thatcaused "nervous attacks," as he reported to Theo. (12) Upon hisreturn to Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh wrote to Madame Ginoux, ponderingthe mysteries of illness and health: "What makes us ill and boweddown by our despondency today is the same thing that gives us thestrength to get up the next day with the will to recover." (13)Shortly thereafter, Van Gogh himself fell ill for a week, anepisode which reinforced his empathy for Madame Ginoux. On January28th, just as he was beginning to recover, he received a letterfrom Gauguin suggesting that the two artists consider livingtogether again--a development that Van Gogh had expres*sed hopesfor several months earlier, writing of the "aching void" that hefelt for his erstwhile friend and colleague.(14)
In early February, Van Gogh began work on the new paintings ofMadame Ginoux, which drew heavily on Gauguin's drawing for pose,costume, and facial expres*sion. Around the 20th of the month, hementioned the project to his sister Wil: "I'm working on a portraitof an Arlé sienne, and am trying to achieve an expres*siondifferent than that of the Parisiennes...so sad, so moved, almostsmiling." (15) Of the four surviving versions the composition,three are nearly identical, featuring Madame Ginoux in a blackdress with a white bodice, seated at a green table against abackground of diagonal pink strokes. On the table are two bookswith clearly legible titles: Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet BeecherStowe and Charles Dickens' Christmas Stories. The present paintingdiffers from the other three both in palette and in brushwork. Thedress is pink with a pale green bodice, and the background iscomprised of cream-colored strokes in a basket weave patternoverlaid with delicate floral ornamentation. In all four versions,the crisp angularities and acidic hues of Van Gogh's 1888Arlésiennes have been jettisoned in favor of rounded forms andsilvery pastels that make the sitter seem older and more sedate.Comparing the 1890 series to the earlier portraits, Judy Sundcomments:
The paintings are at once the revised image of a changedfriend and a reflection of the artist's own illness and hisattempts to cope with it. As portrayed by Van Gogh in 1890, theArlésienne seems a different person from the woman depicted somefifteen months before, and while the gap between his images of hersurely reflects illness-induced changes in the model's appearance,it likewise indicates the artist's altered state. As before, hebent Ginoux's demeanor to a mental construct: that of an idealfemale companion and counterpart. Before the onset of his illness,the desired entity was a reflective intellectual with a taste formodern literature (a far cry, no doubt, from the person Ginouxactually was), but in the aftermath of his breakdown (as heexperienced 'a tempest of desire to embrace a woman of the domestichen type'), the feminine touchstone of his mind's eye became softerand more maternal (compare La Berceuse of January 1889) and byearly 1890 took on aspects of the fellow sufferer van Goghperceived Ginoux to be. (16)
On February 22, 1890, Van Gogh went to Arles with one of thenew Arlésienne portraits, most likely intending to present it toMadame Ginoux herself. While he was there, he suffered anotherattack, recounted in a letter to Theo from Dr. Peyron, director ofthe asylum in Saint-Rémy: "I was obliged to send two men bycarriage to Arles to pick him up, and there is no way of knowingwhere he spent Saturday night. He had taken the portrait of a womanfrom Arles with him; it has not been recovered." (17) One of theartist's longest episodes of illness followed, lasting until theend of April. In a letter to Gauguin later in the year, Van Goghassociated this collapse with his work on the Arlésienne series,writing that he "paid for doing it with another month of illness,but I also know that it is a canvas that will be understood by youand by a very few others, as we would wish it to be understood."(18)
When his health had returned, Van Gogh sent three of the foursurviving versions of the portrait to Theo, with instructions thatone should be dispatched to Gauguin as a gift. The wallpaper in thepresent example is very similar to that in a self-portrait thatGauguin had made for Van Gogh in September 1888 (W. 239;Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh, Amsterdam), and it has been suggestedthat it may have been the version that Van Gogh intended for hisfellow painter. (19) There is no evidence, however, that thepresent painting ever belonged to Gauguin. Instead, Theo seems tohave kept it for his own collection. Van Gogh referred to thisversion in a letter to Wil dated June 1890, which was accompaniedby a sketch (fig. 5): "In the copy which is in Theo's possessionthe dress is pink, the background yellowish white, and the front ofthe open bodice is of muslin of a white color merging into green.Among all these colors only the hair, the eyebrows and the eyesform black spots." (20) It is also possible that the presentpainting is the Arlésienne that Gauguin saw at Theo's apartment inMay or June 1890; he declared it "very beautiful and very curious,"adding, "I like it better than my drawing." (21) Van Gogh wrote inresponse, "I'm absolutely delighted to hear that you like theArlésienne portrait, which I based strictly on your drawing. Itried to be faithful to your drawing, respectfully so but takingthe liberty of interpreting the sober character and style of thedrawing in question by the use of a color. It is a sort ofsynthesis of our Arlésienne, if you will; and since such things arequite rare, take it as a work by you and by me, as a summary of ourmonths of work together." (22)
