Van Gogh's paintings are so etched in the public's mind that it can be hard to get beyond the sunflowers and the myth and see his work with fresh eyes. His drawings, however, are so immediate, so personal, that they succeed in returning the epic figure to a more human scale.
The fantastic new exhibition at the Morgan Library, Painted With Words: Vincent van Gogh's Letters to Émile Bernard (September 28, 2007, through January 6, 2008), tracks the correspondence between the Dutchman, who was then in his thirties, and Bernard, a precocious French teenage painter. Van Gogh's letters (never exhibited before), written in brown ink in accomplished French, often include wonderful sketches of paintings he was working on at the time, complete with notation about what color would go where.
A Summer Evening, July 1888
As their communication progressed, van Gogh dispensed with the sketches within the letters and began shipping Bernard entire bundles of large, more formal drawings of thatch-roofed houses, bridges, wheat fields, and smokestacks. Bernard himself, now largely forgotten, painted a few vivid pieces that recall Gauguin. Though he wasn't savvy enough to heed van Gogh's advice about painting, he was smart enough to save all the master's correspondence. He knew a good thing when he saw one, and in his collection, we are let in on the confidential thoughts of a genius.
Letter to Émile Bernard, Arles, ca. June 20, 1888 (Letter 7, folio 2)
Street in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, mid-July 1888
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