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THE LETTERS OF A POST-IMPRESSIONIST

[Illustration]

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN

BY

ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI

[Illustration: VINCENT VAN GOGH

BY HIMSELF]




THE LETTERS OF A

POST-IMPRESSIONIST

BEING

THE FAMILIAR CORRESPONDENCE

OF VINCENT VAN GOGH

[Illustration: colophon]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1913

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.




INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON VAN GOGH AND HIS ART.


Though the collection of letters contained in Cassirer's publication,
"Vincent Van Gogh. Briefe," is not a complete one, from my knowledge of
a very large number of the letters which are not included in this
volume, I feel able to say that the present selection is in any case
very representative and contains all that is essential in respect to Van
Gogh's art-credo and general attitude of mind.

For reasons into which it is unnecessary for me to enter here, it was
found convenient to adopt the form of Cassirer's publication arranged by
Margarete Mauthner, and my translation has therefore been made from the
German (Fourth Edition, 1911). Still, with the view of avoiding the
errors which were bound to creep into a double translation of this sort,
I took care, when my version was complete, to compare it with as many of
the original French letters as I was able to find, and I am glad to say
that by this means I succeeded in satisfying myself as to the accuracy
of every line from page 39 to the end.

The letters printed up to page 38, some of which I fancy must have been
written in Dutch--a language which in any case I could not have
read--have not been compared with the originals. But, seeing that the
general quality of the German translation of the letters after page 39
was so good that I was able to discover only the small handful of
inaccuracies referred to in the appendix, I think the reader may rest
assured that the matter covering pages 1 to 38 is sufficiently
trustworthy for all ordinary purposes.

I say that "I fancy" some of the letters which occur between pages 1 and
38 were written in Dutch; for I am not by any means certain of this. In
any case I can vouch for the fact that the originals of all the letters
after page 38 were in French, as I have seen them. But in this respect
Paul Gauguin's remark about his friend Van Gogh is not without interest:
"Il oubliait meme," wrote the famous painter of negresses, "d'ecrire le
hollandais, et comme on a pu voir par la publication de ses lettres a
son frere, il n'ecrivait jamais qu'en francais, et cela admirablement,
avec des 'Tant qu'a, Quant a,' a n'en plus finir."[1]

Rather than disfigure my pages with a quantity of notes, I preferred to
put my remarks relative to the divergencies between the original French
and the German in the form of an appendix (to which the Numbers 1 to 35
in the text refer), and have thus kept only those notes in the text
which were indispensable for the proper understanding of the book. Be
this as it may, the inaccuracies and doubts discussed in the appendix
are, on the whole, of such slight import, that those readers who do not
wish to be interrupted by pedantic quibbles will be well advised if they
simply read straight on, without heeding the figures in the text. To
protect myself against fault-finders, however, such readers will
understand that it was necessary for me to prepare some sort of a list
referring to those passages which, in the German, differed even slightly
from the French original.

In the letters not included in Cassirer's publication, there are, of
course, a few passages which, for obvious reasons, could never have been
brought before the German or English reading public; as will be seen,
however, the present letters in themselves are but more or less lengthy
fragments, carefully edited by the friends of the deceased painter,
while the almost complete omission of dates and other biographical
information usually accompanying a volume of this sort, may also at
first be felt as a rather disturbing blemish.

I would like, however, to seize this opportunity to defend Margarete
Mauthner against the charge of having made a "fantastic arrangement" of
these letters; for, if the person who made this charge had only been
acquainted with the facts of the case, he would have known that she had
done no more (at least from page 39 onwards) than faithfully to follow
Emile Bernard's original arrangement of his friend's correspondence in
the "Mercure de France"; and surely we must assume that Emile Bernard,
Van Gogh's devoted admirer, was the best judge as to