Professor Cliff Edwards of VCU, where I went to college, wrote a book entitled, van Gogh and God. Reading it again recently, it has helped Vincent to enter my life again and bring forth images of beauty and love, especially when the world is full of the ugliness and despair wrought by wars and other human atrocities. The most intriguing point about this book is that he does not overlook Vincent’s first calling or career—ministry. Dr. Edwards supports the idea that because of his paintings, and his famously infamous bouts with mental illness, his lifelong, profound theological exploration is usually not discussed. Vincent was a man for whom ministry might have worked out if he did not have this deeper calling to express his divinity in another way, through his art. Dr. Edwards used letters that Vincent wrote and historical insights as to the religiosity of the day to document how his call to the ministry informed his artwork.
Vincent van Gogh was born into a family of clergy. For several generations a van Gogh had always been called to ministry. His father was a minister in the Dutch Reformed church, and both he and Vincent hoped that Vincent would be the one in his generation. They were not wealthy—Pastor van Gogh’s parish was in a mostly Catholic province and the family struggled with their parish and their minority Calvinist views. Taking part in theological studies meant a great deal of money, and that Vincent would have to live far from home and perhaps be a missionary—his parents chose for him the less expensive and safer path of working with another branch of the family at an art dealership house.
Although he did very well, getting transferred from his first appointment at The Hague, to Brussels, then London, and finally Paris, his call to ministry, his strong belief in God, and his obsession with bible study finally led him to give up his position. He wandered around Paris, having taken up sketching now in his spare time, working as a substitute teacher, and got a job teaching and apprenticing with a Methodist minister. In November of his 23rd year he preached his first sermon and felt positive that he was called to ministry. The sermon’s theme was “that our life is a pilgrim’s progress” (Edwards, p. 32) in which Vincent made clear his call to communicate with ordinary people and to evangelize to the poor. The book, Pilgrim’s Progress, was one that Vincent read multiple times in his life, strongly identifying with the characters. From his early ministry with poor miners to his paintings of peasants, and as his spiritual path would lead him into many disputes over the nature of God, the biblical theme of life being a pilgrim’s progress would always stay with him. The regular people were always Vincent’s favorite subject, whether reading Victor Hugo novels or painting his beloved miners and peasants.
During this time of his religious awakening, working for a Methodist preacher, sketching, teaching, doing bible study, his father and the rest of his family were displeased. They prodded him to take a position as an assistant at a bookstore in Dordrecht with friends of the van Gogh family. It is supposed that they probably did not want him to be working for a Methodist rather than a fellow Calvinist, nor did they want him to be preaching to the poorest of the poor, and definitely not in England. The assistant bookseller job did not work out, because Vincent spent all of his time writing sermons, reading the Bible, and translating selected verses into French, German, and English, working from the Dutch. At long last, his wealthy uncles stepped in and agreed to pay for the young man to take up theological study.
He settled into Amsterdam with an uncle and took up university studies. Calvinism, and the belief that only scripture is from God while anything else is of man or the Devil, was the theology of the day. As devoted as Vincent was to living as Christ would want us to, and spending countless hours in bible study, he still struggled with the nature of God and with the doctrine of the Church. Often when he should have been studying Latin, Greek, and Mathematics, he was taking long walks and sketching. He also put aside his own rule of reading only scripture to read many novels of the day that told stories of ordinary people and their quest for love and survival. It seems that he did not abandon God or Christianity, but instead his God became too large for the experiences he was having. His letters to Theo started to speak more of a humanist love for all people and the importance of experiencing the Creator’s full world, as quoted in the following passage:
“If only we try to live sincerely, it will go well with us, even though we are certain to experience real sorrow, and great disappointments, and shall also probably commit great errors and do wrong things; but it is certainly true that it is better to be high spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and overprudent. It is good to love many things, for therein lies true strength; whosoever loves much, performs and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.” (Edwards, pp. 34-5)
He dropped out of University and went instead to Brussels where he learned how to be a lay preacher, and spent a very happy six-month period being a missionary lay minister to very poor miners. It was during this time of living in extreme poverty and being with people who work in the earth and with the earth that it became clear to Vincent that being an artist was his way of honoring the God who had created him. His continued failed attempts at formal education were only leading him back to his art. Vincent understood God to be an artist, which is not surprising, as many people see God to possess whatever qualities they do, or wish for God to possess on their behalf. The way that Vincent spoke of nature, including the people who lived in harmony with the land, in his letters to Theo and others are very moving. Haystacks, wheat fields, and the village mailman all became his beloved subjects.
