First and foremost, as a young man of the time, Vincent van Gogh lived in a boarding house.  Unmarried men usually let out a room in a boarding house where basic household services were provided, such as laundry and morning and evening meals.  As Van Gogh started his career as a clerk for Goupil and Cie in their branch at the Hague at age sixteen in 1869, it was no wonder that he needed a place to provide basic living necessities.  Due to his family’s limited funds, it was necessary for him to find work to lessen the burden on the main household.  His younger brother Theo eventually joined Vincent at Goupil and Cie at a similar age four years after Vincent did.

Living in a city for the first time had the potential to be disastrous for a young man of sixteen.  Luckily, he boarded with family friends, Willem Marinus Roos and his wife Dina, and several of his mother’s relatives lived in the Hague, a city on the western coast of the Netherlands.  He was not without support and visited his family often.  From 1869 to 1873, he worked first in the offices behind the gallery and then on the showroom floor.  By most accounts, Vincent was a pleasant man and did well at his job, promoting quickly through the ranks like his Uncle Vincent, known as Uncle Cent, before him.  Although retired from the art dealer business, Uncle Cent still had a financial hold in Goupil and Cie and used it to bring Vincent and Theo into the business.  Vincent van Gogh also grew close to the Hague branch’s manager, Herman Tersteeg.

In the beginning, Vincent was happy with his work.  In the first few letters he sent to Theo, he continually reassured Theo that he would grow accustomed to life as a working man and repeated that he was happy that they both worked for the same company.  His exact words in the third letter are, “I’m really very happy that you’re also part of this firm.  It’s such a fine firm, the longer one is part of it the more enthusiastic one becomes.  The beginning is perhaps more difficult than in other jobs, but keep your chin up and you’ll get along” (letter 3).  Granted, Vincent had just received a promotion and a bonus, but the encouraging tone was common when he wrote about work to his brother.  Many of his letters list what he had found for clients, what art was in demand.  He often asked Theo about how he found his work, what parts he liked.

In addition, at an earlier part of the letter Van Gogh mentions that he would be self-supporting as his wages increased to 50 guilders (the currency of the Netherlands) a month.  Until then, it wouldn’t have been unusual for his parents to send him some money to help him get by; it was cheaper than still having him live at home with them.  More money allowed him to relieve his parents of some financial burden and become a man in the eyes of society.  At least as much of a man as anyone can be at the age of twenty.

Around March of 1873, Vincent received notice that he would be given another promotion and a transfer to the London office.  While the idea excited him, he admitted that he would miss the Hague and its surroundings.  In the subsequent letters, Van Gogh mentioned several concerns about money being an issue as the cost of living in London was higher than the Hague.  He worried that he wouldn’t be able to find a boarding house, that he would have to let rooms and take care of all the duties of a household by himself.

While this study will be referred to here as “Langlois Bridge with Washer Women, etc,” it also goes by “Drawbridge with Washer Women” as well as a variety of similar names.  The title seems to depend on  the whims of the translator.  Oddly enough, Van Gogh himself mistook the bridge’s name, having misheard it as “Pont de l’Anglais” (The English Bridge).  What drew Van Gogh to the bridge was its resemblance to the ones in the Netherlands.  This was not a mistake or a trick of the eye; a Dutchman had been the engineer who designed the bridge.  So for Van Gogh it was a little bit of home in France.

The Langlois Bridge with Washerwomen – Original and Copy for Theo van Gogh

The Langlois Bridge with Washerwomen is two out of the four oil paintings.  The first Van Gogh sent to his former supervisor, Herman Tersteeg, at the Goupil & Cie art dealership so that he would have an example of his work.  Van Gogh completed the original around March 16th; he mentioned it in a letter to his younger brother Theo.  He later made a copy that he sent to him.

The painting follows his typical style.  It is a slice of life, where his focus is not on capturing merely the people at work but on the scene as a whole.  All the women are focused on their task, wholly separate from the carriage driving over the bridge.  Two separate instances combined into a full picture of daily life.  His color choice denotes a bright, sunny day.  One that is middle of the summer hot.  The stones of the bridge appear warmed by the sun in yellow and grey brushstrokes.  The grass appears dry, yellowed from the sun, and even the dirt is a red-brown that appears burnt from its rays.