Van Gogh kept one of the 1890 portraits of Madame Ginoux forhimself, taking it with him when he moved from Saint-Rémy to Auversin May of that year. At Auvers, the painting made a powerfulimpression on the homeopathic physician, Dr. Paul Gachet, wholinked it to a self-portrait by Van Gogh that he also particularlyadmired (F. 627; Musée d'Orsay, Paris): "He always comes back tothese two portraits when he comes to see the studies," Van Goghwrote to Theo, "and he understands them exactly, exactly, I tellyou, as they are." (23) When Van Gogh painted Dr. Gachet's ownlikeness in June of 1890, he drew heavily on the Arlésienneportraits, repeating the melancholy pose and the display of bookson the table (fig. 6). As Sund has concluded, "Joined in theartist's mind by his empathy with their sufferings, Ginoux andGachet, who never met, are forever coupled by the portraits made ofthem." (24)
L'Arlésienne and the Craft of Weaving in Van Gogh's Work
By Madeleine Clay
Among the four extant portraits of Madame Ginoux that Van Goghpainted in February 1890, the present version is distinguished bothby palette and facture. The other three versions, which are nearlyidentical, all depict the model clad in a black dress with a whitebodice, the traditional costume of an Arlésienne. She is seated ata green table against a pink background, which is painted withevenly spaced, diagonal brushstrokes. In the present painting, bycontrast, the dress is pale pink, the bodice mint green, and thebackground is comprised of thick, cream-colored strokes applied ina prominent cross-hatch configuration and overlaid with delicatefloral patterning. The distinctive, interlocking facture that VanGogh used for this version of the portrait is not merely adecorative motif. Rather, it is a mature manifestation of theartist's life-long interest in the craft of weaving, intentionallyevoking the warp and weft of woven fabric or canvas. The goal ofthis essay is to explore this aspect of the painting, one of manylevels of meaning that interact to make the portrait one of VanGogh's most compelling late works (25).
Van Gogh's attraction to weaving dates to the very beginningof his career as an artist. In 1884-1885, he spent several monthsobserving weavers at their looms in Nuenen, a small village inHolland where his parents had recently moved. The weavers, whocomprised eighty percent of Nuenen's working population at thetime, were mainly engaged in making brightly colored, striped andcheckered materials called bontjes. Van Gogh, in turn, made atleast thirty images in varying media documenting these skilledartisans absorbed in their craft (see previous page). (26) At thesame time that he was scrutinizing the production of colored cloth,Van Gogh was also reading the work of Michel Chevreul, author ofthe most important books on color theory for nineteenth-centurypainters. The director of the Gobelins Tapestry Works, Chevreuldevised his schema of complementary and contrasting colors based onexperiments with dyed fibers and fabric. Van Gogh's letters fromthis period indicate that he too explicitly linked the process ofweaving with the artist's efforts to achieve certain effects ofpattern and color. In 1885, he wrote to his brother Theo, "When theweavers weave that cloth, the peculiar Scottish plaid, then youknow their aim is to make the most vivid colors balance each other.But for the weaver, or rather the designer of the pattern orcombination of colors, it is not always easy to determine hisestimation of the number of threads and their direction, no morethan it is easy to blend the strokes of the brush into a harmoniouswhole. All winter long I have had the threads of this tissue in myhands, and have searched for the ultimate pattern; and though ithas become a tissue of rough, coarse aspect, nevertheless thethreads have been chosen carefully and according to certain rules."(27) In 1886, Emile Bernard observed Van Gogh experimenting withcolor effects by unrolling skeins of dyed yarn on his work table inParis and arranging them in "unexpected interlacing tonalities."(28) The red lacquered box in which Van Gogh kept his collection ofcolored yarn is now housed in the Van Gogh Museum inAmsterdam.
During the last three years of his career, the legacy ofweaving was inescapable in Van Gogh's visual language. He wasrepeatedly drawn to woven objects as subjects for composition:straw hats, shawls and textured clothes, wicker chairs,thatch-roofed cottages, and so on. He also experimented withcanvases of differing weaves. In October and November of 1888, forinstance, he worked on a heavy and minimally primed jute thatGauguin had purchased shortly after his arrival at Arles, thecoarse texture of which remained visible beneath the paint surface.On occasion, Van Gogh even painted on untreated surfaces such aslinen towels and cotton bed sheets, using the woven texture of thecloth as part of his composition. An example of this is WildFlowers and Thistles of 1890 (fig. 7), which was painted on ared-striped linen hand towel of the sort seen hanging in theartist's paintings of his bedroom at Arles (F. nos. 482-484).Weaving also provided the compositional structure for many of theartist's late landscapes, particularly his panoramic views of thewheat fields at Auvers (fig. 8). Van Gogh rendered the broad, flatplains as complex checkerboards of color, the blocks of pigmentdeliberately interlocking like the warp and weft of fabric. Withineach unit, he applied the paint in thick, textured strokes thatsuggest the individual threads or fibers of this intricately wovenfield.
