Before proceeding with my argument, let me lay stress on the point that I feel very little sympathy whatever with any of these impressionists, _art-form-maniacs_, and their followers inasmuch as they obscured the issues at the very moment--half way through the last century--when the issues were growing so plain that they _must_ have found a solution sooner or later. But, if we are going to speak of preferences, if in a gingerly manner we are going to put on gloves and draw out from among this crowd the men whom we feel we can tolerate most readily, then, from the sculptor Rodin to his friend Renoir, of all the names that are now household words in the impressionistic and post-impressionistic movement of the late nineteenth century, I for my part, certainly select Van Gogh and, perhaps a little way before him, his friend Gauguin, as the only two whom I can contemplate with equanimity--not to speak of approval.
In judging Van Gogh, one of the critic’s greatest difficulties is, in the first place, to see a sufficient number of his pictures; for he passed through so many phases that isolated examples of his work may prove merely misleading. Now, thanks to the Post-Impressionist Exhibition of 1910-1911 in London, the Sonderbund Austellung in Cologne (1912), and a visit to Amsterdam, I have been able to see about 200 of Van Gogh’s paintings, and about a quarter as many drawings; but when one remembers that the largest exhibition of his work which has ever been held contained some 450 pictures alone, not to speak of drawings, it will be seen that to be acquainted with 200 of his works is a long way from possessing a complete knowledge of what he achieved. Still the specimens I have seen I believe to have been thoroughly representative, and in any case sufficient to warrant my forming an opinion as to his merits.
Van Gogh died when he was only thirty-seven years of age, and Emile Bernard reminds us that though he always used to draw, he really did not give his attention wholly to painting until the year 1882--that is to say, when he was fully twenty-nine years old. About this time he writes to his brother: “In a sense I am glad that I never learned to paint.... I really do not know how to paint. Armed with a white panel I take up a position in front of the spot that interests me, contemplate what lies before me, and say to myself, ‘that white panel must be turned into something!’” And concerning two studies finished at this period, he says: “I feel quite certain that on looking at these two pictures, no one will ever believe that they are the first studies I have ever painted” (pages 15 and 4).