en plein air

"The True and the Essential" in Art by Jeannine Cook

I am still mulling over the twists and turns of Vincent Van Gogh's life as an artist, with his highly intelligent reasonings or rationalisations about each phase of his art, especially in his letters to his brother, Theo.  So much to think about because, to a greater or lesser extent, most artists can learn a great deal from Van Gogh.

There is a wonderful quote of his in Van Gogh, A Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith.  Writing in mid 1889, when he was staying at the Asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, at Saint-Rémy,  Van Gogh remarked, "In the open air, one works as best one can, one fills one's canvas regardless.  Yet that is how one captures the true and the essential - the most difficult part."

Iris, Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh, oil on canvas, 1889 (Image courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles)

Iris, Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh, oil on canvas, 1889 (Image courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles)

Even before Van Gogh was allowed to leave the asylum to paint further afield, he was "doing little things after nature", like these gem-like Iris.  Rather than thinking too much, he was going out to "look at a blade of grass, the branch of a fire tree, an ear of wheat, in order to calm down".  Painting as best he could, with spontaneity, and indeed, the essence of irises sings from the canvas. 

Landscape from Saint-Rémy, oil on canvas, Van Gogh, 1889 (Image courtesy of NY Carlsberg Glyptotek)

Landscape from Saint-Rémy, oil on canvas, Van Gogh, 1889 (Image courtesy of NY Carlsberg Glyptotek)

Olive Grove, oil on canvas, Van Gogh, 1889, (Image courtesy of Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Netherlands)

Olive Grove, oil on canvas, Van Gogh, 1889, (Image courtesy of Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Netherlands)

Green Wheat Field with Cypress, oil on canvas, Van Gogh, 1889 (Image courtesy of Národiní Galerie, Prague)

Green Wheat Field with Cypress, oil on canvas, Van Gogh, 1889 (Image courtesy of Národiní Galerie, Prague)

These paintings show the progression of Van Gogh moving further out from the asylum, exploring the Midi landscapes, working en plein air, in heat and wind and sun, trying to capture this wide world in his new-found serenity of mind.

Mountains at Saint-Rémy, oil on canvas, Van Gogh, 1889, (Image courtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY)

Mountains at Saint-Rémy, oil on canvas, Van Gogh, 1889, (Image courtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY)

During this amazingly productive time, Van Gogh had found the clarity and peace that allowed him to cast away the fetters of mind and even those of drawing with the aid of his perspective frame.  He simply worked "by feeling and by instinct", in the same way, he decided, as the ancient Egyptians had done in their creative work.

I find it interesting that this was a brief time, for Van Gogh, when order, simplicity of living, and a cloistered serenity in the asylum all fostered his creativity.  He had the peace of mind and energy to go to the heart of what he was seeing and simply paint and draw.  

Time and time again, we get reminders of how solitude and peace help artists to find the "true and the essential" in their art.  Agatha Christie found inspiration and amazing productivity in her writing at her beloved home, Greenway, near Torquay, because of the quiet peacefulness there.  Author Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote a wonderful small book in 1957, A Time to Keep Silence, about his stay at the Abbey of St. Wandrille de Fontanelle, near Rouen in France.  He had gone there to write, but found that once he had become accustomed to the silence and deep orderliness of the life of the Benedictines monks, he was filled with an energy and creativity of "limpid freshness".

We all need that solitude and order in our lives to be able to reach whatever is true and essential to us as artists. Not always so easy in our world of today.  We need seriously to organise ourselves and find the discipline to turn off phones, unplug from the computer, make space and time and serenity. But there are rewards.

Gauguin versus Van Gogh - Their Art-Making Argument by Jeannine Cook

When Paul Gauguin finally came south from Brittany to spend time with Vincent Van Gogh in the famous Yellow House in Arles in 1888, one of the many arguments that erupted between the two artists still has huge relevance for practically every artist today.

The argument boils down to the different approach to creating art. Should one work from real life, often plein air, as Van Gogh believed, or should one create art de tête, from one's head, by using prior drawings and painted studies, composed and executed in the studio, as Gauguin did?

Alychamps, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, oil on canvas, Private collection

Alychamps, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, oil on canvas, Private collection

Alyschamps,Arles, Paul Gauguin, 1888, oil on canvas, (Image courtesy of Musée d'Orsay)

Alyschamps,Arles, Paul Gauguin, 1888, oil on canvas, (Image courtesy of Musée d'Orsay)

These two paintings were among the initial salvos in this argument between the two artists.  Gauguin chose Les Alyschamps as a destination for painting, a place that Van Gogh had not talked of during his earlier seven months in Arles.  It had  been a necropolis since  Roman times, and over the centuries had evolved into a sacred burying ground, before having a railway track put through and the tombs destroyed.  By the 1880s, Arles' city government had transformed the debris into an allée with trees and gardens, a rendez vous for lovers and parading city dwellers.

