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Vincent’s ‘Pinterest’. Prints and Illustrations as a Source of Inspiration
Everybody finds inspiration somewhere. From literature, perhaps, or from love, nature, faith, art or music. Vincent van Gogh was no exception: his letters are full of references to books and paintings. They also express his great love of nature and –in his younger years especially– the Bible.
He collected pictures of all things that appealed to him. The result was a highly personal ‘database’ of prints and magazine illustrations: Vincent’s ‘Pinterest’.
Actually, it’s not a painting but an inspiration.
To his brother Theo from Isleworth, 26 August 1876
Vincent worked in the art trade from the age of 16 until he was 23. During that time, he sold many reproductions of works by artists of all kinds. He himself collected the ones he found beautiful or important, filling the walls of his room with prints, including religious ones.
This morning in church I saw a little old woman (...) who reminded me so much of that etching by Rembrandt, a woman who has been reading the Bible and has fallen asleep leaning her head on her hand.
To his brother Theo from Amsterdam, 21–22 May 1877
Rembrandt van Rijn, Old Woman Sleeping, c. 1635–37, Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam
Vincent’s letters contain all sorts of associations. He saw the paintings, prints and books he knew in the world around him. Such as the time he took a walk along the Amsterdam harbour front:
‘Walked back over the big sand works by the Oosterspoor which you know, and along Buitenkant, the moon was shining and everything was full of M. Maris or Andersen.’
18 September 1877
Vincent gradually became more interested in religion than he was in the art trade. His prints were a support, guiding his thoughts as he searched for something to fill his working days.
Following his dismissal from the art dealer’s, he immersed himself in his faith and decided to become a minister of the church.
H.A.C. Dekker after Jozef Israëls, Winter, in Life as Well, Kunstkronijk 4 (1863)
Vincent made a copy of this print of more or less the same size. It is one of the few early drawings of his we know of.
Jacobus Jan van der Maaten, Going to Church for the Last Time, Kunstkronijk 3 (1862), Universiteits Bibliotheek Amsterdam
This might have been Vincent’s favourite of all his religious prints. A funeral procession makes its way through a wheatfield past a labourer who pauses in his reaping and removes his cap in tribute to the deceased and to God, arbiter of life and death.
Vincent was drawn to Going to Church for the Last Time by its deep respect for nature, rural life, God and death.
Detail from the print with a poem scrawled in the margin
Prints like Going to Church for the Last Time were very popular in the Protestant Netherlands. Vincent’s father – a Dutch Reformed minister – had one in his study, and Vincent gave a copy to Mendes da Costa, his Greek and Latin teacher.
He scrawled a poem in the margin, together with passages from the Gospels focusing on death and rural life.
Van der Maaten’s print reverberates in Vincent’s later work, even after he had abandoned organised religion.
He painted this country churchyard in Nuenen, next to the old churchtower, having previously written to Theo:
‘I certainly would like to try doing that kind of old church and churchyard with sandy graves and old wooden crosses.’
Years later, Vincent painted a farmer reaping the ripe wheat in the South of France. This painting, like Van der Maaten’s, was about life and death. Vincent saw the reaper as a symbol of death, clearing a way for new life (new wheat) with his sickle or scythe:
‘(…) it’s an image of death as the great book of nature speaks to us about it (…)’
L.P. Henriquel-Dupont after Ary Scheffer, Christus Consolator (1837) 1857, Musée Goupil, Bordeaux
After his dismissal from the art dealer’s, Vincent worked for a time as a teacher at a boys’ school in England. He hung this print of Christus Consolator (Christ the comforter of the oppressed) on the wall of his room. The print illustrated the faith to which Vincent aspired.
Vincent described which prints he had in his room in Isleworth, England and what they meant to him in a letter to his parents:
‘(...) then I feel ‘Stay, Lord, and hear the prayer my Mother said for me when I left my parent’s house (...).’
The five prints in Vincent’s room in Isleworth, England
When Vincent turned his back on the church to become an artist, a personal experience of God remained important to him. Toward the end of his life, he lived and worked for a time at a psychiatric clinic at Saint-Rémy. As usual, he took a number of prints with him.
He copied four religiously themed prints after paintings by Eugène Delacroix and Rembrandt. In Vincent’s eyes, these were the only artists who had succeeded in translating Biblical subjects faithfully into paint.
C.F. Nanteuil-Leboeuf naar Eugène Delacroix, Pietà (c. 1850)
During his time at the institution, Vincent sometimes sought consolation in religious reflection. To his great sorrow, the lithograph of Delacroix’s Pietà was damaged during one of the artist’s crises, so he decided to paint a copy. He wrote to Theo about his work, saying ‘I think [it] has feeling’.
Notice the resemblance between the figure of Christ, with his red hair, and Vincent himself.
J.J.A. Laurens after Eugène Delacroix, The Good Samaritan, 1890, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
Vincent later made a further ‘colour translation’, this time of the monochrome print of the painting The Good Samaritan – another work by his great example, Delacroix.
Print after Rembrandt van Rijn, The Raising of Lazarus (c. 1632), from the series Eaux-fortes et gravures des maîtres anciens
Theo sent his brother prints during his time in the institution. For his birthday on 30 March 1890, Vincent received several reproductions of Rembrandt, one of which he ‘translated’ into colour, as he had previously done with the damaged lithograph after Delacroix. The print he chose was The Raising of Lazarus.
Lazarus looks a little like Vincent, who had experienced a severe crisis shortly before making this work. Perhaps he wanted to refer to this by making Lazarus resemble him.
His brother Theo had seen a painting in Paris that was attributed at the time to Rembrandt. He wrote to Vincent about this image of the Archangel Raphael and sent him an illustration, from which Vincent made this copy.
The figure of Christ has been painted — as I feel it — only by Delacroix and by Rembrandt.
To his colleague Émile Bernard from Arles, 26 June 1888
When Vincent started out as an artist, he was particularly interested in magazine illustrations. He sometimes bought an issue simply because it contained a picture he was keen to have.
In my view prints like these together form a kind of Bible for an artist, in which he reads now and again to get into a mood. It’s good not only to know them but to have them in the studio once and for all, it seems to me.
To Anthon van Rappard from The Hague, 10 February 1883
He was most interested in subjects from everyday life and the harsh lives of workers and peasants. But he also had a fair-sized collection of ships and of society themes, such as a badminton match.
Together they formed Vincent’s ‘database’ – a source on which he could draw as an artist at the beginning of his career.
Paul Renouard, Beggars on New Year’s Day, Le Monde Illustré 26 (7 January 1882)
Vincent took the magazines apart and mounted the best prints on thick and coarse grey paper. He sorted them by theme, and sometimes by artist, storing the hundreds of prints he collected this way in portfolios.
Vincent’s huge collection – his ‘database’ – has partly survived and is now managed by the Van Gogh Museum. It still runs to around 1,500 wood engravings.
Paul Renouard, Detail of Beggars on New Year’s Day, Le Monde Illustré 26 (7 January 1882)
Paul Renouard, Detail of Beggars on New Year’s Day, Le Monde Illustré 26 (7 January 1882)
After T.B. Wirgman, Some Graphic Artists, The Graphic Christmas Supplement 1882, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Vincent liked to collect pictures from British magazines like The Graphic, which employed artists to produce their illustrations. He was a huge admirer of the draughtsmen who worked for these publications.
This print shows several artists whose pictures Vincent collected. Front row, left to right: Hubert Herkomer, G. Durand, Frank Holl, William Small – standing, second from right: Luke Fildes.
Hubert Herkomer, ‘Old Women’s Home’ –a Study after Westminster Union, The Graphic 15 (17 April 1877)
The collection reached its height when Vincent got hold of ten years’ worth of the British magazine The Graphic at once.
He suddenly found himself with lots of duplicate prints, so he began to trade them with his friend and colleague Anthon van Rappard, who had also begun to collect these wood engravings because of him.
I’d like to have a word with you about what to do with the duplicates. For there are many, and among them some of the very finest, Last muster by Herkomer, Old women’s home, Low lodging house St Giles’s by him.
To his colleague Anthon van Rappard from The Hague, 3 February 1883
Vincent’s collection of prints was important to his own drawing. It helped him to choose themes and to develop a better understanding of light and shade.
Frank Holl, Alone, in The Graphic 27 (10 February 1883)
We occasionally find a striking echo of a particular print in Vincent’s drawings, as in the case of these two lonely girls. The painter Frank Holl placed his subject in a dark attic, lit from a skylight above, while Vincent’s girl is backlit.
Hubert Herkomer, Heads of the People: ‘The Coastguardsman’, The Graphic 20 (supplement 20 November 1879)
Vincent produced a group of head studies in the winter of 1882–83, for which he drew on the ‘Heads of the People’ series in the magazine The Graphic. He was primarily interested in portraits of poor working people.
The raw immediacy of the portraits in The Graphic is echoed in Vincent’s own head studies of ordinary people shown unadorned and marked by life. Vincent was annoyed when the magazine ended the series, announcing that it would in future publish elegant drawings of fashionable lady’s heads.
The Graphic will do Types of beauty (Large heads of women) [...] no doubt as a replacement for Heads of the people by Herkomer, Small and Ridley. Very well, but some people will not admire the Types of beauty, and will think back with melancholy to the old Heads of the people.
To his brother Theo from The Hague, 11 December 1882
Vincent had difficulty drawing groups of figures. Their relative proportions and the sense of depth were often flawed. His collection of prints helped him get to grips with this shortcoming.
He did not copy the illustrations directly, but drew ideas from them for things like poses. In some cases, it is clear which print he used as an example.
E.G. Dalziel, London Sketches – Sunday Afternoon, 1 pm – Waiting for the Public House to Open, in The Graphic 9 (10 January 1874)
Vincent had his models adopt similar poses to figures in his collection of prints.
Auguste Lançon, A Group of Snow-Shovellers, in La Vie Moderne 3 (29 January 1881)
Vincent was especially interested in learning from pictures featuring groups of figures, which he struggled to draw. Torn-Up Street with Diggers is teeming with people.
Vincent composed the drawing based on individual figure studies, which he was unable to combine harmoniously. The relative proportions of the figures are not very convincing.
Vincent van Gogh, Torn-Up Street with Diggers, 1882, Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Groups of people doing something or other. But how hard it is to get life and movement into it, and to get the figures in place and separate from each other.
To his brother Theo from The Hague, 17 September 1882
Vincent achieves a far better sense of unity in the group of figures depicted in the watercolour The Poor and Money. His study of his collection of wood engravings, including the one by Small, was clearly bearing fruit.
Vincent initially hoped to work for the illustrated magazines, but he gradually abandoned the idea and was already scaling back the number of illustrations he collected.
He decided to become an ‘all-round’ painter instead. Other sources of inspiration, such as Japanese printmaking, were becoming more important.
My studio’s quite tolerable, mainly because I’ve pinned a set of Japanese prints on the walls that I find very diverting. You know, those little female figures in gardens or on the shore, horsemen, flowers, gnarled thorn branches.
To his brother Theo from Antwerp, around 28 November 1885
