MARTIN BAILEY is a leading specialist on Van Gogh and an arts journalist. He is a London-based correspondent for The Art Newspaper. Bailey has curated several exhibitions on Van Gogh including one at Tate Britain in 2019. His books include The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece, Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence, Starry Night: Van Gogh at the Asylum and Van Gogh's Finale: Auvers and the Artist's Rise to Fame​.

Living with Vincent van Gogh

The Homes & Landscapes that Shaped the Artist

The Quarto Group

Contents

Childhood

Zundert March 1853–July 1869

A lifeless infant named Vincent Willem van Gogh was born in Zundert on 30 March 1852. One year later, on exactly the same day, his mother gave birth to a healthy, second son who would be baptized with the identical name (fig. 1). The future artist's father, Theodorus, was the local pastor and every time the young boy attended church, he would pass the funeral slab of his stillborn brother, inscribed with his own name. The stone, which still survives, reads: 'Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of God'.

Zundert, a farming village in Brabant, lies in the south of the Netherlands, very close to the Belgian border. Theodorus (fig. 2) had become its Protestant pastor in 1849, serving in a community where Catholics represented the majority. The parsonage (fig. 3) lay just opposite the town hall and square (fig. 4). Behind the parsonage the Van Goghs had a spacious garden – and beyond this lay a patchwork of fields where the peasantry toiled.

Theodorus had married Anna (fig. 5) in 1851. After the successful birth of Vincent two years later they went on to have five more children: Anna (1855), Theo (1857), Lies (1859), Wil (1862) and Cor (1867). Among these siblings, Vincent was always closest to Theo. With Theodorus earning a steady income as a parson, he provided a comfortable, middle-class environment for his family, and Anna was a loving mother. In many respects, this might seem an ideal environment to nurture young children.

Once he turned seven, Vincent started at the village school, just across the road. Presumably problems arose, since around a year later he was withdrawn, to be taught by a governess at home. At the tender age of eleven he was sent away to boarding school in the nearby town of Zevenbergen. Two years later he progressed to a secondary school in Tilburg, lodging there with a local family for a further two years. Vincent left the Tilburg school just before turning 15 and then lived at home for a year or so, considering his next steps.

Although Vincent's formal schooling totalled only about five years, he ended up being well-read and adept at languages, greatly helped by the fact that his parents attached considerable importance to learning. By his twenties he was fluent in English, French and German. Although he sketched as a child and took drawing lessons at school, there is little indication that he showed any particular talent in this direction.

A major legacy of Vincent's youth was the impact of Zundert's rural setting, and the lifelong love of nature that this engendered in him. Always a keen walker, he became interested in insects, birds and animals, and from childhood he was particularly aware of the changing seasons and their impact on the landscape and farming. Observing the life of the local peasantry at close hand made him only too aware of the challenges that they faced and overcame. These early experiences would prove inspirational when he eventually set out to become an artist.

Van Gogh always retained positive, almost idealistic memories of Zundert. For him, the village symbolized rustic simplicity and a carefree childhood. At the age of 22 he wrote to Theo to say that 'my heart was drawn to Zundert so strongly' that he felt the need to revisit it after his parents had moved to the nearby village of Helvoirt.

A dozen years later in Arles, when he faced a mental crisis after mutilating his ear, his thoughts once again returned to his birthplace: 'During my illness I again saw each room in the house at Zundert, each path, each plant in the garden, the views round about, the fields, the neighbours, the cemetery, the church, our kitchen garden behind – right up to the magpies' nest in a tall acacia in the cemetery'.

That same year he wrote to his mother saying that although many years earlier he had lived in the metropolises of London and Paris, 'I still look more or less like a peasant from Zundert'. Vincent compared his life as an artist with those of the farmers: 'I plough on my canvases as they do in their fields'.

Art Dealer

The Hague, London and Paris July 1869–April 1876

Thanks to family connections, after Vincent turned 16 he got his first job, as a trainee art dealer. An uncle, also named Vincent (and known as Cent), had set up a gallery in The Hague, which he later sold to Goupil, a successful company based in Paris. Cent remained a partner and was able to secure a position for his young nephew.

The Goupil gallery was located in Plaats, a square in the centre of The Hague, where it served a sophisticated clientele, as its elegant interior suggests (fig. 6). Van Gogh, the most junior member of staff, was employed in July 1869 to perform clerical tasks and help in the storeroom. He lodged not far away, with the family of Willem and Dina Roos, with whom he soon became friends. To make himself feel at home, he put up his favourite prints in the room.

Van Gogh, coming from a rural community, first came face to face with mainstream modern art in The Hague. Goupil handled 19th-century works, mostly French, but some by Italian and Spanish artists. Along with paintings, they had developed into the world's largest producer of highquality reproductions of artworks, publishing thousands of engravings and photographs. Van Gogh's main task was to handle the stock of reproductions, providing an intensive introduction to recent Continental pictures.

