Bob, you refer to Jean Leymarie as “the” authority...

2007-05-17T03:20:00.000+01:00

Bob, you refer to Jean Leymarie as “the” authority on van Gogh. No. He is one of a number of authorities. Regarding his comment on Vincent’s work at St. Remy as “one” of the high points of his career. Absolutely. But he didn’t say “the” highest.

Frank Elgar, one of France’s great art critics, in writing of this period says, “His own color no longer exhibited the boldness, purity and intensity. The admirable coherence and majesty of the Arles period are gone. Thereafter his work becomes as uncertain as his temper, with alternations of resignation and anxiety, doubt and hope, excellence and mediocrity…Touching as the paintings of this period are, there is less magic in them than singularity, more putrefaction than excitement and less originality than oddity… the last flares of his genius cannot be put on the same level as that of his Arlesian period.”

English critic Roger Fry on Vincent’s Arles period writes, “Perhaps nowhere else has van Gogh expressed so fully the feeling of ecstatic wonder with which he greeted the radiance of Provencal light.”

As to Bernard’s comments – I don’t recall reading this in any of his writings, but even so he himself was a relatively very minor talent so I don’t put too much stock in his opinion.

You say your article was based on a visit to St. Remy. The institution’s own account was then checked against several independent sources. Sweetman’s book corroborates the official version, etc. And what, pray tell, was Sweetman’s source? Probably the institution’s own account. Who do we believe, Vincent and Theo or Sweetman and the institution?

Vincent wrote to Theo at this time: “M. Salles has been to St. Remy – they are not willing to let me point outside the institution.” April1889. Theo, over the strong objections of the administrators, persuaded them to allow Vincent to paint and arranged that he should have 2 rooms, one to be used as a bedroom and the other as a studio. Both, mere dingy cells with bars like all the other cells. Sweetman's description makes it sound like a resort.

Reiterating my earlier point, prior to Vincent, no patient at St. Remy was ever allowed to do any work of any kind. Their whole philosophy was to keep all the patients as quiet and inactive as possible. Vincent again, “Above all I must not waste my time, I am going to set to work again as soon as M. Peyron permits it; if he does not permit it, then I shall be through with this place. … The rather superstitious ideas they have here about painting sometimes depress me more than I can tell you.” January 1890

For them to claim that they pioneered the treatment of psychiatric illness (at least when Vincent was there) is belied directly by Vincent’s own account. Again: “The treatment of patients in the hospital is certainly easy for they do absolutely nothing; they leave them to vegetate in idleness and feed them with stale and slightly spoiled food.” Sept. 1889. “The food is so-so. Naturally it tastes rather moldy, like in a cockroach infested restaurant in Paris.” May 1889

As to the people, Peyron included, who ran the institution, “Perhaps they would like nothing better than for the thing to become chronic, and we should be culpably stupid to give into that. They inquire a great deal too much to my liking about what not only I but also what you earn, and so on.” August 1889.

Vincent’s stay at St. Remy was indeed a nightmare. For them now to try to rewrite history is very typical and very wrong. I made The Eyes of Van Gogh to set the record straight, to show what really happened there and also to reveal the truth behind his relationships to his brother, his father and Gauguin. All from his point of view. Alexander Barnett

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Bob, you refer to Jean Leymarie as “the” authority...