The Langlois Bridge at Arles – May, 1888

Van Gogh completed this painting some time in May of 1888.  He mentions starting it in a letter to Theo dated around May 14th, 1888.  It’s a small aside of little note.  What is significant is how he describes the colors of Arles comparing to those of the Netherlands in the following sentence.  As he puts it, “There’s sulfur everywhere where the sun beats down.”  For the previous two paintings, yellow tones were prevalent.  It was sulphurous.  In contrast, the painting above is cooler, easier.  Yellow is still worked into the painting; the stones on the bridge are yellower than the last two.  It’s in the ripples of the water; it trails down from the path on the far bank.  Yet here yellow is less heated.  The bright blue of the sky dominates the picture but does not overwhelm the rest of the scene.  The sun shines, demonstrated by the woman walking with a parasol, but the blue of the sky tempers its heat.  This painting has little “action;” its focus is on the bridge and its surroundings rather than the person in it.  She merely part of the background.

Langlois Bridge at Arles – March, 1888

As with the first two, this painting was done some time in March 1888.  An unusual point about this painting is that it is a reworking of another piece that Van Gogh had made that  has since been destroyed.  The other piece had the same view, only with a couple walking in it.  He sent a description of it to friend and fellow artist Emile Bernard in a letter.  Only a fragment of the walking couple painting remains today.  In a letter to Theo, Van Gogh mentioned trouble that he is having with the walking couple painting and added that he started this painting immediately after, but “as the weather was quite different, in a grey palette and without figures.”  Van Gogh followed in the tradition of Impressionist and Post-Impressionists artists, in that if the scenery around the subject changed, so too did the work.  His art is a response to his surroundings and how he viewed them.  In this case, the colors are muted, lacking the vibrancy of the other three paintings.  It’s emptier.  While not lifeless, as there are people milling about the bridge and the grass along the road is greener than the other paintings, the greyer tones used here do give it less energy.  The lethargy brought by stormy weather sucked all vigor out of the scene and left it a shadow of itself.

This series provides an exceptional example of how Vincent van Gogh looked at the same subject and saw it differently each time.  It encapsulates brief moments to show how each scene, while having similar subjects, is a separate and equally valuable moment to preserve.  Individually , the moments are strong, but when they are placed together they form a better understanding of subject as a whole.

Letters referenced:

1. http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let610/letter.html
2. http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let587/letter.html
3. http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let589/letter.html

    Before its destruction, The Painter on the Road to Tarascon was an oil on canvas painting 48 x 44 cm.  It was housed in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum of Magdeburg, Germany, currently known as the Kulturhistorisches Museum.  It is believed to be lost in fire from the Allied bombings of Magdeburg during World War II.  However, the  Monuments Men Foundation has it on its “Most Wanted: Works of Art” list.  The Foundation is based on the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section of the Allied armies organized in World War II to preserve and recover art and cultural pieces threatened during the war.  The foundation lists the painting as “missing from the Stassfurt salt mines art repository … on April 12, 1945.”

Destroyed Painting, The Painter on His Way to Work

Van Gogh painted it in 1888 during his time in Arles, France.  It is part of several paint studies that he sent to his younger brother Theo in August.  This self-portrait is very different from his others, in which he typically depicted himself as seated with a plainer background, showing only his torso and face.  In this painting, he is full-bodied, trudging along the road to work with his cane and art supplies.  The figure is paused mid-step, suggesting that he stopped his busy pace to see if this was the place to paint.  Much of his painting took place outdoors, travelling from area to area for new subjects.  His face is obscured, giving the impression that he is part of the surrounding countryside.  It is inferred that the figure is Van Gogh by the red hair peeking out below the straw hat.  

 
A point to note is that Van Gogh used the area he called “the road to Tarascon” in several different works, such as Meadow with Flowers and Farmhouse in the Wheat Field.  He also used it in a series of sketches that he sent to fellow artist, John Peter Russell.  Russell was an Australian artist that Van Gogh had met in Paris and with whom he maintained a friendship and exchanged works.  The sketch, now on display at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, was done with pencil and pen, focusing on the same stretch of road used in The Painter on the Road to Tarascon 

Sketch of The Road to Tarascon

In contrast to the painting, there is no figure walking; it is a landscape sketch.  The sun is shining brightly in the sky while the Van Gogh uses the shadow and bright blue sky to show the sunny weather.  The plants seem more alive in the sketch, as well.  The trees are less rigid than in the painting while the wheat field is comprised of brief lines scratched into differently angled lines.  The sketch has more movement to it.  

Another interesting point to this painting that even though it was destroyed, through prints many other artists have created their own reinterpretation.  One of the most famous of these was a series done by the artist Francis Bacon in the 1950s that sees Van Gogh’s artist as an tortured form walking down the road.  It is a dark and intriguing series that adds another perspective to the original piece.   

See the Monuments Men Foundation’s “Most Wanted” list for other famous lost and stolen artwork!

And see Francis Bacon’s study of the destroyed work here on the fourth page.