Once he left his lay ministry, painting would occupy the rest of his life, which unfortunately was only ten more years. Starting off with rich, dark colors befitting the earthy subjects in his paintings, such as the peasant woman from our slide show, he moved through different periods as he kept experiencing new ideas about God, and as he met different people. His brother, Theo maintained his apprenticeship with the same art house that Vincent had left behind, and Theo supported Vincent financially. His first five years were spent doing mostly landscapes and portraits, learning oil and watercolors. During this time, his parents finally reconciled themselves to the fact that their oldest son was going to be an artist, and for a brief period, he was allowed back home and had his own studio. His father and he had time to reconcile right before Pastor van Gogh died.
By the next year he had met Monet, Renoir, and Degas, and his paintings from then on took on the bright hues we recognize in most of his better-known works. Another piece of evidence that his God had grown larger than any of his previous understanding of God, is that he got interested in Japanese woodcuts, and therefore, Buddhism. Japan had been opened up to Europe for trade and late 19th century Europeans were experiencing deep interest in everything Japanese. Vincent loved the depiction of nature and the bright colors used in the woodcut art style. He bought as many as he could find and afford for his own house, and in the background of his self-portraits and of his rooms, one sees Japanese art on the walls. When Theo and his wife, Jo, had Vincent’s godson, named after his uncle, it was this Japanese style of painting with which Uncle Vincent honored the new arrival. In the bluest sky he ever painted, he painted almond branches in bloom. His wheatfields now had young, green, wheat in them. He loved this godson profoundly.
I suppose that one cannot speak about Vincent without mentioning his bouts with mental illness. During his time in Arles, two years before his death, he lived in what he called “The Yellow House,” yellow being his favorite color. Attracting some favorable attention, mostly people thought of him as the strange, harmless artist. He had invented a way of painting outside at night, the first artist ever to do so. His scenes of the outdoor cafes were done by putting candles on the brim of his hat to illuminate the canvas, thereby perfecting the correct lighting of the night sky. Vincent had begged Gaugin to come live with him at the yellow house because he had dreams of starting an artists’ commune. Gauging obliged, and for awhile they worked together, but the partnership ended when Vincent had some sort of fit, probably characterized today as a psychotic episode, where he first threatened Gaugin with a razor blade, then turned it on himself, severing part of his ear. When he wrapped it in a bandage and went to see a friend of his at the nearby brothel, she called the police, and he was committed to an asylum.
As he recovered, he read many books and took long walks. He wrote to Theo of his sense of happiness with being in nature and having time to read: “At times there is something indescribable in those aspects—all nature seems to speak; and going home, one has the same feeling as when one has finished a book by Victor Hugo, for instance. As for me, I cannot understand why everybody does not see it and feel it; nature or God does it for everyone who has eyes and ears and a heart to understand.” (Edwards, p. 62) It was over the next year and a half as these fits kept him in and out of hospital, under constant surveillance by family, that he painted the Almond Branches, the Starry Night, his Bedroom in Arles, and Irises, to name some of the best known pieces. He also knew that by Theo having to support him and his own child, his godson was suffering without the proper medical care he needed. When he painted his last masterpiece of crows flying over a wheatfield in the same month that he fatally shot himself, it may have been a fit, but it also may have been an attempt to unburden his brother, thereby improving if not saving his godson’s life.
The images of life being a pilgrim’s progress—of old grain giving way to fertile ground for the tender, green, new grain—are Vincent’s tributes of love to his family. At the end of the Don McLean song, Vincent, it closes with the words “You took your life as lovers often do.” Dr. Edwards asserts that Vincent knew very well what he was doing when he ended his life. He was trading his life for his godson’s. Theo could not support his wife, baby, and brother, and Vincent lightened his brother’s load by removing himself as a burden. Vincent was a man for whom ministry might have worked out if he did not have this deeper calling to express his divinity in another way, through his art. Certainly he had love in his heart, and a deep love for humanity. However he actually met with his death, the art he left us with is sustaining. The themes of love and of a personal, universal, natural God are what I feel when I look at his work. I will end this discussion by sharing a thought of Vincent’s on the subject of children, as van Gogh’s and my son’s birthday approach:
“When one is in a somber mood, how good it is to walk on the barren beach and look at the grayish-green sea with the long white streaks of the waves. But if one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it. I think I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of a little baby when it wakes in the morning, and coos and laughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle. If there is a ‘ray from on high,’ perhaps one can find it there.” (Edwards p. 79)