Booknotes for Vincent and Theo by Deborah Heiligman

 

39. The book is organized into sections called "galleries," as though you're walking through a museum.  Some chapters have organizing structures inside them.  One chapter is called Vincent Walking and has two separate walks he does.  Chapter 7 "Vincent: the Readheaded boy" has a series of subtitles that look like painting titles: Vincent, Book in hand, bincent, Dreaming.  Chapter 11 is called "Theo: Some Croquis"...  The author helps with: "A croquis is a sketch. Artists make croquis for different reasons. While learning how to draw the human figure, an artist uses a croquis to concentrate on a different part of the body, a different pose: how an arm bends throwing a ball, what the hand looks like when grasping a painbrush or a fishing pole or a lover's hand.... Sometimes the artist uses croquis for subjects who won't or can't stay still -- like a feral cat or a small child, someone whose whole being cannot be capture on paper in one steady view.  So, like Theo.  [then the author begins her four named Croquis of Theo, I-IV

49 Love how author uses "walks" in a literal and figurative sense: In the years to come, Vincent will take many long walks, for many different reasons, in different moods. It will be years before he figures out where he's going.  He will often crave company, demand help, plead for both. on this day he knows where he's going, and he's carryig his own parcel.

128 (good paragraph) So with passion and perseverance, he spends day after day filling pages of notebooks made of old Dutch paper like the one he boughs from bookseller in Brussels. He sketches in graphite and reed pen. He experiments with watercolor and sepia ink. He copies plates from Charles Bargue's  Cours de dessin (Drawing Course). He's attacking art with the force and fury of a storm, and the tenacity of a tradesman learning a craft.  By late August he has news to report to Theo: "You should know that I'm sketching large drawings after Millet. ... Well, if you saw them perhaps you wouldn't be too unhappy with them."

list of painters: Jean-francois Millet, Jules Breton,  Onece in Paris: Degas, Mary Cassaatt, Gauguin, Renoir, Pissarro, Berhe Morisot, Monet (he take Vincent to Impressionist exhibit) Also Seurat and Paul Signac, also Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Emile Bernard. then huge impression: Adolphe Monticelli

173. First oil painting - View of the Sea at Scheveningen; By October he's drawn one hundred studies of figures -- all since Theo's August visit.  He can't quite capture on paper what he has in his head, but he's learning. "Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures," he tells Theo.

211 - Vincent will not be deterred by the criticism. He tells Van Rappard, "I keep on making what I can't do yet in order to learn to be able to do it."

248 sentence: They are so different, but their differences, when they are on the same path, complement each other, fill in spaces.  Another sentence: Vincent is experimenting with different styles: aspects of pointillism, mixed with the more graphic approach of the Japanese paintings he loves.  He uses some of his drawing technqieus in his painting, too -- dashes and strokes, working to find the paiting style that he likes best.  In May he starting loading his brush again, making thicker, fuller strokes.  From the middle of May to the end of July he paints almost forty scenes of parks full of bright colors and thick paint.

278. In the time he will spend in Arles -- 444 days -- he'll make two hundred paintings and one hundred drawings, a hug number for an artist. He'll paint landscapes, still lifes, scenes of cafes at night, furniture, rooms, flowering trees, flowers -- he is about to begin painting his favorite again, sunflowers.

• March 30, 1853 - Vincent born
• 1873 - starts to work at Groupil; firesd 1876
• 1877 - attends theology school
• Feb 20, 1888 - moves to Arles
• Oct 23, 1888 - Paul Gauguin arrives in ARles, moves in with him
• Dec 23, 1888 - they fight, V cuts off ear; 
• May 1889 - V packs paitins he made in ARles and sends to Theo -- they are superb
• May 8, 1889 - checksk into Saint Paul de Mausole asylum in St. Remy de provence
• April 1890 - send paintings to Theo, including Almond tree in bloom for his godson
• May 20, 1890 - V moves to Auvers-sur-Oise, meets Dr. Gachet
• July 27, 1890 - V shoots hismelf; 
• July 29, 1890 - V dies
• Jan 25, 1891 - Theo dies

References for each chapter -- filled with letters