JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022
The third, and one assumes last, volume in Martin Bailey’s account of Van Gogh’s mature career deals with the last seventy days before the painter shot himself on July 27th, 1890, with death following two days after (Auvers: Finale, Frances Lincoln, £25) Bonus sections are tagged on the end: the first deals with the manner of his death, recently the cause of much ridiculous and deliberately sensational speculation; the second with the growth in Vincent’s artistic reputation and the coincident appeal of his work to fakers – the experimental, rushed Auvers style being a particularly easy one to rip off.
As ever with Bailey’s work this is the book of a terrier researcher doggedly in pursuit of what precisely happened at that second. Alas, the evidence is rarely as conclusive as he would like it to be, so the text is seasoned with innumerable ‘must haves’, ‘might haves’, ‘would haves’, ‘could haves’, ‘probablys’, ‘possiblys’ and ‘presumablys’. Bailey is, however, always even-handed when weighing uncertainties and he is right to be dismissive of crackpot theories concerning Vincent’s death. The only absurdity about the painter’s demise which hasn’t yet been seriously aired is that a passing alien shot his ear off and he bled to death. There can be not an atom of doubt that Van Gogh committed suicide. One thing is certain, even if you are knowledgable about the artist you’ll know considerably more by the end of this book. However, Bailey, as a devoted pupil of Mr Gradgrind, whilst sound on the facts is not so good when critically appraising pictures themselves, about which he too often errs on the side of generosity – a common failing this among commentators where established reputations are concerned. Too often the assumption, coloured by a willing surrender to romance and worship, is that because these are the last works they are imbued with special authority and represent a sort of apogee. They don’t. If anything they mark a serious tailing off involving an unapologetic retreat from any convention.
Vincent breaks the train journey from St Rémy to Auvers to spend two seemingly happy days with his brother in Paris. Considering he’d had a ‘mad’ episode as little as six weeks before – only the latest in a regular series of black-outs – all evidence suggests he is looking well and calm, some even said normal.
Always a stranger to peace of mind, outward appearances were deceptive. Wherever he had lived loneliness dogged him, his art having demanded long periods of solitary study. Isolation, drink, bad diet, a tendency to over-theorise and lack of love fuelled his worst enemy, anxiety, for which work alone (or oblivion) seemed the sole cure. Concentration kept most demons at bay. Insecurity about lack of sales and the threat of losing essential hand-outs from his financially stretched brother tried his nerves during these last weeks. A final reckoning was inevitable. Following a Sunday spent painting he walked in the evening to a spot not far from his café lodging and shot himself in the chest. He had often stated and written that the finality of death appealed to him as a release from the constant torture inflicted by his own mind. Few suspected the inner turmoil he disguised so well. Gachet, that eccentric cocktail of medical doctor and charlatan (Vincent thought him bats), who was supposed to be keeping an eye on the artist, suspected nothing. He should have looked more closely at the pictures, which were exploding all over the place.
Productivity in Auvers was intense: Vincent started on average almost a picture a day. He was a painter in a hurry and the conclusion must be that, as a most intelligent realist, his inner reason had left him in no doubt that time was short. Many pictures look slapdash and tentative, unresolved. Our own Auvers landscape in the National Gallery is clearly unfinished although there’s no acknowledgment of this obvious fact in the picture’s caption. Other works are unfocused and starkly unconventional. Continuing where he left off in St Rémy, they reject completely the traditional formulae for picture-making which Vincent had persevered so patiently to master early in his short career. Lack of inhibition takes over. He couldn’t any longer care less about local colour, straight lines or accurate topography. Everything swims in this lawlessness of complete freedom. These are paintings which, although prompted by actual motifs, are straight out of his head. Landscapes, especially the double-square canvases, become bland, wide-angle panoramas with flat, unappealing foregrounds, betraying abhorrence of the particular and with paint squelched out in either streaks or a rhythmic staccato of blunt stabs. They are either frenziedly out of control or single-mindedly in pursuit of a new way of mediating his personal world through pictures. These last works are quite unlike any other paintings done before that time.
A tiny, wild ‘portrait’ head done at some point in Auvers, in which the hair is in flames and the unresolved flesh only vaguely human, fetched $46 million at Christie’s in November.