As the days went past, Van Gogh and Gauguin continued to be more at odds than not, as is vividly detailed in the superb book,Van Gogh: A Life, by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. As they write, "Vincent wanted to paint: Gauguin wanted to draw.  Vincent wanted to rush into the countryside at the first opportunity: Gauguin demanded a "period of incubation" - a month at least - to wander about, sketching and "learning the essence" of the place.  Vincent loved to paint en  plein air; Gauguin preferred to work indoors.  He saw their expeditions as fact-finding missions, opportunities to gather sketches - "documents" he called them - that he could synthesize into tableaux in the calm and reflection of the studio. Vincent championed spontaneity and serendipity; Gauguin constructed his images slowly and methodically, trying out forms and blocking in colours.  Vincent flung himself at the canvas headlong with a loaded brush and fierce intent: Gauguin built up his surfaces in tranquil sessions of careful brushstrokes." (pp.671-72).

The Night Café, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, oil on canvas (Image courtesy of the Yale University art Gallery, New Haven)

The Night Café, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, oil on canvas (Image courtesy of the Yale University art Gallery, New Haven)

Night Café at Arles (Mme.Ginoux), Paul Gauguin, 1888, oil on canvas, (Image courtesy of Pushkin Museum, Moscow)

Night Café at Arles (Mme.Ginoux), Paul Gauguin, 1888, oil on canvas, (Image courtesy of Pushkin Museum, Moscow)

Earlier that year, Vincent Van Gogh had lugged his heavy easel into the all-night Café de la Gare in Arles, for three nights in a row, to paint its garish "clashes and contrasts", human and material.  Later, in the deadly psychological warfare that had broken out between Gauguin and Van Gogh, Gauguin drew a study of the wife of the Café's owner, Madame Ginoux.  Behind her in the painting he then did, he changed the viewpoint of Van Gogh's  café scene, inserting images cherished by Van Gogh, but he produced in essence a close evocation of Van Gogh's Café.  However, Gauguin created this imagined café scene in the studio, not in the Café de la Gare.

Pure imagination, arbitrary colour, invented compositions versus "surrendering myself to nature" as Van Gogh preferred to do, celebrating "the things that exist", as Vincent's brother, Theo, once observed; that remained the tussle between them.  There were many ramifications to this contrasting way of creating art, but part of Van Gogh's difficulty was often with the depiction of human figures.  He needed models in front of him to be able to grapple with the human form, and even then with difficulty.  He felt uncomfortable with the "more mysterious character" of the imagined scene.

During a rainy spell, Gauguin challenged Van Gogh to paint a scene from memory that Van Gogh ironically had described vividly to him a short time before.  He had told Gauguin how the vineyards at the base of Montmajour, past which they were walking, had looked a few weeks previously, during grape harvest.  He had told of the workers, the vivid colours and how these women had looked in the intense, autumnal sun. 

The Red Vineyard at Arles, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, oil, on canvas (Image courtesy of the Puskin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow)

The Red Vineyard at Arles, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, oil, on canvas (Image courtesy of the Puskin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow)

Grape Harvest at Arles, Paul Gauguin, 1888, oil on canvas, (image courtesy of the Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen)

Grape Harvest at Arles, Paul Gauguin, 1888, oil on canvas, (image courtesy of the Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen)

Van Gogh used old drawings and relied on his knowledge of field workers.  By contrast, Gauguin reverted to the labourers of Brittany, not those of Provence, and with his enigmatic composition and depiction of the the two introverted figures, he raises more questions than gives answers.  His painting was a far cry from Van Gogh's more predictable, if a little awkward, painting of the grape harvest.

Van Gogh soon gave the de tête version of art another try.  He was triggered by family letters and waves of nostalgia to travel back mentally to his childhood home in Etten, Holland.  He imagines the two ladies he depicts might be his mother and his sister; he uses compositional tricks Gauguin used to wind through the canvas, leading the viewer to Midi cypress trees and the brilliantly hued gardens his mother used to cultivate.

