He next became dissatisfied with the absorbent canvas on which he painted. The thin coat of plaster with which they were covered did not suck up his rich colours. Theo sent him rolls of unprepared canvas; at night he mixed the plaster in a little bowl and spread it over the canvas he planned to paint the following day.
Georges Seurat had made him sensitive to the sort of frame his work was to rest in. When he sent his first Arlesian canvases to Theo, he explained just what sort of wood had to be used, and what colour it had to be painted. But he could not be happy until he saw his paintings in frames that he made himself. He bought plain strips of wood from his grocer, cut them down to the size he wanted, and then painted them to match the composition of the picture.
He made his colours, built his stretchers, plastered his canvas, painted his pictures, carpentered his frames, and painted them.
“Too bad I can’t buy my own pictures,” he murmured aloud. “Then I’d be completely self-sufficient.”
The mistral came up again. All nature seemed in a rage. The skies were cloudless. The brilliant sunshine was accompanied by intense dryness and piercing cold. Vincent did a still life in his room; a coffee pot in blue enamel, a cup of royal blue and gold, a milk jug in squares of pale blue and white, a jug in majolica, blue with a pattern in reds, greens and browns, and lastly, two oranges and three lemons.
When the wind died down he went out again and did a view on the Rhône, the iron bridge at Trinquetaille, in which the sky and river were the colour of absinthe, the quays a shade of lilac, the figures leaning on their elbows on the parapet blackish, the iron bridge an intense blue with a note of vivid orange in the black background and a touch of intense malachite green. He was trying to get at something utterly heartbroken and therefore utterly heartbreaking.
Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what he had before his eyes, he used colour arbitrarily to express himself with greater force. He realized that what Pissarro had told him in Paris was true. “You must boldly exaggerate the effects, either in harmony or discord, which colours produce.” In Maupassant’s preface to “Pierre et Jean” he found a similar sentiment. “The artist has the liberty to exaggerate, to create in his novel a world more beautiful, more simple, more consoling than ours.”
He did a day’s hard, close work among the cornfields in full sun. The result was a ploughed field, a big field with clods of violet earth, climbing toward the horizon; a sower in blue and white; on the horizon a field of short, ripe corn; over all a yellow sky with a yellow sun.
Vincent knew that the Parisian critics would think he worked too fast. He did not agree. Was it not emotion, the sincerity of his feeling for nature, that impelled him? And if the emotions were sometimes so strong that he worked without knowing he worked, if sometimes the strokes came with a sequence and coherence like words in a speech, then too the time would come when there would again be heavy days, empty of inspiration. He had to strike while the iron was hot, put the forged bars on one side.
He strapped his easel to his back and took the road home which led past Montmajour. He walked so rapidly that he soon overtook a man and a boy who were dallying ahead of him. He recognized the man as old Roulin the Arlesian facteur des postes. He had often sat near Roulin in the café, and had wanted to speak to him, but the occasion had never arisen.
“Good day, monsieur Roulin,” he said.
“Ah, it is you, the painter,” said Roulin. “Good day. I have been taking my boy for a Sunday afternoon stroll.”
“It has been a glorious day, hasn’t it?”
“Ah, yes, it is lovely when that devil mistral does not blow. You have painted a picture today, Monsieur?”
“Yes.”
“I am an ignorant man, Monsieur, and know nothing about art. But I would be honoured if you would let me look.”
“With pleasure.”
The boy ran ahead, playing. Vincent and Roulin walked side by side. While Roulin looked at the canvas, Vincent studied him. Roulin was wearing his blue postman’s cap. He had soft, inquiring eyes and a long, square, wavy beard which completely covered his neck and collar and came to rest on the dark blue postman’s coat. Vincent felt the same soft, wistful quality about Roulin that had attracted him to Pére Tanguy. He was homely in a pathetic sort of way, and his plain, peasant’s face seemed out of place in the luxuriant Greek beard.
“I am an ignorant man, Monsieur,” repeated Roulin, “and you will forgive me for speaking. But your cornfields are so very alive, as alive as the field we passed back there, for instance, where I saw you at work.”
“Then you like it?”
“As for that, I cannot say. I only know that it makes me feel something, in here.”
He ran his hand upward over his chest.
They paused for a moment at the base of Montmajour. The sun was setting red over the ancient abbey, its rays falling on the trunks and foliage of pines growing among a tumble of rocks, colouring the trunks and foliage with orange fire, while the other pines in the distance stood out in Prussian blue against a sky of tender, blue-green cerulean. The white sand and the layers of white rocks under the trees took on tints of blue.
“That is alive, too, is it not, Monsieur?” asked Roulin.
“It will still be alive when we are gone, Roulin.”
They walked along, chatting in a quiet, friendly manner. There was nothing of the abrasive quality in Roulin’s words. His mind was simple, his thoughts at once simple and profound. He supported himself, his wife, and four children on a hundred and thirty-five francs a month. He had been a postman twenty-five years without a promotion, and with only infinitesimal advances in salary.
“When I was young, Monsieur,” he said, “I used to think a lot about God. But He seems to have grown thinner with the years. He is still in that cornfield you painted, and in the sunset by Montmajour, but when I think about men . . . and the world they have made . . .”
“I know, Roulin, but I feel more and more that we must not judge God by this world. It’s just a study that didn’t come off. What can you do in a study that has gone wrong, if you are fond of the artist? You do not find much to criticize; you hold your tongue. But you have a right to ask for something better.”
“Yes, that’s it,” exclaimed Roulin, “something just a tiny bit better.”
“We should have to see some other work by the same hand before we judge him. This world was evidently botched up in a hurry on one of his bad days, when the artist did not have his wits about him.”
Dusk had fallen over the winding country road. The first chips of stars poked through the heavy cobalt blanket of night. Roulin’s sweet innocent eyes searched Vincent’s face. “Then you think there are other worlds besides this, Monsieur?”
“I don’t know, Roulin. I gave up thinking about that sort of thing when I became interested in my work. But this life seems so incomplete, doesn’t it? Sometimes I think that just as trains and carriages are means of locomotion to get us from one place to another on this earth, so typhoid and consumption are means of locomotion to get us from one world to another.”
“Ah, you think of things, you artists.”
“Roulin, will you do me a favour? Let me paint your portrait. The people of Arles won’t pose for me.”
“I should be honoured, Monsieur. But why do you want to paint me. I am not an ugly man.”
“If there were a God, Roulin, I think he would have a beard and eyes just like yours.”
“You are making fun of me, Monsieur!”
“On the contrary, I am in earnest.”