Vincent by painters
Vincent in painters’eyes
We have a few portraits of you made by your friends painters.
Almost all of them are from the Parisian period…
Pastel by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Emile Bernard (your best friend in Paris)
You and the art critic Fénéon by Lucien Pissaro
Russell (the most beautiful and best-achieved portrait of you according to
Jo, Theo’s wife)
Gauguin’s portrait of you which you didn’t like “me gone mad”
(painted in Arles in October 1888)
The last portrait of you on your deathbed by Gachet.
Borinage
From the moment you heard of the Borinage, you felt attracted to it... You
sent Theo the description found in a book and you made that drawing... What
were you going to do in the Borinage? Was the misery of that black country
that you found so attractive? Or of those inhabitants “who work in darkness”?
When you reach that place, when you see its poverty and the unbearable, hard
life...led by these miners who see daylight on Sundays only, the cold, disease,
hunger... You get rid of your clothes, you become poorer than them. When you
sink in a state of utter destitution and distress, You look for a gleam of
light, which you will find underground... You will dive into the depths of
the mine and of yourself... You will surface different, with a new desire...
“ Down there I saw a gleam, not bigger than a star in the sky”.
You start drawing night and day... You have made up your mind, you want to
devote your life to painting. “I will resume drawing, and then it seems
to me that everything has changed for me, and my pencil becomes obedient”...