Page 301

About a year after leaving Arles, Gauguin painted what Vincent had always hoped to paint - a Gethsemane scene. (Curiously, it was with a Vincent-like redheaded Christ.) "Vincent denounced Gauguin's painting, in which e felt nothing was 'really observed.'"

Page 301

While institutionalized at St. Remy, Vincent painted what may be his most famous painting. But he saw it as a failure. He wrote "once again I allowed myself to be led astray into reaching for stars that are too big - another failure - and I have had my fill of that."

Page 300

After leaving Arles, Vincent had another fit. This time while painting this quarry entrance near St. Remy.

Page 294

Van Gogh's first self-portrait after his crisis.

Page 293

This is Dr. Rey, who oversaw Vincent after Van Gogh cut off his ear. Coincidence or creepy that Van Gogh painted the doctor's ear blood red?

Page 291

After leaving Van Gogh and Arles for Paris, Gauguin created this self-portrait as a jug. Noticeably absent are the ears.

Page 269

This is the portrait Vincent was painting when he cut off his ear.

Distressed by Gauguin's eminent plans to leave Arles, combined with the image of the woman rocking a cradle (that's what the rope in her hands is for), which he also imagined could be a Madonna on a boat rocking the sailors to sleep, plus several other mad thoughts led to Vincent's violent act, chronicled from pages 274-286.

Page 266

Gauguin's portrait of his mother took some cues (the clothing and gaze in particular) from the portrait Vincent had painted earlier that summer.

Page 265

Gauguin painted this portrait of his mother from a photograph of her when she was 15 years old.

He later used her 15-year-old image in painting Exotic Eve. 

Page 260

Vincent asked his brother Theo  to "see if you could get, not too dear, the lithograph after Delacroix's Tasso in the Madhouse, since I think the figure there must have some affinity with this fine portrait of Brias [Bruyas]."

Van Gogh saw himself in this portrait: the red-headed outcast, being mocked through the windows. (Vincent received occasional taunts from children outside the Yellow House.)

Pages 252-

In mid-December, the two artists took the train to visit the Musée Fabre in Montpellier.

One of the paintings they discovered was Aline, The Mulatto Woman, by an artist they both admired, Delacroix. "The extraordinary thing about it, for nineteenth-century Europe, was that she was both black and beautiful...It must also have stuck Gauguin that the woman in the picture had the same name as his mother and daughter: Aline...This image may have given rise to his numerous pictures of similarly sensual, bare-breasted Polynesian women."

"To Gauguin's mind, there was only one blot in the admirable gallery at Montpellier: a self-portrait by the elderly academic star Alexander Cabanel. Gauguin could not stand his slick and glossy work. 'Cabanel!' he snorted. 'Stupidity and fatuity!'"

They also came across the Pond by Théodore Rousseau, which Van Gogh enthusiastically admired, and which Gauguin despised.

They also found Stratonice and Antiochus by Ingres which Gauguin loved and Vincent hated.

They both appreciated Giotto's Death of the Virgin.

"The heart of the museum at Montpellier was the collection of one man: Alfred Bruyas...a wealthy local man...an enthusiastic patron of several artists...[who] had also been markedly eccentric." This is a portrait of himself he commissioned from Delacroix...

Vincent was more moved by Delacroix's Women in Algiers (different than the painting of the same name in Paris)...

Vincent also appreciated Bathers by Courbet...

But he failed to mention the most famous Courbet, Meeting, aka Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet, depicting the meeting of Courbet and his patron Alfred Bruyas.

This painting also made a deep impression on Gauguin, because a few months later he produced a painting entitled Bonjour, Monsieur Gauguin.

Page 242

Gauguin was not known as a great portrait artist. "When shortly he came to paint Schuffenecker and his family, he caused offense by depicting his friend as cringingly obsequious."

Page 239 - 243

Gauguin painted Van Gogh in Painter of Sunflowers (Van Gogh has some of Gauguin's facial features).