In L'Arlésienne, Van Gogh employed yet another strategy fortranslating the weaver's craft into the language of painting. Thecream-colored background is comprised of thick, interlockingbrushstrokes that seem to magnify the warp and weft of the canvasitself. The paint surface, in other words, replicates the wovenqualities of the support, as though the latter had been rewoven inpigment. The use of hatched intersections in the background of apainting to rearticulate the coarse weave of the canvas is a devicethat Van Gogh first tested in a series of portraits from 1887-1888.These include La Mousmé (F. 431; National Gallery of Art,Washington, D.C.), Portrait de Joseph Roulin (F. 432; Museum ofFine Arts, Boston; cf. F. 1458 for a version in ink), andespecially L'Italienne (fig. 9), where the weave of the sitter'scostume is also replicated through interlaced, colored strokes. AtSaint-Rémy and Auvers in 1889-1890, Van Gogh continued hisexploration of the cross-hatched background in paintings such asVase with Rosemallows (F. 764a; Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh,Amsterdam), Adeline Ravoux (fig. 10), and the present Arlésienne.In these late examples, Van Gogh heightened the impact of thedistinctive, interlocking facture by applying the paint in broader,thicker strokes than he had previously. The surface is built up asa dense, patterned deposit of interwoven brushstrokes, renderingthe image itself as tangible and textural as the canvas on which itwas applied.
Van Gogh's interest in the visual language of weaving duringthe last years of his career may also be linked more generally tohis life-long identification with the craftsman or laborer. In hisletters to Theo from Nuenen in 1884-1885, he repeatedly expres*sedthe view that active work was the path to grace, describing theweavers and peasants of the town as "useful, honest, andproductive." (29) Moreover, he associated the arduousness of hisown artistic activity with the redemptive production of the peasantworking the soil: "I keep my hand to the plow and cut my furrowsteadily." (30) In paintings such as L'Arlésienne, the tactile,textured application of paint transforms the image into a tangiblecraft product, comparable to the output of the weaver at his loom.During his stay at the asylum at Saint-Rimy, moreover, Van Goghundertook an ambitious program of copying from prints, translatingthem into colored paintings. Between September 1889 and May 1890(the same time that he was at work on the Arlésienne portraits,themselves based on a drawing by Gauguin), he made more than twentycanvas versions of prints after Millet, the majority depictingpeasants at work, as well as adaptations of images by Rembrandt,Delacroix, and Daumier. (31) While Van Gogh admitted that he madethe copies in part for his own pleasure, he also saw this endeavoras a means of honing his artistic skills through practice andrepetition, much as a craftsman would: "Misfortune is good forsomething," he wrote to Theo, "you gain time for study."(32)
The Impassioned Reader:
Literature in the Life and Art of Vincent van Gogh
by John Steinert
Two books lay stacked on the tabletop in front of Mme Ginouxin Vincent's portrait of her, in the present painting and in theother three extant versions. They are clearly titled in each of thecanvases: 'Ch Dickens Contes de Noël,' the English novelist'smuch-loved Christmas Stories, and 'Beecher Stowe La Case de l'OncleTom,' the American author's popular anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom'sCabin. Books appear in fifteen of Vincent's paintings and ahalf-dozen drawings done between 1882 and 1890, including some ofhis best-known works. Their inclusion always contained specialsignificance for the artist, and was intended to convey a messageto his sitter and the viewer as well.
The prose in Vincent's abundant letters is direct andunmannered, but it is uncommonly articulate and absorbinglypictorial for someone who did not write professionally, even inthat great age of letter-writing. This suggests that the artist wasan avid reader, which is indeed the case. In True to Temperament,her engrossing and comprehensive study of Van Gogh's relationshipto French Naturalist literature, Judy Sund has noted that Vincentmentioned more than two hundred titles in his letters (33),sometimes commenting on them at length or only briefly in passing,including works by many of the leading and progressive authors ofhis day. Vincent proudly professed to his brother Theo a "more orless irresistible passion for books" and declared that "the love ofbooks is as sacred as the love of Rembrandt" (Letter T 133; July1880). Vincent was perhaps the best-read of the artists in hiscircle. He relished contemporary fiction, and must have spent longhours alone with a book in hand, deeply involved in his reading.Considering his prodigious activity as a painter and draughtsman,and as a letter-writer as well, all compressed within a tragicallyshort span, one wonders when he found the time to read so widely,and intently.
Vincent's early taste in fiction reflected his youthfulpietism and crusader's zeal on behalf of the poor and oppressed -he attempted in 1879 to become a lay evangelist minister. Thenovels of Dickens and Beecher Stowe, who dealt with the moral andsocial issues of the times, became his favorite reading, togetherwith the Bible. His English sojourn in 1876 reinforced anattraction to the mid-century Victorian novelists, George Eliotespecially. It was not until Vincent moved to The Hague in 1882 tostudy painting with Anton Mauve that he first encountered FrenchNaturalist literature, the richly pictorial and compellinglyrealistic novels of Emile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, Guy de Maupassantand the Goncourt brothers, which quickly became his abiding passionas a reader. In a letter to his brother, Vincent quoted a maximfrom Zola's Mes haines, which he completely took to heart: "I, asan artist, want to live life to the hilt - want to live!" (LetterT336; 1883).
