Vincent really enjoyed talking about painting with the old white-bearded wiseman, father Pissaro, guru of young Impressionnists. “With him, you could broaden subjects of conversation”.
In Saint Rémy, as soon as July 1889, when Vincent was thinking of going back home in the North, he thought of Pissaro and asked Theo to see “whether Pissaro wanted to take me at home”, to see if he could make a deal: “if there’s a way of going and stay with him. He will get something out of it, if you pay him the same amount than here”.
But Pissaro couldn’t greet him. According to Theo, he “doesn’t have his word to say at home where his wife is the one who wears the trousers”. But he knows someone in Auvers “who is a doctor and who paints in his spare time”. It was Doctor Gachet, to whom he recommended Vincent.