—
Van Gogh's home
seen in his
Vrles
in
watercolor painting on the opposite page and the photograph at left- via* a modest two-
in -
1
<
>
r
\
structure that housed a grocery store in
addition to \ incent's small apartment. a few \
I
sing
hundred francs Theo had sent him.
make the
incent Âťa> able to
place habitable
within a few month- after he arrived in 1888.
He S)
called
mbolic
house"
it
his "yellow
in
Japanese culture of
a
name
a '"house of
because he had high hopes for
friendship"
the impending arrival of his friend (.auguin.
Sometime around
into a bar.
bombed
Gauguin was painting arrange a
it
so that
in Brittany,
ill
his
to Aries,
and wrote that "as there
painters living together.
think
it
is
for extra
to \ incent to
to
will alter
1
several
need an abbot to keep order,
shall
he can cook very well."
a kitchen range
was also important
It
I
am ashamed
much
of
it.
but
I
on Gauguin with
am vain enough to want to my work, so cannot help I
as possible alone before he
comes. His coming
my manner of painting and shall gain by it. I am rather keen on my decorations, which I
believe, but
I
all
are almost like
French painted porcelain." He covered the walls of Gauguin's bedroom with magnificent pictures of gardens.
And he
own room
filled his
w
ith
dazzling sunflower paintings, having gone hungry so that he could buv
frames for them.
Yet when the idea was proposed to Gauguin, he delayed. He was. he claimed, too sick and too deeply in debt to
ever awed he
may have been by "my
there was a vein of craftiness in stinctively that [he]
is
a
make
the trip. \ incent. how-
friend Gauguin." sensed that
him and
told
Theo
schemer who. seeing himself
that "I feel inat
the bottom of
the social ladder, wants to regain a position by means which will certainlv be honest, but at the tle
that
I
am
same time, very
able to take all this into
wrote Gauguin a self-abasing letter ceptions extremely ordinarv
politic.
Gauguin knows
lit-
account." However, ho soon
*T always think
when compared
my
to yours.
1
artistic
s
death v\
a-
con-
have alwa\s
o:,
in
1890. the
converted
remained until 1.
his society of
now be
will
buv beds, chests, sheets and
sailor;
a certain impression
wanting to do as the same
it
decorate the house with the finest paintings he could pro-
â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "Well, yes,
make
\'>
proceeded to furnish his yellow house, imploring
money
"Gauguin has been a duce
we
in
going to be Gauguin."
\ incent eagerly
Theo
I
which
out
perhaps by giving him
enthusiasm Vincent saw
artists already established,
and naturally
Gogh
and impoverished. Could not Theo
Gauguin could come
monthly allowance too? In
after \ an
floor of the building
it
ua-