Ladies of Arles (Memories of the Garden at Etten), Vincent Van Gogh, oil on canvas, 1888, (Image courtesy of the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg)

Ladies of Arles (Memories of the Garden at Etten), Vincent Van Gogh, oil on canvas, 1888, (Image courtesy of the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg)

Old Women of Arles, Paul Gauguin, oil on canvas, 1888, (Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Old Women of Arles, Paul Gauguin, oil on canvas, 1888, (Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Once more, the two men created such different works - hardly surprising, however.  Again and again, as the days passed in The Yellow House,  the tensions flared between the two men. One painting in particular that Gauguin did of Van Gogh sums up his ability to go for the jugular... and how poisonous the atmosphere had become between the two protagonists.

Vincent Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers, Paul Gauguin, oil on canvas, 1888, (Image courtesy of Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

Vincent Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers, Paul Gauguin, oil on canvas, 1888, (Image courtesy of Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

The rows and temporary amnesties eventually only ended when Gauguin left Arles and precipitated the famous ear-slicing episode that everyone remembers about Vincent Van Gogh. 

Yet those same issues - how to create art, no matter of what description, persist to this day.  Most of us oscillate between the two camps, sometimes working from real life, often en plein air.  At other times, imagined compositions, mosaics of different images placed together to create messages, images, ideas, predominate in our work.  The head versus the eye - every artist knows the argument.

Perhaps Van Gogh's remark in a letter to Theo sums up the situation we all know about: "In spite of himself and in spite of me, Gauguin has more or less proved to me that it is time I was varying my work a little."  In other words, be open to experimentation and change.

What Trees tell me by Jeannine Cook

I realise that I am extremely lucky often to be surrounded by very beautiful trees, of very different types according to where I am in the world. I can quite understand why people worshipped trees and why today, there are so-called tree-huggers.

Givhans Ferry Beech, graphite, Jeannine Cook artist

Givhans Ferry Beech, graphite, Jeannine Cook artist

There is a majesty and serenity inherent in a large tree, something that dwarfs human presumptions and quiets one's fears. Their trunks tell of their capacity for endurance, adaptation and survival; their shapes tell of past influences of weather, treatment by man or animal, drought or abundance of rain and nutrients. This huge beech, growing in Givhans Ferry State Park in South Carolina, spoke to me insistently, in the cold spring light. Before long, as I was drawing this in graphite, I was totally at peace, unaware of anything save the tree.

A-Top the Terrace, Palma, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook, Private collection

A-Top the Terrace, Palma, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook, Private collection

Every time I find myself drawing or painting a tree, I remember a remark that Paul Cezanne apparently made: "Art is a harmony parallel with nature". In the case of trees, as wonderful representatives of nature, they help me achieve a degree of harmony and serenity that is a huge gift. When I perched uncomfortably on a very hard rock to draw this Aleppo Pine on Palma de Mallorca's outskirts, I was oblivious of the curious looks given me by people walking their dogs. I was somehow in harmony with this luminous tree that spoke of times when Palma was not such a sea of concrete.Drawing in silverpoint seemed appropriate for it had the same wonderful luster.

Overlooking Ibiza, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Overlooking Ibiza, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

This is another silverpoint drawing of an Aleppo pine, growing far up on the mountains above the city of Palma, where the view takes one far over the sea to the neighbouring island of Ibiza. The driving winds are shaping this pine, as it clings to the rocky mountainside. But it somehow seemed timeless.

At the Top of the Hill, Le Vicomte-sur-Rance,  silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

At the Top of the Hill, Le Vicomte-sur-Rance,  silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

These rugged pine trees, growing on a windswept ridge in Brittany, were equally "eternal" in feel, as I sat in a ploughed, muddy field to draw them. Farmers were passing with huge trailers full of manure to fertilise their fields, and they gave me some very curious looks. The crows were calling far overhead in the soft luminously grey sky. It was a time when my art did indeed provide me a passport to a "harmony parallel with Nature".

This quiet that comes to one as one works outside en plein air is especially magical. Nothing else seems temporarily to matter - just the dialogue between what one is trying to depict and one's hand working on the surface of the paper. Yet one hears bird song, the sound of the wind, different calls of humans or animals - but as a backdrop only. It is somehow a different experience to when one is deep in work in the studio, perhaps because of the vagaries of the weather and surroundings. Another aspect also comes into play when trees are the subject matter: they are intensely, logically complicated in their form and growth, and somehow one has to sort that all out, without depicting every single branch or leaf. Each type of tree is totally individualistic, and I liken drawing each one to doing a portrait of a person.

Perhaps, however, one is more likely to be in harmony with trees than with a fellow human being that one is drawing or painting? Who knows!