1 I associated him with primary colours, with yellow, with Arles, with Provence. And with mental instability. That's him, I used to think. No longer. Oh, no. Rooms 1 and 2 put paid to any such emasculated understanding of the man. Room 5 - Arles and Provence - is underpinned by the contents of those first two rooms. It was in those early rooms, it was during those early years, that the painter's development is manifested. The journey to Provence goes through Brabant. Nature, the people in Brabant, sketches in ink and in pencil - keep these phenomena in mind. And perspective.
2 The first picture on show is a colourful still life. A green tea-pot, a corn-flakes bowl with onions in it, a pipe, a tablecloth. Now form a cylinder with your hand, that is, form a monocular and look at the picture through it. Ah, the immediate three-dimensional effect. Last year the monocular-view displayed the Gaugin canvasses in the RA to remarkable effect; now it is the Van Gogh pictures which are brought to life. Those pictures though are colourless or colour-light. I took sunflowers into the room with me, but I soon set them aside as I looked at the sketch of a road in Nuenen, a district in Brabaant. The pencil sketch is of a road bounded on the left side by a wall and on the right by a line of trees. In the foreground, a man stands; a figure stands behind in the middle-ghround, whilst in the background on the road is a third figure. (Form the monocular - ignore the people around - and straightaway you are looking at the three-dimensional road. The man who is associat5ed with yellows, with sunlight, is learning the craft of perspective and is doing so in a colourless landscape.
3 There are splashes of colour, of course. Indeed there is more than a splash in A Cottage in Branant. A dilapidated cottage, a run-down barn on the left, an anonymous woman kneeling on the right. The brick frontage of the cottage, the windows in need of repair. A sparse surround. Notice the colour. Notice, when you look through your handmade monocular, the success of the perspective. Or look at the Autumn Lacndscape, the other picture which, to the peril of my soul, I covet. Ah, to place that picture on my wall. The two lines of trees which curve to the right with a green space, a forest way, between. The trees are brown, so are the leaves in the foreground. The sun is shining on them. Now achieve the three-dimensional effect and the picture has a depth which is missing when viewed with the two eyes.
4 In room 2 - yes, you have just viewed the pictures in room 1 - you will see the painter's attempts to draw the peasants in the fields. Notice the momumental, heroic effect. Look at the woman, back to you, as she digs. Turn to The Loom, a solid, monumental contrivance to which the weaver, at the b ack, partly shielded by a cross-bar, seems but an addition. Structures, spatial relationships - notice the artist's concerns.
5 On my first visit, I left the exhibition after viewing the contents of rooms 1 and 2. I did so again today. I and a companion had taken an hour to view the contents. It was time to leave, to leave the RA for a sandwich, a coffee, and an opportunity to talk about what we had seen. Of course, we had whispered to each other as we viewed; we had tugged each other's sleeves; we had pointed; we had stood in front of a sketch (A Nursery) which showed a left-hand fence running to the central point of perspective, a right-hand stream running to the same point, and a central path running straight to the point.. Meanwhile, in the foreground, a stream ran laterally. Another picture, we both whispered, for the wall.
6 The Bright Coulour Man had not always been so, we realised. We left those two rooms with a sense of the exhibition - pictures and commentaries - as a teaching device. Of course, the artist had been his own commentator. He had written frequently to his brother about his activities. And he had written engagingly, so much so that there was inclination to buy a book of his letters. When later, in a first view of the Arles room, we admired the perspective of his sketch and painting of Irises near Arles, we knew where he had developed his skills and we recognised his development.
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Ah yes the delight of the man is allowing us to have the seeing eye into his development and progress.
We read the letters and know what he is attempting, then we look at the sketches and paintings and say, 'yes, he achieved that'
One wonders whether through his letters, one could teach oneself to draw or paint.
The first rooms are where he grew in his art. The mastery of the human form though not always wholly formed came through the sweat and toil. At one with nature.
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