Lust for Life

Afer his long seclusion in the asylum the days seemed to him like weeks. He was at a loss to know how to fill them, for he did not have the strength to paint all the time. Nor did he have the desire. Before his accident in Aries no day had been long enough to get his work done; now they seemed interminable.

Fewer scenes in nature tempted him, and when he did begin work he felt strangely calm, almost indifferent. The feverish passion to paint in hot blood every minute of the day had left him. He now sketched in what was for him a leisurely fashion. And if he did not finish a canvas by nightfall . . . it no longer seemed to matter.

Doctor Gachet remained his only friend in Auvers. Gachet, who spent most of his days at his consulting office in Paris, often came to the Café Ravoux at night to look at pictures. Vincent had often wondered at the look of utter heartbreak in the doctor’s eyes.

“Why are you unhappy, Doctor Gachet?” he asked.

“Ah, Vincent, I have laboured so many years . . . and I have done so little good. The doctor sees nothing but pain, pain, pain.”

“I would gladly exchange my calling for yours,” said Vincent.

A rapt eagerness lighted up the melancholy in Gachet’s eyes.

“Ah, no, Vincent, it is the most beautiful thing in the world, to be a painter. All my life I wanted to be an artist . . . but I could spare only an hour here and there . . . there are so many sick people who need me.”

Doctor Gachet went on his knees and pulled a pile of canvases from under Vincent’s bed. He held a glowing yellow sunflower before him.

“If I had painted just one canvas like this, Vincent, I would consider my life justified. I spent the years curing people’s pain . . . but they died in the end, anyway . . . so what did it matter? These sunflowers of yours . . . they will cure the pain in people’s hearts . . . they will bring people joy . . . for centuries and centuries . . . that is why your life is successful . . . that is why you should be a happy man.”

A few days later Vincent painted a portrait of the doctor in his white cap and blue frock coat, against a cobalt blue background. He did the head in a very fair, very light tone, the hands also in a light flesh tint. He posed Gachet leaning on a red table on which were a yellow book and a foxglove plant with purple flowers. He was amused to find, when he finished, that the portrait resembled the one he had done of himself in Aries, before Gauguin arrived.

The doctor went absolutely fanatical about the portrait. Vincent had never heard such a torrent of praise and acclaim. Gachet insisted that Vincent make a copy for him. When Vincent agreed, the doctor’s joy knew no bounds.

“You must use my printing machine in the attic, Vincent,” he cried. “We’ll go to Paris, get all your canvases, and make lithographs of them. It won’t cost you a centime, not a centime. Come, I will show you my workshop.”

They had to climb a ladder and push open a trap door to get into the attic. Gachet’s studio was piled so high with weird and fantastic implements that Vincent thought he had been plunged into an alchemist’s workshop of the Middle Ages.

On the way downstairs, Vincent noticed that the Guillaumin nude was still lying about, neglected.

“Doctor Gachet,” he said, “I simply must insist that you have this framed. You are ruining a masterpiece.”

“Yes, yes, I mean to have it framed. When can we go to Paris and get your paintings? You will print as many lithographs as you like. I will supply the materials.”

May slipped quietly into June. Vincent painted the Catholic church on the hill. He wearied in the middle of the afternoon and did not even bother to finish it. By dint of great perseverance he managed to paint a cornfield while lying flat on the ground, his head almost in the corn; he did a large canvas of Madame Daubigny’s house; another of a white house in the trees, with a night sky, an orange light in the windows, dark greenery and a note of sombre rose colour; and lastly, an evening effect, two pear trees quite black against a yellowing sky.

But the juice had gone out of painting. He worked from habit, because there was nothing else to do. The terrific momentum of his ten years of colossal labour carried him still a little farther. Where scenes from nature had thrilled and excited him before, they now left him indifferent.

“I’ve painted that so many times,” he would murmur to himself as he walked along the roads, easel on his back, looking for a motif. “I have nothing new to say about it. Why should I repeat myself? Father Millet was right. ‘J’aimerais mieux ne rien dire que de m’exprimer faiblement.’”