Vincent's engagement with Naturalist fiction, Les romansparisiens, was one factor that led him to Paris in 1886. Here heexperienced their sights and sounds firsthand, which was no lesscrucial to his evolution as a artist than being exposed to thelatest advances in painting, which he absorbed slowly butdeliberately. He symbolically married these literary and pictorialinfluences in Still Life with Plaster Statuette, a Rose and TwoNovels, painted in the winter of 1887-1888 (see frontispiece tothis note). The two titles he illustrated, seen in their colorful,paper covers, are the Goncourts' Germinie Lacerteaux, their tragictale of a spinster made pregnant and then abandoned by her younglover, and Maupassant's Bel-Ami, his send-up of an ambitious cad'scorrupt rise to wealth and power.
Daudet's tales of the Midi, especially his picaresque Tartarinde Tarascon series, stirred Vincent's interest in the South. Healso expected to find there a place resembling the landscape andlight that had been such a revelation to him in Japanese prints. Heacted on his "idea of looking for something in the country ofTartarin" (Letter T617), and arrived in Arles in February 1888. Oneof the first works he painted there was the small still-lifeBlossoming Almond Branch in a Glass with a Book (fig. 2), in whichhe expres*sed his hope for a productive stay. The book is notidentifiable, but one might reasonably guess it to be a title byDaudet. Gauguin joined Vincent in late October to establish their"Studio of the South." Their partnership lasted only a couple ofmonths; Gauguin later wrote in Avant et Après, "Daudet, de Goncourtand the Bible were burning up this Dutchman's brain."34 He recalledhow after making an inedible pot of soup for their dinner, Vincentinvoked an incident in Tartarin, "my Vincent burst out laughing andexclaimed 'Tarascon! La casquette au père Daudet!' 35b
The two artists discovered the local Arlésienne they wereeager to paint in the person of Marie Ginoux. She and her husband,the proprietors of a local café, were virtually the onlyrespectable townspeople who would have anything to do with theoddly-behaved strangers from the North, and their interests atfirst were purely commercial. As described in the introductoryessay in this catalogue, Vincent and Gauguin held their portraitsessions with Mme Ginoux, who arrived dressed in her colorful,traditional garb, during the first week in November. Vincentpainted two canvases (figs. ? and ?, p. ___); in the second heincluded two books. Judy Sund has written, "The well-thumbedpaperbacks of the later painting (one which lies open before thesitter) suggest a more private realm and lead one to interpretGinoux's pose as one of high-minded reverie..."36 However, Sundpoints out that "it isunlikely that Marie Ginoux had a predilectionfor literature, and it even less likely she knew the sort of booksVan Gogh included in the second Arlésienne, which -- by virtue oftheir colorful paper bindings - are readily identified as "romansparisiens". Few provincial women, even the most 'literary,' readsuch books in this era, and the novel's presence in L'Arlésiennesurely reflects Van Gogh's taste, not Ginoux's" 37. In the samemonth Vincent painted Woman Reading a Novel (fig. 3), a purelyimagined work, which suggests the intense involvement andconcentration that he himself brought to the pastime of readingfiction.
During the sessions with Mme Ginoux, Gauguin made the charcoaldrawing of her that he left with Vincent, and which became thebasis for the second series of portraits, including the presentpainting. Gauguin's departure in December 1888 was a tremendousblow to Vincent. Some of their arguments had been over literature;Gauguin was partial to the newer movement of the Symbolists anddecadents, while Vincent retained his loyalty to the Naturalists.In Gauguin's Chair (fig. 4), painted shortly after the twoL'Arlésienne portraits, Vincent seemed to sense Gauguin's imminentdeparture. In the absence of his friend and sitter, he placed twobooks next to a candle on his chair. These constituted, in light ofVincent's great love of books, a heartfelt and movingtribute.
Van Gogh painted the second group of five Ginoux portraits inFebruary 1890, as he was convalescing from his bout with mentalillness at the asylum in Saint-Rémy, near Arles. He had learnedthat Marie Ginoux was also suffering from a nervous ailment, and heprepared to dispatch to her one version of her portrait as a signof his compassion in her time of need. He included in her portraitsa copy of Dicken's Christmas Stories and Beecher Stowe's UncleTom's Cabin. The romans parisiens he had employed in the initialpair of portraits were no longer suitable in this situation. Theuplifting stories of Dickens and Beecher Stowe would be moreappropriate for a lady, and in light of her condition, morecomforting as well. In a letter to his sister Wilhelmina, datedArles 10 April 1889, before he left for Saint-Rémy, Vincent wrote:"I have reread Uncle Tom's Cabin by Beecher Stowe with extremeattention, for the very reason that it is a book written by awoman, written, as she tells us, while she was making soup for thechildren -- and after that, also with extreme attention, CharlesDickens Christmas Tales [sic]." It was a symptom of his malaisethat he went on to say, "I read little in order to meditate all themore. It is very probable that I shall have to suffer a great dealyet" (Letter W11). Nevertheless, eight months later, when thinkingabout and painting Marie Ginoux, he remembered the pair of booksthat had assuaged his own distress. Ronald Pickvance has written,"He included them in L'Arlésienne as magical talismans for therestoration of Madame Ginoux's health"38.
