Lot Essay
Although van Gogh spent less than a week in the fishing village of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, his brief stay there was a crucial stimulus for his development both as a painter and draughtsman. Van Gogh himself acknowledged the importance of his visit to the town, and critics and historians have agreed.
During his five-day stay at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, from May 30 to June 3 1888, van Gogh made two paintings and seven drawings. Of the seven drawings, the present sheet is the most celebrated. Van Gogh wrote his brother Theo that it was among the most technically accomplished he had done up to that point in his life. Jan Hulsker has called it a "brilliant drawing" (op.cit., p. 326); and Ronald Pickvance has termed it "a breakthrough drawing" (Amsterdam, exh. cat., op.cit., p. 224).
Van Gogh drew this sheet on the morning of Sunday, June 3, his last day at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. He discussed the drawing in the first letter he wrote to Theo after returning to Arles, probably on Monday, June 4:
I am sending you by the same post some drawings of Saintes-Maries. I made the drawing of the boats very early on the morning I was due to leave, and I have the painting of it on the easel, a size 30 canvas, with more sea and sky on the right. It was before the boats cleared off, I had observed it all the other morning, but as they leave very early, I hadn't had time to do it. . . . I am convinced that I shall set my individuality free simply by staying on here. I have only been here a few months, but tell me this--could I, in Paris, have done the drawing of the boats in an hour? Even without the perspective frame, I do it now without measuring, simply by letting my pen go. (LT500)
Ronald Pickvance has commented about the letter and drawing:
These are revealing passages. Clearly, this drawing was meant to be a demonstration piece. Van Gogh wanted to prove to his brother that without the crutch of the perspective frame [that he used before (fig. 1)] he could quickly produce a large and intricate drawing. But it was also destined to serve as a working drawing. Each of the four boats carries detailed color notes. Indeed, no other Arles (or Saintes-Maries) study has so many annotations. (exh. cat, op cit., New York, 1984
The painting made on the basis of this drawing is now in the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam (fig. 2). Van Gogh followed both the design and color notes of his sketch very closely; the only significant changes are the inclusion of a second bamboo fishing pole leaning against the mast of the boat in the foreground, and the addition of a string of four fishing boats in the middle distance at the right. For the composition of that part of the picture, van Gogh may have turned to one of the two paintings he made at Saintes-Maries (fig. 3). Van Gogh was fascinated with the image of the boats on the shore; he made a watercolor after the painting (fig. 4), and included a sketch of the picture in a letter to Emile Bernard (fig. 5), writing:
I spent a week at Saintes-Maries . . . There, at Saintes-Maries, were girls who reminded one of Cimabue and Giotto--thin, straight, somewhat sad and mystic. On the perfectly flat, sandy beach little green, red, blue boats, so pretty in shape and color that they made one think of flowers. A single man is their whole crew, for these boats hardly venture on the high seas. They are off when there is no wind, and make for the shore when there is too much of it. . . I am doing nothing but landscapes--enclosed is a sketch. (B6)
According to van Gogh's letters, the visit to Saintes-Maries-de- la-Mer had three major effects on his art. First, it encouraged and enabled him to draw in a freer and more exaggerated manner. Several days before traveling there he wrote to Theo, "What is always urgent is the drawing, and whether you do it straight off with the brush or with something else, say a pen, you never get enough done. I am trying now to exaggerate the essential, and purposely leave the obvious things vague" (LT490). On May 27, the eve of his trip to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Vincent wrote Theo, "I am taking especially whatever I need for drawing. I must draw a great deal, for the very reason you spoke of in your letter. Things here have so much line. And I want to get my drawing more spontaneous, more exaggerated" (LT495). The joy and sense of artistic accomplishment van Gogh felt in making the present drawing stem largely from the spontaneity and "exaggeration" with which he rendered it.
Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and the Mediterranean also influenced van Gogh's sense of color. His reactions to the sea were intense. He wrote Theo:
I am at last writing to you from Stes.-Maries on the shore of the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean has the colors of mackerel, changeable I mean. You don't always know if it is green or violet, you can't even say it's blue, because the next moment the changing light has taken on a tinge of pink or gray. . . One night I went for a walk by the sea along the empty shore. It was not gay, but neither was it sad--it was--beautiful. The deep blue sky was flecked with clouds of a blue deeper than the fundamental blue of intense cobalt, and others of a clearer blue, like the blue whiteness of the Milky Way. In the blue depth, the stars were sparkling, greenish, yellow, white, pink, more brilliant, more sparklingly gemlike than at home--even in Paris: opals you might call them, emeralds, lapis lazuli, rubies, sapphires. The sea was very deep ultramarine--the shore a sort of violet and faint russet as I saw it, and on the dunes some bushes Prussian blue (LT499).
After returning to Arles, he wrote, "Now that I have seen the sea here, I am absolutely convinced of the importance of staying in the Midi, and of positively piling it on, exaggerating the color--Africa not so far away" (LT500).
Third, Vincent felt that his stay in the south, and especially Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, increased the Japanese element in his art. The day after returning from the Mediterranean he wrote to Theo, "I wish you could spend some time here, you would feel it after a while, one's sight changes: you see things with an eye more Japanese, you feel color differently. The Japanese draw quickly, very quickly, like a lightning flash, because their nerves are finer, their feeling simpler" (LT500). And he added, "What Pissarro says is true, you must boldly exaggerate the effects of either harmony or discord which colors produce. It is the same as in drawing--accurate drawing, accurate color, is perhaps not the essential thing to aim at, because the reflection of reality in a mirror, if it could be caught, color and all, would not be a picture at all" (LT500). Van Gogh was rapidly moving towards a more liberated, more personal, and more expressive style. Indeed, in the same letter he wrote, "I am convinced that I shall set my individuality free simply by staying on here," and pointed to the present drawing as proof of the truth of this statement. It is indeed a key drawing in the artist's evolution.
(fig. 1) Vincent van Gogh, sketch of the artist working with a perspective frame (LT222)
Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam
(fig. 2) Vincent van Gogh, Fishing Boats at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam
(fig. 3) Vincent van Gogh, Little Seascape at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
(fig. 4) Vincent van Gogh, Fishing boats at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer Hermitage, St. Petersburg
(fig. 5) Vincent van Gogh, sketch in letter to Emile Bernard (B6)
Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam
During his five-day stay at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, from May 30 to June 3 1888, van Gogh made two paintings and seven drawings. Of the seven drawings, the present sheet is the most celebrated. Van Gogh wrote his brother Theo that it was among the most technically accomplished he had done up to that point in his life. Jan Hulsker has called it a "brilliant drawing" (op.cit., p. 326); and Ronald Pickvance has termed it "a breakthrough drawing" (Amsterdam, exh. cat., op.cit., p. 224).
Van Gogh drew this sheet on the morning of Sunday, June 3, his last day at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. He discussed the drawing in the first letter he wrote to Theo after returning to Arles, probably on Monday, June 4:
I am sending you by the same post some drawings of Saintes-Maries. I made the drawing of the boats very early on the morning I was due to leave, and I have the painting of it on the easel, a size 30 canvas, with more sea and sky on the right. It was before the boats cleared off, I had observed it all the other morning, but as they leave very early, I hadn't had time to do it. . . . I am convinced that I shall set my individuality free simply by staying on here. I have only been here a few months, but tell me this--could I, in Paris, have done the drawing of the boats in an hour? Even without the perspective frame, I do it now without measuring, simply by letting my pen go. (LT500)
Ronald Pickvance has commented about the letter and drawing:
These are revealing passages. Clearly, this drawing was meant to be a demonstration piece. Van Gogh wanted to prove to his brother that without the crutch of the perspective frame [that he used before (fig. 1)] he could quickly produce a large and intricate drawing. But it was also destined to serve as a working drawing. Each of the four boats carries detailed color notes. Indeed, no other Arles (or Saintes-Maries) study has so many annotations. (exh. cat, op cit., New York, 1984
