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Updated: May 8, 2025
A second followed when Van Gogh's devoted brother went mad. Good Father Tanguy, as he was affectionately called, sickened. He entered a hospital. He suffered from a cancerous trouble of the stomach. One day he said to his wife, who was visiting him: "I am bored here... I won't die here... I mean to die in my own home." He went home and died shortly afterward.
The great public won't have him, and the amateurs who adore him jealously hold on to their prizes. The socialism of Père Tanguy was of a mild order. He pitied with a Tolstoyan pity the sufferings of the poor. He did not hate the rich, nor did he stand at street corners preaching the beauties of torch and bomb.
He it was who may be remembered by those who knew him and also a few future historians of the futility of things in general as the man who first made known to Paris the pictures of the timid, obstinate Paul Cézanne. An odd fish, indeed, was this same Julien Tanguy, little father to painters.
But the Frenchman would have made of Père Tanguy a species of poor Myriel; the Russian would have painted him as he was, a saint in humility, springing from the soil, the friend of poor painters, a socialist in theory, but a Christian in practice. After following the humble itinerary of his life you realise the uselessness of "literary" invention.
Here was character for a novelist to be had for the asking. The Crainquebille of Anatole France occurs to the lover of that writer after reading Emile Bernard's little study of Father Tanguy. His name was Julien Tanguy. He was born in 1825 at Plédran, in the north of France. He was a plasterer when he married. The young couple, accustomed to hardships of all kinds, left Saint-Brieuc for Paris.
But and here is the curious part of this narrative of M. Bernard's Tanguy was the only person in Paris who bought and owned pictures by Cézanne. He had dozens of his canvases stacked away in the rear of his establishment Cézanne often parted with a canvas for a few francs.
Cazin, Guillemet, Gyp, Maufra, Monet, Luce, Pissarro, Rochegrosse, Sisley, Vauthier, Carrier-Belleuse, Berthe Morisot, Renoir, Jongkind, Raffaelli, *Helleu, Rodin, and many others participated in this noble charity, which brought the widow ten thousand francs. She soon died. Van Gogh painted a portrait of Tanguy about 1886. It is said to belong to Rodin.
Finally, entering his beloved quarter he resumed his tranquil occupation, and hearing that the Maison Edouard had been moved from the Rue Clauzel he rented a little shop, where he sold material to artists, bought pictures, and entertained in his humble manner any friend or luckless devil who happened that way. Cézanne and Vignon were his best customers. Tanguy was a rallying point.
This supreme simplicity led him into joining the Communists in 1871, and then he had a nasty adventure. One day, while dreaming on sentry duty, a band from Versailles suddenly descended upon the outposts. Père Tanguy lost his head. He could not fire on a fellow-being, and he threw away his musket. For this act of "treachery" he was sentenced to serve two years in the galleys at Brest.
This was in 1860. After various vicissitudes the man became a colour grinder in the house of Edouard, Rue Clauzel. The position was meagre. The Tanguys moved up in the social scale by accepting the job of concierge somewhere on the Butte Montmartre. This gave Père Tanguy liberty, his wife looking after the house.
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