A pair of books appears for the last time in one of Vincent'sfinal portraits, in the famous first version of his Portrait ofDoctor Gachet (fig.__, p. __). The portrait of Mme Ginoux thatVincent kept for himself greatly impressed Gachet. Vincent used asimilar pose in his two portraits of Gachet, and in the first heincluded two novels, again the roman parisiens that he had longadmired, this time the Goncourt brothers' Manette Salomon andGerminie Lacertaux. As it turned out, Vincent was again imposinghis literary tastes on his sitter. Gachet appeared to have littleinterest in the Goncourts. Vincent eliminated the pair of novelsfrom the second version of his portrait, which he made for andpresented to the doctor.
Several weeks later, Vincent killed himself. This might havebeen a scene out of one of the novels he read; an alarming numberof protagonists in 19th century literature resorted to thisterrible solution. One may ponder if Vincent, the impassionedreader, thought of himself as one of them.
L'Arlésienne, Madame Ginoux
By Roland Dorn
In the aftermath of the Romantic Movement French literaturesaw a revival of regional traditions, especially in Provence, whereartists of every kind were inspired by beauty - and theArlésiennes, the women of its capital since ancient days, werepraised to be "the most beautiful women on earth", as FrédéricMistral stated (39). More familiar to the contemporary Frenchpublic was Alphonse Daudet's "L'Arlésienne", a short storyfeaturing a femme fatale and a peasant's son, who fell in love withher but vanished under her spell. 40 Its adaptation to a play,staged to the music of Georges Bizet (1872), at first floppedcompletely, but triumphed when restaged at the Odéon Théâtre inParis in 1888.
Arriving in Arles in February 1888, Vincent--at the beginningof his career, in 1881, he had dropped the name of the wealthy andrenowned Van Gogh family he was born to (41)--began to look formodels, but evidently only "An Old Arlésienne" (F.390) would posefor him. It was the return of his old dilemma. Like Gavarni, hewanted to depict contemporary society: figures he felt to berepresentative of the age, in their characteristic settings, withtheir distinctive attitudes and sentiments. But how to depict"abstractions" like these, how to paint figures at all, when thismeant (although Vincent had a reasonable monthly allowance suppliedby his brother, he was always short of money) paying for sittings?And this assumes that the models he was looking for were willing topose for him-which they often were not.
Gauguin's arrival in Arles, 23 October 1888, altered thesituation., A man acquainted with the rites and rules of the game,."he has almost found his Arlésienne," Vincent marveled a few dayslater (42) Who was this Arlésienne? Was it Marie Ginoux, néeJullian (1848 - 1911)? She and her husband Joseph Ginoux ran theCafé de la Gare at 30, place Lamartine in Arles; Vincent as well asGauguin immortalized its interior in their paintings of a Café denuit (FIG 1).
Vincent to stay there from April 1888 until he moved to theYellow House next door in mid-September 1888. His ironic remarks onthe owners of the Café de nuit while he was executing the paintingleave little doubt that their relationship stayed more or lesscommercial until Vincent left Arles for Saint-Rémy, in the springof 1889. Even then, he had to pay them for the space to store hisfurniture.
On one of the last days of October 1888, Marie Ginoux waspersuaded to pose for both artists: Vincent completed a large size30 canvas within three quarters of an hour (FIG XXX), while Gauguincontented himself with a carefully executed study in pencil (FIGXXX). He used this study as the basis for his Café de nuit (FIGXXX), finished a few days later in November, before being sent toVincent's brother Theo and exhibited at Les XX in Brussels in thespring of 1889.
By this time, two things had happened. First, Gauguin, who hadleft Arles for Paris during the critical days after Vincent'snervous breakdown and temporary confinement in the hospital,claimed Vincent's Sunflowers in exchange for a few studies that hehad left behind in Arles, among them the portrait drawing of MadameGinoux. Vincent was extremely upset, refused categorically, andoffered to return all the works that he had ever exchanged withGauguin. 43 Second, Vincent was struck by the news that the day hehad fallen ill, Madame Ginoux, too, had begun to suffer from aserious disease. This coincidence had a strong emotional impact onVincent and evidently was reason enough for him, as soon as he wasable to do so, to repeat her portrait (FIG XXX)--with significantalterations. No doubt, Vincent had initially conceived a femmefatale in the tradition of Daudet's novel: a woman dressed up inthe traditional costume of the town, worn on Sundays and feastdays, her gloves and parasol carelessly thrown to the table. "TellDegas," Vincent then asked his brother, "I have been unable topaint the women of Arles without their poison". 44 But in Vincent'srepetition, Madame Ginoux became the modern woman looking up fromher book and reflecting on her reading, like the nun painted byPhilippe de Champaigne (Musée du Louvre, Paris), whom JulesMichelet evoked in his essay "L'Amour" (a favourite tract ofVincent, who called it "this marvellous page").