The painting made on the basis of this drawing is now in the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam (fig. 2). Van Gogh followed both the design and color notes of his sketch very closely; the only significant changes are the inclusion of a second bamboo fishing pole leaning against the mast of the boat in the foreground, and the addition of a string of four fishing boats in the middle distance at the right. For the composition of that part of the picture, van Gogh may have turned to one of the two paintings he made at Saintes-Maries (fig. 3). Van Gogh was fascinated with the image of the boats on the shore; he made a watercolor after the painting (fig. 4), and included a sketch of the picture in a letter to Emile Bernard (fig. 5), writing:
I spent a week at Saintes-Maries . . . There, at Saintes-Maries, were girls who reminded one of Cimabue and Giotto--thin, straight, somewhat sad and mystic. On the perfectly flat, sandy beach little green, red, blue boats, so pretty in shape and color that they made one think of flowers. A single man is their whole crew, for these boats hardly venture on the high seas. They are off when there is no wind, and make for the shore when there is too much of it. . . I am doing nothing but landscapes--enclosed is a sketch. (B6)
According to van Gogh's letters, the visit to Saintes-Maries-de- la-Mer had three major effects on his art. First, it encouraged and enabled him to draw in a freer and more exaggerated manner. Several days before traveling there he wrote to Theo, "What is always urgent is the drawing, and whether you do it straight off with the brush or with something else, say a pen, you never get enough done. I am trying now to exaggerate the essential, and purposely leave the obvious things vague" (LT490). On May 27, the eve of his trip to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Vincent wrote Theo, "I am taking especially whatever I need for drawing. I must draw a great deal, for the very reason you spoke of in your letter. Things here have so much line. And I want to get my drawing more spontaneous, more exaggerated" (LT495). The joy and sense of artistic accomplishment van Gogh felt in making the present drawing stem largely from the spontaneity and "exaggeration" with which he rendered it.
Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and the Mediterranean also influenced van Gogh's sense of color. His reactions to the sea were intense. He wrote Theo:
I am at last writing to you from Stes.-Maries on the shore of the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean has the colors of mackerel, changeable I mean. You don't always know if it is green or violet, you can't even say it's blue, because the next moment the changing light has taken on a tinge of pink or gray. . . One night I went for a walk by the sea along the empty shore. It was not gay, but neither was it sad--it was--beautiful. The deep blue sky was flecked with clouds of a blue deeper than the fundamental blue of intense cobalt, and others of a clearer blue, like the blue whiteness of the Milky Way. In the blue depth, the stars were sparkling, greenish, yellow, white, pink, more brilliant, more sparklingly gemlike than at home--even in Paris: opals you might call them, emeralds, lapis lazuli, rubies, sapphires. The sea was very deep ultramarine--the shore a sort of violet and faint russet as I saw it, and on the dunes some bushes Prussian blue (LT499).
After returning to Arles, he wrote, "Now that I have seen the sea here, I am absolutely convinced of the importance of staying in the Midi, and of positively piling it on, exaggerating the color--Africa not so far away" (LT500).
Third, Vincent felt that his stay in the south, and especially Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, increased the Japanese element in his art. The day after returning from the Mediterranean he wrote to Theo, "I wish you could spend some time here, you would feel it after a while, one's sight changes: you see things with an eye more Japanese, you feel color differently. The Japanese draw quickly, very quickly, like a lightning flash, because their nerves are finer, their feeling simpler" (LT500). And he added, "What Pissarro says is true, you must boldly exaggerate the effects of either harmony or discord which colors produce. It is the same as in drawing--accurate drawing, accurate color, is perhaps not the essential thing to aim at, because the reflection of reality in a mirror, if it could be caught, color and all, would not be a picture at all" (LT500). Van Gogh was rapidly moving towards a more liberated, more personal, and more expressive style. Indeed, in the same letter he wrote, "I am convinced that I shall set my individuality free simply by staying on here," and pointed to the present drawing as proof of the truth of this statement. It is indeed a key drawing in the artist's evolution.
(fig. 1) Vincent van Gogh, sketch of the artist working with a perspective frame (LT222)
Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam
(fig. 2) Vincent van Gogh, Fishing Boats at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam
(fig. 3) Vincent van Gogh, Little Seascape at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
(fig. 4) Vincent van Gogh, Fishing boats at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer Hermitage, St. Petersburg
(fig. 5) Vincent van Gogh, sketch in letter to Emile Bernard (B6)
Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam