his features would make a deep impression on me; it wasn’t his own face any longer: it had become beautiful […] When he came back from his office at nine o’clock in the evening, he would immediately light a little wooden pipe; he would take down a big Bible, and sit down to read assiduously, to copy texts and to learn them by heart; he would also write all kinds of religious compositions […] When Sunday came, van Gogh would go to church three times, either to the Roman Catholic church, or to the Protestant or Old Episcopal church, which was commonly called the Jansenist church. When once we made the remark, “But, my dear van Gogh, how is it possible that you can go to three churches of such divergent creeds?” he said, “Well, in every church I see God, and it’s all the same to me whether a Protestant pastor or a Roman Catholic priest preaches; it is not really a matter of dogma, but of the spirit of the Gospel, and I find this spirit in all churches.[32]
After his failure as a businessman, van Gogh hoped that his father would appreciate his decision to follow in his footsteps. But vicar van Gogh viewed his eldest son’s enthusiasm for religion critically: Vincent’s belief in the “spirit of the Gospel” deviated from the teachings of the Church. Nevertheless, he asked his brothers Cornelius and Jan, who lived in Amsterdam, to help the young man. Both uncles agreed to support their nephew: one promised to give him money, the other board and lodging.
In May 1877, van Gogh began to prepare himself for university. Since he had left school at the age of fifteen, he had to study mathematics and ancient languages before entering the academy. His language teacher, Mendes da Costa, described his student:
I succeeded in winning his confidence and friendship very soon, which was so essential in this case: and as his studies were prompted by the best of intentions, we made comparatively good progress at the beginning […]; but after a short time the Greek verbs became too much for him. However I might set about it, whatever trick I might invent to enliven the lessons, it was no use. – ‘Mendes’, he would say […] ‘do you seriously believe that such horrors are indispensable to a man who wants to do what I want to do: give peace to poor creatures and reconcile them to their existence on earth?’[33]
Van Gogh stayed less than one year in Amsterdam before abandoning his studies. He did not lack talent: van Gogh spoke a couple of languages; read German books; and wrote his letters in English and French. But he was impatient: he didn’t want to meditate on the Gospel; he wanted to live it.
Still Life with a Basket of Apples, Nuenen, September 1885.
Oil on canvas, 33 x 43.5 cm.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Avenue of Poplars in Autumn, Nuenen, October 1884.
Oil on canvas on wood, 98.5 x 66 cm.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
He travelled to Brussels to begin training at a mission school. Three months later, he left the school and applied for a job as a preacher in the Borinage, a Belgian mining area. In January 1879, he found a temporary post that might have been renewed, had an inspector of the Comité d’Évangélisation not discovered that the new preacher took the Bible more literally than the authorities of the church.
Vicar Bonte, who also worked in the neighbourhood, reported:
He felt obliged to imitate the early Christians, to sacrifice all he could live without, and he wanted to be even more destitute than the majority of the miners to whom he preached the Gospel. I must add that also his Dutch cleanliness was singularly abandoned; soap was banished as a wicked luxury; and when our evangelist was not wholly covered with a layer of coal dust, his face was usually dirtier than that of the miners. […] He no longer felt any inducement to care for his own well-being – his heart had been aroused by the sight of others’ want. He preferred to go to the unfortunate, the wounded, the sick, and always stayed with them a long time; he was willing to make any sacrifice to relieve their sufferings.[34]
After he ‘failed’ as a preacher, van Gogh broke with the church, which was, in his opinion, dominated by Christian conventions instead of a Christ-like love for mankind. This rupture also sent ripples through his relationship with his father, who threatened to have his son committed to the mental hospital in Gheel.[35]
After his father’s death in 1885, van Gogh expressed his resentment against father and church in two still lifes: one shows his father’s pipe and tobacco pouch lying next to a vase with a bouquet of flowers, known in Holland as Silver of Judas. The second composition depicts a large, open Bible next to a small, well-thumbed copy of Zola’s Joie de Vivre – ‘The Joy of Life’. Vicar van Gogh disapproved of his son’s preference for contemporary French literature, which was, in his opinion, depraved. The Bible in the painting is opened to the Book of Isaiah, chapter 53: “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
The correspondence between autumn 1879 and spring 1880 is full of gaps. Van Gogh remained in the Borinage, where he spent most of his time drawing. He had already started to make sketches in Brussels and during his time as a preacher: “Often I draw far into the night, to keep some souvenir and to strengthen the thoughts raised involuntarily by the aspect of things here.”[36]
For his parents’ sake, van Gogh tried to cloak his artistic aspirations in the more sensible garb of a bourgeois professional, like a printer or technical draughtsman. He told his mother that he wanted to draw costumes and machines. In his letters to Theo, he was more candid:
On the other hand, you would also be mistaken if you thought that I would do well to follow your advice literally to become an engraver of bill headings and visiting cards, […] But, you say, I do not expect you take that advice literally; I was just afraid you were too fond of spending your days in idleness, and I thought you had to put an end to it. May I observe that this is a rather strange sort of ‘idleness’. It is somewhat difficult for me to defend myself, but I should be very sorry if, sooner or later, you could not see it differently.[37]
The Weaver, Nuenen, February 1884.
Oil on canvas, 36.6 x 45 cm.
Private collection.
The Cottage, Nuenen, 1885.
Oil on canvas, 65.5 x 79 cm.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Woman (“Sien”) Seated near the Stove, The Hague, March-April 1882.
Pencil, pen and brush in black ink (faded to brown in parts) and white opaque watercolour on laid paper (two sheets), 50 x 61 cm.
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.
Sorrow, The Hague, November 1882.
Lithograph, 38.9 x 29.2 cm.
Private collection.
Van Gogh compared his unproductive period with a bird’s change of feathers:
As the moulting time […] is for birds, so adversity or misfortune is the difficult time for us human beings. One can stay in it – in that time of moulting – one can also emerge renewed; but anyhow it must not be done in public and it is not at all amusing, therefore the only thing to do is to hide oneself. Well, so be it.[38]
The ‘renewed’ van Gogh made two important decisions: first, he resolved to determine the course of his life entirely on his own and not to seek his family’s advice; second, he set out