Madame Ginoux received Vincent's gift at the latest in July1889, during his first visit to Arles from St.-Rémy. By this time,his feelings of anger towards Gauguin had calmed, and, reconciledby letters from Paris and Britanny, Vincent took up writing again.But the next conflict soon arose. Vincent's critical remarks on thereligious subjects which Gauguin and Bernard had recently paintedled to a silence lasting until the spring of 1890, when Gauguin wasback from Brittany and had seen Vincent's exhibit at "LesIndépendants" in Paris. 45 But to Vincent's offer of a paintedversion of the Arlésienne based on his drawing of 1888, Gauguinreplied only after a considerable delay, i.e. not before April1890. Having seen Vincent's recent work, he was no longerhesitating, but was eager to get the Arlésienne that he had beenoffered. 46
Late in the autumn of 1889, when working outdoors becamedifficult, Vincent began to copy prints in his possession,including works by Millet, Delacroix, and Rembrandt, as well asdrawings of his own. The final set of "interpretations in color"which Vincent executed in Saint-Rémy was based on Gauguin'sportrait drawing of Madame Ginoux, which he had left behind when hedeparted for Paris in 1888. Evidently this set of copies wascompleted before Vincent set out for his final trip to Arles. Fromletters of Dr. Théophile Peyron, director of the asylum atSaint-Rémy, to Theo van Gogh, we know that Vincent went once ortwice to Arles in February 1890. On the last occasion, Peyron hadto send two men to Arles to bring him back: "Nobody knows where hespent the night of Saturday to Sunday" (22/23 February 1890?), and"the painting representing an Arlésienne he took with him, hasdisappeared". 47 Nobody knows to whom Vincent wanted to give thepainting (as the Ginoux already had their share, it may have beenfor Roulin and his family), and it never surfaced again.
The pedigrees of all extant versions of L'Arlésienne based onGauguin's drawing start in the collection or the estate of Theo vanGogh, to whom Vincent left the task of distribution: Gauguin was toget one 48, Gauguin, Emile Bernard, and Theo himself were each toget one, and a fourth, which Vincent wanted to keep for himself,evidently accompanied him to Auvers. There, it excited Dr. Gachet,who did not rest until Vincent consented to do his portrait inexactly this manner. From this derive the significant alterationsin Vincent's second portrait of Dr. Gachet (F.754, FIG XXX), whichbrought the Gachet portrait very close to Vincent's own version ofthe Arlésienne (F.542, FIG XXX). But with Vincent's sudden death,the latter merged again with the others in the estate, which Theoshared with his brother's friends and admirers. Among them was aportrait of Emile Bernard (F.540), who helped Theo to organize thefirst retrospective exhibition of Vincent's work in Theo's formerapartment, Cité Pigalle, and the writer and critic Albert Aurier(F.541), who was the first to acknowledge Vincent's talent. Theoentrusted Aurier with publishing the first monograph on hisbrother, a project that was never realized due to Aurier'spremature death in 1892. When Gauguin, back from Tahiti in April1894, claimed his version of the Arlésienne, Johanna vanGogh-Bonger, Theo's widow and translator of her brother-in-law'scorrespondence, sent him one of the two that remained- Vincent'sown (F.542, FIG). Evidently, she was well aware that Vincent hadpainted the other (F.543, the present canvas) explicitly forherself and her late husband. From one of the last letters byVincent to his sister Wil we know that this painting together withthe "Blossoming Almond Branches" (F.671), celebrating the birth oftheir son, had a place of honour in the apartment of Jo and Theo inMontmartre.
This background corresponds with the shift in meaning in thepresent version of the portrait. All earlier versions, even thosethat had already abandoned the initial femme fatale concept,retained the traditional black and white costume of an Arlésienne.Color was something surrounding Madame Ginoux, never part of her.Now black is reserved to indicate the depths of her personality,her hair with the black ribbon, her brows and eyes, whilebright-light-white (Vincent loved such chains of associations)illuminates everything. Isn't illumination the source of modernity,and was it not, according to Victor Hugo and others, the book thatilluminated Europe, at that time the World? Vincent himself pointedto this distinction: "The portrait of an Arlésienne has the fleshdiscoloured and matte, the eyes are quiet and very simple, thedress is black, the background pink, and with her elbow she isleaning on a green table with green books. But in the version atTheo's (the present lot) the dress is pink, the backgroundyellowish white, and the muslin of the open corsage turns fromwhite to green. Among all these bright colors only the hair, thebrows and the eyes mark black spots." 49 The slight opening of thepink corsage to the delicate greenish muslin below makes the point:This woman is no longer exposed to the public like herpredecessors, but she willingly allows the spectator a glance intoher private sphere. From her most intimate settings, the colorsevoke the proverbial beauty of the women of Arles.