The Hague at this time had become the artistic capital of the Netherlands, the home of the so-called Hague School of painters. These contemporary landscape artists focused on conveying atmosphere, using muted colours to depict idyllic rural scenes. Vincent quickly became an avid admirer of their work, especially Anton Mauve (who would later marry his cousin Jet).

Van Gogh continued his earlier habit of sketching. Several of his drawings survive, including one of the tree-lined Lange Vijverberg, a waterside boulevard running from Plaats towards the Mauritshuis museum. Although these early sketches are clumsy, he was keen to persevere and improve his technique.

After working there for nearly four years, Vincent was offered a promotion, which involved a transfer to London. Never again would he stay for so long in the same place as he had done in The Hague. When Van Gogh left for London he already looked older than his 20 years, with a slightly furrowed brow that gave him a soulful appearance. In the only surviving photograph he has scruffy hair and appears ill at ease in a jacket and tie (fig. 7). The most striking feature of this image is his piercing eyes.

Writing to his brother Theo (who had just joined the Brussels branch of Goupil), Vincent enthused over his forthcoming move to London. Although The Hague, with a population of 90,000, must have seemed huge after the village of Zundert, London had over three million inhabitants. Vincent declared the transfer would be 'wonderful for my English, which I understand well, though I don't speak it nearly as well as I'd like'. He was also 'very curious about the English painters, we see so little of them, because almost everything stays in England'.

Van Gogh arrived in London in May 1873. His salary was £90 a year, a considerable amount for a young man (a typical workman, with a family to support, might receive a quarter of this). Never again would he earn anything approaching this sum. It was actually more than his father received, although as a parson Theodorus also had free accommodation. The location of Vincent's first lodgings in London is unknown, but it was in the suburbs, almost certainly south of the Thames.

The young Dutchman loved to walk, which gave him plenty of time to observe and reflect. In London he usually commuted to the gallery on foot, partly along the recently constructed Thames Embankment. He strode out wearing a top hat, telling his parents that 'you cannot be in London without one'. These journeys gave him endless opportunities to marvel at the sights of the London streets – and to contemplate the contrast between the lives of the wealthy and the impoverished.

The Goupil gallery was on Southampton Street in Covent Garden, in the very heart of bustling London. A minute's walk north of the gallery lay the rowdy vegetable market, adjacent to the more decorous Royal Opera House. A minute to the south was the Strand, then home to bookshops and publishers, and, come the evening, a haunt of prostitutes. One can sense the impact of this heady environment on Vincent's febrile imagination.

Van Gogh's comfortable, suburban lodgings must have provided a peaceful retreat. But finding it expensive, he moved after three months to cheaper accommodation on Hackford Road in north Brixton, then a leafy suburb. There, in a three-storey, 1850s house, he lodged with Sarah Ursula Loyer, a widow who lived with her teenage daughter Eugenie and ran a small school for girls. The schoolroom was on the ground floor, the Loyers were above and Van Gogh probably had the front bedroom on the top floor. Vincent wrote back to Theo: 'I now have a room, as I've long been wishing, without sloping beams and without blue wallpaper with a green border', presumably comparing it with the garret where he had stayed in The Hague.

It was in Brixton that Van Gogh seems to have fallen in love. In January 1874 his sister Anna wrote to Theo, saying that she had just received news from Hackford Road, with letters from Vincent and 'Ursula'. Anna then commented that 'I suppose there will be a love between those two as between Agnes and David Copperfield', who in the Dickens novel eventually married and found true happiness. Anna may have mistaken platonic affection for something more, but she clearly believed that romance was in the air.

What is curious, however, is that Anna suggested that the target of Vincent's affection was Ursula, who was the mother in her late fifties – rather than Eugenie, the 19-year-old daughter. It later emerged that Vincent did have a penchant for older women, although the vast age difference means that Anna presumably intended to refer to the daughter.

One month later, Eugenie became engaged and afterwards married Samuel Plowman, who had been lodging there when Vincent arrived. This means that there may well have been competition to woo the landlady's daughter. A few months after the engagement a crisis erupted in Vincent's life. In August 1874 Vincent and his sister Anna, who had recently arrived to stay with him for a short time in London, abruptly left Hackford Road. This was one of the first indications of the emotional problems that were to plague Van Gogh for the rest of his life.

News of the departure from the Loyers was passed on to their mother, who commented: 'I'm glad he's no longer there, there were too many secrets there and no family like ordinary people, but he will surely have been disappointed by them and his illusions will not have been realized – real life is different from what one imagines.' What exactly occurred in the Brixton house still remains shrouded in mystery.

Vincent, along with Anna, who had come to London to practise her English and find work, then moved to Kennington Road, where they lodged with John Parker, a publican, and his wife Elizabeth. This was not far from Hackford Road, but slightly closer to central London. Living with a publican must have given Van Gogh a vivid insight into the problems of everyday life in the capital.

Meanwhile, Van Gogh continued to absorb British culture with gusto. Goupil was only five minutes' walk from the National Gallery, and he was doubtless a regular visitor (figs. 8 and 9). He would visit the Royal Academy's highly popular Summer

Exhibitions, which provided the best opportunity to discover British contemporary art. Back at Hackford Road he read the Illustrated London News, along with its rival the Graphic, and immersed himself in the novels of Charles Dickens and George Eliot and the plays of Shakespeare. British art and literature would have a deep influence on Van Gogh when he later set out to become an artist. He came to admire English magazine illustrators and in the early 1880s he actually thought of returning to London to seek work on one of the periodicals.

Although Van Gogh did some sightseeing in London, his passions were art and nature. Three months after his arrival, he had written to friends back in The Hague: 'I haven't yet been to the Crystal Palace and the Tower, nor to Tussaud's; I'm not at all in a hurry to go and see everything. For the time being I have enough with the museums, parks, &c., which attract me more'.

During his leisure hours Van Gogh continued to sketch. His most accomplished drawing from London is of Austin Friars, the Dutch Protestant church in the City (fig. 10). He made it for his family, no doubt thinking that its religious subject matter would appeal to them. The accurate depiction of the church, drawn fairly confidently in ink, suggests that he may have copied it from a print or a photograph.

Van Gogh would also make occasional thumbnail sketches of paintings that particularly caught his eye, such as Giuseppe De Nittis's Victoria Embankment, a work that he saw during a temporary stint at Goupil in Paris (fig. 11). This picture brought back recent memories of London: 'I crossed Westminster Bridge every morning and evening and know what it looks like when the sun's setting behind Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, and what it's like early in the morning, and in the winter with snow and fog. When I saw this painting I felt how much I love London.' Van Gogh also sketched while walking back from work. As he recalled a decade later: 'How often I would stand on the Thames Embankment and draw as I made my way home from Southampton Street in the evening, and it looked terrible. If only there had been someone then who had told me what perspective was, how much misery I would have been spared, how much further along I would be now.'

Although only a few drawings from his English period survive, scattered references in letters suggest that he sketched fairly frequently. The surviving works are unpretentious, often done to give his family an idea of the places where he was living. They do not reveal any particular talent, but Van Gogh was attempting to improve his technique. Building on these early efforts, the future artist would eventually discover his true vocation.

While Van Gogh was with Goupil in London he was twice transferred on a temporary basis to its main Paris gallery. The first time was from late October to Christmas 1874. That summer he had fallen into a depression, partly caused by the fraught situation in Hackford Road, and his bosses felt that a change of scene would be beneficial. But Vincent was angry about the transfer, blaming his family for encouraging Goupil to move him, and after spending the Christmas break with them he was allowed to return to London.

Van Gogh was again sent to Paris the following year. Once more, he resented the move, which on this occasion was prompted by his increasingly poor performance at a crucial time. In January 1875 Goupil had taken over a rival printseller, Thomas Holloway, which had a gallery nearby in Bedford Street. After the takeover Goupil moved into Holloway's larger premises and expanded the business, to sell original paintings alongside prints. The inaugural exhibition was scheduled to open in mid-May.

Vincent was transferred again to Paris in early May 1875, just a few days before the opening, and a Goupil employee from Paris, Richard Tripp, was summoned to London, so they effectively swapped posts. Tripp, a young Englishman, was well regarded, and it was thought that he would provide much-needed assistance at the London gallery, where it was urgently required for the inaugural show.

During Van Gogh's second stint in Paris he lodged in Montmartre with a fellow Goupil employee, Harry Gladwell, whose father owned a gallery in London. Harry had been sent to Paris to learn the trade. The two young men got on well, with Van Gogh calling him 'my worthy Englishman'. Vincent described their lodgings to Theo: 'I've rented a small room in Montmartre which you'd like; it's small, but overlooks a little garden full of ivy and Virginia creeper.' Vincent and Harry called the cosy place their 'cabin', decorating its walls with their favourite prints.

Van Gogh's sojourn in Paris saw his career as an art dealer brought to an abrupt end. After returning from a short visit to see his parents over Christmas 1875, he was called in to see his boss, who gave him notice to leave at the end of March. The ostensible reason was that Van Gogh had taken unauthorized leave over the holiday period, but the gallery had become increasingly concerned about his performance. Shy, awkward and often tactless, his inability to interact effectively with customers proved to be a serious disadvantage in the art trade.

In view of Van Gogh's later failure to sell his own paintings, it may come as a surprise that he had been employed in a commercial gallery for nearly seven years – not far off the ten years that he would devote to creating his own works. He certainly learned a great deal about art at Goupil, although he failed completely to understand the commercial side of the business. But had he not begun his career in a gallery, it would probably never have occurred to him to set out on his eventual chosen path. Exposure to paintings and prints at Goupil opened Van Gogh's eyes to art.