And Van Gogh painted Gauguin in Man in Red Hat - a painting that was so unsuccessful, it was more than a century before it was even recognized as an authentic Van Gogh. (Note the poor nose. Vincent needed a model to do portraits.)

Page 235

In this self-portrait, Gauguin portrayed himself as both saint and tempter in Eden.

Gauguin wrote: "No one is good, no one is evil; everyone is both, in the same way and in different ways. I wish to love, and I cannot. I wish not to love, and I cannot. You drag your double along with you, and yet the two contrive to get on together. I have been good sometimes; I do not congratulate myself because of it. I have been evil often; I do not repent it."

Page 230-232

Gauguin and Van Gogh decided to trade self-portraits with the French painter, Charles Laval. This is the painting Laval made of himself...

This is Vincent's, dedicated to "l'ami" (although the two had never met)...

And this is what Gauguin created...

Page 227

This was the third and final shared sitting between Van Gogh and Gauguin. The man's identity is not documented, but is likely Monsieur Louis, the local brothel-keeper.

This is what Vincent painted...

And this is was Gauguin's angle (funny he gave the brothel-keeper a faux halo via the painting in the background)...

Page 225

According to the author, this is a fair representation of Gauguin's view from his bedroom window in the Yellow House.

(Notice Madam Ginoux on the far left. And is that Gauguin's self portrait staring at the viewer from the bush?)

Page 223-224

Vincent attended a ball at a dance hall in Arles. He apparently found it unnerving and made him feel claustrophobic. (Notice Madam Roulin on the far right looking at the viewer.)

Page 219

A lithograph Vincent made. Having decided to move away from his prostitute lover and her two children to become a painter, he was apparently familiar with the subject.

Pages 201-212

After painting Monsieur Roulin many times, and after the dual sitting with Gauguin to paint Madam Roulin, Vincent decided to paint the entire family.

Here is Monsieur Joseph Roulin in his postal uniform.

Madam Roulin and their 4-month old daughter, Marcelle...

Their 17-year-old son, Armand...

And their teenage son Camille...

Van Gogh could not afford to pay the Roulins for their sitting, so he gave them each a painting of themselves, plus this still life of pink oleanders and Emile Zola's La Joie de Vivre.

The Roulins were not a wealthy family. In fact, Vincent had more money coming from his brother Theo than the Roulins did each month.

"But Joseph soon accepted an offer from the Parisian dealer Ambroise Vollard for 450 francs a canvas. HAd they waited a little longer, the Roulins would have got much more."

Pages 197-198

As they had done with Madam Ginoux, Van Gogh and Gauguin had a dual sitting with Madam Roulin, the 37-year-old wife of the postmaster Vincent had painted numerous times.

Here is Gauguin's Madam Roulin (notice his painting Blue Trees in the background).

And here is Vincent's Madam Roulin. According to the author, those onions weren't really outside. Vincent just liked them as a symbol or rebirth.

Page 195

Vincent loved this painting by Rembrandt. Really.

"When he had gone to visit the museum in Amsterdam with his friend Anton Kerssemakers, he sat down in front of this picture and told his friend, 'You will find me here when you come back.' When Kerssemakers returned, Vincent looked up and declared: 'Would you believe it - and I honestly mean what I say - I should be happy to give ten years of my life if I could on on sitting here in front of this picture for a fortnight, with only a crust of dry bread for food?'"

Page 193

Three Arlésienne landscapes by Gauguin. (Once more, Madam Ginoux seems to have made a cameo. She's in the orange skirt and yellow scarf in Washerwomen at the Roubine du Roi.)

Page 187

At the time Vincent was working on his Sower, Gauguin painted the painting, Blue Trees...

Page 185

Van Gogh thought Millet's Sower was so heavily gray. He wanted to try a painting that relied on yellows and lavender. This was Vincent's Sower...

Page 184

For Van Gogh, the image of a sower was replete with symbolism. It was a type or resurrection. He painted two different Sowers, both of which took cues from this Sower, painted by Jean-François Millet.

Here's my daughter Elsa outside of Millet's house in Barbizon about an hour south of Paris.

And here's my mom at Millet's door.