In portraits such as the present work, Vincent opted forradical modernity: "I should like to do portraits which a centurylater would appeal to the people living then like apparitions.Therefore I am not looking for photographic resemblance, but forexpres*sions of our passions by means of our knowledge of, andmodern taste for, color." 50
(fig. 1) Paul Gauguin, L'Arlésienne, Madame Ginoux, 1888. FineArts Museum of San Francisco.
(fig. 2) Vincent van Gogh, L'Arlésienne, Madame Ginoux, 1888.Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
(fig. 3) Vincent van Gogh, L'Arlésienne, Madame Ginoux,1888.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
(fig. 4) Vincent van Gogh, sketch of L'Arlésienne,d'après
Gauguin, 1890. Museu de Arte de São Paulo.
(fig. 5) Vincent van Gogh, sketch of L'Arlésienne, MadameGinoux, 1890. Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam.
(fig. 6) Vincent van Gogh, Portrait du Dr. Gachet, 1890;sold,
Christie's, New York, 15 May 1990, lot 21.
OVERLEAF: Vincent van Gogh, Tisserand au rouet, 1884.Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam.
(fig. 7) Vincent van Gogh, Wild Flowers and Thistles in aVase, 1890. Private collection.
(fig. 8) Vincent van Gogh, Champs de blé, 1890. Museum ofModern Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh.
(fig. 9) Vincent van Gogh, L'Italienne, 1887-1888. Muséed'Orsay, Paris.
(fig. 10) Vincent van Gogh, Adeline Ravoux, 1890. ClevelandMuseum of Art
OVERLEAF: Vincent van Gogh, Still-Life with Plaster Statuette,a Rose and Two Novels, Paris, December 1887 (F 360; JH 1349);Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterloo.
(fig. 11) Vincent van Gogh, Blossoming Almh?d Branch in aGlass with a Book, Arles, early March 1888 (F 393; JH 1362); sold,Christie's, New York, 4 November 2003, lot 6.
(fig. 12) Vincent van Gogh, Woman Reading a Novel, Arles,December 1888; (F 497; JH 1632); sold, Christie's, London, 21 June2005, lot 18.
(fig. 13) Vincent van Gogh, Gauguin's Chair, Arles, December1888 (F 499; JH 1636); Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh,Amsterdam.
1. R. Pickvance, Van Gogh in Arles, exh. cat., MetropolitanMuseum of Art, New York, 1984, p. 11.
2. D. Druick and P. Zegers, Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studioof the South, exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago, 2001, p.323.
3. R. Pickvance, op. cit., p. 12.
4. D. Druick and P. Zegers, op. cit., p. 385, note 35.
5. Ibid., p. 171.
6. Ibid., p. 171.
7. Ibid., p. 171.
8. D. Wildenstein, op. cit., p. 521.
9. Ibid., p. 520.
10. Ibid., p. 520.
11. D. Druick and P. Zegers, op. cit., p. 184.
12. J. Sund, "Famine to Feast: Portrait Making at St.-Rémy andAuvers," in Van Gogh Face to Face: The Portraits, exh. cat.,Detroit Institute of Arts, 2000, p. 202.
13. J. Hulsker, op. cit., 1996, p. 432.
14. D. Cooper, Paul Gauguin: 45 Lettres à Vincent, Théo et JoVan Gogh, The Hague, 1983, p. 297; cited in J. Sund, op. cit., p.202.
15. Vincent Van Gogh: Paintings, exh. cat., RijksmuseumVincent Van Gogh, Amsterdam, 2000, p. 247.
16. J. Sund, op. cit., p. 205.
17. J. Hulsker, op. cit., 1996, p. 442.
18. J. Sund, op. cit., p. 256, note 106.
19. D. Druick and P. Zegers, op. cit., p. 323.
20. J.-B. de la Faille, op. cit., 1970, p. 289.
21. D. Wildenstein, op. cit., p. 523.
22. Ibid., p. 523.
23. J. Sund, op. cit., p. 259, note 212.
24. Ibid., p. 227.
25. This issue is discussed in detail in D. Silverman, VanGogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art, New York, 2000, pp.405-412.
26. De la Faille nos. 26-27, 29-30, 32-33, 35, 37, 1107-1111,1114-1116, 1118-1125, 1134, 1136-1140.
27. D. Silverman, op. cit., pp. 142-143.
28. B. Welsh-Ovcharov, Van Gogh in Perspective, EnglewoodCliffs 1974, p. 38.
29. D. Silverman, op. cit., p. 79.
30. Ibid., p. 79.
31. Millet: de la Faille nos. 632, 634, 647-649, 668, 670,684-690, 692-694, 696-700; Rembrandt: nos. 624, 677; Delacroix:nos. 630, 633; Daumier: no. 667.
