Free Leaving Van Gogh by Carol Wallace Page A

fill with images of Auvers, then with shipments of paintings Vincent had made in the South, then with more Auvers paintings. He loved the crooked little thatched cottages and the fields patchworked with their different shades of green. I never tired of examining the way he applied the paint—in waves or dashes or thick, swirling rosettes. Sometimes he would cover a background with a kind of woven effect, painstakingly applied.
    He did not mind at all when I watched him, I discovered. In fact, he said he concentrated better with someone to talk to.
    I thought that was why he wanted to paint my portrait—that he might as well make use of my constant presence. He was surprisingly modest in his request, asking if I might be able to spare him the time for a sitting. Of course I was flattered and intrigued. I had by then seen his exquisite self-portrait, the one with the swirling blue background that I am fortunate enough to own now. There was a rigor to it that I admired immensely. It was not a portrait in the old-fashioned sense, a painting that demonstrated a sitter’s position in life and permitted him to think well of himself. Van Gogh’s self-portrait with the blue flames is an examination. In fact, I thought, that afternoon, as Vincent arranged his easel, that it was now his turn to examine me. I had peered at his body and attempted to diagnose the state of his mind, and he would now do likewise to me.
    When my old friend Amand Gautier painted me as a young man, we discussed the format, the pose, even which one of my two coats I should wear. He sketched a few different poses, drew my figure three or four times to work out his lighting scheme. That portrait was finished in three weeks, and we thought his swiftness astounding. (I might add that it was a great success in the Salon of 1861, and that I gained a degree of renown from the painting and the lithograph reproduction of it.) Now here I was, sitting at the red table in the garden behind the house, without any obvious preparation. But of course Vincent van Gogh never did anything conventionally. I would have liked to change into something more elegant, but Vincent would not permit this.
    “No, Doctor, just as you are,” he said. “We’ll do very well with your old jacket.” I made to take off my hat, but he would not permit that, either, though it was only a stained sailor’s cap with a narrow leather brim. Vincent stood a few feet away, squeezing blue and red and yellow paint onto his palette.
    “And how would you like me to pose?” I asked, feeling somewhat at a loss. “Perhaps I could be writing something?”
    “No, no,” he answered, scrutinizing the bristles on a brush and discarding it. “Just lean your head on your hand and look at me.” I obeyed. I already knew better than to suggest an alternative.
    He stepped back and gazed at me. “We need another note,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Yellow.” He glanced around, as if the desired color would appear before him.
    “Have you any yellow blooms, Doctor?” he asked. “I don’t know your northern plants very well. I want something strong, like the yolk of an egg.”
    “There are the orange dahlias you painted the other day,” I suggested.
    “No, I must have yellow, the primary color. You see the red of the table and the blue of your coat require it, a strong, true yellow like the cover of a novel. Actually, a book would do nicely.”
    “Yes, of course,” I said. “Shall I get one?”
    “Yes,” he said. “But I will paint your figure first. I like this pose. It shows that you have been long acquainted with grief.”
    So he was indeed examining me, and he had managed to discern a truth about me that I did not often acknowledge. Blanche had been gone for many years already; perhaps I should have been able to put the pain and guilt of her death behind me. Yet I often felt that I carried it with me like a heavy stone, a burden I could never put down. Many a man has been widowed young,