A Master
Vincent van Gogh. Drawings : Pastels : Studies. Introduction by W. Muensterberger. (Falcon Press. 21s.) Vincent van Gogh. " The Potato Eaters." Introduction by J. G. Van Gelder. (Lund Humphries. 4s. 6d.)
THESE collections of plates gain a particular interest from the fact that we in London can now see so many of the originals. The contents of the du Cherie portfolio are especially valuable ; the technical standard improves considerably on its predecessors in this uneven series, and the pictures have a freshness, for few of them have been traduced, by previous reproductions. Mr. Reynolds adds little to our knowledge of the subject ; indeed his grasp of it is uncertain. It was a little before his thirty-third birthday that the painter arrived in Paris. But he has the good fortune to appear in his own language. He does not refer to woodcuts as carvings as Dr. Muensterberger is made to, and his grammar at least is happier than that which has been given to Dr. J. G. Van Gelder. The Dutch studies, however, are both authoritative and illuminating. Many readers might have been glad to sacrifice some of the representative character of the collection of drawings in favour of a few more of the marvellous examples in pen and ink from the last period ; in them alone is the stature of the painter fully reflected. At the opposite extreme of his work, displaying little of that pursuit of lucidity which is one of the less remarked features of his development, stands " The Potato Eaters." It is almost the only one of his pictures whose significance does not transcend that of a personal gesture. We can, however, scrutinise at leisure here the details of its forbidding facture ; it would be an insult to seek from them the pleasures which we are accustomed to expect from the medium.
Dr. Van Gelder is able to convey much of the passion with which the picture was conceived. Perhaps it was a fear of mitigating the severity of these " physiognomies which remind one of pigs and crows " that suggested the omission of the loveliest of the works associated with it, the pen and wash 'drawing at the head of a fetter to Theo (Letter 409) and the only one which anticipates the later clarity and coherence. Dr. Muensterberger broaches the interesting question of Van Gogh's invariable use of his Christian name as a signature. He discards the painter's own explanation without diffi- culty, and suggests that if a better one could be found it might shed
light on the nature of a singular man. He is no doubt right ; unfor- tunately, he does not pursue the matter. Perhaps it should be con- sidered in relation to the crucial character of the painter's family relationships. His father's death was followed by " The Potato Eaters " ; it inaugurated Vie year of his liberation. The problem of his distaste for his father's name should not be beyond solution.
LAWRENCE GOWING.
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