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I never heard him speak of those whose work had a certain analogy with his own of Cezanne, for instance, or of Van Gogh; and I doubt very much if he had ever seen their pictures. He was not greatly interested in the Impressionists. Their technique impressed him, but I fancy that he thought their attitude commonplace.
Gauguin in an eloquent letter tells of his intercourse with Vincent Van Gogh, who went mad and killed himself, not, however, before attempting the life of his master. Mauclair has said of Van Gogh that he "left to the world some violent and strange works, in which Impressionism appears to have reached the limit of its audacity.
Certainly Matthew Arnold could say of it, as he once said of Paris, that the great goddess Lubricity reigned in state. In the Moderne Galerie I am still in Munich I was reassured; I saw Israels, Gauguin, Van Gogh what masters! Trübner, Hodler, Zügel, Von Uhde, Max Slevogt a fine view of Frankfort and some children at the seashore by my favourite, Max Liebermann.
He passed through the greater part of life unnoticed, and came near creeping out of it undiscovered. No one seems to have guessed at what was happening. It is easy now to see how much we owe to him, and how little he owed to anyone; for us it is easy to see what Gaugin and Van Gogh borrowed in 1890, the year in which the latter died, it was not so.
He submitted himself to various influences; he imitated the Impressionists, became a Neo-Impressionist of the most extravagant sort; went sketching with Cézanne and Van Gogh, that unfortunate Dutchman, and finally announced to his friends and family that "henceforward I shall paint every day."
Nor was this degradation inexcusable: Van Gogh was a preacher, and too often his delicious and sensitive works of art are smeared over, to their detriment, with tendencious propaganda.
The Publisher had gone unsuspectingly, confidingly, with J. to Montmartre and there, among other haunts, into the now celebrated little shop where the paintings Van Gogh used to give in exchange for paints littered the whole place, and where the dealer thought it a bargain if, for a few francs, he could get rid of canvases that now fetch their hundreds and thousands of pounds.
Amidst many faulty and clumsy works, Van Gogh has also left some really beautiful canvases. There is a deep affinity between him and Cézanne. A very real affinity exists, too, between Paul Gauguin, who was a friend and to a certain extent the master of Van Gogh, and Cézanne and Renoir.
His life became a miracle and an ecstasy. As a lover awakes, he awoke to a day full of consequence and delight. He had learnt to feel; and, because to feel a man must live, it was good to be alive. I know an erudite and intelligent man, a man whose arid life had been little better than one long cold in the head, for whom that madman, Van Gogh, did nothing less.
"A sun in his head and a hurricane in his heart," was said of him, as it was first said of Delacroix by a critical contemporary. Vincent Van Gogh is, to my way of thinking, the greatest genius of the trio under discussion. After them followed the Uglicists and the passionate patterns and emotional curves of the Cubists.
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