32. D. Silverman, op. cit., p. 394.
33. J. Sund, True to Temperament: Van Gogh and FrenchNaturalist Literature, Cambridge, UK, 1992, p. 2
34. D. Guerin, ed., Paul Gauguin, The Writings of a Savage,New York, 1978, pp. 251-252
35. ibid., p. 253
36. J. Sund, op. cit., p. 207
37. ibid., pp. 209-210
38. R. Pickvance, Van Gogh in Saint-Remy and Auvers, exh.cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1986, p. 177
39. Cf. R. Dorn, Décoration: Vincent van Goghs Werkreihe fürdas Gelbe Haus in Arles, Hildesheim, 1990, pp. 152-153. FrédericMistral (1813-1914) was the head behind this neo-provençal movementand awarded the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his epic "Mirho"(Mireille), published in 1859.
40. A. Daudet, Lettres de mon Moulin, impressions et souvenirsParis, 1869.
41. Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, New York, 1988, no.558 (29. Oct. 1888)
42. Complete Letters (op. cit. note 1), no. 570 (9. Jan.1889): "[...] dis un peu à de Gas que jusqu'à present j'ai étéimpuissant à les peindre désempoissonnés les femmes d'Arles."
J. Meier-Graefe, Vincent, Munich, 1921, pl. 36.
K. Pfister, "Vincent van Gogh", Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration,March 1922, pp. 305-317 (illustrated, p. 310).
K. Pfister, Vincent van Gogh, Potsdam, 1922 (illustrated, fig.42).
J.-B. de la Faille, L'Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh, Catalogueraisonné, Paris, 1928, no. 543 (illustrated).
J.-B. de la Faille, L'Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh, Catalogueraisonné, supplément aux tomes I et II, Paris, 1928, no. 543.
K. Pfister, Vincent van Gogh, Berlin, 1929 (illustrated, fig.34).
W. Scherjon, Catalogue des Tableaux par Vincent van Goghdécrits dans ses lettres, Périodes: St.-Rémy et Auvers-sur-Oise,Utrecht, 1932, p. 103, no. 101 (illustrated).
W. Pach, Vincent van Gogh, a study of the artist and his workin relation to his times, New York, 1936, pl. 19.
W. Scherjon and J. de Gruyter, Vincent van Gogh's GreatPeriod: Arles, St.-Rémy and Auvers-sur-Oise (Complete Catalogue),Amsterdam, 1937, p. 293, no. 101 (illustrated).
J.-B. de la Faille, Vincent van Gogh, Paris, 1939, no. 711(illustrated).
C. Chetham, The Role of Vincent van Gogh's Copies in theDevelopment of His Art, New York, 1976, no. 56.
J.-B. de la Faille, ed., The Works of Vincent van Gogh,Amsterdam & London, 1970, no. 543 (illustrated).
P. Lecaldano, L'opera completa pittorica di Van Gogh e i suoinessi grafici, Milan, 1971, no. 773 (illustrated).
J. Hulsker, Van Gogh door Van Gogh, De brieven als commentaarop zijn werk, Amsterdam, 1973, no. F.543; letters W20, 629, 632,638, W22, 642, and 643.
J. Hulsker, Van Gogh en zijn weg, Amsterdam, 1977, no. 1895(illustrated).
P. Aletrino, Vincent van Gogh, Milan, 1980, no. 635(illustrated). R. Pickvance, Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and Auvers, NewYork, 1986, p. CHK, Appendix II, (illustrated, batch seven).
W. Feilchenfeldt, Vincent van Gogh & Paul Cassirer Berlin:The Reception of Van Gogh in Germany from 1901 to 1914, Zwolle,1988, p. 103 (illustrated).
I.F. Walther and R. Metzer, Vincent van Gogh, SämtlicheGemälde, Köln, 1989 (illustrated, p. 618).
G. Testori and L. Arrigoni, Van Gogh, Catalogo completo didipinti, Florence, 1990, no. 769 (illustrated).
M. Arnold, Vincent van Gogh, Werk und Wirkung, Munich, 1995,fig. 89 (illustrated in color).
J. Hulsker, The New Complete Van Gogh, Paintings: Drawings,Sketches, Amsterdam, 1996, no. 1895 (illustrated).
C. Stolwijk and H. Veenenbos, The Account Book of Theo vanGogh and Jo van Gogh-Bonger, Amsterdam, 2002, p. 52, no. F.543(illustrated, p. 177).
D. Wildenstein, Gauguin: A Savage in the Making: Catalogueraisonné of the Paintings, Milan, 2002, vol. II, p. 523(illustrated).
Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles, ed., Pablo Picasso,Portraits d'Arlésiennes 1912-1958, Arles, 2005, pp. 50-51(illustrated in color, p. 51).
W. Feilchenfeldt, By Appointment Only: Writings on Art and ArtDealing, London, 2006, p. 119(illustrated).
